Fabricator (intelligence) ... Pentagon policy officials ... undertook the collection of sensitive intelligence. ... It was a rogue operation." "Ahmed Chalabi" is an Iraqi politician and Iranian agent who fed and promoted false intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction to Bush Administration officials in order to encourage the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi" is an Iraqi citizen who peddled fabrications regarding Iraqi WMDs to western intelligence services. Known under his codename "Curveball", his fabrications compromised the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. He was a prolific fabricator with his information generating over 100 false intelligence reports for the BND and
Rationale for the Iraq War in January 2004, David Kay, the original director of the Iraq Survey Group, said unequivocally that "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing." He later added in an interview that the intelligence community owed the President an apology. In the aftermath of the invasion, much attention was also paid to the role of the press in promoting government claims concerning weapons of mass destruction production in Iraq. Between 1998 and 2003, "The New York Times" and other influential U.S. newspapers published numerous articles about suspected Iraqi rearmament programs with headlines