BBC AMERICA TO AIR INTERVIEW WITH WMD INFORMANT

BBC AMERICA TO AIR INTERVIEW WITH WMD INFORMANT

Stepping up its competition with U.S. cable news networks, BBC America announced Tuesday that it plans to air an interview Friday night with the Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball," whose false claims that he worked for an Iraqi factory developing biolog ical weapons gave the Bush administration a principal justification for launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The man reportedly sold his information to German intelligence, which passed it along to Washington. It formed the centerpiece of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech on Iraq to the U.N. in early 2003, even though some senior officials in the CIA had reportedly warned Powell that the man was "unstable, immature and unreliable." Friday night's program will also feature an interview with Powell's chief of staff at the time, Lawrence Wilkerson.

26/03/2008