In other Iraq news — five senior officials from Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service have told the Los Angeles Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that information provided by a top Iraqi informant codenamed Curveball could not be trusted or confirmed. Despite the questions about Curveball’s veracity, the Bush administration issued dire warnings about Iraq’s biological weapons program based on his claims. President Bush repeatedly said Iraq had mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations in February 2003 that these labs could brew enough weapons-grade microbes “in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people.” The Germans were shocked to hear Powell’s speech. One official said “We had always told them it was not proven.... It was not hard intelligence.” A month after Powell’s speech, chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, announced inspectors in Iraq had found “no evidence” of mobile biological production facilities in Iraq. But Blix’s announcement drew little notice at the time and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began two weeks later. Curveball was an Iraqi exile who moved to Germany in 1999. The LA Times reports the CIA corroborated Curveball’s story with three sources: Two had ties to Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. All three turned out to be frauds. Curveball claimed his brother was Chalabi’s bodyguard.