Rafid Ahmed Alway, whose false stories of biological weapons labs earned him the code-name "Curveball" and buttressed President Bush's calls for a war with Iraq wasn't the prominent engineer he claimed to be.

Alwan did study chemical engineering, but made poor grades and never managed a biological weapons facility, according to CBS'"60 Minutes," which will broadcast on Sunday a report describing how he became a secret intelligence source.

Curveball has been repeatedly discredited by investigations of the United States'faulty prewar intelligence and became an embarrassment to U.S. spy agencies. A presidential intelligence commission found that Curveball, who mostly told his stories to German intelligence officials who passed them on to the United States, was a prevaricator and an alcoholic.

"60 Minutes" reports that Alwan arrived at a German refugee center in 1999 and began spinning his tales of a facility making mobile biological weapons in an effort to gain asylum. The ploy apparently achieved his goal, and Alwan is assumed to be living in Germany today under an assumed name.

Although German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball's claims of mobile bioweapons labs were unreliable, and U.N. inspectors determined before the war began in 2003 that parts of his story were false, the Bush administration continued to promote the existence of such mobile labs for months after the invasion, until it was widely accepted that they could not be found.

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Agencies