大学英语6级考试拓展阅读练习.docVIP

This is a book you can imagine Alec Leamas, the miserable spook hero of 揟he Spy Who Came In From the Cold? enjoying on the number 11 bus back to his dingy Hammersmith flat. 揥hat do you think spies are: priests, saints, martyrs??Leamas famously snarled. 揟heyre a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.? 牋牋牋?Plus 鏰 change, apparently. 揅urveball?offers a squalid and up-to-date procession of real-life fools, traitors and game-players seeking to brighten their rotten lives. Principal among them is an Iraqi chemical engineer who pitched up in Germany wed.ithout a visa in 1999. He asked for political asylum and knew that he would greatly improve his chances of getting it if he could make himself interesting to the intelligence services. Which he did. Before long he had their rapt attention, as well as his own code name, Curveball. 牋? 牋?Bob Drogin, a reporter on the Los Angeles Times, relates how over the next couple of years Curveball impressed his interrogators with his detailed knowledge of Iraqs chemical and biological weapons programmes. He spoke at length of such things as mobile laboratories that were being used to cook up lethal bugs. The Americans were desperate to have a look at him too. But the Germans fobbed off their rivals with transcripts and reports, blocking direct access to their prize informer. 牋? 牋?Nevertheless, Curveballs story became an important part of the American governments case for invading Iraq. Information taken from his testimony cropped up in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 (which maintained with 揾igh confidence?that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons); in George Bushs state-of-the-union message in January 2003 (which included a reference to 搈obile weapons labs designed to produce germ-warfare agents?; and in Colin Powells presentation to the UN the following month (which featured comp