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Iraq: U.S. Plans to Add WMD Searchers; Leading Iraqi Official in Custody Concerned by the lack of WMD evidence uncovered so far in Iraq, the Bush administration plans to triple the number of searchers, bringing the total to 1,500 personnel dedicated to finding banned weapons, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, April 25). Currently, 500 military and scientific specialists are in Iraq, with 150 of them searching for weapons of mass destruction and the rest providing support. “A fairly robust organization is going over there,” said a military official. “It will also look for evidence of war crimes, terrorism connections, missing POWs — anything it can find that will help get to the weapons of mass destruction,” the official said (Steven Weisman, New York Times, April 27). The additional personnel would allow the United States to broaden its search. “We have about 1,000 sites that we knew about before this point,” said Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of all coalition forces in Iraq and the surrounding region. “We’ll go through all of those. The whole thrust of this is probably going to carry us through several thousand sites up in that country,” he said (Eric Schmitt, New York Times, April 28). U.S. Searchers Frustrated by Limits Some members of the U.S. WMD search teams say they are frustrated by a lack of resources and overly rigid search rules. Originally four Mobile Exploitation Teams (METs) were assigned to hunt for weapons of mass destruction, but two of them have been reordered to investigate Iraqi war crimes and to collect documents of intelligence value, according to the Times. MET members said they had not been told to expect more personnel and criticized the Sensitive Site Teams that are likely to receive the additional forces. Those teams, intended to alert the METs to suspicious sites, have often provided inaccurate information because they are inadequately trained, according to weapons experts. MET members also complained that they have been required to stick to the original Defense Department list of suspect sites and are not able to act upon tips from local Iraqi informants. Furthermore, MET members said they lack air and ground transportation and communication equipment (Judith Miller, New York Times, April 28). U.N. Inspectors Will Not Join WMD Hunt While debate continues in the United Nations over whether U.N. inspectors should return to Iraq to help the WMD hunt, there is little interest in this prospect in the United States, according to the Times. Even the State Department, which pushed for giving U.N. inspectors the opportunity to resume inspections last autumn, is not supporting their return now. “Forget it,” said one official. “On principle, we don’t want the United Nations running around Iraq,” the official added. Ambiguous Evidence Some U.S. officials are playing down the prospects of finding a “smoking gun” — usable weapons of mass destruction. Instead, the most condemning evidence will probably be empty shells designed to carry chemical or biological weapons or laboratories that are capable of producing WMD precursor chemicals, according to administration officials and experts. “People are realizing that Saddam Hussein may not have stored the weapons themselves, in part because when you put chemical or biological agents into weapons, they deteriorate very rapidly, said an administration official. Therefore U.S. experts will probably need to make their case based on more ambiguous evidence that is subject to different interpretations. “The evidence that we do find will be convincing to most experts, but not necessarily to those predisposed to doubt what we say,” said a U.S. official. Said another official, “It may be that the Iraqis poured toxins into the ground, or scoured out their shells, or never filled their shells. There may be weapons, and there may not be.” “But it will be clear,” the official added, “that they were pursuing WMD actively” (Weisman, New York Times). Senior Iraqi Official Captured Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the Iraqi official responsible for liaising with U.N. inspectors before the recent war, was captured by undisclosed forces at Ramadi and turned over to U.S. forces Saturday. Amin had been head of Iraq’s National Monitoring Directorate, which kept track of Iraq’s weapons and facilitated the movement of U.N. inspectors. Amin was No. 49 on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials (Reuters, April 27). In recent months Amin had given frequent news conferences to deny that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and he reportedly repeated that denial yesterday (Kelly/Porubcansky, Los Angeles Times, April 28). Another Suspicious Find Discounted A dozen 55-gallon drums found Friday in Iraq initially tested positive for the nerve agent cyclosarin and possibly for mustard gas, but more precise follow-up testing indicated no chemical weapons agents, according to reports. The drums were found by U.S. special forces at Baiji, 115 miles north of Baghdad. Initial tests conducted by units of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division used Army M-8 test paper, which is designed to provide more false positive results than false negative ones, said division chemical officer Lt. Col. Valentine Novikov. A subsequent test with an AP-2C detector, considered more accurate, also “came up positive for a nerve agent,” Novikov said (Guy Taylor, Washington Times, April 28). However, further testing by Mobile Exploitation Team Bravo contradicted the earlier results. “Our tests showed no positive hits at all,” said team leader Capt. Ryan Cutchin (Miller, New York Times). Former Iraqi Scientist Lied Nissar Hindawi, a senior Iraqi biological weapons scientist in the 1980s, told the New York Times that he and other scientists were compelled to lie to U.N. inspectors following the 1991 Gulf War. Responsible for briefing U.N. inspectors in the early 1990s, Hindawi said his reports “were all lies.” Hindawi worked on Iraqi programs to produce anthrax and botulinum toxin until 1989 when he was dismissed after he complained to then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the program was riddled with corruption. During his tenure Iraq “produced huge quantities” of both toxins, he said. Later, “there were orders to destroy it,” Hindawi said. “They destroyed some — whether all or not, I can’t say,” he added. He said Iraq never made dried anthrax, a form much more useful for weapons purposes, because he chose not to. He thought he had figured out how to do it, but “I kept the method secret,” adding, “History would have cursed me.” Following the Gulf War, Hindawi was intermittently under suspicion or jailed by Iraqi authorities for seeking to contact Western officials and he is now under the protective custody of Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabai (Judith Miller, New York Times, April 27).
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