The United Kingdom is urging the United States to offer captured senior Iraqi officials leniency if they provide information that aids the coalition’s search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the London Times reported today (see GSN, June 17).

London wants to offer the captured officials — 32 out of the 55 U.S. most-wanted — the assurance that their assistance would be taken into account if they appear before a war crimes tribunal.  If an official offered particularly useful information, he or she could be granted immunity and a new life in another country, according to the Times.

The United States, however, is divided over the British proposal, officials said.  Some U.S. Defense Department officials oppose any agreement that could lower the officials’ possible sentences if they are convicted of war crimes.

“We have been trying for ages to persuade the Americans but they have come up with all kinds of legal arguments,” a British official said (Michael Evans, London Times, June 18).

Meanwhile, another coalition search tactic, the use of the massive Iraq Survey Group of weapons teams and intelligence analysts, bears many resemblances to the U.N. weapons inspection regime that U.S. officials criticized prior to the war, according to senior military and intelligence officials in Iraq.

The group will not be fully operational for several more weeks, officials said.  When it is up and running, its 1,400 members will live in mobile trailers and work at a facility that will be constructed within one of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s palaces near the Baghdad airport, according to the Los Angeles Times.  The group will also operate two satellite bases in the northern and southern sections of Iraq.

Advance survey group teams have already been assigned to find and interview certain Iraqis, with other teams assigned to translating and analyzing recovered documents and computer data, the Times reported.  In addition, some group teams have been given the task of investigating Iraq’s former covert procurement efforts.

“This is truly going to be looking for all the clues,” a Pentagon official said.  “We haven’t done that before,” the official said.

Brig. Gen. Steve Meekin, the senior Australian officer in the group, said the new effort “absolutely” resembles the U.N. inspection regime because it will focus on collecting information and not just site searches.

The Iraq Survey Group has several advantages, however, over the previous U.N. effort, the Times reported.  For example, the group will rely heavily on U.S. and British intelligence operatives who have been dubbed “secret squirrels” by U.S. commanders.  The group will also have what one commander called “unfettered access to Iraqis at all levels.”

“We have a full deck of cards,” the commander said.  “The U.N. had about 35,” the commander added (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 18).

Bush Defends WMD Claims

In the past two days, U.S. President George W. Bush has twice attacked the growing criticism coming from some in the U.S. Congress, as well as overseas, that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

“I know there’s a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain:  He [Hussein] is no longer a threat to the Free World, and the people of Iraq are free,” Bush said yesterday (Mike Allen, Washington Post, June 18).

Bush and his aides believe that Americans’ relief over the fall of Hussein will counter any questions over the case the White House built to justify going to war, Bush administration officials and Republican strategists said.

“We see a very similar pattern to the commentary around the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq — the premature drawing of conclusions, based on a picture that is still incomplete,” said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.  “Americans are patient.  They are willing to wait and see what we find,” he said.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed that Bush is likely to experience little fallout over the lack of a discovery of weapons of mass destruction.  “The president is 99 percent safe on this one,” he said.

“The literary class that dislikes Bush and dislikes American activism is thrilled, whether in Europe or in the U.S., to have this question to raise,” Gingrich said.  “But in the United States at least, given the mass graves, given the level of torture and brutality by the Baath Party regime, you’re asking the American people to side with the apologists for replacing Saddam.  Does even the most left-wing Democrat want to defend the proposition that the world would be better off with Saddam in power?” he added.

Some Republicans are concerned, however, that the growing criticism British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing over the lack of success in finding weapons of mass destruction could have an influence in Washington, according to the New York Times.

“After all, we were all working off the same shared evidence,” said a senior coalition diplomat.  “If it was wrong for one, it was wrong for all,” the diplomat said (Sanger/Hulse, New York Times, June 18).

DIA Doubted Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons

U.S. intelligence analysts told the Bush administration last year that while Iraq had begun to deploy chemical weapons, it would not use them unless the fall of Hussein’s regime was imminent, U.S. officials said yesterday.

In a November 2002 report, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said it was unlikely that Iraq would resort to using weapons of mass destruction as long as U.N. sanctions were in place.  Hussein would use such weapons only “in extreme circumstances,” the report said, “because their use would confirm Iraq’s evasion of U.N. restrictions,” according to the report, portions of which were read to a reporter by an intelligence official (James Risen, New York Times, June 18).

U.S. Intelligence Review

U.S. House and Senate intelligence committees are expected to begin hearings today on the prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq, according to Reuters.

The House committee is set to hold a closed hearing today to interview intelligence analysts about the compilation of National Intelligence Estimate reports on Iraqi WMD programs, with a focus on the last such report, produced in October 2002.  Committee members plan to ask analysts how the report was prepared, how the report was used and how it differed from other intelligence reports, congressional aides said.  The committee is expected to hold a second closed hearing tomorrow on the current search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to meet today to discuss procedures for future hearings.  The committee is then expected to hold a closed hearing tomorrow on Iraq-related intelligence reports (Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters/Yahoo!News, June 18).

The House International Affairs Committee voted 23-15 along party lines yesterday to unfavorably report a resolution calling on Bush to release all Iraq-related documents within 14 days of the measure’s adoption (Sara Steines, CongressDaily, June 18).

British Intelligence Review

Former British International Development Secretary Claire Short yesterday accused Blair of “honorable deception” in drawing the United Kingdom into war.

“I believe that the prime minister must have concluded that it was honorable and desirable to back the U.S. in going for military action in Iraq, and therefore it was honorable for him to persuade us through various ruses and ways to get us there — so for him I think it was an honorable deception,” Short said before the British Parliament’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which is examining the case Blair made for going to war (Ben Russell, London Independent, June 18).

Australia Senate to Conduct Inquiry

The Australian Senate has decided to conduct an inquiry into Australia’s prewar intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs, the Sydney Morning Herald reported today (Sydney Morning Herald, June 18).

A spokesman for the opposition Labor Party today accused Australian Prime Minister John Howard of seeking to deter intelligence officials from answering questions during the inquiry.

“Mr. Howard may have a grand political strategy in mind about how to create a public political environment which makes life difficult for those agencies if they cooperate,” opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said (Sydney Morning Herald II, June 18).

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