Retiring chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday that he was surprised that coalition forces expected to find large quantities of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when U.N. inspectors had made no such discovery (see GSN, June 18).

“What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons,” Blix said in an interview with the New York Times.  “I don’t see how they could have come to such an attitude if they had, at any time, studied the reports” of U.N. inspectors, he said.

“Is the United Nations on a different planet?”  Blix said.  “Are reports from here totally unread south of the Hudson?” he added.

Blix also said he did not know if there was anything former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could have done, short of abasing himself before the world, to avoid war.  If Iraq had quickly provided a list of scientists who had worked on the destruction of VX and anthrax stockpiles in 1991, interviews with those scientists might have accounted for weapons of mass destruction that have not been found, he said.

“If we had clear evidence” of the stockpiles’ destruction, “that would have been impressive,” Blix said.  “But would it have been so unambiguous?  That is doubtful,” he added (Felicity Barringer, New York Times, June 19).

WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, a British weapons team has found no evidence of a rumored chemical weapons laboratory beneath a Baghdad hospital, according to the London Times.

Last week, the team, believed to be a lead element of the Iraqi Survey Group, arrived at the Bittar Hospital of Cardiology in Baghdad and demanded to search the premises.  The team conducted a thorough search of the hospital, including the sewer system beneath the facility, but found nothing, the Times reported.

“I was astonished,” said hospital Director Hussein al-Hilli.  “The British soldiers came to my office.  They told me they knew there was an underground chemical weapons laboratory beneath the hospital and insisted that they search the site.  I told them that they were wasting their time but were welcome to look,” he said (Richard Beeston, London Times, June 19).

U.S. troops Monday captured an Iraqi official believed to have been the third highest-ranking official in Hussein’s regime, just after the Iraqi leader himself and his youngest son Qusay, according to the Knight Ridder News Service.

The U.S. Central Command announced yesterday the capture of Gen. Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, who U.S. officials described as Hussein’s personal secretary, senior bodyguard and national security adviser.  Mahmud, who may have had the authority to authorize the use of weapons of mass destruction, might have knowledge about the fate of Hussein and whether Iraq possessed such weapons.

Based on previous experiences with captured Iraqi officials, however, U.S. officials are unsure as to how valuable Mahmud may be, according to Knight Ridder.  “We have no reason to believe that his initial reaction will be to spill his guts,” a senior U.S. official said (Lasseter/Hull, Knight Ridder/Philadelphia Inquirer, June 19).

U.S. Intelligence

The U.S. House and Senate intelligence committees yesterday began closed hearings to review the prewar intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify the war on Iraq, according to the Washington Post.

“The credibility of the intelligence community is at issue here” because questions have been raised “about whether the (Bush) administration accurately portrayed the intelligence case regarding Iraq’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and ties to al-Qaeda and other nonindigenous terrorist groups,” Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said after the House intelligence committee hearing.

Yesterday, the House committee heard testimony from several intelligence officers that provided background on an October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraqi WMD programs and how that report was prepared, Bush administration and congressional sources said.  The committee is expected to hear from intelligence officers today about the status of the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they said.

Yesterday, the Senate intelligence committee attempted to develop procedures for future hearings, according to the Post.  Both committees may continue to hold hearings on the Iraq intelligence issue throughout the summer (Pincus/Priest, Washington Post, June 19).

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