U.S. Suppressed Intelligence on Iraq, Expert Says

One year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the White House continued to suppress intelligence findings that Baghdad had not possessed mobile biological weapons facilities, according to a book published today by an Australian weapons inspector (see GSN, March 29, 2005).

Two trailers found in April 2003 were initially believed to be used for producing biological weapons, the Associated Press reported. Tests in early May uncovered no evidence of biological agents, and members of a U.S. fact-finding mission said in a classified report later that month that the trailers had not been involved in weapons work, the Washington Post reported in April (see GSN, April 12).

The trailers were more likely used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons.

However, Bush administration officials for months afterward continued to point to the trailers as evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts, AP reported.

Rod Barton, an Australian microbiologist who worked with the Iraq Survey Group, said U.S. officials blocked him from publicly noting that the trailers were not believed to be weapons facilities.

“You don’t understand how difficult it is to say anything different” than the official CIA line, the U.S. head of the biological team said, according to Barton’s book, “The Weapons Detective.”

A CIA officer in February 2004 forbade Barton from including the trailers in a report, the book states.

“I don’t care that they are not biological trailers. It’s not politically possible,” the officer reportedly said.

The trailers were not included in the Iraq Survey Group’s March 2004 report, AP reported.

Barton said he and other Australian and British experts quit the WMD search team then rather than remain “complicit in deceit.”

The final Iraq Survey Group report, in October 2004, stated that the trailers had not been weapons facilities.

Charles Duelfer, the last ISG chief, said he did not face pressure from Washington to leave out intelligence in his reports. Rather, he wanted to address the entire matter in the final report.

“I did not think those were mobile biological weapons labs,” he said. “I wanted to understand the issue of mobile BW production, whether it (the trailers) was part of a larger thing or not.”

Former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said, “There was no effort to stifle any reporting from the field” (Charles Hanley, Associated Press I/phillyBurbs.com, May 14).

Meanwhile, recently released court documents show that Vice President Dick Cheney questioned a 2002 trip by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had sought to buy uranium for possible use in a nuclear weapons program.

The trip was organized by the CIA, where Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked as an undercover CIA operative, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Have they done this sort of thing before?” Cheney wrote on July 2003 in the margins of a recent New York Times piece in which Wilson charged that the Bush administration had overstated the case for war. “Send an (ambassador) to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”

Cheney told Lewis Libby, his chief of staff at the time, that Plame worked for the CIA, the federal court documents state. Her identity was made public about a month later. Libby has been indicted in connection with the case (see GSN, Oct. 31, 2005; Agence France-Presse, May 14).

The court documents leave open the possibility that prosecutors believe Cheney was behind the decision to leak Plame’s identity to the press, AP reported.

The notes “support the proposition that publication of the Wilson op-ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and [Libby] on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions,” special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said in the documents filed Friday (Pete Yost, Associated Press/The Montana Standard, May 14).

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IAEA Asks Iran for More Samples

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have requested additional samples from machinery removed from a bulldozed nuclear site in Iran to confirm findings of weapon-grade uranium, the London Sunday Times reported yesterday (see GSN, May 12).

Diplomats said Saturday that they want to determine whether weapons-related activity occurred at the Physics Research Center at Lavizan. They are seeking access to particular machines and equipment once used at the site.

“It’s painstaking work and we’ve got to get these things right,” said an agency official. “You’re looking at parts per trillion in some of these tests — it’s very hard to know the significance and we’re requesting further sampling” (Tom Walker, Sunday Times, May 14).

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday disputed reports that inspectors had found traces of highly enriched uranium on equipment from Lavizan, United Press International reported.

He accused countries of seeking to deprive Iran of its nuclear rights (United Press International, May 14).

European Union foreign ministers are scheduled today to discuss a broadened incentives package designed to induce Tehran to give up its uranium enrichment activities, the Associated Press reported.

European officials said they would try to build upon an economic and political deal that Iran rejected last year. A document on the official EU Web site says the ministers are likely for the first time to officially “support Iran’s development of a safe, sustainable and proliferation-proof civilian nuclear program, if international concerns were fully addressed.”

The offer is “a positive thing,” said IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

“I hope that package will be comprehensive, will be bold,” he said Saturday. “I hope that package will enable Iran to come back to the negotiating table” (Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press I, May 15).

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said today that the proposal would be bold, Agence France-Presse reported.

“It will be a generous package, a bold package, that will contain issues relating to nuclear, economic matters, and maybe, if necessary, security matters,” he said. “We are preparing a package (so) that it will be difficult for them to say no if what they really want is energy.”

Ahmadinejad has already publicly rejected any offer that requires Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.

“I am surprised that a group of people hold meetings without us being present there and make decisions for us,” the Iranian president said.

Solana said that Tehran has not yet seen the package (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, May 15).

“The suspension of uranium enrichment and reprocessing remains a red line for the Europeans. It certainly remains a red line for us.  We believe it’s a red line for Russia and China,” John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday.

Bolton said the United States had not “caved in” by postponing council debate for two weeks on a binding resolution demanding Tehran halt all sensitive nuclear work, AFP reported.

“This is a delay but it’s intended to show the American willingness to try and exhaust every diplomatic possibility, and it proves again that the key to this still lies in Iran’s hands,” he said (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, May 12).

Ahmadinejad Saturday that he was open to nuclear talks, but not with “countries that hang planes with bombs over our heads,” AP reported.

“If they want to threaten the use of force we will not go into dialogue with them,” he said (Associated Press II/Miami Herald, May 14).

The Bush administration is rejecting growing pressure to conduct bilateral talks with Tehran, AFP reported Friday.

Former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright called on President George W. Bush to reply to a letter sent to him last week by Ahmadinejad.

“Maybe it is the beginning of an understanding that they must come to some terms with the international community,” Kissinger said.

The State Department dismissed the notion.

“The problems that Iran has right now are with the rest of the world, not just between the United States and Iran,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

McCormack said channels existed for contact between the two countries. He named the Swiss Embassy in Tehran; the Pakistani Embassy in the United States; Iran’s U.N. mission in New York; and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

A senior U.S. official, meanwhile, said that despite some public comments, the European Union wanted the United States to remain in a supporting role in negotiations with Tehran.

“It’s in our interest to be exactly where we are,” the official said. “We have absolutely zero pressure” (Peter Mackler, Agence France-Presse III/Yahoo!News, May 12).

Ahmadinejad said Saturday the letter to Bush was intended to begin “a new political literature” rather than address the nuclear standoff, AP reported.

“The letter I sent to President Bush has nothing to do with the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the relations between Iran and the U.S.,” he said. “This letter was meant to open a new horizon for politicians in the world and to lay down the foundation for a new political literature ... based on justice, human dignity and peace” (Associated Press III/Yahoo!News, May 13).

While the U.S. Defense Department is updating contingency planning for Iran, there is no formal military option yet, the Washington Times reported today.

“They don’t want anything like that to leak. It would upset Europe,” a Pentagon adviser said. “The generals in the building won’t talk about Iran. The message is diplomacy.”

A second adviser said that a senior policy-maker privately said, “I guess we’re going to have to learn to live with a nuclear Iran.”

“There is not much they can do. They are tied up in Iraq,” the adviser said. “I don’t think the president wants to stick his neck out again.”

The sources added that they are unaware of any internal meetings in which senior officials are advocating military action (Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, May 15).

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U.S. Prepares to Sell HEU to Canadian Firm

The U.S. Energy Department is ready to sell 34 pounds of highly enriched uranium to a Canadian company to produce radioactive isotopes for X-ray machines and other medical technology, the Austin American-Statesman reported Saturday (see GSN, July 29, 2005).

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering the department’s export license application. 

Much of the medical equipment produced by MDS Nordion would end up in the United States, the Statesman reported.

Critics say the sale could open the door for diversion of the weapon-grade material by terrorists.

“I personally think HEU represents our greatest vulnerability to nuclear terrorism,” said Alan Kuperman, an assistant public affairs professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Only with HEU can you make a gun-type nuclear weapon, and that is something that is within the capabilities of terrorist groups.”

Changes to rules on HEU exports also damage U.S. efforts to persuade other nations to halt use of the material, activists say.

The Canadian company funded lobbying efforts for two years to see the U.S. law on HEU exports changed, the Statesman reported. Controls were relaxed in a 2005 energy bill.

“It is a cautionary tale of how a single foreign company can weaken U.S. national security through misleading scare tactics and cold cash,” Kuperman wrote in the latest issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

HEU users in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands are covered under the revised law. While the law mandates that isotope producers convert to using low-enriched uranium, it allows extra time for the shift and waives it entirely should the change increase isotope costs by 10 percent or more in the United States.

One expert played down the danger posed by the new arrangement.

“When it comes to keeping HEU out of the hands of terrorists, we have much bigger problems that we should concentrate on,” said Washington University radiology professor Henry Royal, former president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

“The last time I checked, Nordion was not a terrorist organization,” he said (Jeff Nesmith, Austin American-Statesman, May 13).

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North Korea Reportedly Restarts Reactor

Operations appear to be under way again at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which is suspected of producing weapon-grade nuclear material, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, May 12).

Pyongyang last year announced that it had suspended operations at Yongbyon to remove plutonium-bearing spent fuel, but satellite images from January show a tower emitting steam, according to GlobalSecurity.org.

“The steam plume in the January 5, 2006 view is indicative of the reactor being active,” says a caption next to the photograph.

Images show other signs of activity, including the paving over of a dirt path and an influx of vehicles and containers, Reuters reported (Reuters/CNN.com, May 14).

Meanwhile, Washington is contemplating economic sanctions against some Chinese banks that conduct business with North Korean companies tied to suspected WMD proliferation, Kyodo News reported yesterday.

Bush administration hard-liners believe similar financial regulatory actions against a Macao-based bank have been effective in isolating Pyongyang, according to a government source (Kyodo News/Yahoo!News, May 14).

However, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Han Song Ryol, argued that the sanctions have not been effective.

“We have endured sanctions by the United States for 50 years. More sanctions won’t bring any special changes,” Han told the Joong Ang Ilbo.

He added that North Korea would boost its nuclear deterrence (JoongAng Daily, May 12).

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U.S. Intelligence Ties Pakistani Scientist to Syria

A U.S. intelligence report indicates that Syria received nuclear weapons technology from the black market network once headed by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Washington Times reported Saturday (see GSN, May 4).

Pakistani investigators have confirmed International Atomic Energy Agency reports that the Khan network “offered nuclear technology and hardware to Syria,” according to an annual report to Congress.

“We are concerned that expertise or technology could have been transferred,” says the U.S. report.

“In 2004 Syria continued to develop civilian nuclear capabilities, including uranium extraction technology and hot cell facilities, which may also be potentially applicable to a weapons program,” it says.

The report also names China as a “key supplier” of WMD and missile technology to nations of concern, according to the Times.

Chinese firms “continued to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic missile-related projects and firms in China provided dual-use missile-related items, raw materials, or assistance to Libya and North Korea,” the document says.

The report also says Syria continued to seek solid-propellant rocket motor technology, and that Pyongyang offered technology and support to that effort. Damascus is developing liquid-fueled Scud missiles and preparing a longer-range Scud with help North Korean and Iranian help, it adds.

The document also names Russia as another top supplier of WMD technologies (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, May 13).

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IAEA Chief Warns of Nuclear Terrorism

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said Friday that nuclear terrorism is a greater threat to the world than is Iran’s atomic program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2005).

After speaking with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday, ElBaradei said he was “for the first time somewhat optimistic” regarding a resolution to the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Terrorists are a different thing,” he told the Dutch television program Netwerk. “The fear of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons is much more, in my view ... than a country acquiring nuclear weapons right now” (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 13).

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Pentagon Details CW Disposal Schedule

The U.S. Defense Department has prepared a detailed schedule for disposal of chemical weapons stored around the country, the Chemical Weapons Working Group reported Friday (see GSN, May 10).

The United States last month requested an extension of the disposal deadline from 2007 to 2012 under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Officials have acknowledged that work is not expected to be completed before 2017, and new documents have detailed the planned schedule.

Operating processing sites in Arkansas and Utah would finish their work in the first quarter of 2016, followed by the Alabama facility in the fourth quarter of that year and the Oregon site in the third quarter of 2017. All four sites are weapons incinerators.

“With each new schedule projection, it becomes more and more obvious that incineration is not the ‘mature, robust and reliable’ technology the Army promised to communities back in the 80s,” Craig Williams, director of the anti-burning nonprofit, said in a press release.

Two sites — Johnson Atoll and Aberdeen, Md. — have finished disposal. Neutralization of weapons stored at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana is expected in 2012, the press release states. Neutralization sites in Colorado and Kentucky are not yet built, but Army officials believe they will complete their work by early 2015.

The Pentagon document estimates the total cost for weapons disposal at more than $32 billion, the Chemical Weapons Working Group said. The project was originally expected to cost $1.85 billion, it added (Chemical Weapons Working Group release, May 12).

The Army has encountered problems, such as fires during disposal of rockets, which have caused delays, The Hermiston Herald in Oregon reported Friday. Data has also been gained.

“We know where the problems are,” said Army Chemical Materials Agency spokesman Greg Mahall.

“All the schedules have been extremely optimistic,” said Doug Hamrick, project general manager at Washington Group International, the Army contractor at the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Oregon. “There is a lot more predictability, a lot more experience (now). We also need to ensure the money is in the budget to see the project through.”

Financing remains a concern, Mahall said.

“We need to recognize the need to address funding issues,” he said. “Closure comes after the final destruction of weapons. There needs to be enough money to complete the projects.”

The Umatilla facility has eliminated 75 percent of the depot’s stockpile of M55 rockets filled with sarin nerve agent. The remaining 550 munitions are expected to be eliminated next month, Hamrick said.

“That will be the end of the entire population of GB bombs in the U.S. inventory,” he said.

Disposal of weapons containing mustard agent might go on longer than anticipated, the Herald reported.

“Mustard will provide significant challenges to the optimistic schedule,” Hamrick said. “The last campaign will clearly be a large project. Thankfully, mustard presents a low risk to the public” (Karen Hutchinson-Talaski, The Hermiston Herald, May 12).

The Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah is scheduled to begin processing mustard agent this summer, the Tooele Transcript Bulletin reported Thursday (see GSN, Feb. 28).

“We have 6,219 pounds of mustard left in bulk containers,” said Alaine Southworth, spokeswoman for the Deseret Chemical Depot. “There is potential mercury contamination in about 15 to 20 percent of the mustard. During the first three years we will burn mustard that contains little or no mercury.”

Mahall noted that the mercury comes from the storage containers rather than the chemical agent.

“We’re concerned because mercury is a heavy metal and when it settles out of the air it finds its way into the food chain. It can seep down into the water system,” he said (Mark Watson, Tooele Transcript Bulletin, May 11).

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Lewisite Disposal Continues at Russian Site

The Russian chemical weapons disposal site at Kambarka as of Friday had eliminated 245.5 tons of the blistering agent lewisite, ITAR-Tass reported (see GSN, May 15).

Roughly 5.5 tons are eliminated every 24 hours, and officials hope soon to increase the processing rate to 8 tons every day, according to Valery Kapashin, head of the federal directorate for chemical weapons storage and destruction.

The next priority is beginning disposal of 5,700 tons of lewisite stored at the Kizner depot. The processing site is scheduled to begin work in 2009 and finish disposal in 2012, ITAR-Tass reported (ITAR-Tass, May 12).

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India Preparing ICBM Test Launch

India is preparing to test its longest-range nuclear-capable missile, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 6).

“We are technically ready for the test-firing of the missile,” M. Natarajan, scientific adviser to the Defense Ministry, announced yesterday.

“We are awaiting a nod from the government,” he said.

Some experts believe the solid-fuel Agni 3 missile, which officially can fly 4,000 kilometers, has an actual range of up to 6,000 kilometers, AFP reported.

New Delhi has delayed testing the missile since November 2004, reportedly under pressure from Washington (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, May 14).

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