Iraqi military leaders were ordered to use chemical weapons during the recent Iraq war, according to the leader of the team conducting the WMD hunt in Iraq, the Boston Globe reported Friday (see GSN, Aug. 11).
David Kay, leader of the Iraq Survey Group, testified to Congress last week that the team had collected solid physical and documentary evidence that the order was given, according to the Globe.
“They have found evidence that an order was given,” said a senior intelligence official with access to a pending report by Kay.
Kay’s report says that no chemical weapons have yet been found but does not explain why the orders to launch chemical attacks were not carried out, according to the Globe. A senior defense official said the United States might have persuaded Iraqi commanders to not use chemical weapons by warning them that they could face war crimes charges if they did so.
“We tried to dissuade them in very public ways, and there were clearly covert ways as well,” the official said.
Some officials suggested that the weapons may not have been delivered to front-line units or that they were destroyed by Iraqi officials or U.S. airstrikes, the Globe reported. Some officials also said the chemical strike orders might have been a ruse intended to deter a U.S.-led invasion.
U.S. officials said they were confident that Kay would both back up the claims that Iraqi units were ordered to conduct chemical attacks and account for the weapons themselves.
“It sounded like they had something that they could hold up and say ‘Here is the reason why it didn’t take place,” a defense official said (Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, Aug. 8).
Tenet Defends October 2002 NIE
Meanwhile, CIA Director George Tenet has defended an October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, saying it provided the best assessment of Iraq’s capabilities at the time.
“We have no doubt … that the NIE was the most reasonable, well-grounded and objective assessment of Iraq’s WMD programs that was possible at the time it was produced,” Tenet said in a statement released yesterday.
The Bush administration has come under increasing criticism for its handling of prewar intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The Washington Post Sunday detailed a number of instances wherein White House claims on Iraq’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons exceeded available intelligence.
In his statement, Tenet said the U.S. intelligence community agreed on the assessment that Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program and on the pieces of evidence included in the NIE to support that claim. Tenet noted that the now-disputed claim that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Africa was not included among the evidence used to support the nuclear assessment.
Another piece of evidence oft-cited by Bush administration officials as a sign that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons — attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes — has also been the subject of intense scrutiny. The Post reported yesterday that U.S. experts had told U.S. intelligence agencies that Iraq was producing copies of an Italian-made conventional rocket that matched both the alloy and the dimensions of the tubes. In addition, two U.S. agencies — the U.S. Energy Department and the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research — said during the preparation of the NIE that the tubes were most likely for conventional military uses, according to Tenet.
Even so, Tenet said, all U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that the tubes could have been used to produce gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. He added that the agencies differed in intent — a natural outcome taking into account that Iraq went to “great lengths” to hide their WMD efforts.
Tenet also said that even though the Energy Department differed on the purpose of the tubes, it still agreed that Iraq was attempting to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. “Obviously, the tubes were not central to DOE’s view on reconstitution,” he said (CIA release, Aug. 11).
British Dossier
Senior British defense officials yesterday told an inquiry panel into the death of former U.N. weapons inspector David Kelly that concerns were raised over the wording of a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Two officials had expressed concerns over the wording of the dossier, which included a now-disputed claim that the Iraqi military could deploy biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so, Deputy Chief of Defense Intelligence Martin Howard said. He added, however, that such concerns were “quite normal.”
“There was not a difference of view about whether the intelligence should be included or not, it was more about how the intelligence should be described,” Howard said.
The inquiry was established to investigate why Kelly, who was identified prior to his death as the source for a BBC report that the British government had exaggerated intelligence, died in an apparent suicide, according to the Financial Times (Bob Sherwood, Financial Times, Aug. 12).
Taiwanese customs officials yesterday seized hundreds of barrels of a suspected WMD-related material from the North Korean freighter Be Gaehung, according to the Christian Science Monitor (see GSN, Aug. 8).
Taiwanese customs officials Sunday asked the ship, docked at Kaohsiung Harbor, to unload 158 barrels of phosphorus pentasulfide, according to the Monitor. Although a private consultant working for North Korea at the port had argued that the cargo should not be unloaded because it was a general chemical product, the barrels yesterday were voluntarily unloaded and then seized.
Yesterday’s seizure is the first instance of North Korean cargo being confiscated since the June creation of the Proliferation Security Initiative — a U.S.-led effort to interdict suspect shipments of WMD-related cargo (see GSN, Aug. 6; Robert Marquand, Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 12).
Despite recent pressure from Washington, Syria has not moved to rid itself of the weapons of mass destruction the United States suspects it has, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, July 16).
Visiting Damascus in May, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell cautioned that the United States could impose trade sanctions if Syria did not dispose of its suspected WMD arsenal (see GSN, May 5).
Citing Syrian opposition figures and Western diplomats, however, the Times reported that Damascus refuses to abandon its chemical — and potentially biological — weapons programs.
Syrian President Bashar Assad is hoping that the White House will overlook his country while dealing with other issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rebuilding effort in Iraq and U.S. elections, according to the Times.
“They are playing for time,” said a Western diplomat of the Syrian leadership.
The U.S. Congress is currently debating the Syrian Accountability Act, which would push the president to impose economic penalties on Damascus if Assad refuses to abandon his weapons programs.
Syria has not acknowledged accusations that it has WMD stockpiles (Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 12).
The United Kingdom plans to simulate a WMD attack on the London Underground next month, the British Transport Department announced yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 6).
The exercise is scheduled to be conducted at the Bank subway station in London Sept. 7, a department spokeswoman said. She added that the exercise — scheduled to involve several hundred police, fire and emergency response personnel — was not being conducted in response to a specific threat (Evening Standard/ThisisLondon, Aug. 11).
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