Iraq I:  IAEA Inspectors to Return to Tuwaitha Nuclear Site Today

A team of International Atomic Energy Agency experts is scheduled to return to Iraq today to determine the extent of looting of radioactive materials from the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program  (see GSN, June 3).

“Their job will be to do an inventory to see what’s missing and, if possible, to re-collect and reseal the material,” agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

The United States, however, has set a number of conditions on the IAEA team’s visit, according to the Los Angeles Times.  For example, the team is limited to only seven members and may only visit the Tuwaitha complex — they are barred from visiting six other looted Iraqi nuclear sites.  The team was also originally required to sleep in tents at the complex, but now will be able to stay in a hotel in Baghdad (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 6).

The IAEA team will also be accompanied at all times by U.S. troops during the visit to the Tuwaitha complex, U.S. Defense Department officials said.  Fleming said, however, that the team would operate independently.

“We’re not going to conduct any activities with the military,” she said (Dafna Linzer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 6).

The IAEA team’s visit is a one-time event to help enforce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Pentagon officials said, adding that the visit should not be seen as a type of weapons inspection (Betsy Pisik, Washington Times, June 6).

U.S. military commanders this week said they are unequipped to sufficiently monitor the Tuwaitha complex.

“I know that the Tuwaitha facility is larger than the assets we have now in country to deal with it,” said Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. ground troops in Iraq (Linzer, Associated Press).

Pentagon officials have also said they have found more radioactive material at the Tuwaitha complex than originally expected (Matt Kelley, Associated Press/London Guardian, June 6).

U.S. officials have so far recovered more than 100 containers believed to have been taken from the complex, according to the Washington Times.  None of the people who returned the containers, and were paid $3 per container, have shown elevated levels of radiation, officials said (Pisik, Washington Times).

U.N. Security Council Members Call for Return of Inspectors

Meanwhile, U.N. Security Council members yesterday called for the United States to allow experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission to return to Iraq to certify whether it possessed biological or chemical weapons.

The calls for the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq appear to reflect a growing belief within the Security Council that inspectors should be allowed to test the U.S. and British claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the war, according to the Washington Post.

“The disarmament of Iraq must be verified and confirmed by UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency on the ground and in conjunction with the (U.S.-led military) coalition,” French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told the Security Council, according to a copy of his speaking notes.

John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Iraq Survey Group, a Pentagon-established group of weapons experts, is capable of searching for evidence of Iraq’s WMD programs by itself, and that the United States is unlikely to permit U.N. inspectors to return anytime soon (Lynch/Graham, Washington Post, June 6).

“What we’ve said all along is that since March 17 or 18, the coalition has taken on responsibility for inspections and the search for the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” Negroponte said.  “But for the time being, we have undertaken this mission of searching for WMD and I would expect that situation to continue for the foreseeable future,” he added (Evelyn Leopold, Reuters, June 6).

DIA Reported Last Year No Evidence of Chemical Weapons

The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency reported in September — at the same time the Bush administration was building the case for war — that there was no reliable evidence that Iraq had chemical weapons, officials said today.

In its report, the DIA said there was no evidence that Iraq had deployable chemical weapons.  There was evidence, however, that Iraq had stockpiles of banned chemical agents, the agency said.

Two Pentagon officials who had read a summary of the report released yesterday by Bloomberg News said today that the report said the DIA had no solid evidence that Iraq possessed useable chemical weapons (Robert Burns, Associated Press/Boston Globe, June 6).

British Intelligence

British intelligence officers have said that the MI6 intelligence service inadequately evaluated information on Iraqi WMD efforts that was passed on to the British government, according to the London Independent (see GSN, June 5).

Most of the Iraq-related intelligence given to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office was from “raw” MI6 intelligence, according to senior government sources.  Other information came from U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, according to security sources.

Officers in the British intelligence services said that MI6 wanted to please the prime minister’s office over Iraq to the point where “short cuts” were taken.  For example, MI6 officers are believed to have approached the prime minister’s office directly with information, without having first passed it through the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Independent reported.  While MI6 was allowed to do so, such actions resulted in a lack of filtering for the information (Kim Sengupta, London Independent, June 6).

A source described by the BBC as being  “close to British intelligence” has said the prime minister’s office asked intelligence services at least six times to rewrite a dossier released last year on Iraq’s WMD efforts, according to the Press Association.  Blair was personally involved at one point in the decision to have the dossier rewritten, the source said (Press Association, London Guardian, June 6).

Niger Claim Defended

British claims that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger prior to the war were not based on falsified information, according to the Financial Times.

The United States provided the IAEA with documents purporting to illustrate the attempted sale, but those documents were later revealed to have been forgeries.  The British government, however, never possessed those documents and did not base its claims about the attempted uranium purchase on them, the Times reported (Huband/Turner, Financial Times, June 6). 

Iraqi Officials — Dead or Alive?

Pentagon officials have said that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is probably alive and behind a recent series of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, according to ITAR-Tass.  The attacks, which have so far killed nine U.S. soldiers over the past month, may have been coordinated by former senior Iraqi officials, according to intelligence reports (ITAR-Tass, June 6).

In addition, Rumsfeld said yesterday that Ali Hassan al-Majid — known as “Chemical Ali” for ordering a 1998 chemical weapons attack on Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq — may still be alive (see GSN, April 24).

U.S. officials had previously believed that al-Majid was killed during a U.S. airstrike on the southern Iraqi city of Basra in April.

“There was some speculation afterwards that they thought that he had been killed.  Now there’s some speculation that he may be alive,” Rumsfeld said.  “But I just don’t know,” he added (New York Times, June 6).

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Iraq II:  Experts Continue to Question U.S. WMD Intelligence

By Peter H. Stone

National Journal

WASHINGTON — You cannot call it “WMDgate” yet, but the chorus of criticism aimed at the Bush administration for overselling, or misleading, the public and lawmakers about the existence and threat of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction is climbing rapidly up the decibel meter.

Six weeks after the war, the search for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq is still fruitless.  Members of Congress, foreign governments, the media, and, perhaps most ominously, a growing number of intelligence insiders are questioning the accuracy of prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons and whether it was hyped to build support for going to war.

The adjectives used to describe key parts of the administration’s intelligence-some of them uttered on the record and some of them without attribution-are getting stronger and stronger with each passing day.  They range from “spurious” and “intellectually dishonest,” to “fraudulent” and “completely unscrupulous.”

Vince Cannistraro, a 27-year veteran of the CIA who left in 1991, is one of several former agency officials who say that the administration’s intelligence on Iraq’s unconventional weapons capabilities now looks way off base.  “It was at least incorrect and at the worst fraudulent,” says Cannistraro.  “The real story is the politicization of intelligence.”

Other agency alumni hold similar views.  “I don’t like the fact that the U.S. government exaggerated that Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat against U.S. forces or allies in the region,” says Robert Baer, a 21-year CIA operative in the Middle East who retired in 1997.  “People died.  As an American, I’m mad, and I want to know why we’re there.”

Members of Congress, too, are asking, “Where are the WMD?”  The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence this week began examining the issue at its weekly briefings on intelligence.  Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, says he’s “still inclined to believe that some weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq,” but he has “grave misgivings” about the administration’s prewar claims.  “We’ll continue to press and probe and try to get people who know the information,” Rockefeller added.  In addition, the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services panels are expected to work together on reviews of CIA documents relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and could launch a broader joint investigation later this year.

Meanwhile, in a May 22 letter, Representatives Porter Goss (R-Fla.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the chairman and ranking Democrat respectively on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, asked CIA Director George Tenet some tough questions.  The House committee, the letter said, is “interested in learning, in detail, how the intelligence picture regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was developed,” and it asked for answers by July 1.  The letter also pressed Tenet to explain “how the CIA’s analysis of Iraq’s linkages to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, was derived.”

Now some Republicans are accusing the Democrats of making partisan hay out of the situation.  Goss, for instance, told National Journal, “There’s no question that partisan politics has crept into the debate....  This is largely a media event so far.”  But Goss, a former CIA official himself, said the administration’s intelligence product warranted a committee review, which will likely lead to hearings later this year.

The administration is starting to mount a defense, albeit with conflicting messages and some backtracking from its broader prewar claims.  On his recent European trip, President Bush went on Polish television and declared that two mobile trailers found in Iraq, which contained fermenters capable of making biological weapons, proved the administration’s case.  “We found the weapons of mass destruction,” he said.  “We found biological laboratories.”

Moreover, in a highly unusual move, Tenet in a written statement defended intelligence on Iraq, saying that the “integrity of our process was maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong.”  The CIA had earlier announced that it had started a review to analyze how its prewar assessments of the Iraqi threat measured up against what was being discovered after the war.

Tenet’s statement came in response to a memo written to Bush, and posted on some Internet sites, by a group of retired CIA and State analysts known as Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.  The memo declared that there was “growing mistrust and cynicism” among professionals about the intelligence that the administration’s top officials, including Bush, cited to justify the war against Iraq.

These concerns certainly weren’t allayed when Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, told Vanity Fair last month that although there were three fundamental worries about Iraq’s regime — its support for terrorism, criminal treatment of its own citizens, and weapons of mass destruction — “the truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason” for the war.

Indeed, senior administration officials hammered that theme home constantly in the months preceding the war.  Last Aug. 26, for instance, Vice President Dick Cheney, addressing a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, flatly declared, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.  There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”  Further, Secretary of State Colin Powell in his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations stated, “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, he’s determined to make more.”  And last October, Wolfowitz said that Hussein “will not easily give up those horrible weapons that he has worked so hard and paid such a high price to develop and retain.”

For many critics, the primary problem with the prewar assessments of the Iraqi threat was that the administration slighted more-conservative and more-nuanced intelligence reports on Iraq from the CIA, while relying too heavily on more-aggressive and more-pessimistic intelligence provided by a small and secretive unit that the Pentagon set up in late 2001 called the Office of Special Plans.  The real mission of OSP, critics allege, was to amass intelligence to help administration hard-liners make their case that the threat posed by Iraq was imminent.

Cannistraro, along with other former CIA officials, charges that the OSP “incorporated a lot of debatable intelligence, and it was not coordinated with the intelligence community.”  Other intelligence veterans also point out that the Pentagon unit relied a great deal on the Iraqi National Congress and its leader Ahmed Chalabi, who were far from impeccable sources.  “Chalabi never provided the CIA anything that could be corroborated,” Baer says.  “Chalabi had an agenda — he wanted to go back.  You can take his information, but you need to caveat it.”

Other former intelligence hands say that the caveats didn’t happen because of pressures to reach certain conclusions.  Larry Johnson, who did stints in counterterrorism at both the CIA and the State Department, says he’s been told by people still in intelligence that what “they’re experiencing now is the worst political pressure” they’ve ever faced.  “Anyone who attempted to challenge or rebut OSP was accused of rocking the boat.”  Johnson adds that the OSP analysts “came in with an agenda that they were predisposed to believe.”

Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst who is research director at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, says, “One of the lessons to take away from the Iraq experience is that defectors are often biased and willing to tell the United States what they think we want to hear.”  The Pentagon and its special unit, he continues, “Fought constantly with the CIA.  They beat the crap out of the agency and their own analysis.  It was a war of attrition, and they ground the agency down.”

The real issue, Pollack concludes, “isn’t overreliance on defectors or opposition groups, but that some officials in the administration seem to have run with defector reports and opposition-group claims that other intelligence analysts believe were spurious or of dubious accuracy.”

In developing good intelligence, intelligence veterans and others say that competition among agencies can be useful, but poses risks.  “Competition is good, up to a point,” Rep. Goss says.  But “I’m very much opposed to competition going to the point of obfuscation.  This is a race that has to be run freely; you can’t trip your opponent in the next lane.”

That’s what some CIA veterans now say happened in the Bush administration’s effort to build its case against Iraq.  Particularly troubling to former analysts are the British intelligence reports cited by Bush in this year’s State of the Union speech on Iraq’s supposed efforts to buy uranium from the Republic of Niger for a nuclear weapons program.  The documents, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, are now considered forgeries, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has asked inspectors general at the CIA and the State Department to investigate.

Looking back, weapons experts are skeptical of America’s prewar intelligence on Iraq.  “I think it’s increasingly unlikely that Iraq was the imminent threat which was at the heart of the administration’s case for pre-emptive action,” says Jonathan Tucker, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the author of Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox.  “The administration gave the impression that those weapons were deployed and ready to use,” he said.

Veteran intelligence operatives fear that the growing doubts about the administrations prewar intelligence will harm U.S. credibility, especially in the conflict that everyone acknowledges is a direct threat to Americans — the war against terrorism.

“How good other countries believe our intelligence was about Iraq will color how they view our intelligence on other issues,” Pollack warns.  “If they believe our intelligence on Iraq was greatly exaggerated, either intentionally or unintentionally, then they’re likely to be even harder to persuade next time around.” 

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International Response:  Five Countries Join G-8 Effort to Prevent WMD Spread

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The White House announced earlier this week the addition of five new countries to an effort by the Group of Eight to help address WMD prolferation concerns in the former Soviet Union (see GSN, June 2).

Finland, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland have chosen to join the G-8 Global Partnership to Prevent the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, according to a White House fact sheet.  The partnership calls for G-8 members — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — to pledge $20 billion over 10 years to help fund nonproliferation projects, primarily in Russia.  The effort was launched at the 2002 G-8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada.

G-8 members are also set to begin new projects in Russia through the partnership, the White House said.  For example, France is expected later this year to launch three projects to help dispose of nuclear fuel and solid waste recovered from dismantled Russian submarines.  In addition, Germany is expected to begin this month new projects to help improve physical protection at 17 Russian sites housing fissile materials.

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U.S. Response:  Washington Wants to “Roll Back” Illicit Weapons from “Rogue” States

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States aims to “eliminate or roll back” suspected nuclear, chemical and biological weapons possessed by certain states and terrorist groups, potentially by using force, a senior Bush administration official said yesterday.

The statement was delivered even as administration officials are increasingly pressed to defend the U.S. justification for the March invasion of Iraq, where U.S.-led occupation forces have so far found no unconventional weapons.

Speaking at a House International Relations Committee hearing, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said the use of force would not necessarily be the first or only option for addressing suspected proliferation, but said it would be a consideration.

“We aim ultimately not just to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, but also to eliminate or roll back such weapons from rogue states and terrorist groups that already possess them or are close to doing so,” he said.

“While we stress peaceful and diplomatic solutions to the proliferation threat, as [U.S.] President [George W.] Bush has said repeatedly, we rule out no options.  To do so would give the proliferators the safe haven they do not deserve, and pose a risk to our innocent civilian population and those of our friends and allies,” he said.

In his prepared testimony, Bolton described Iran and North Korea as “axis of evil” countries and Libya, Syria, Cuba and Sudan as “beyond the axis of evil” countries either possessing such weapons or having a program, or “effort,” to acquire such weapons.

“The logic of adverse consequences must fall not only on the states aspiring to possess these weapons, but on the states supplying them as well,” he said.

Interdiction Plan

Bolton described a new U.S. plan, the Proliferation Security Initiative, through which the United States and allies would cooperate to interdict transfers of internationally restricted weapons and related technologies “at sea, in the air, and on land” (see GSN, June 2).

He said the United States plans to work with other countries using “a broad range of legal, diplomatic, economic, military and other tools,” and has begun working with “several close friends and allies to expand our ability to stop and seize suspected WMD transfers.”

The plan received endorsements from both Republican and Democratic committee members.

Criticism of Iraq Approach

Bolton’s comments were delivered as the administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair receive continuing criticism over the fact that no unconventional weapons have yet been found in occupied Iraq.  Several Democrats on the committee yesterday restated the criticisms.

“Like millions of Americans, I’m wondering where the hell the weapons of mass destruction are.  I think the administration faces a growing credibility gap regarding the weapons of mass destruction,” said Representative Joseph Hoeffel (D-Pa.).

Bolton said he anticipates that finding such weapons and their production means “will occur in due course.”

The invasion of Iraq and the administration’s policy of threatening force against unconventional weapons proliferators are controversial, in part, because the U.N. Security Council did not specifically authorize the Iraqi war and customary international law permits a pre-emptive attack only when there is evidence of an imminent threat.

Bolton said the “inextricable link between weapons of mass destruction capabilities and [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein’s regime meant that the only way ultimately that we could be secure both in ourselves and in terms of our friends and allies, that the intent of Resolution 687 be carried out, was to resort to military force.”

He said the United States was motivated because of Hussein’s “desire” to acquire unconventional weapons.

Bolton said, “it was his desire to have these weapons, his desire to conceal them from U.N. weapons inspectors, his desire to evade U.N. sanctions over more than a decade to procure the prerequisites to having weapons of mass destruction and his repeated and insistent violation of numerous Security Council resolutions that brought us to the conclusion that there was no option other than the use of military force to change the regime in Baghdad and deny them the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

Bolton reiterated a statement in an earlier speech that a suspected Iraqi capacity for developing and producing unconventional weapons offered justification for a military attack (see GSN, May 23).

“It’s the weapon, it’s the delivery system, it’s the means of production, it’s the research and development, it’s the intellectual capacity, all of                         which are points on a spectrum,” he said.

“I think it’s very unlikely that we will find weapons-grade                        uranium or weapons-grade plutonium in Iraq.  But what we will find, what we know is there now, is the cadre of nuclear scientists and technicians, whom Saddam Hussein himself called his nuclear mujahadeen, who are                       the possessors of the intellectual know-how of how to construct nuclear weapons,” he said.

Representative Chris Bell (D-Texas) said the threatened use of force against proliferators could be counterproductive, potentially instigating an acceleration of the very proliferation activities it is intended to address.

“Our country’s pre-emptive actions, overwhelming military strength, and unprecedented projection of power capabilities have engendered distrust, resentment and hostile feelings in countries around the world and I’m afraid that in the interest of possessing some kind of leverage against what may be seen as overwhelming force, we have not provided a disincentive for nonproliferation, but rather an incentive,” he said.

Bolton responded, “It seems to me the lesson for the proliferators is that we don’t think that these weapons that you seek are things that you should have when they threaten us and our friends and our allies, and we are determined either to prevent you from getting them or to roll back the capacity if you have it.”

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Iraq I:  Blix Says Many Open Questions Remain on Weapons Programs

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — In his final briefing to the U.N. Security Council before his contract ends this month, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said this morning there are still many unanswered questions concerning Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and urged the council to keep the door open for the return of international inspectors (see GSN, June 3).

“The commission has not at any time during the inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items,” Blix said, referring to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which he heads.  “This does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist.  They might — there remain long lists of items unaccounted for — but it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for.”

Blix was presenting to the council his report, issued Monday, covering UNMOVIC activities in March, April and May.  Secretary General Kofi Annan withdrew the UNMOVIC inspectors along with all other U.N. personnel on March 18, just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Blix said that neither UNMOVIC nor its predecessor, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, “made significant finds of weapons.  The lack of finds could be because the items were unilaterally destroyed … or effectively concealed” by the Iraqi authorities.  Blix said he hoped that “in the new environment” in Iraq “it should be possible to establish the truth we all want to know.”

The United States is now conducting all weapons inspections in Iraq and has repeatedly said U.N. inspectors will not be allowed to return.  Despite this, Blix said, “UNMOVIC remains ready to resume work in Iraq as an independent verifier or to conduct long-term monitoring, should the council so decide.”  Blix, who will retire when his contract with the United Nations expires June 30, added, “The core expertise and experience available within UNMOVIC remain a valuable asset.”

He said the “long list” of weapons and other items unaccounted for had not been reduced by the inspections so it was still necessary for Iraq to present those items or proof of their destruction. If this is not done, he said, “the international community cannot have confidence that past programs or any remaining parts of them have been terminated.”

Much attention is currently focused on two mobile laboratories the United States has found in Iraq that Washington claims were used for the production of biological or chemical weapons (see GSN, June 2).  Blix said these laboratories do not match the trucks found by UNMOVIC — and found not to be used for weapons — nor do they match photos provided by Iraq before the war, so UNMOVIC “cannot make a proper evaluation” of the new finds.

Until the day before they withdrew from Iraq, the U.N. inspectors were destroying al-Samoud 2 missiles that Blix had determined were illegal according to Security Council resolutions.  He said 25 of the 75 missiles remained intact, as did half of the declared warheads and 98 percent of the missile engines.  He said there had not been time to determine if a second missile system, the al-Fatah, violated Security Council resolutions.

Looking beyond Iraq, Blix reminded the council of the “strong commitment among nations … to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — to terrorists as well as to states — and to eventually achieve the elimination of these weapons.”

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Iraq II: Cheney’s CIA Visits May Have Influenced Reports, Analysts Say

Over the last year, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and his most senior aide made a number of trips to the CIA to question analysts examining Iraq’s suspected WMD programs — trips that created an environment that led some agency officials to feel they were being pressured to create analyses that supported White House policy objectives, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, June 4).

While not entirely unheard of, visits to CIA headquarters by a vice president are unusual, according to intelligence officials.  The exact number of trips Cheney made to the CIA has not been disclosed, but one agency official described them as “multiple.”

Because Cheney was one of the leading White House advocates of military action in Iraq by claiming it possessed weapons of mass destruction, the visits by him and his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, “sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here,” a senior CIA official said.

Other CIA officials said, however, they were not bothered by Cheney’s visits, and some CIA officials even welcomed them, according to the Post.

A spokeswoman for Cheney yesterday refused to comment on the issue.

“The vice president values the hard work of the intelligence community, but his office has a practice of declining to comment on the specifics of his intelligence briefings,” said spokeswoman Cathie Martin (Pincus/Priest, Washington Post, June 5).

Yesterday, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith held a rare press briefing to counter charges that senior civilian policy makers had politicized intelligence on Iraq to support the case for war, according to the New York Times.

Feith said he had created a small intelligence team within his office shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to investigate possible connections between terrorist groups and other countries, such as Iraq.  Some intelligence analysts, however, have said Feith’s team provided an alternative, hard-line view on Iraq-related intelligence that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used during briefings with President George W. Bush.

“This suggestion that we said to them, ‘This is what we’re looking for.  Go find it,’ is precisely the inaccuracy that we are here to rebut,” Feith said.  “I know of nobody who pressured anybody,” he added (Eric Schmitt, New York Times, June 5).

Truth Will Be Revealed Soon, Bush Says

Bush said today that the United States would “reveal the truth” about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

“We’re going to look.  We’ll reveal the truth,” Bush said.  “But one thing is certain:  No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more,” he added (Associated Press/New York Times, June 5).

Blair Faces Increasing Criticism

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing increasing criticism over British intelligence that claimed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said “nobody believes a word now that the prime minister is saying.”

“The whole credibility of his [Blair’s] government rests on clearing up these charges,” Smith added.

More than 70 lawmakers in the British Parliament’s House of Commons from Blair’s Labor Party have signed a petition demanding that Blair publish his evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.  One Labor Party lawmaker, Malcolm Savidge, said the issue was “potentially more serious than Watergate.”

In addition, a Commons committee Tuesday approved an investigation into the matter.  Blair said yesterday that he would cooperate with the investigation (Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, June 5).

One of the most controversial claims of British intelligence, that the Iraqi military had the ability to deploy biological or chemical weapons within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so, was based on information provided by a senior Iraqi military officer, according to the Associated Press.

The 45-minute claim was included in a dossier released by London last year prior to the war.  Officials in two departments described the source as having provided reliable information for years, AP reported (Michael McDonough, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 5).

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International Response:  G-8 Leaders Decry Use of Force

Leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations meeting in France this week said they were not considering the use of force against suspected nuclear transgressors North Korea and Iran, the Associated Press reported Tuesday (see GSN, June 3).

North Korea says it has developed nuclear weapons, but other countries are skeptical, while Iran says that it is not developing such weapons — although the United States insists that it is.

A G-8 declaration mentioned “other measures” that might be used to dissuade the development of nuclear weapons — language that many observers believe to mean military action.

“This interpretation, my dear sir, seems to me to be extremely daring,” said French President Jacques Chirac.  “There was never any question of using force against anybody, in any area,” Chirac added.

Leaders also pushed for a peaceful solution to the North Korean crisis.

“What is the solution for a situation like North Korea?  We don’t have the solution,” said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.  “The best course is always diplomacy, the United Nations and international organizations.  But you’re dealing with a government there that is not well known by anybody and not very well understood,” he added (John Leicester, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 3).

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi agreed with Chretien.

“We shall pursue through and through peaceful and diplomatic solutions to the North Korean problem,” he said.  “I think that was agreed upon last evening,” he added (John Tagliabue, New York Times, June 4).

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Iraq I:  Secret Documents Lie Untouched at Baghdad Missile Plant

U.S. forces have not been to the main Iraqi missile production site in Baghdad despite the presence of secret documents and plans, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, June 3).

“We have the most sensitive documents here,” said Marouf al-Chalabi, director general of the state-run al-Fatah company.  “We were sure the Americans would target us but they haven’t even dropped by,” he said.

Despite heavy looting, the company’s complex still has plans and testing results for rockets, guidance systems and warheads.

“They’re scattered everywhere,” al-Chalabi said of the documents.

U.S. experts who have traveled with weapons inspections teams in Iraq were surprised that the plans were available at al-Fatah.  They said, however, that the company was not on a list of sites to visit (Associated Press/CNN.com, June 3).

The Hunt Continues

British and U.S. officials in Iraq have discovered an illegal missile program that was under development when coalition forces invaded the country, Agence France-Presse reported.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is under heavy criticism for allegedly exaggerating intelligence reports on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, is aware that officials have found motors for illicit missiles with a range of 960 kilometers.  Iraq was only allowed to possess missiles with a range of up to 150 kilometers under limits set by the U.N. Security Council.

The motors were found at Abu Ghraib military base near Baghdad, according to senior British government sources (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, June 4).

A former senior Iraqi official, Brig. Gen. Alaa Saeed, says U.S. and British forces will not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Saeed said that officials have asked him, “‘Do you know of any documents or inventory of chemical agents?  Any stockpiles?  Any production programs?  Any filled munitions?  Do you have any idea where these weapons are?’ I am ready to give them all the information I have.  But the answer is always the same, ‘No, no, no.’”

Allied bombing in the 1990s destroyed Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear programs and sanctions prevented Iraq from rebuilding them, Saeed said.

U.S. officials said that senior Iraqi officials who have been captured repeatedly give similar answers to Saeed (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 4).

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Iraq II:  U.S., British WMD Intelligence Assessments Face More Scrutiny

U.S. and British officials are investigating their prewar national intelligence assessments of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to reports, and U.S. officials now concede that some prewar analysis was incorrect (see GSN, May 22).

A U.S. official familiar with a CIA review of its findings said the quality of U.S. intelligence deteriorated after U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, leaving scant information to counteract earlier assessments that Iraq was actively pursuing WMD programs, the official said.

Therefore, the natural inclination of analysts was to assume that those programs were continuing even though there was no evidence of such activity, according to New York Times.

In addition, some information appears to have been simply wrong.  For example, prior to hostilities, the United States received reports that Iraqi forces had been given the authority to use chemical weapons against U.S. troops.  However, no such weapons have been found anywhere, and postwar interrogations of Iraqi officers have turned up no evidence that chemical weapons were ever deployed (James Risen, New York Times, June 4).

At the Pentagon, a U.S. Defense Department official today defended a prewar Pentagon intelligence analysis effort that he said was intended to learn how terrorist groups cooperated with each other and with nations such as Iraq.  Some critics have suggested recently that the analysis was intended to find a justification to attack Iraq, according to the Associated Press.

“This suggestion that we said to them, ‘This is what we’re looking for, go find it’ is precisely the inaccuracy that we are here to rebut,” said Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

“The main thing that the team produced was, it helped educate a lot of people about the fact that there was more cooperation and interconnections among these terrorist organizations and state sponsors — across ideological lines — than many people had appreciated before,” Feith said (Associated Press, New York Times, June 4).

British Review

Meanwhile, a British parliamentary committee announced yesterday that it would formally investigate whether Prime Minister Tony Blair presented inaccurate information on Iraqi WMD programs to build support for war in Iraq.

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said it would examine if the Foreign Office “presented accurate and complete information to Parliament in the period leading up to military action in Iraq, particularly in relation to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Committee head Donald Anderson said the investigation would be more believable than an investigation by the intelligence services themselves.

“We have a track record of independence … that shows we are not toadies of the government,” he said.

House leader John Reid criticized the investigation, however, blaming “rogue elements” in British intelligence services for questioning the prewar assessments.

“We have not found WMD yet, but we have not found Saddam Hussein — and everyone knows he existed,” Reid said (Audrey Woods, Associated Press/Boston Globe, June 4).

Defending his decision before the House of Commons today, Blair announced that he would cooperate with the investigation.

“In the end, there have been many claims made about the Iraq conflict, that hundreds of thousands of people were going to die, that it was going to be my Vietnam, that the Middle East was going to be in flames and this latest one, that weapons of mass destruction were a complete invention by the British government,” Blair said.

“The truth is, some people resent the fact that it was right to go to conflict.  We won the conflict thanks to the magnificent contribution of the British troops, and Iraq is now free and we should be proud of that,” he added (Michael McDonough, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 4).

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Iraq:  Blix Asks Security Council to Keep Inspection Team Intact

Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix released a new report to the U.N. Security Council yesterday, asking council diplomats to keep the U.N. inspection team intact after he leaves his position at the end of this month (see GSN, June 2).

Blix told the council that months of inspections had prepared his staff to resolve some unanswered questions.  Despite a successful invasion, U.S. forces have yet to discover any of the suspected Iraqi WMD stockpiles that Washington used to justify the war in Iraq.

“It would be inadvisable to undertake any drastic overall reduction in the present cadre of staff,” Blix wrote in what will be his last quarterly report to the Security Council.  “In the months to come it may also be desirable that this staff engage in summarizing and digesting unique experience gained,” he added.

In the report, Blix said U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq at the end of last year and the beginning of 2003 did not find evidence of “continuation or resumption” of illicit weapons development.  The report noted, however, that many questions were left unanswered about previously known stocks of Iraqi weapons (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, June 3).

“The long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was neither shortened by the inspections, nor by Iraqi declarations and documents,” the report says.

Blix’s report took special note of chemical weapons that were produced by Iraq but never accounted for.

“This assessment does not resolve the question regarding the total quantity of anthrax produced and destroyed by Iraq,” the report said.  Blix also addressed VX nerve gas, saying, “accounting issues remain concerning the chemical.”

The report also noted that two recently discovered Iraqi trailers containing laboratory equipment were not on Iraqi lists of prewar “legitimate vehicles.”  U.S. President George W. Bush has seized on the trailers as evidence of an illicit weapons program (Felicity Barringer, New York Times, June 3).

Nuclear Agency Restricted by U.S.

Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency will be allowed to recover nuclear material looted from the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center in Iraq, but the group’s movement will be restricted by U.S. forces, Reuters reported today.  The officials will not be allowed on the main plant and their work is expected to take two weeks.

“The inspection will be confined to ‘Location C,’ the nuclear material storage facility where they will independently identify, verify, repack, seal and secure nuclear material,” IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.  “Location C is located near the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, but is outside the gate which encloses the main Tuwaitha site,” she added (Reuters/Jordan Times, June 3).

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Canadian Response:  Chretien Pledges $108 Million to Russian Nonproliferation

Canada will provide $108 million to aid Russian nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament efforts, the Associated Press reported Friday (see GSN, June 2).

The pledge is part of $730 million that Canada will put toward the effort over 10 years, according to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

It “will improve international security by destroying chemical weapons, dismantling nuclear submarines, disposing of fissile materials and redirecting former weapons scientists into peaceful research,” Chretien said.  “These actions will also prevent terrorist groups from acquiring key ingredients for weapons of mass destruction,” he added (Matti Huuhtanen, Associated Press, May 30).

As part of the effort, Canada will put $23 million toward decommissioning three Russian nuclear submarines, according to Chretien.  Ottawa will also contribute $22 million to the chemical weapons destruction program at Shchuchye and $47 million to dispose of Russian weapon-grade plutonium (Shawn McCarthy, Globe and Mail, May 31).

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International Response:  G-8 Reports “Substantial Progress” in Implementation of Global Partnership

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

EVIAN, France — The Group of Eight today released a report praising the “substantial progress” achieved in helping to secure and dispose of Russian WMD materials to prevent them from falling into terrorist hands, but also called for progress to continue (see GSN, May 30).

The G-8 effort, the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction was initiated during the G-8 summit last year in Kananaskis, Canada (see GSN, June 28, 2002).  The partnership calls for G-8 members — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States — to provide $20 billion over 10 years to fund nonproliferation projects, primarily in Russia.

According to a report released here today at the G-8 summit, a group of senior G-8 officials has determined that “substantial progress” has been made in translating the partnership into concrete nonproliferation projects.  “At the same time, much work remains to be done,” the report says.

The report praises progress on implementing several contentious partnership guidelines that form a framework for the negotiation of specific projects, such as tax exemption and liability issues (see GSN, May 22).  In addition, a proposal to help simplify access to project sites by reducing prior notification requirements from 45 days to 30 days is considered an “improvement” but is still contentious to some partnership members, the report says.  It adds that this proposal should continue to be evaluated over the next year.

In its report, the G-8 also praised progress made in launching new cooperation projects with Russia.  For example, new projects designed to aid in the destruction of former nuclear submarines have been launched at two Russian shipyards on Russia’s east coast, according to the report.  It also says that agreements have been reached on a program to end Russian production of weapon-grade plutonium and on the acceleration of efforts to secure Russian stockpiles of fissile materials and nuclear weapons (see GSN, May 28).  In addition, the report highlights the progress made in improving security at Russian biological research facilities and in the conversion for former WMD production sites to produce commercial products.

The report warns, however, that for all the progress made in launching cooperative projects with Russia, “sustained and broadened efforts will be needed.”

In addition, the G-8 report also calls for further outreach efforts in both new partnership members and targets.  For example, Ukraine has presented an official application to become a partnership recipient country, in addition to Russia, according to the report.  While the G-8 answered Ukraine’s request positively “in principle,” the partnership is still in its initial phase and thereby focused on projects within Russia, the report says.  The senior officials group has expressed a readiness, however, to enter into preliminary discussions with countries willing to adhere to the partnership’s guidelines, it says, adding that some G-8 members have already begun pursuing projects in other former Soviet states.

The European Union has decided to organize an interparliamentary conference on the partnership in November in Strasbourg, the report says, adding that the decision to hold such a conference is “fully supported” by the G-8.

Nongovernmental Experts Also Push for Continued G-8 Efforts

Speaking Saturday in Morzine, near Evian, a panel of nonproliferation experts praised the initial results of the G-8 nonproliferation efforts.

The global partnership was “urgently needed” in Russia because of the difficulties Moscow had previously had in securing nuclear materials and stockpiles of chemical weapons, said Vladimir Orlov, founding director of the PIR Center for Policy Studies in Russia.  For example, a 1994 Russian government document described the lack of physical protection, as well as poor security, at a naval facility on the northern Kola Peninsula that housed stockpiles of enriched uranium, Orlov said.  The same facility would have much better security today because of increased international assistance, made possible through the partnership, he said.

Russia itself is applying more resources to the security problem, Orlov said.  For example, Moscow has agreed to provide $2 billion over the next 10 years to the partnership, making it the second largest donor to the effort behind the United States, he said.  In addition, eight leading Russian security experts have recently presented recommendations on further implementation of the partnership to Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said. 

The concern now is whether Russia will meet its funding pledge, as well as whether it will fully meet the principles set forth in the partnership, Orlov said.  For its part, the G-8 also needs to develop a schedule for the provision of pledged funding, he said.

While in the last year there has been “more good news … than bad news” concerning the security of Russian WMD materials, such materials are still at risk, according to Orlov.  In January, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that intercepted communications from Chechen militants expressed an interest in sabotaging nuclear facilities and capturing nuclear materials, he said.

Another concern is the status of former Soviet weapons scientists, who are feared to be potential sources of information and expertise for rogue states and terrorist groups.  Despite the risk posed by such scientists, Russia has chosen to focus its initial efforts on disposing of strategic submarines and its vast chemical weapons arsenal, Orlov said. 

He nevertheless defended Moscow’s priorities, arguing that disposing of actual weapons was a sensible first step, in part because those activities would attract international attention.

The threat posed by scientists potentially aiding terrorist groups or other states may also be exaggerated, according to another expert.  Rudimentary information on making weapons of mass destruction is easily available, said Laura Holgate of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, so restricting access to WMD materials should be the primary concern.

Additional Areas

Another possible area for possible increased cooperation is the disposal of Russian general-purpose nuclear submarines, said Sverre Lodgaard, director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.  Russia currently has about 100 such submarines that need to be scrapped, at a cost of millions of dollars per submarine, he said. 

Norway, which has sent a letter of intent to France regarding joining the global partnership, is soon set to enter into an agreement with Russia to aid in the disposal of two general-purpose nuclear submarines, Lodgaard said.

Lodgaard also called for a “crash program” to accelerate the blending down of stockpiles of highly enriched uranium for later use as fuel in civilian nuclear power plants.  Stockpiles of highly enriched uranium pose a greater threat than plutonium because terrorists could develop a crude nuclear device more easily with uranium, he said.

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U.S. Response I:  Bush Proposes New Initiative to Block Suspect Cargo Shipments

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

U.S President George W. Bush proposed Saturday a new international effort to help block illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technologies.

The United States has already begun contacting a number of countries, such as Poland, on the development of new legal agreements authorizing the search of planes and ships carrying suspect cargo, Bush said during a press conference in Krakow, Poland.  Legal agreements developed through the Proliferation Security Initiative would also provide authority to seize illegal shipments of WMD- or missile-related components if discovered. 

“When weapons of mass destruction or their components are in transit, we must have the means and authority to seize them,” Bush said.

The issue of the legality of stopping and seizing suspect cargo was dramatically demonstrated late last year when a joint U.S.-Spanish effort briefly seized a North Korean ship carrying at least a dozen disassembled Scud ballistic missiles to Yemen. 

Bush said he would work to continue to add new members to the initiative.  “We will extend this partnership as broadly as possible to keep the world’s most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our common enemies,” he said.

The initiative is likely to be a topic of discussion during a one-on-one meeting between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac scheduled for today during the Group of Eight summit in Evian, France, according to Chirac spokeswoman Catharine Colonna.  While France is not opposed to consideration of the issue, one concern is the legal basis for the stopping and seizure of WMD- and missile-related technologies, Colonna said during a press conference. She added that the planned initiative could also be included in a larger nonproliferation system.

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U.S. Response II:  Pentagon Report Outlines Chemical, Biological Defense Needs and Solutions

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A range of new vaccines, real-time multiagent detection systems, safer decontamination solutions and less burdensome protective clothing are among the numerous measures sought by the U.S. military to better protect U.S. forces against chemical and biological warfare threats.

The various needs — and the solutions planned to address them — were outlined in the annual report of the Defense Department’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program provided to Congress in April and released to the public last month.

To develop improved chemical and biological defense technologies, the Pentagon this year requested more than $1.1 billion to research, develop and acquire chemical and biological defenses in fiscal 2004, up $35 million from the previous year’s request.

At a March congressional hearing, the senior Pentagon official overseeing the effort said U.S. forces are becoming better prepared for operating in chemical and biological warfare environments, but conceded that there are shortcomings.

“I believe that the forward-deployed troops are the best protected that they can be,” said Dale Klein, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense.

Nevertheless, “we wish we had better standoff detectors, we wish we had better antibiotics, we wish … we knew what was coming so that we could detect to prevent rather than detect to treat,” he said.

Michael Powers, a senior fellow at the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute here who recently completed a review of U.S. biological defense activities, similarly said there are two particular weaknesses in U.S. biological defense capabilities in particular, both on the prevention side: detection and vaccine availability.

The detection weakness is of particular concern because the military’s approach to chemical and biological defense focuses on preventing contamination.  Post-exposure treatment is a less preferable option, as it would inevitably require removing soldiers from the battlefield.

“Their emphasis is really on preventing exposure rather than preventing disease,” he said.

Detection Capabilities

The report specifically says there is a need for battlefield chemical and biological detection systems that are able to detect and identify in real time all known chemical and biological agents.

“Current technologies require a high level of logistical support and lack discrimination in biological standoff detection,” it said.  “Real-time detection of biological agents is currently unavailable and is unlikely in the near- to mid-term, though investment efforts are reducing detection times.”

Detection devices are needed for a range of entities, from ships to vehicles to soldiers, according to the report. 

Soldier Protection Systems

Insufficient detection systems, Powers said, hinder soldier contamination avoidance efforts because soldiers may not have enough time to don their protective equipment.

“What you want to do is provide ample warning that an agent could be moving through your area so you could don your gas mask,” he said.

The recent Pentagon report says efforts are underway to develop protective clothing that is longer lasting and less burdensome to the soldier in terms of weight and heat.

“Individual protection equipment must also provide protection against emerging threats, such as novel agents or toxic chemicals,” it says, suggesting that the challenge will be difficult and complex.  “Integral respiratory protection requires tradeoffs between physiological performance parameters such as pulmonary function, field of regard, speech intelligibility and anthropometric sizing against constraints of cost, size/weight, protection time and interfacing with other equipment.”

A breakthrough could be pending, according to the report, as a new mask now in the final stages of testing is expected to offer increased protection, improved comfort and usability.

Funding also is directed toward technologies to reduce the weight, volume, cost and deployability of chemical- and biological-safe shelters and to integrate skin and respiratory protection systems into major weapons systems.

That, too, can be a challenge, as protection is sought for incorporation into major land, sea, and air weapons systems — for instance, within the Army’s Comanche, Crusader, Bradley, Breacher, Heavy Assault Bridge, Future Scout and Cavalry systems.

Decontamination Systems

More efficient, less destructive decontamination systems also are needed, the report says.

“Existing systems are effective against a wide variety of threat agents, yet are slow and labor intensive and present logistical, environmental, material and safety burdens,” it says.

According to the report, existing systems are inadequate for decontaminating electronic equipment or for a large area, such as a port or airfield.  The military is searching for decontaminants that are not water-based or corrosive, can be used on equipment to neutralize a wide range of agents, pose no “unacceptable” health hazards and require reduced manpower and logistics to implement.

Medical Defense

Another major biological defense weakness, said Powers, is the availability of vaccines for the many possible biological weapons threats. 

The nature of the science and technology, he said, forces the Defense Department to develop specific vaccines for a broad array of potential threat agents, often after a lengthy testing processes for safety.

The military currently lacks Food and Drug Administration-licensed vaccines for a number of biological weapons threats.  Work is underway to develop and license vaccines for Q fever, tularemia and smallpox.  There are options, however, for the development and licensing of 10 other vaccines, the report says.

In the next two years, the military expects to have licensed a paste for reducing chemical agent exposure to skin and a pretreatment for protection against soman, a nerve agent.  It also aims to produce a new system for identifying and diagnosing biological agent exposure, licensing the antibiotic cyprofloxacin for treating anthrax and approving a shorter dosing schedule for administering anthrax vaccine, the report said.

Anthrax vaccination currently requires a primary series of six doses given over 18 months, with an annual booster to maintain immunity.

“The protocol makes it difficult to complete before deployment of forces or to ensure that mobile forces, once deployed, are administered the proper regimen,” it said.

Work also is underway to assess the effectiveness of current medical countermeasures on nontraditional chemical and biological agents and to assess the effects of low dose exposure to chemical agents on soldiers.

Powers says the military is much more prepared to deal with the chemical threat than the biological threat.”

“Longstanding programs within the Chemical Corps, a lot of the training and education programs that have been underway for several years if not decades have really focused on the chemical weapons threat, or dealing with the biological threat in sort of the context of a hazardous materials response,” Powers said, noting that the military is much more prepared to deal with a chemical threat than a biological one.

“What DOD I think has come to realize in the past couple of years … is a sort of gradual shift to recognize the difference in both the threat and necessary response for chemical and biological weapons and a recognition of the important role played by the public health and the medical care providers within DOD in dealing with the biological weapons challenge,” he added.

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Iraq I:  Scientist Says Saddam Hid Weapons Programs Near Commercial Facilities

An Iraqi scientist has told Bush administration officials that Saddam Hussein placed the country’s chemical and biological weapons programs close to commercial facilities in an effort to produce the weapons on a moment’s notice, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN , May 29).

Positioning the alleged WMD programs near commercial facilities also helped to keep them under wraps, the scientist said.  In a May 7 White House document made available to the Post, the scientist describes Iraq as having “carefully embedded its (weapons of mass destruction) infrastructure in dual-use facilities” so the weapons could be made quickly in the event of an attack.

According to the Post, the commercial facilities also made legitimate products such as pesticides, but “such sites also could employ ‘just in time’ manufacturing and delivery systems to reduce the need for stockpiles,” the document noted.

Administration officials have pointed toward the recent discovery of two trailers in Iraq that could have been used to concoct biological weapons.  The trailers — one captured by Kurdish forces near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and turned over to U.S. troops in late April and a second discovered by U.S. troops at the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development and Engineering site in Mosul in early May — have long been suspected of being mobile biological production plants (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 2).

The United States is ramping up efforts to find weapons of mass destruction, sending in the Iraq Survey Group, which will consist of 1,300 to 1,400 personnel.  The team will be led by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, who is scheduled to arrive in Baghdad today.

“This will be a deliberate process and it will be a long-term effort.  We will be using all sources to put together pieces of an incredibly complex jigsaw puzzle,” Dayton said (Politi/Alden, Financial Times, May 31).

Some Looted Barrels Recovered

U.S. officials, meanwhile, are busy recovering barrels that were used to store nuclear material that were looted from Iraqi government facilities.

U.S. forces are paying $3 for barrels that originally contained uranium and were being used by civilians for storing food and washing clothes, Reuters reported.

“We recovered 100 barrels, but we do not know how many more are out there,” said Lt. Col. Brent Bredehoft, head of the U.S. unit searching for the radioactive material (Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, June 2).

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Iraq II:  Coalition Nations Defend Assessment of Iraqi Weapons

Today and over the weekend, top U.S. and British officials defended their prewar intelligence estimates of Iraq’s WMD capabilities, according to reports.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair today supported British intelligence assessments on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were released prior to the recent war.

“I stand absolutely, 100 percent” behind the intelligence information, Blair said this afternoon at a press conference held during the Group of Eight’s summit in Evian, France (Mike Nartker, GSN, June 2).

Yesterday, Blair said he had seen new evidence of Iraq’s WMD arsenal “which is not yet public,” adding that he had “no doubt at all” that Iraq possessed illegal weapons (Sparrow/Brogan, London Telegraph, June 2).

Recently, there has been increasing criticism of information contained in a British dossier released last year on the threat posed by Iraqi biological and chemical weapons.  For example, the dossier said the Iraqi military could deploy such weapons within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so — a claim some of Blair’s critics have called exaggerated.

Blair denied that any British intelligence had been “doctored” prior to release, saying that the British Parliament’s Joint Intelligence Committee had first cleared such information.  Blair also denied recent allegations made by former Cabinet member Claire Short that he and U.S. President George W. Bush made a secret agreement last year to invade Iraq. 

During his address today, Blair called for patience in assessing the results of the coalition’s search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  An international survey group is set to begin its work in Iraq this week, and the results will be released upon completion, Blair said (see related GSN story, today).  He refused to comment directly, however, on whether an independent inquiry of the disputed intelligence information will be conducted.

“Have a little patience,”  Blair said (Nartker, GSN).

Bush Claims Smoking Gun

Late last week, U.S. President George W. Bush told a Polish television station that the discovery of two Iraqi mobile laboratories meant the United States has “found the weapons of mass destruction,” the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, May 29).

Officials did not find any illegal or dangerous biological agents in the two trailers, but the vehicles did contain laboratory equipment.  The threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the major reason Bush cited for invading and occupying Iraq, but U.S. forces have yet to find any illicit weapons or biological agents that could be used to build weapons of mass destruction.

“We found the weapons of mass destruction,” Bush said.  “We found biological laboratories.  You remember when [U.S. Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons.  They’re illegal.  They’re against the United Nations resolutions, and we’ve so far discovered two.  And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on.  But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they wrong.  We found them,” he added.

U.S. officials have been shifting away from the prewar claims that Iraq had large WMD stocks and posed a direct threat to the United States, the Post reported.

“Just because they found two mobile labs, to say that’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction is absurd,” said Kristian Denny, a spokeswoman for Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.) (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, June 1).

Tenet Defends CIA Analysis

In the face of growing criticism, CIA Director George Tenet Friday defended his agency’s analysis of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities, the Post reported (see GSN, May 30).

Tenet is sending Congress “all the statements made by the administration on weapons of mass destruction and the underlying intelligence that supported those statements,” according to Senator John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Warner said that he might support an investigation of the intelligence that supported the U.S. invasion.  Warner said, however, that his actions should not be construed as criticism of the agency or Bush’s decision to invade.

Democratic lawmakers were more critical.

“If we don’t find these weapons of mass destruction, it will represent a serious intelligence failure or the manipulation of that intelligence to keep the American people in the dark,” according to Graham.

Representative Jane Harmon (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, said that she is concerned about weapons of mass destruction that have not been found and might be in the hands of U.S. enemies.

If weapons of mass destruction are buried in Iraq, “someone knows where that is, Saddam Hussein and his sons may still be alive, and the major moral underpinning of our war, to prevent him from using (weapons of mass destruction) against American interests and Iraqi citizens, may still be out there,” Harmon said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 2).

Powell Was Frustrated at Holes in Allegations, Report Says

Before the invasion, the Bush administration was seriously divided over the merits of the evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to U.S. News and World Report.

On Feb. 1, 24 U.S. officials reportedly met to review Secretary Powell’s pending speech to the United Nations, in which he would allege an extensive Iraqi WMD program.

Powell reportedly became frustrated with holes in the U.S. allegations.

“I’m not reading this,” Powell reportedly said after throwing some pages of the speech in the air.  “This is bull----,” he added.

In the speech he presented to the United Nations, Powell excluded some allegations that did not stand up to a close examination, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Lower ranking officials were also distressed.

“The policy decisions weren’t matching the reports we were reading every day,” said a U.S. intelligence official (U.S. News and World Report, June 9).

Greg Thielmann, a recently retired State Department intelligence analyst who was directly involved in reviewing intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, said that “there is a lot of sorrow and anger at the way intelligence was misused,” according to Newsweek (Newsweek, June 9).

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U.S. Response III:  Washington Deploys Sensors to Map Wind Currents

U.S. scientists have installed wind strength and direction sensors in the Washington, D.C., area to reduce the consequences of a potential chemical, biological or radioactive terrorist attack, the Washington Post reported today.

The system, called DCNet, consists so far of 30-foot aluminum weather towers erected near sensitive sites in the area, including the U.S. Capitol, the White House, tourist spots and highways.  The sensors are designed to forecast how urban “wind fields” might disperse fallout from a weapon of mass destruction, according to the Post.  The sensors will sample the wind 10 times per second, and data will be downloaded to experts every 15 minutes.

“The Washington exercise is seen as a prototype of what could eventually be a nationwide program,” said Bruce Hicks, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s air resources laboratory, which created the $500,000 network.  “The system now in place offers this area an unparalleled capability to plan for possible attacks and to respond if one were to occur,” he added.

A sister program, called SensorNet, has been launched by the U.S. Energy Department, the Post reported.  This $3 million program has added gamma-radiation detectors to the towers to test their feasibility in detecting a radiological terrorist attack.

The U.S. House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations is scheduled to hold a hearing today to examine technologies that model the spread of airborne biological, chemical and radiological agents.

“In the Cold War, we plotted the course of ballistic missiles,” said Chairman Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) in a press release last week.  “In the war against weapons of mass destruction, we need to be able to predict the path of toxic clouds across new battlefields abroad and here at home,” he added (Spencer Hsu, Washington Post, June 2).

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