Global Security Newswire

U.S. forces in Iraq have found new evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime secretly disposed of some biological and chemical weapons stockpiles in the mid-1990s, former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 27).

In an interview with the Washington Post, Kay said the Iraq Survey Group has discovered “contemporary documents” that Iraq destroyed some weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s without notifying U.N. inspectors. According to Kay, Iraqi scientists did not have complete records to support their claims because of pressure to keep the destruction effort hidden from U.N. weapons inspectors.

In addition to the recovered documents, the Iraq Survey Group also interviewed Iraqi scientists who confirmed some, but not all, of the destruction, Kay said. “That will be impossible, and there will always be some doubts,” he said.

Kay, who testified today before the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Post that the fact that Iraq destroyed some of its WMD stockpiles in secret has led him to believe that Hussein had bluffed about possessing such weapons to achieve a deterrent effect.

“Saddam wanted to enjoy the benefits of having chemical and biological weapons without having to pay the costs,” Kay said.

While Kay has previously heaped most of the blame for the poor assessments of prewar Iraq’s WMD efforts on U.S. intelligence, in his interview yesterday he broadened his criticism.

“Everyone was wrong. Outside experts like myself and other intelligence agencies … including the Germans and French believed he (Hussein) had weapons,” Kay said (Pincus/Milbank, Washington Post, Jan. 28).

Some Bush administration officials said yesterday that Kay’s criticism of prewar intelligence on Iraq was becoming an increasing political problem for the White House. Two officials said that a debate has begun within the administration over whether President George W. Bush should issue a call for intelligence reform. They added that Bush’s aides were seeking a way acknowledge intelligence problems without blaming either the CIA or its director George Tenet.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday appeared to back off their persistent claims that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.

“I think it’s very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work, so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought,” Bush said at an appearance with visiting Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski (David Sanger, New York Times, Jan. 28).

“There’s still work to be done to ascertain exactly what’s there, and I am not prepared to make a final judgment until they [the Iraq Survey Group] have completed their work,” Cheney said (Wagstyle/Dinmore, Financial Times, Jan. 27).

Bush yesterday also continued to defend that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was justified.

“There is just no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world,” Bush said. “There is just no doubt in my mind. And I say that based upon intelligence that I saw prior to the decision to go into Iraq, and I say that based upon what I know today,” he said (Sanger, New York Times).

Kay yesterday also said during an appearance on NBC’s Today that the invasion was justified, citing concerns that terrorists were seeking to obtain Iraqi WMD capabilities.

“I think, at the end of the inspection process, we’ll paint a picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war. It was of a system collapsing.  It was a country that had the capability in weapons of mass destruction areas and in which terrorists, like ants to honey, were going after it,” Kay said (FNS transcript, Jan. 27).

British Inquiry Clears Government of Role in Weapons Expert’s Death

Meanwhile, an inquiry into the suicide of British weapons expert David Kelly cleared the British government today of any role in his death, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Sept. 11, 2003).

Kelly killed himself after his identity was leaked as the source of a BBC report that that the British government had exaggerated information contained within a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In his ruling, Brian Hutton said that notes of BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan did not back up his report’s assertion that the Kelly had said that the British government had exaggerated the information contained within the dossier (Glen Frankel, Washington Post, Jan. 28).

Hutton also ruled that while the dossier’s claim that Iraq had the ability to deploy biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes may be proven wrong in the future, the BBC report’s claim that the government knew it was wrong when the dossier was published was “unfounded” because intelligence officials believed their source for the claim was reliable, according to the London Guardian.

In a speech before the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that Hutton’s ruling discredited allegations that his government falsified intelligence on Iraq.

“The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House, or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD, is itself the real lie, and I simply ask that those that made it, and those who have repeated it over all these months, now withdraw it, fully, openly and clearly,” Blair said (Simon Jeffery, London Guardian, Jan. 28).