Global Security Newswire

The Bush administration’s claim that prewar Iraq had developed mobile biological weapons laboratories was mainly based on information from an Iraqi defector who was never questioned directly by U.S. intelligence agents, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 25).

In a February 2003 speech before the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said an Iraqi chemical engineer who had defected provided descriptions of the mobile facilities capable of producing biological weapons. That engineer, though, never had contact with U.S. intelligence, and instead provided his information through a foreign intelligence service, CIA officials said. U.S. analysts did not know the engineer’s name prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and relied solely on foreign officials to support his credibility, according to a former CIA employee and other sources.

U.S. officials are now trying to interview the engineer, but the foreign intelligence service that provided his information has refused to produce him, sources said. There is additional concern because U.S. intelligence officials have learned that the chemical engineer is related to a senior official in the Iraqi National Congress, a former Iraqi opposition group that has come under increasing criticism for providing inaccurate information on prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts, the Post reported.

In his U.N. presentation, Powell also cited an Iraqi major, who had defected and was provided to the United States by the Iraqi National Congress, as supporting the chemical engineer’s claims, according to the Post. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had previously “red-flagged” the major as providing questionable information on Iraqi mobile biological facilities, but agency analysts did not relay their cautionary assessment, the Post reported.

CIA Director George Tenet is expected to be questioned today about the prewar claims of Iraqi mobile biological facilities during an appearance before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Post reported (see related GSN story, today; Walter Pincus, Washington Post, March 5).