Global Security Newswire

The U.S. Energy Department’s National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has confirmed that a recently discovered cache of Iraqi mortar shells did not contain chemical weapons agents, the Danish army said Sunday (see GSN, Jan. 16).

The shells, discovered earlier this month, had initially tested positive for the presence of blister agent. Further testing conducted by experts from the Iraq Survey Group, however, came back negative (Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 19).

Cheney Refuses to Confirm Prewar Intelligence Flaws on Iraq

Meanwhile, in an interview with USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said “the jury’s still out” as to whether Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.

According to Cheney, it would be difficult to find biological weapons stocks in Iraq because they can be produced on short notice and because “the stuff is perishable and doesn’t last very long anyway.” Even though no evidence of biological and chemical weapons stockpiles have yet been found, though, Cheney said that he still supported prewar intelligence on Iraq, noting that it is “never perfect.”

“I am a long way at this stage from concluding that somehow there was some fundamental flaw in our intelligence,” Cheney said (Judy Keen, USA Today, Jan. 19).

Israel Conducts Intelligence Review

Elsewhere, an Israeli parliamentary panel is completing a seven-month review of Israeli intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq, according to Defense News (see GSN, Dec. 5, 2003).

The panel, the Investigative Committee for the Intelligence Picture Prior to the War in Iraq, has conducted more than 50 sessions with current and former heads of Israeli military intelligence, the Mossad intelligence service, members of the military’s general staff and academics, Defense News reported. Yuval Steinitz, head of the panel, said that the committee hopes to present a classified report on its findings to senior Israeli officials by the end of the month, with an unclassified summary to be released at the same time.

“For 30 years, since the aftermath of 1973 Yom Kippur War, there has been no examination of Israel’s doctrine of intelligence by an official body that is not beholden to the government or to the Israeli military,” Steinitz said (Barbara Opall-Rome, Defense News, Jan. 19).