SEARCH FOR BANNED ARMS IN IRAQ ENDED LAST MONTH
Wed Jan 12,
By Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writer
The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush
ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein.
The top CIA weapons hunter is
home, and analysts are back at Langley.
In interviews, officials who served with the
Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in
Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information,
led them to fold up the effort shortly before
Christmas.
Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who
led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an
interim report to Congress that contradicted
nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq
made by top Bush administration officials, a
senior intelligence official said the findings
will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and
will be published this spring.
President Bush, Vice President Cheney and
other top administration officials asserted
before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that
Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program, had chemical and biological
weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda
affiliates to whom it might give such
weapons to use against the United States.
Bush has expressed disappointment that no
weapons or weapons programs were found,
but the White House has been reluctant to
call off the hunt, holding out the possibility
that weapons were moved out of Iraq before
the war or are well hidden somewhere inside
the country. But the intelligence official said
that possibility is very small.
Duelfer is back in Washington, finishing
some addenda to his September report
before it is reprinted.
"There's no particular news in them, just
some odds and ends," the intelligence
official said. The Government Printing Office
will publish it in book form, the official said.
The CIA declined to authorize any official
involved in the weapons search to speak on
the record for this story. The intelligence
official offered an authoritative account of the
status of the hunt on the condition of anonymity. The agency did confirm
that Duelfer is wrapping up his work and will not be replaced in Baghdad.
The ISG, established to search for weapons but now enmeshed in
counterinsurgency work, remains under Pentagon (news - web sites)
command and is being led by Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph
McMenamin.
Intelligence officials said there is little left for the ISG to investigate
because Duelfer's last report answered as many outstanding questions
as possible. The ISG has interviewed every person it could find
connected to programs that ended more than 10 years ago, and every
suspected site within Iraq has been fully searched, or stripped bare by
insurgents and thieves, according to several people involved in the
weapons hunt.
Satellite photos show that entire facilities have been dismantled,
possibly by scrap dealers who sold off parts and equipment to buyers
around the world.
"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the
intelligence official said.
"We've talked to so many people that someone would have said
something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put
forward. It's possible there is a supply someplace, but what is much
more likely is that [as time goes by] we will find a greater substantiation
of the picture that we've already put forward."
Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt,
and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for
the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and
the expenditures would remain classified.
Several hundred military translators and document experts will continue
to sift through millions of pages of documents on paper and computer
media sitting in a storeroom on a U.S. military base in Qatar.
But their work is focused on material that could support possible war
crimes charges or shed light on the fate of Capt. Michael Scott
Speicher, a Navy pilot who was shot down in an F/A-18 fighter over
central Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the opening night of the Persian Gulf War
(news - web sites). Although he was initially reported as killed in action,
Speicher's status was changed to missing after evidence emerged that
he had ejected alive from his aircraft.
The work on documents is not connected to weapons of mass
destruction, officials said, and a small group of Iraqi scientists still in
U.S. military custody are not being held in connection with weapons
investigations, either.
Three people involved with the ISG said the weapons
teams made several pleas to the Pentagon to release
the scientists, who have been interviewed extensively.
All three officials specifically mentioned Gen. Amir
Saadi, who was a liaison between Hussein's
government and U.N. inspectors; Rihab Taha, a
biologist nicknamed "Dr. Germ" years ago by U.N.
inspectors; her husband, Amir Rashid, the former oil
minister; and Huda Amash, a biologist whose extensive
dealings with U.N. inspectors earned her the nickname
"Mrs. Anthrax."
None of the scientists has been involved in weapons
programs since the 1991 Gulf War, the ISG determined
more than a year ago, and all have cooperated with
investigators despite nearly two years of jail time
without charges. U.S. officials previously said they
were being held because their denials of ongoing
weapons programs were presumed to be lies; now, they
say the scientists are being held in connection with
the possible war crimes trials of Iraqis.
It has been more than a year since any Iraqi scientist
was arrested in connection with weapons of mass
destruction. Many of those questioned and cleared
have since left Iraq, one senior official said,
acknowledging for the first time that the "brain drain"
that has long been feared "is well underway."
"A lot of it is because of the kidnapping industry" in
Iraq, the official said. The State Department has been
trying to implement programs designed to keep Iraqi
scientists from seeking weapons-related work in
neighboring countries, such as Syria and Iran.
Since March 2003, nearly a dozen people working for or
with the weapons hunt have lost their lives to the
insurgency. The most recent deaths came in November,
when Duelfer's convoy was attacked during a routine
mission around Baghdad and two of his bodyguards
were killed.
story.news.yahoo.com |
