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To: KLP who wrote (4108)	8/1/2003 1:32:21 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793552

Iraqi Scientists Helping, CIA Adviser Says Team Is Finding New Sites in Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A15 <font size=4> Some Iraqi scientists are cooperating in the hunt for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, including leading searchers to sensitive sites, according to the CIA's adviser on the search. "We are gaining the cooperation, the active cooperation, of Iraqis who were involved in that program," David Kay told reporters yesterday, between appearances before two Senate committees in closed session. Describing the activities of the Iraq Survey Group, which he helps direct, he said: "We are, as we speak, involved in sensitive exploitation of sites that we are being led to by Iraqis." Kay said "solid evidence" is being produced, but he indicated that it would not be made public "until we have full confidence it is solid proof of what we're to talk about." He also emphasized that he had been working for only six weeks and in that time had been "concentrating initially on the biological [weapons programs] and the role of the intelligence and security services." Kay took issue with a report in yesterday's Washington Post that quoted administration sources as saying the Iraq Survey Group had essentially suspended site examinations while it was analyzing documents. Kay said that the team is visiting new sites and that "almost every one of them is one that we did not know about until we were led to it by Iraqis or the documentation we have seized." <font size=3> According to one source at Kay's briefing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Kay some former senior Iraqi nuclear scientists had said that they were not involved in any program reconstituted after 1998, when U.N. inspectors left, but that they had heard that other scientists may have been. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services panel, said after the hearing that "good, solid progress is being made" but that there would not be "any dramatic public announcements at this time." Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), a member of the panel and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he was impressed by Kay's "step-by-step process." After Kay's afternoon session with the intelligence committee, its vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), said he remains cautious about finding "very extensive weapons -- ready for attack -- that we all were told existed." He said he expects that there will be evidence of weapons programs in time, "but signs of a weapons program are very different than the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that were a certainty before the war." "It's looking more and more like a case of mass deception," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said after hearing Kay's morning briefing. "There was no imminent danger, and we should never have gone to war." <font size=4> Concerned that past piecemeal findings have been challenged and even withdrawn, Kay told reporters that he is looking for "multiple Iraqis willing to talk and explain the program . . . documentary evidence . . . and physical evidence associated with a program." He said it will take time to assemble evidence that will stand international scrutiny. He also said he had found new evidence on how Iraq misled U.N. inspectors and hid material from them. Before they were withdrawn in 1998, inspectors focused on Iraq's deception operation, and they made discussion of it a central part of their final report. Kay said yesterday that interviews with Iraqis who took part showed how "truly amazing [they were] once you get inside it." <font size=3> A senior administration official yesterday said, "Not every data point that was there in the case for going to war will pan out now that we're in the country. That's the nature of intelligence." The official, who is familiar with Kay's work, said he will put together what happened to the Iraqi programs and the unaccounted-for weapons of mass destruction. "It's not surprising that it's going to take some time to untangle that concealment and to get a full accounting of what was going on with this program," the official said. © 2003 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com