JohnnyBz00LS
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Posted on Wed, Apr. 12, 2006
Findings in search for WMD shelved
White House ignored ’03 Iraq mission reports
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post
WASHINGTON – On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” He declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq – not made public until now – had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president’s statement.
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped “secret” and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts – scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons – who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.
None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission.
The contents of the final report, “Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers,” remains classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.
“There was no connection to anything biological,” said one expert who studied the trailers.
Questioning intelligence
The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government’s handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers – along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program – were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.
Intelligence officials and the White House has repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team’s reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration’s public views about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized U.S. spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion.
Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team’s findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
“Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say,” said the DIA official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
Certainty turns to doubt
Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003.
Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said.
The technical team’s findings had no apparent effect on the intelligence agencies’ public statements on the trailers. A day after the team’s report was transmitted to Washington – May 28, 2003 – the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were “confident” that the trailers were used for “mobile biological weapons production.”
Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply “mobile biological laboratories” in speeches and press statements by administration officials.
In late June, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the “confidence level is increasing” that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be “mobile biological facilities,” and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.
By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports.
David Kay, the group’s first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was “no consensus” among intelligence officials, the trailers “could be made to work” as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5.
Tenet, now a faculty member at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, declined to comment for this story.
“If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq,” Kay said, “I would certainly have given their findings more weight.”
Findings create jitters
The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.
The technical team peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.
By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about the trailers. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.
“Within the first four hours,” said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, “it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.”
News of the team’s early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.
The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.” It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.
But the technical team’s preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.
Findings in search for WMD shelved
White House ignored ’03 Iraq mission reports
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post
WASHINGTON – On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” He declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq – not made public until now – had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president’s statement.
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped “secret” and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts – scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons – who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.
None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission.
The contents of the final report, “Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers,” remains classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.
“There was no connection to anything biological,” said one expert who studied the trailers.
Questioning intelligence
The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government’s handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers – along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program – were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.
Intelligence officials and the White House has repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team’s reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration’s public views about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized U.S. spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion.
Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team’s findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
“Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say,” said the DIA official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
Certainty turns to doubt
Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003.
Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said.
The technical team’s findings had no apparent effect on the intelligence agencies’ public statements on the trailers. A day after the team’s report was transmitted to Washington – May 28, 2003 – the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were “confident” that the trailers were used for “mobile biological weapons production.”
Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply “mobile biological laboratories” in speeches and press statements by administration officials.
In late June, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the “confidence level is increasing” that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be “mobile biological facilities,” and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.
By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports.
David Kay, the group’s first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was “no consensus” among intelligence officials, the trailers “could be made to work” as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5.
Tenet, now a faculty member at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, declined to comment for this story.
“If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq,” Kay said, “I would certainly have given their findings more weight.”
Findings create jitters
The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.
The technical team peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.
By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about the trailers. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.
“Within the first four hours,” said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, “it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.”
News of the team’s early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.
The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.” It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.
But the technical team’s preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.