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An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist. The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein. Instead, a British scientist and biological...

Iraq Had Secret Labs, Officer Says Goal was to someday rebuild chemical and biological weapons, general alleges. By Bob Drogin Times Staff Writer June 8, 2003 BAGHDAD -- Saddam Hussein's intelligence services set up a network of clandestine cells and small laboratories after 1996 with the goal of someday rebuilding illicit chemical and biological weapons, according to a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer. The officer, who held the rank of brigadier general, said each closely guarded weapons team had three or four scientists and other experts who were unknown to U.N. inspectors. He said they worked on computers and conducted...

Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs' Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs Peter Beaumont and Antony BarnettSunday June 8, 2003The Observer Tony Blair faces a fresh crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, as evidence emerges that two vehicles that he has repeatedly claimed to be Iraqi mobile biological warfare production units are nothing of the sort. The intelligence agency MI6, British defence officers and technical experts from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment have been ordered to conduct an urgent review of the mobile facilities, following US analysis which casts serious doubt on whether they really are...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA stands by its assessment that complex mobile laboratories discovered in Iraq were designed and built to produce biological weapons, a senior CIA official told CNN on Saturday.</p> <p>Critics of the U.S. intelligence assessment "don't have the benefit of all of the intelligence" that has been collected on the trucks, the official said.</p>

American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment. "Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He...

By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment. "Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on...

<p>Democrats tempted to make a partisan issue out of the quality of U.S. intelligence prior to the Iraq war are setting themselves up for a question they don't want to answer: How many secret bioweapons labs are too many?</p> <p>Saddam had at least two.</p>

<p>The CIA yesterday concluded that two truck trailers seized by coalition forces in northern Iraq were designed by Saddam Hussein's regime to produce biological weapons agents.</p> <p>A six-page agency white paper said an examination of the trailers' equipment showed that "BW [biological weapons] agent production is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles."</p>

By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - Two truck-trailers found in Iraq were "ingeniously simple" mobile biological weapons factories, with other as-yet-undiscovered trailers holding the end of the production chain, the CIA said on Wednesday. No trace of biological weapons has been found in either of the trailers, but there is little question they were constructed to make such toxins as anthrax and botulinin in quantities that potentially could kill thousands of people, U.S. intelligence officials said in telephone conference called to discuss a new report by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. "Our experts who are in the...

May 21, 2003 U.S. Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ ArmsBy JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD nited States intelligence agencies have concluded that two mysterious trailers found in Iraq were mobile units to produce germs for weapons, but they have found neither biological agents nor evidence that the equipment was used to make such arms, according to senior administration officials.The officials said intelligence analysts in Washington and Baghdad reached their conclusion about the trailers after analyzing, and rejecting, alternative theories of how they could have been used. Their consensus was in a paper presented to the White House late...

Military teams searching for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq found three trailers believed to be mobile biological weapons laboratories capable of producing deadly germs for weapons, NBC News reported.

<p>U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating a mobile laboratory discovered recently in northern Iraq that appears to be a transportable biological or chemical weapons facility, defense officials said.</p> <p>Additionally, investigators in Iraq also have discovered what appear to be chemicals used in making chemical weapons, according to defense and intelligence officials.</p>

The buried labs U.S. troops found last week were not the mobile chemical and biological weapons labs one U.S. Army general suspected, CNN's Ryan Chilcote reported Tuesday.

An American general in Iraq said last night that his troops had uncovered 11 vans buried underground that could be mobile chemical and biological weapons laboratories. No weapons of mass destruction were found in or around the 20ft square metal units, said Brigadier General Ben Freakley, of the 101st Armoured Division, whose soldiers made the discovery near a weapons facility outside Kerbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad. It was visited by UN inspectors at the end of February. "Initial reports indicate that this is clearly a case of denial and deception on the part of the Iraqi government," Brig Freakley...

Everybody in Washington knows the risks of speaking truth to power. I would be reminded of those risks over and over again during what still remains the most alarming and least understood scandal of the Clinton era.