Uh, would ya believe he shot himself six times? If Abu Nidal could do it, why can't a scientist?
OCTOBER 3, 2003 : (KAY SAYS AFTER SPEAKING WITH INVESTIGATORS IN IRAQ; ONE SCIENTIST ASSASSINATED, ONE WAS SHOT SIX TIMES AND SURVIVED - THIS SCIENTIST'S NEPHEW HAD ALSO BEEN SHOT) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Iraqi scientists were shot in Baghdad after they talked to the U.S.-led team hunting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and others believe they will be in danger if they collaborate in the search, Washington's chief weapons inspector David Kay said on Friday. Kay, who is directing the WMD hunt as an adviser to the CIA, presented an interim report to U.S. lawmakers this week that said no banned weapons had yet been found. Some Iraqi scientists have sought relocation in the United States out of fear for the safety of their families, and others who want to stay in Iraq seek security guarantees, Kay told reporters on a conference call. "They believe they are in genuine danger ... if they collaborate with us," he said.
One scientist was "assassinated literally hours after meeting" with a member of the WMD-hunting team, killed by a single shot to the back of his head outside his apartment, Kay said. There were no signs of robbery.
Another scientist, who was "really golden for us," was shot six times but survived, he said. Kay declined to name them. "The scientist who took six bullets was ... key to starting our understanding of the biological weapons program and pointing us in the direction of others," he said. His nephew was also shot in the incident a month and a half ago, Kay said.
"We engaged in a lot of conversations with him. We perhaps were not as sensitive to his security needs as now in retrospect we realize we should have been," he said. "It's very difficult to conduct clandestine meetings in Iraq when you have to go pick people up because ... transport was hard to come by."
But Kay said cooperation from Iraqis, inside and outside detention, has increased. "This is an intelligence-led operation, we are absolutely dependent on the cooperation of Iraqis to help us discover the complete truth about the WMD programs," he noted. - "Kay: Two Iraqi WMD Scientists Shot for Helping U.S.," by Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters , 10/3/03
>>>Uh, would ya believe he shot himself six times? If Abu Nidal could do it, why can't a scientist?
ROFL!
Pay no attention to those other bullets.
I WELCOME this opportunity to discuss the progress that the Iraq Survey Group has made in its initial three months of its investigation into Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs.--- "PAYDIRT ," (David Kay-Must Read), New York Post , David KayThe Interim Progress Report is a snapshot, in the context of an ongoing investigation, of where we are after our first three months of work. It does not represent a final reckoning of Iraq's WMD programs, nor are we prepared to close the file on any of these programs.
While solid progress - I would say even remarkable, progress considering the conditions the ISG has had to work under - has been made in this initial period, much remains to be done.
We are still very much in the collection-and-analysis mode, still seeking the information and evidence that will allow us to confidently draw comprehensive conclusions to the actual objectives, scope and dimensions of Iraq's WMD activities at the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
A HUGE TASK
IRAQ's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The very scale of this program, coupled with conditions in Iraq, dictate the speed at which we can move to a comprehensive understanding of Iraq's WMD activities. With the regime of Saddam Hussein at an end, ISG has the opportunity for the first time of drawing together all the evidence that can still be found - much evidence is irretrievably lost - to reach definitive conclusions concerning the true state of Iraq's WMD program.
It is far too early to reach any definitive conclusions; in some areas, we may never reach that goal. But the unique nature of this opportunity requires that we take great care to ensure that the conclusions we draw reflect the truth to the maximum extent possible given the conditions in post-conflict Iraq.
We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. We are actively searching, based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis.
WHY THE SEARCH REMAINS TOUGH
WHY are we having such difficulty in finding weapons or in reaching a confident conclusion on their existence or removal?
1) From birth, all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program.
2) Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans- to post-conflict.
3) Post-war looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-war activities of Saddam's regime.
4) Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans-conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them.
5) Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional-armaments "footprint" and difficult to near-impossible to identify with normal search procedures. Even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two-car garage.
6) The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being subject to threats and attacks.
WMD PROGRAMS: REAL EVIDENCE
WHAT have we found in the first three months of our work? We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery came about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence.
A few examples:
* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing chemical and biological weapons research.
* A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of biological weapons agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the United Nations.
* Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
* New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the United Nations.
* Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation.
* A line of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] in not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
* Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the United Nations.
* Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the United Nations. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East.
* Clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.
SIGNS OF MASSIVE CONCEALMENT
IN addition, to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence - hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use - is one of deliberate, not random, acts.
For example:
* On July 10, an ISG team exploited the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) Headquarters in Baghdad. The basement of the main building contained an archive of documents situated on well-organized rows of metal shelving. The basement suffered no fire damage despite the total destruction of the upper floors from coalition air strikes. Upon arrival, the exploitation team encountered small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents were intentionally destroyed. Hard drives had been deliberately destroyed. Computers would have had financial value to a random looter; their destruction, rather than removal for resale or reuse, indicates a targeted effort to prevent Coalition forces from gaining access to their contents.
* All IIS laboratories visited by IIS exploitation teams have been clearly sanitized, including removal of much equipment, shredding and burning of documents and even the removal of nameplates from office doors.
THERE are two reasons that drive us to want to complete this effort.
Whatever we find will probably differ from pre-war intelligence. Reality on the ground is, and has always been, different from intelligence judgments that must be made under serious constraints of time, distance and information. Yet it is only by understanding precisely what those difference are that the quality of future intelligence and investment decisions concerning future intelligence systems can be improved. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is such a continuing threat to global society that learning those lessons has a high imperative.
We have found people, technical information and illicit-procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and regions could accelerate global proliferation. Even in the area of actual weapons, there is no doubt that Iraq had at one time chemical and biological weapons. Even if there were only a remote possibility that these pre-1991 weapons still exist, we have an obligation to troops who are now there and the Iraqi population to ensure that none of these remain to be used against them in the ongoing insurgency activity.
I am certain that I speak for Major-Gen. Keith Dayton, who commands the Iraqi Survey Group, when I say how proud we are of the men and women from across the government and from our coalition partners, Australia and the United Kingdom, who have gone to Iraq and are carrying out this important mission.