Posted on 04/22/2003 12:04:13 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
An Iraqi scientist claims Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment days before the war began, according to a New York Times reporter embedded with the 101 Airborne division.
The scientist also claims Iraq transferred some illicit weapons to Syria and recently was cooperating with Osama bin Laden's terror network al-Qaida.
According to Times correspondent Judith Miller, the scientist claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program. Officials consider him credible and describe the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them as precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical-weapons treaties.
Miller reports an American military team hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, tracked down the scientist who slipped a letter to coalition forces offering to provide information in exchange for protection. His identity, as well as details of what chemicals have been found, are being withheld to protect his safety.
The MET Alpha team said it reported its findings to Washington after testing the buried material and checking the scientist's identity with experts in the United States.
Military officials describe the discovery as the most important to date in the hunt for illegal weapons.
At a Pentagon news briefing today, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters he could not confirm the MET Alpha discovery.
U.S. officials are keen to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as this was one of the key reasons cited for launching the war over the objections of United Nations Security Council members France, Germany, Russia and China.
Miller was not allowed to interview the scientist, but watched from a distance as the man, clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried.
Officials said the scientist also showed them documents, samples, and other evidence of the program that he claimed to have stolen to prove that the program existed.
He told them Iraqi officials set fire to a warehouse where biological weapons research and development was conducted four days ahead of President Bush's 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein.
According to the scientist, Iraq destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990s and transferred other unconventional weapons and technology to Syria.
More recent weapons programs, according to the scientist, focused on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors because they resemble the initial stages of development of pharmaceuticals, according to Miller.
"It's very hard to tell the difference until the material that you produced is actually put into a weapon," Miller told Fox News. "Therefore the moral of what the scientist had to say – if in fact he turns out to be correct – is that international inspectors could have searched from now till doomsday and probably not have found this 'smoking gun' that we all have been looking for over here."
Summing up the scientist's information for Fox News, Miller said Saddam Hussein kept his team of scientists together and buried the "building blocks" that he would need to resume production of weapons of mass destruction should he need to.
MET Alpha is one of several teams searching some 150 sites that intelligence agencies have targeted in the hunt for unconventional weapons in Iraq, according to the Times.
Rumsfeld explained the sites that the inter-agency teams are exploring are ones U.S. officials have known about and others that surfaced based on tips from Iraqis.
MET Alpha is supported by the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a field artillery brigade based in Fort Sill, Okla., which has two transportable labs in which chemical and germ samples can be analyzed quickly.
Two weeks ago, MET Alpha was involved in the inspection of barrels filled with chemicals unearthed on the outskirts of Muhawish, a small town south of Baghdad. The chemicals turned out not to be agents for weapons. But it was during this inspection that officers learned of the Iraqi scientist.
The potential of MET Alpha's work is "enormous," Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, told Miller.
"What they've discovered," he added, "could prove to be of incalculable value. Though much work must still be done to validate the information MET Alpha has uncovered, if it proves out it will clearly be one of the major discoveries of this operation, and it may be the major discovery."
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