Posted on 08/09/2003 5:36:27 AM PDT by Palm_OScar
ASHINGTON, Aug. 8 — Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say.
The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.
That report had dismissed as a "cover story" claims by senior Iraqi scientists that the trailers were used to make hydrogen for the weather balloons that were then used in artillery practice.
A Defense Department official said the alternative views expressed by members of the engineering team, not yet spelled out in a formal report, had prompted the Defense Intelligence Agency to "pursue additional information" to determine whether those Iraqi claims were indeed accurate.
Officials at the C.I.A. and the Defense Department said today that the two intelligence agencies still stood by the May 28 finding, which President Bush has cited as evidence that Iraq had a biological weapons program. The engineering teams' findings, which officials from the Defense Department and other agencies would discuss only on the condition of anonymity, add a new layer to disputes within the intelligence community about the trailers found by allied forces in Iraq in April and May.
The State Department's intelligence branch, which was not invited to take part in the initial review, disputed the findings in a memorandum on June 2. The fact that American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence were disputing the claims included in the C.I.A. white paper was first reported in June, along with the analysts' concern that the evaluation of the mobile units had been marred by a rush to judgment.
But it had not previously been known that a majority of the Defense Intelligence Agency's engineering team had come to disagree with the central finding of the white paper: that the trailers were used for making biological weapons.
"The team has decided that in their minds, there could be another use, for inefficient hydrogen production, most likely for balloons," a Defense Department official said.
The Defense Intelligence Agency's engineering teams had not concluded their work in Iraq at the time the white paper was drafted, and so their views were not taken into account at that time, the government officials said. They said the engineering teams had discussed their findings in meetings in Washington in June and again last month.
"We stand by the white paper," the Defense Department official said. "But based on the assessment of the engineering team, it has caused us to pursue additional information about possible alternative uses for the trailers."
A C.I.A. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the agency was "continuing to gather more information about the labs, but we stand behind the white paper."
Since the white paper was made public in May, new information suggesting that the trailers might have been used for making hydrogen has come from Iraqi officials interrogated by American military officers in Iraq, a military officer said today. Those Iraqi officials have repeated the claims of Iraqi scientists that the trailers were used to fill weather balloons, said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Another government official from a different agency said the issue of the trailers had prompted deep divisions within the Defense Intelligence Agency. The official said members of the engineering team had been angry that the agency issued the joint white paper with the C.I.A. before their own work was completed.
The official said the question of how that had happened was being examined by the defense agency's inspector general as part of a broader inquiry that began in June.
A spokesman for the intelligence agency, Don Black, said he could not comment on the work of the inspector general.
The Bush administration has said the two trailers are evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. In the white paper made public in May, it detailed its case even while conceding discrepancies in the evidence and a lack of hard proof.
Senior administration officials have acknowledged that the United States has found neither biological agents nor undisputed evidence that the trailers were used to make such arms. They have said that 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.
That view, described as a consensus of opinion with the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, was presented to the White House before it was made public.
At that time, a senior official who examined the evidence in detail and concluded that the trailers were used for biological weapons said, "The experts who have crawled over this again and again can come up with no other plausible legitimate use."
That official said the agencies had rejected the theory put forward by Iraqi scientists who said one of the units was used to produce hydrogen.
Today, a Defense Department official said of Iraq, "There is not doubt in our minds that they had mobile biological weapons trailers." But the official said there was disagreement within the Defense Intelligence Agency about whether those found so far were used to produce biological weapons or hydrogen.
The engineering team that has come to believe the trailers were used to produce hydrogen includes experts whose task was to assess the trailers from a purely technical standpoint, as opposed to one based on other sources of intelligence. Skeptical experts had previously cited a lack of equipment in the trailers for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production.
Bush administration officials have said the most compelling information that the trailers were used for making biological weapons has come from a human source, an Iraqi scientist who described the trailers and what he said was their weapon-making role to American experts months before the trailers were discovered.
The six-page report that was made public in May, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," called discovery of the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."
Senior administration officials have said repeatedly that the White House has not put pressure on the intelligence community in any way on the content of its white paper, or on the timing of its release.
"The remains of the unfortunate Princess were found in much better preservation than expected; the head might be known again, the hair was still perfect".
The explanation is that these trailers were using bacteria to make hydrogen? I thought it was some simple chemical process for making hydrogen. (And it's so easy to compress and ship around in cylinders for weather baloons.)
They have a lab that uses micro-biologic processes is what we're left with. We get to decide if the biologic process lab was for a highly inefficient method of getting weather baloons aloft or if it was for biologic weapons.
Amazing. And the left wants us to believe weather baloons. It's insane. Have they no shame nor patriotism at all that they would lie to make their country look bad?
Because the nonstop assaults have eroded Bush's poll numbers somewhat, and the NYT got their talking points FAX from their employers.
I worked on DoE hydrogen energy programs, and have patents and publications in that field, so I do not think I am being merely reactionary to dismiss the Weather Balloon story as desperate and idiotic.
But, then, it is the NYT, and is designed for Democrat consumption.
There is always hope that some of these stupid whitewashes are deliberate disinformation, or a setup... or am I giving the Republicans too much credit again?
Terrorist devices, chemical weapons found in Iraq
Suspicious Iraqi Drums - UPDATE
Suspected bioweapons labs found
Searching for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Larry Elder
Iraq's Weapons and the Road to War
Iraqi Scientist Links Weapons to 'Dual Use' Facilities, White House Says
IRAQ: U.S. Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ Arms
Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert
Herald Sun: Soldiers find Iraqi chemical 'dump'
***Germany's leading role in arming Iraq
*Germany intercepts (30 tonnes) chemicals (may be used to make nerve gas) for N Korea
New DOD team to hunt for intel as well as weapons
Capture of chemical expert could help U.S. weapons hunt in Iraq (Emad Husayn Abdulla al-Ani)
Belgium Finds Nerve Gas Ingredient in Letters
Banned missile programme found in Iraq
Administration to Announce 'Rollback' Strategy for WMD
Suspicious Iraqi Drums Preliminary Testing Suggests Chemical Agents; More Testing Needed
2 trailers deemed biological arms labs
***CENTAF IRAQ'S CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM
WARNING: Gathering WMD storm a crock. See what Clinton told nation in 1998...
THE ROAD ENDS FOR WMD ON WHEELS
Coalition forces enter possible WMD site
Initial tests suggest WMD "cocktail" found in Iraq (**Of special note--post #58, by Archy)
U.S. finds new evidence of Iraqi WMD (NBC training school, antidotes)
Chem-weapons lab believed discovered
BRITS' CHILLING CHEM-NUKE FIND
CAPTURED FOES FOUND WITH CHEM-WAR GEAR
MSNBC - Cyanide & Mustard Agents Found in Euphrates River
Is the Activity at Al Qaim Related to Nuclear Efforts?
U.S. probing nuclear facility (Al Tuwaitha Follow Up)
Team Inspects suspected plutonium site (update by the journalist who broke original story, NEW info)
Underground Nuclear Facility Found in Iraq
Marines hold Iraqi nuclear site built by French
U.S. Marines Guard Secret Iraqi City with Very Hot Nuclear Radiation Levels
IRAQ: WMD source 'was senior Iraqi officer'
If Bush, Powell & Rumsfeld "Lied" on WMD, So Did the UN, EU & Clinton (RUSH LIMBAUGH)
Rumsfeld Denies 'False Pretext' for Iraq War
An absence of evidence proves nothing
Powell Defends Information He Used to Justify Iraq War
Iraq Resumes WMD Activities, New York Times Reports [Carnegie - Jan. 22, 2001]
Iraq Rebuilt Weapons Factories, Officials Say
U.S. says more radioactive material than expected found at Iraqi nuclear site
Fate of Al-Tuwaitha nuclear material unclear
Iraq Failing to Disarm: Nuclear Weapons
***October 1998:Senate Democrats Signed Letter Urging Clinton To Attack Saddam Over WMDs
U.S. Discovers Weapons of Mass Destruction Lab.(see para 8; scrubbed caustics)
Weapons of Mass Destruction ( or Distorsion or Deception? You decide...)
Iraq's bioweapons program: detailed info on mobile labs from pre-war intel.
As conspiracies go, this is a doozy
Michael D. Evans: Where are WMDs? Hidden in Syria
U.S.: Banned arms evidence in Iraq
Same Crystallograph Technique Engineers Narcotic Overdose Fix, Chemico-Weapon Detoxification
Bush, Rumsfeld Confident Iraq Had Weapons of Mass Destruction
U.S. Weapons Adviser Confident Of Finding Iraqi Arms'
Iraq mission was founded on truth
Al-Qaeda chief told us Iraq supplied WMD material: US
I think when we jumped in and redacted about 1/2 the Iraqi UN report we pretty much telegraphed that there were parts of Saddams' weapons procurement somebody didn't want exposed. Follow the money, still the most effective investigatory tool. Let's see who sold this stuff and who the owners/lobbists were for the deals
No doubt, it will come as a huge shock to the crowds here that the US still maintains weather balloon programs. Imagine, the very idea of some other country doing the same thing. Impossible!!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.