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.
... and don't forget to take out the parrot news channels that just repeat the OldYT fabrication as if it were true. You also need to compensate for the kooks and Dims media echo chamber effect.
It's the administrations attempt to defuse the story and make it "old news" while GW isn't available to me asked more embarrassing questions.
Richard W.
Richard W.
That a line of bull is printed in "newspapers around the world" is no reason to assign articles with nothing but unnamed sources- or even named sources who haven't been in the biz for years but who have very blatant political connections to say, the Al Gore campaign- more credibility than a lone article from even an unknown journalist, much less an article from a journalist with named and not fictional sources.
Some articles just beg for sarcasm. Earlier reports were unsourced as well, at least every one I've seen. The only exception being the ever-hysterical Blix. One NY Times article even had the audacity to include a quote from a guy who hadn't even seen the trucks.
Speaking of that article, three teams of experts were sent to look at the trailers. Two of those teams were convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents. The third team - we are told by unnamed sources- was "sharply divided", but whether this division was two dissenters or more, is not clear. The third team, too, concluded that the labs were for bioweapons, and that only some on the team dissented. That NY Times article grossly exagerated the opinion of a small minority of unnamed and perhaps nonexistant experts on ONE team and attempted to imply that there was a sizable number of such people to anyone just skimming the article.
BTW, we've always had a policy of completing reports before releasing detailed findings. It's SOP for any inspection team, and in any case there hasn't been time enough to go over even a fraction of the documentation, all of which must first be translated.
Richard W.
Read his report. The chemical shell was not destroyed as Iraq claimed, it was intact. We're not sure if Blixie had time to dig further, but there's reason to believe he didn't want to.
Your next response will probably be "ONE SHELL?"
To which I will say, "Why yes, one shell. I suppose you think Iraq only filled ONE shell with chemical weapons in the last decade, and used the remaining chemicals in the barrel, which of course was a one-time salesman's sample and not part of a larger manufacturing run, to kill the infamous corn borers that lurk in the Euphrates."
Of course, even THAT is more plausible than the idea that Iraq destroyed the other shells all by itself, making no effort to have the UN document it so it could get those sanctions lifted, and just "missed one."
Yeah, sure.
And Iraq had intended those modified drones to spray Goldbond powder on sweaty date harvesters.
And Iraq designed those modified warheads Blix mentioned in his report to disperse confetti for Uday's birthday party.
And Dr. Germ the bioweapons scientist really held down a job at Baskin al-Robins all along, which requires all of its ice cream store clerks to have advanced degrees in biochemistry so they can innoculate children using special Belgian chocolate and French vanilla flavoring. She couldn't POSSIBLY have been employed in a field which involves the very weapons she is a specialist in...
Give me a break. Even Blixie AND Iraq admitted to Iraq's having thousands of liters of anthrax, and even Blixie admitted Iraq had not proven even one teaspoon of it was disposed of, nor made an effort to have the UN team come in and destroy it for them. And that doesn't even count anything Iraq was estimated to be capable of producing with what it purchased and didn't claim.
Named sources have said that WMD have been found in Iraq from Kay to the PM of Australia, Blair and Bush. The best the press can do is cite unnamed sources.
We should have resumed fighting Iraq as soon as they violated the cease fire- which occured the moment they refused to turn over prisoners abducted from Kuwait, one of the most basic of the requirements that had to be met. Waiting years and years through violation after violation, finding after finding of WMD that had not been turned over, through every smuggling effort we caught them in, through every terrorist effort they supported, only let people get it into their heads that Iraq really hasn't been asking for it in every way possible all along.
Yeah sure. Blix didn't want to find them. LOL Too funny. You guys will believe anything. Seen Elvis lately?
Richard W.
do you think the majority of expert engineers in the DIA who examined the trailers first hand and came to that conclusion are "dumb" ?
or perhaps you think they have some secret agenda. please enlighten us, oh un-dumb one.
funny, i've never thought of the DIA as particularly leftist.
why are you so nervous about the mere possiblity that the trailers will turn out to be a dead end, like so many other "big finds" at one time reported in the media?
btw, if my question makes you uneasy, feel free to just ask me if i have "no shame nor patriotism." that'll get you through.
hint on why the sources were unnamed:
the information they leaked was classified.
the question a curious person would ask next:
why is this information still classified while the report that reached an opposite conclusion was rushed to the public before the investigation was even complete?
one more question:
where does your implicit, almost child-like trust of our government spring from?
I didn't see the name of a single source of information. Is there something "secret" about saying these things produced "hydrogen" that would make someone reluctant to give names?
Also, don't you find producing hydrogen via bacteria to be a whole lot more trouble than getting hydrogen is anywhere else in the world.
And don't you think admitting that it's a bio lab, but that it's for having bacteria make hydrogen to be a whole lot to ask someone to swallow?
It's pretty obvious that Middle Eastern tyrants have litle respect for human rights. That is as true now as it was in ancient Egypt when all those knowing a secret about a Pharoah's tomb were killed when their task was done.
Those that hid Saddam's weapons are not likely to be alive.
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