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China illegally supplied Saddam Hussein's regime with missile technology and other weaponry and was a major beneficiary of the U.N. oil-for-food program, according to a CIA report. The report by the Iraq Survey Group also stated that China, along with France and Russia, was bribed by Saddam with oil sales and weapons deals into working to end U.N. sanctions. One sale took place in 2001 and involved an intelligence officer in Beijing, Abd al-Wahab, who bought 10 to 20 gyroscopes and 20 accelerometers from a Chinese firm that was not identified by name. The equipment was to be used in...

State of war IIBy Oliver NorthFriday, December 8, 2006 RAMADI, Iraq -- "If everything went as planned, they wouldn't call it 'war.'" That was the tongue-in-cheek assessment of a U.S. Marine Major as to why our helicopter flight from Baghdad to Ramadi had been delayed for half a day. By the time we arrived on the LZ at this outpost of freedom it was the middle of an unusually cold, damp night. A proffered hot cup of coffee was gratefully accepted as the Major helped us load our backpacks, camera gear and satellite broadcast equipment aboard a dust-encrusted Humvee. Just...

These are realists?By Mona CharenFriday, December 8, 2006 Recommendation 16 of the Iraq Study Group's report calls upon Syria to agree to a peace deal with Israel in return for the Golan Heights. It further suggests that Syria be persuaded to end its interference in Lebanon, cease aiding Hezbollah, convince Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist, and intervene to obtain the release of two captured Israeli soldiers. Elsewhere the report declares that "Iran should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and use its influence over Iraqi Shia groups to encourage...

WASHINGTON - The Iraq Study Group report delivered to President Bush yesterday contains 79 separate recommendations - but not one that explains how American forces can defeat the terrorist insurgents, only ways to bring the troops home. Declaring the situation "grave and deteriorating," the high-powered commission proposed the United States talk directly to terror abettors Iran and Syria to get their cooperation, and commit to removing U.S. combat troops in early 2008. In a major policy report presented to Bush and Congress, the panel also recommended taking a harder line with the fledgling Iraqi government by threatening to reduce or...

In reviewing the career of French diplomat Jean-Bernard Mérimée, two key moments stand out. In June 1995, Mr. Mérimée, then France's ambassador to the U.N., announced he was largely satisfied with the progress Iraq had made on disarmament and wanted sanctions lifted sooner rather than later. And this week, a French investigative magistrate brought Mr. Mérimée in for questioning on an allegation that he took a bribe from Saddam in the form of 11 million barrels of oil. So now we know what French officialdom means by the word "multilateralism": One part involves speechifying about the need for international "consensus"...

NEW YORK — As investigations proliferate into the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, one of the more intriguing mysteries involves a former French diplomat with a direct link to the U.N.’s executive suite: Jean-Bernard Merimee (search). The 68-year-old Merimee, one of several individuals now under investigation in France for alleged involvement in Saddam Hussein’s Oil-for-Food scams, is well known for his role in the early 1990s as French ambassador to the United Nations. What investigators have not so far highlighted is that during the period Merimee is alleged to have come into commercial contact with Saddam’s regime, starting in December 2001,...

One year ago I told the Senate Armed Services Committee that I had concluded "we were almost all wrong" at the time of the Iraq war about that country's activities with regard to weapons of mass destruction -- and never more wrong than in the assessment that Iraq had a resurgent program on the verge of producing nuclear weapons. I testified about what I saw as the major reasons we got it so wrong, and I urged the establishment of an independent commission to examine this failure and begin the long-overdue process of adjusting our intelligence capabilities to the new...

WASHINGTON — An Iraqi-born American citizen pleaded guilty Tuesday to several charges as part of the federal investigation into the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, becoming the first person to be convicted in the growing scandal. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the agreement with Samir Vincent, accused of being an unregistered Iraqi agent between the first and second Persian Gulf wars. [SNIP] The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York. The criminal indictment and plea deal were filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. [SNIP] The Justice Department said that from 1992 to...

WMD hunters ambushed in Baghdad By P. Mitchell Prothero Published 4/26/2004 1:32 PM BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 26 (UPI) -- An explosion that killed al least three U.S. personnel in Baghdad was an ambush of a top-secret unit detailed to search for weapons of mass destruction, United Press International has confirmed. The military initially claimed that a detail of U.S. Army soldiers were about to raid a suspected bomb making factory when two were killed after an explosion. Several Iraqis in the area at the time told UPI that the building exploded when the soldiers tried to enter the house. Although...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - A new report on Iraq's illicit weapons program is expected to conclude that Saddam Hussein's government had a clear intent to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if United Nations sanctions were lifted, government officials said Thursday. But, like earlier reports, it finds no evidence that Iraq had begun any large-scale program for weapons production by the time of the American invasion last year, the officials said. The most specific evidence of an illicit weapons program, the officials said, has been uncovered in clandestine labs operated by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which could have produced small...

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"/> March 31, 2004 Iraq Arms Inspector Says Search Is a TangleBy DOUGLAS JEHL ASHINGTON, March 30 — The new chief weapons inspector in Iraq told Congress on Tuesday that a lack of cooperation from ousted Iraqi officials was thwarting American efforts to untangle the many remaining mysteries surrounding Iraq's suspected illicit weapons program. In the public version of testimony delivered behind closed doors to two Senate committees on Tuesday, the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, acknowledged that American inspectors had still not found any evidence of an illicit arsenal. But he seemed less inclined...

Kay’s Say and the CIA John Leo ( February 2, 2004 David Kay’s exit interview was odd. In resigning as chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, he made news. “I don’t think they existed,” he said of the WMD supposedly stockpiled by Saddam Hussein. But this announcement came not in a Washington press conference but in a phone interview with a London-based news outlet (Reuters). Then he declined to answer phone calls and E-mails from the New York Times and talked to the London Telegraph instead. Reuters said Kay “fired a parting shot at the Bush administration.” This wasn’t true...

The man who spent eight months leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq told senators here Jan. 28 that although no such weapons have been found, he believes Iraq may have been "even more dangerous than we thought" before Saddam Hussein was removed from power. David Kay, who stepped down last week as head of the Iraq Survey Group, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Kay told the senators he has changed his belief – which he pointed out was shared by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, including those of governments that opposed the war –...

<p>The CIA has been quietly building a case that the anthrax attacks of 2001 were in fact the result of an international terrorist plot.</p> <p>U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports tell us the information showing a terrorist link to the anthrax-filled letters sent by mail in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks is not conclusive. But it is persuasive.</p>

washingtonpost.com Kay Plans to Leave Search for Iraqi Arms Members of Survey Group He Heads Being Diverted to Fight Against Insurgents By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A42 David Kay, the head of the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has told administration officials he plans to leave before the Iraq Survey Group's work is completed and could depart before February, U.S. military and intelligence officials said. The move comes as more of Kay's staff has been diverted from the weapons hunt to help search for Iraqi...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Even though much of the media is focusing on the Iraq Survey Group's (ISG's) "failure" to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the war in Iraq was justified based on the ISG's interim report as given to Congress by chief inspector David Kay last week."Although Kay and his team have not yet discovered stocks of the weapons themselves, they will press on in the months ahead with their important and painstaking work," said Powell in a Washington Post Op-ed. "All indications are that they will uncover still more...

Excerpt from:STATEMENT BY DAVID KAY ON THE INTERIM PROGRESS REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE IRAQ SURVEY GROUP (ISG)BEFORE THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEFENSE, AND THESENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE("With regard to delivery systems...") With regard to delivery systems, the ISG team has discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if OIF had not occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. Detainees and co-operative sources indicate that beginning in 2000 Saddam...

STATEMENT BY DAVID KAY ON THE INTERIM PROGRESS REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE IRAQ SURVEY GROUP (ISG) BEFORE THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEFENSE, AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE October 2, 2003 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome this opportunity to discuss with the Committee 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.

By JAMES RISEN and JUDITH MILLER Published: October 2, 2003 WSHINGTON, Oct. 1 — The Bush administration is seeking more than $600 million from Congress to continue the hunt for conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein's government had an illegal weapons program, officials said Wednesday. The money, part of the White House's request for $87 billion in supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been spent on the weapons search, the officials said. The budget figures for the weapons search are included in the classified part of the administration's supplemental appropriations...

<p>WASHINGTON — The CIA will provide "thousands of documents" — most of them classified — to lawmakers, providing them with intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (search) program, officials told Fox News on Wednesday.</p> <p>The data, said to stack at least four-feet high, could be handed over as early as next week, and will provide specific sources and the agency's assessments, both used by Secretary of State Colin Powell to form his presentation to the U.N. Security Council (search) in February.</p>