US Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ Arms
May 21, 2003
By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
United States intelligence agencies have concluded that two
mysterious trailers found in Iraq were mobile units to
produce germs for weapons, but they have found neither
biological agents nor evidence that the equipment was used
to make such arms, according to senior administration
officials.
The officials said 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. Their consensus was in a paper
presented to the White House late Monday.
"The experts who have crawled over this again and again can
come up with no other plausible legitimate use," said one
senior official who examined the evidence in detail. One
theory that was rejected had recently been put forward by
Iraqi scientists who said one of the units was used to
produce hydrogen.
Officials in Iraq and Washington emphasized in interviews
that because the unit studied in greatest detail had been
thoroughly decontaminated with a still-unidentified caustic
agent, it was impossible to say whether it had ever
produced agents for bioweapons.
"It may have, we don't know," a senior administration
official said. "What we know is that it is equipped to do
that."
The intelligence analysts' judgment would support some of
the evidence that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
presented on Feb. 5 to the United Nations in an effort to
build support for the war in Iraq. But their failure to
find biological agents raises continuing questions about
whether Saddam Hussein's regime had actually made germ
weapons, as administration officials claimed.
The administration has come under growing political
pressure in recent weeks to show clear evidence to back
those claims. Officials said that they expect that the
intelligence community's conclusion about the mobile units
to become a centerpiece of their argument that Iraq had a
well-concealed germ weapons program. Yesterday in Baghdad a
military official said that American forces would invite
international experts to examine the mobile units, The
Associated Press reported.
The six-page white paper, entitled Iraqi Mobile Biological
Warfare Production Plants, contains a description of the
three trailer units found so far in Iraq and dismisses at
least three alternative explanations for their use, an
official said yesterday.
The official said it describes two of the labs as
production units, and the third as a biological laboratory
that could be used for a germ weapons program or for
peaceful purposes.
The paper called the trailers an "ingeniously simple,
self-contained bioprocessing system," one official said.
The paper rejected theories that the two mobile production
units were intended to make hydrogen gas for weather
balloons or germs for biopesticides to protect crops, or to
regenerate rocket fuel.
Repeatedly pressed to discuss the basis for these
conclusions, administration officials provided photographs
of one of the trailers, a schematic diagram of how experts
believe it could have made deadly germs, and interviews
with technical experts and other analysts who have observed
the units most closely.
This trailer has been analyzed by at least three groups of
allied intelligence and technical experts. After it was
turned over last month to American soldiers by Kurdish
forces near Mosul, three experts from a Pentagon chemical
and biological intelligence support team conducted a
four-day examination. Assisted by British experts, the team
concluded that the trailer was a mobile biological
production unit, its members said.
A second group of military and other experts from
Washington was then flown to Baghdad, where further tests
were conducted. In interviews, one of these experts said he
too had concluded that the unit was intended to be a germ
producer.
Finally, experts at the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Defense Intelligence Agency and other national security
units assessed the drawings, reviewed statements by Iraqi
scientists still in Iraq and the Iraqi source of one early
report that there were mobile germ factories in Iraq.
Within the past 10 days, officials said, Iraqi scientists
at Al Kindi, a research and testing facility in northern
Iraq, where allied forces found one of the units, told
American experts that the two production units were mobile
plants to make hydrogen for filling weather balloons.
But American intelligence analysts said that after
exhaustively examining evidence to support this theory,
they concluded it is a false story, possibly conceived to
mislead them.
Each of the two trailer units contains a 2,000-liter
vessel. The Iraqi scientists asserted that the vessel was
used to mix chemicals together to produce hydrogen gas. But
American officials said that engineering surveys and other
evidence strongly suggested that the vessel is a fermenter
used to multiply seed germs of anthrax and possibly other
agents into deadly swarms. Face plates on the vessels show
that they were made in 2002 and 2003.
Officials said they were continuing to test residue in the
vessel. They said that while it has not yet been
identified, it appeared to contain traces of aluminum, a
metal that can be used to produce hydrogen. They said it
might have been planted by Iraqis to create the illusion
that the units had made gas for weather balloons.
American military officers in Iraq said they believe that
Iraqi scientists remain reluctant to speak candidly about
Mr. Hussein's weapons programs because they fear they could
be implicated in possible war crimes or face retribution
from members of the fallen regime who are at large.
One senior administration observed that the mobile
laboratories were a violation of Security Council
resolutions, whether or not they were used to produce
weapons. "It was surely capable of producing biological
weapons agent," he said. "Iraq never told the United
Nations that it had made such units."
"Why would you have a covert program for filling weather
balloons?" the official said.
Late last year, Iraq stated in its formal declaration to
the United Nations that the mobile facilities were
"refrigeration vehicles and food testing laboratories."
American intelligence officials said that the Iraqi
defector who first told Western officials about the
existence of the mobile plants was shown photographs of the
units found in Iraq. The Iraqi, a chemical engineer, said
that the trailers appeared to be modern versions of a germ
production unit he had supervised.
The big vessels in two of the units could be used to
produce an estimated 500 liters of liquid anthrax and 50
liters of botulinum toxin per batch within two to three
days - millions of lethal doses.
"Those are definitely more than terrorist quantities of
these agents," said David R. Franz, a senior scientist and
former head of the Army defensive biological lab at Fort
Detrick, Md.
The schematic diagram was prepared by American experts who
have closely studied the most intact production unit. Aside
from the central fermenter vessel, there was a tank they
believe was for germ food, a compressor to feed air into
the fermenter and a refrigeration unit to cool it. The
diagram shows that the factory has a system of
post-fermenter processing that consists of a compressor
that experts said was to remove any gases and dangerous
spores and bottle them up in tanks.
Civilian experts on Iraq's program and biological weapons
said this gas-capture system appeared to be a hallmark of a
clandestine facility, and strongly reinforced the idea that
the mobile units were for the production of biological
weapons. If spores and signature gasses from the germ food
escaped the unit, experts said, inspectors down wind with
sensitive detectors might be able to detect the illegal
manufacturing.
After being shown some of this material, several civilian
experts in biological weapons agreed with the government's
consensus.
"There is no doubt in my mind," said William C. Patrick
III, a senior official in the United States biological
warfare program decades ago. "This is a very simple
production facility for an easy-to-grow organism like
anthrax."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company