Report raises new questions on Bush, WMDs

" On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by US and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, US intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true. The Washington Post reported on Apr. 12 that a secret fact-finding mission to Iraq had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement. The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories. The authors of the reports were nine US and British civilian experts–scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons–who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews with the Washington Post revealed that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. "There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world." The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the US government's handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers–along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was claimed to be a nuclear weapons program–were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team's reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the adminis-tration's public views about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized US spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion. Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group's final report in September 2004–15 months after the technical report was written–said the trailers were "impractical" for biological weapons production and were "almost certainly intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons. "Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say," said the DIA official, who spoke to the Post on the condition that he not be identified. Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official. The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington–May 28, 2003–the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that US officials were "confident" that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production." Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply "mobile biological laboratories" in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be "mobile biological facilities," and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox. By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports. David Kay, the group's first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was "no consensus" among intelligence officials, the trailers "could be made to work" as weapons labs, he said in a speech. Kay, in an interview, said senior CIA officials had advised him upon accepting the survey group's leadership in June 2003 that some experts in the DIA were "backsliding" on whether the trailers were weapons labs. But Kay said he was not apprised of the technical team's findings until late 2003, near the end of his time as the group's leader. "If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq," Kay said, "I would certainly have given their findings more weight." The Post article did not explicitly say that Bush knew what he was saying was false. But ABC News did during a report on "Good Morning America," and McClellan demanded an apology and an on-air retraction. ABC News said later in a clarification on its website that Charles Gibson had erred. McClellan said he had received an apology. "This is nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago," McClellan said. "I cannot count how many times the president has said the intelligence was wrong." "The intelligence community makes the assessment," he said. "The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency."