The mobile lab, with a fermenter and other sophisticated gear mounted on a trailer, was found three weeks ago in northern Iraq, officials said.
The lab is similar to one described by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his February address to the United Nations when he presented what he termed “irrefutable and undeniable” evidence that Iraq had active chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and tried to shield them from U.N. weapons inspectors.
The U.S. undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, stopped short of saying the mobile lab was the “smoking gun” that proves Hussein had an active program to produce weapons of mass destruction, saying that additional tests were needed. However, he said U.S. and British experts have said the lab does not appear to have any legitimate use.
“We will go about the process of going through further sampling of the system,” Cambone told reporters at the Pentagon, noting that the interior of the lab had been washed down with a caustic substance before it came into U.S. possession. “What we’ll do now is a much more thorough and complete and more intrusive examination of the system, undoubtedly to include its dismantlement, to be able to reach into those places where we would want to get to in order to take additional samples.”
During the past several weeks, U.S. and British soldiers have found numerous barrels and containers thought to contain chemical or biological agents, but all the tests to date have proved negative.
Eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was the major reason given by President Bush for launching an invasion of Iraq and ousting Hussein.
The mobile lab closely mirrors one reported by an Iraqi intelligence source who claimed to have worked on the units, Cambone said, and described by Powell in an unsuccessful effort to get U.N. approval for military action against Iraq.
Cambone said there were “common elements” between the seized lab and those described by the Iraqi source. Besides the trailer, there is a fermenter used for growing cultures, gas cylinders to provide clean air for production as well as a system to capture and compress exhaust gases to eliminate evidence of production.
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“Interestingly enough, the gas recovery systems really are not necessary for, and not normally used for, legitimate biological processes,” Cambone said.
The mobile lab and trailer, whose recovery was first reported in yesterday’s Washington Post, were found at a Kurdish checkpoint in northern Iraq on April 19 and turned over to U.S. forces, Cambone said.
According to Cambone, the Iraqi source whose information Powell relied on said that he was present when one of the mobile labs was in an accident and a dozen workers were killed by a leak of biological material. The Iraqi source said at least 18 mobile labs were built and used to produce lethal anthrax and botulism agents as well as staphylococcus, a toxin that is the most frequent cause of food poisoning and can be fatal in high doses.
Cambone said he was uncertain whether additional testing would clearly show whether the lab was used to develop such agents.
“Don’t know,” he said. “That’s part of the reason we want to take it apart.”
Cambone said he is certain that evidence will eventually show that Iraq’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction were “as extensive and as varied as the secretary of state reported in his February address.”
Of some 600 sites that U.S. experts believed before the war contained weapons of mass destruction or related facilities, about 70 have been searched, Cambone said. Another 40 were reported to coalition forces as suspect and have been searched.
Also yesterday, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the Army’s 5th Corps in Iraq, told reporters that his troops have documents indicating that Hussein’s government possessed chemical and biological programs before the war began March 19.
“We’ve collected evidence, much of it documentary evidence, that suggests there was an active program,” Wallace told Pentagon reporters in a conference call from Baghdad. “It’s taken a while, as you might expect, to sort through that documentary evidence. A lot of the information that we’re getting is coming from low-tier Iraqis who had some knowledge of the program but not full knowledge of the program, and it’s just taken us a while to sort through all of that.”
Wallace said he had no information that Iraqi forces deployed any chemical or biological weapons to the battlefield during the three-week land war. He speculated that Hussein did not employ such weapons because they had been deeply buried to hide them from weapons inspectors and could not be retrieved quickly enough to use against the rapid U.S.-led advance.
“One theory is that we moved so fast that they couldn’t get their hands on it to employ it,” he said. “And secondly, I would like to believe our information operations campaign had an impact on those commanders that might have the opportunity to pull the trigger, and they thought it not such a good idea.”
Cambone said the United States is beefing up its efforts to search for chemical, biological and nuclear sites, interview scientists and other Iraqis and review documents. An additional 2,000 soldiers, government experts and support personnel will begin arriving in Iraq at the end of the month to assist the 600 there now.
Besides helping out in the weapons hunt, the additional personnel will search for information on government leaders, terrorists, war crimes, atrocities and Iraqi prisoners of war. That effort will be headed by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Cambone said.
A Pentagon official said high-level Iraqis such as former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz who surrendered or were captured by U.S. forces have not provided much information about the suspected chemical or biological programs.
However, Cambone said yesterday that a “midlevel scientist” has provided useful information that is helping in the search.
<!– ART CREDITREUTERS
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTA U.S. inspection team examines a suspected Iraqi mobile biological weapons lab found last month in northern Iraq.
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