By Demetri Sevastopulo and Guy Dinmore in Washington and James Harding in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Published: October 28 2004 00:45 | Last updated: October 28 2004 00:45
The controversy over Iraq's missing explosives intensified on Wednesday as the Bush administration rejected charges of incompetence and a senior Pentagon official claimed the munitions may have been removed by Russians before the US-led invasion.
Breaking his silence over an issue that has dominated headlines since Monday, President George W. Bush accused John Kerry, his Democratic challenger, of making "wild charges" over the 350 tonnes of explosives and weapons.
The Pentagon is still investigating their disappearance. But Scott McClellan, White House press secretary, said there was a "very real possibility" the munitions were taken by the Saddam Hussein regime before US troops arrived at the munitions facility at al-Qaqaa, south of Baghdad.
At a rally in Iowa on Wednesday, however, Mr Kerry claimed that Mr Bush had allowed the explosives to fall into the hands of Iraqi rebels. Later, his campaign conceded that the Hussein regime might have removed the munitions before the invasion.
But in a further development, John Shaw, a deputy under-secretary of defence, suggested that "Russian units" had transported the explosives out of the country.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Shaw said: "For nearly nine months my office has been aware of an elaborate scheme set up by Saddam Hussein to finance and disguise his weapons purchases through his international suppliers, principally the Russians and French. That network included. . . employing various Russian units on the eve of hostilities to orchestrate the collection of munitions and assure their transport out of Iraq via Syria."
The Russian embassy in Washington rejected the claims as "nonsense", saying there were no Russian military in the country at the time.
Mr Shaw, who heads the Pentagon's international armament and technology trade directorate, has not provided evidence for his claims and the Pentagon distanced itself from his remarks.
"I am unaware of any particular information on that point," said Larry Di Rita, Pentagon spokesman. The issue has dominated the presidential campaign since the International Atomic Energy Agency raised it at the UN Security Council on Monday. The Iraqi government says the explosives disappeared during looting after US forces seized Baghdad. But Colonel Dave Perkins, who commanded the first troops into al-Qaqaa, yesterday said it was "highly improbable" someone could have removed the munitions after US forces had taken control of the area.
The US has in the past raised concerns about Russian activities in Iraq before the invasion. During the war, Mr Bush called Vladimir Putin, Russian president, to voice concerns that Russian companies at least one state-owned had provided Iraq with anti-tank guided missiles, satellite jamming devices and night-vision goggles. Russia denied the charges and promised an investigation.
Wa Times: Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Washington Times | October 28, 2004
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.
The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said. The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.
The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.
Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said. "That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."
The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.
A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.
The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6. "The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.
The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime. According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken. It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.
A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.
A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.
However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said. The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.
Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said. Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.
The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said. Desides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said. "Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.
Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.
T
he director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.
Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.
The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.
Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing. The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.
Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
AP via MSNBC: Timing of military explosives' theft emerges as issue
U.S. commander says it's unlikely it occurred after 2003 U.S. invasion
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:06 p.m. ET Oct. 27, 2004
The infantry commander whose troops first captured the Iraqi weapons depot where 377 tons of explosives disappeared said Wednesday it is "very highly improbable" that someone could have trucked out so much material once U.S. forces arrived in the area.
Two major roads that pass near the sprawling Al-Qaqaa installation were filled with U.S. military traffic in the weeks after April 3, 2003, when U.S. troops first reached the area, said Col. Dave Perkins, who commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, the division that led the charge into Baghdad.
While he and other military officials acknowledged that some looting at the site had taken place, he said a large-scale operation to remove the explosives using multi-ton trucks would almost certainly have been detected.
Perkins, now a staff officer at the Pentagon, was made available to reporters Wednesday by Defense Department spokesmen. He provided his account of his operations in Iraq in the middle of a furious exchange of accusations between the campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry over what happened to the missing explosives.
Disappearance remains a mystery
Larry Di Rita, the Pentagon's top spokesman, said what ultimately happened to the explosives is unknown, although it remains under investigation by the Pentagon. But Perkins' description seemed to point toward the possibility that the explosives were removed before the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and not during the chaos afterward.
The colonel himself did not directly offer that conclusion.
But the Pentagon said a statement Wednesday, "The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd I.D.'s arrival at the facility."
The Kerry campaign has repeatedly pointed to the missing explosives as evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war. Bush officials have responded that more than a thousand times that amount of explosives and munitions in Iraq have already been either captured or destroyed.
Window of opportunity?
Kerry adviser Mike McCurry said, "From some of the Pentagon reporting today, there is a window that's available there where either just prior to or just after the invasion, there could have been an opportunity for either Saddam to move the weapons or for something happening after that facility had been abandoned. And that is up to the administration to best determine how to answer that question when that happened. But they don't have an answer, and that's what we're asking for."
Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives vanished from the Qaqaa installation as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."
The ministry's letter said the explosives were stolen sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad.
The explosives were known to be housed in storage bunkers at Al-Qaqaa. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time on March 15, 2003, and reported that the seals were not broken; therefore, the weapons were still there at the time. The team then pulled out of the country before the invasion, which started on March 20.
Commanders' account
According to Perkins, his 2nd Brigade arrived in the area near the Al-Qaqaa installation on April 3, 2003, part of the first large coalition combat force to come so close to Baghdad.
His troops were attacked by Iraqi forces, who were based inside the installation, he said. Al-Qaqaa had more than 80 buildings within a massive walled complex.
He estimated the enemy forces as a few hundred fighters. He sent the 3rd Battalion of the 15th Infantry to secure the base and the surrounding area, he said. A company of mechanized infantry and a mortar platoon entered the installation and defeated the Iraqi forces there.
As the rest of Perkins' brigade moved on, the 3rd Battalion spent two days in the area, sweeping for other Iraqi forces, Perkins said. The troops didn't specifically search for any high explosives, although they were aware that Al-Qaqaa was an important site for what was believed to be Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
Some troops found a white powdery substance on the base. But it was tested and determined it was not a chemical or biological weapon, as had been suspected, he said. Perkins did not know what it was.
Troops found other weapons, including artillery shells, on the base, he said. They didn't specifically search for the 377 tons of high explosives, HMX and RDX, that are missing.
HMX and RDX are key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks. It is unclear whether the military is able to trace any of the missing explosives to specific attacks.
HMX is also a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.
Perkins described Iraq as littered with weapons, and the Qaqaa base as one munitions depot among many. Many other depots his forces found had been cleaned out, with weapons scattered, presumably so they wouldn't be destroyed by airstrikes.
On April 6, the battalion left for Baghdad. About four days later, another large unit, the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, moved into the area. That unit did not search the Qaqaa complex. A unit spokesman said there was heavy looting in the area at the time.
U.S. weapons hunters did not give the area a thorough search until May, when they visited on three occasions, starting May 8. They did not find any material or explosives that had been marked by the IAEA.
Syria Storing Iraq's WMDs
By Bill Gertz
Washington Times | October 29, 2003
Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation's top satellite spy director said yesterday.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.
Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in the homes of weapons scientists, Gen. Clapper told defense reporters at a breakfast.
Gen. Clapper said he is not surprised that U.S. and allied forces have not found weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq because "it's a big place."
"Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.
Congress is investigating whether U.S. intelligence agencies overstated information indicating that Iraq had hidden its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has defended the intelligence agencies on prewar reports that the weapons were there.
Iraqi government officials "below the Saddam Hussein and the sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to dispose, destroy and disperse," he said.
Gen. Clapper said he felt strongly that the satellite imagery of Iraq's weapons facilities before the war was "accurate and balanced."
"Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we certainly felt there were indications of [weapons of mass destruction] activity," said the retired general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Gen. Clapper said the judgment was based on analysis of spy satellite photographs and was not proof of "what was going on inside of buildings."
He also said the Iraqi government carried out operations after the fall of Baghdad in April to cover up the hidden weapons programs. The chaos following might have included both looting and "organized dispersal made to look like looting," he said.
"So by the time that we got to a lot of these facilities, that we had previously identified as suspect facilities, there wasn't that much there to look at," he said.
Valuable documents on Iraq's weapons were destroyed or lost in the chaos, which included burning of major government ministries.
Saddam began dispersing his weapons and sending elements of his chemical, biological and nuclear programs out of the country in the weeks before the war, he said.
The dispersal included moving both weapons and equipment as well as documents. The activity began before the United Nations began arms inspections last fall.
"What we saw with the avoidance of inspections, there was clearly an effort to disperse, bury, conceal certain equipment prior to inspections," Gen. Clapper said.
As for shipping weapons out of Iraq, he said, there is "no question" that people and material were taken to Syria. He said he did not know whether material also was moved to Iran.
Convoys of vehicles, mostly commercial trucks, were spotted going into Syria from Iraq shortly before the start of the war March 19 and during the conflict, he said.
ABC News: Discrepancy found in Explosives Amounts
Documents Show Iraqis May Be Overstating Amount of Missing Material
- Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.
The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.
But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing -- presumably stolen due to a lack of security -- was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.
But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility -- a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.
The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.
The missing explosives have become an issue in the presidential campaign. Sen. John Kerry has pointed to the disappearance as evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war. The Bush camp has responded that more than a thousand times that amount of explosives or munitions have been recovered or destroyed in Iraq.
Another Concern
The IAEA documents from January 2003 found no discrepancy in the amount of the more dangerous HMX explosives thought to be stored at Al-Qaqaa, but they do raise another disturbing possibility.
The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.
VOICE OF AMERICA
SLUG: 2-319952 Bush / Iraq Weapons (L) DATE: 10/28/04 NOTE NUMBER: 2-319952
DATE 10/28/04
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=BUSH IRAQ WEAPONS (L ONLY)
In-Depth Coverage
NUMBER=2-319952
BYLINE=PAULA WOLFSON
DATELINE= VIENNA, OHIO
HEADLINE: Iraq Explosives a Campaign Issue
INTRO: The apparent disappearance of tons of explosives from an Iraqi military installation has become an key issue in the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign. Democratic Party nominee John Kerry says the disappearance, which was reported this week, is the latest in a series of Bush administration blunders in Iraq. But at rallies in states where the race for the White House is tight, President Bush, the Republican Party incumbent, attacked Mr. Kerry's motives. V-O-A's Paula Wolfson is traveling with the Bush campaign and filed this report from Vienna, Ohio.
TEXT: The president says Senator Kerry is making wild charges before all the facts are known, and suggests the motive is purely political.
"The senator is denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts. Unfortunately, that is part of a pattern of saying almost anything to get elected."
At a rally at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania airport, and later at stops in Ohio, Mr. Bush spoke for the first time about revelations from the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives are missing. He stressed an investigation is underway and took John Kerry to task for alleging American forces failed to find and secure the explosives after the invasion of Iraq.
"Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the sites. This investigation is important and ongoing and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as your commander in chief."
The president chose his words carefully. Instead of speaking about the dangers that could be posed by the missing explosives, he focused on the large caches of ammunitions already seized by coalition troops.
"Iraq was a dangerous place run by a dangerous tyrant who had a lot of weapons. We have seized or destroyed more than 400-thousand tons of munitions including explosives at thousands of different sights."
His remarks went over well with the highly partisan crowd which cheered as the president delivered attack after attack on his opponent.
"I want to remind the American people: if Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our global test, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could share them with our terrorist enemies."
Part of the goal for the Bush campaign in these final days is to rally the president's core supporters within the Republican Party. With polls continuing to show the candidates are virtually tied, voter turn-out is likely to be crucial and energizing his political base is essential.
Mr. Bush is also making an appeal to Democrats who might consider crossing party lines. At his stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania, he appeared with Georgia Senator Zell Miller - a Democrat who is backing the president in his bid for re-election. (SIGNED)
NEB/PW/KBK/RAE
Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts: ABC News
Thu Oct 28, 2004 02:10 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The amount of conventional explosives missing from an Iraqi storage facility may be substantially less than the 377 tons reported by Iraqi officials, ABC News reported late on Wednesday, citing documents obtained by the network.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo on the missing explosives was based on a "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time Iraqis said there were 141 tons of the explosives at the facility, ABC reported.
International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors record that just over three tons of high explosives were at the Al Qaqaa storage facility, ABC reported.
The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
The missing explosives have become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has raised the disappearance of the high explosives in the campaign for the White House. Kerry said it was an example of President Bush bungling the Iraq war. The IAEA, the United Nation's nuclear watchdog, said the site was never secured by the U.S. military after the March 2003 invasion.
Bush accused the Massachusetts senator of making "wild charges" about the missing explosives and told supporters at a Pennsylvania rally on Wednesday that the military is investigating a number of possible scenarios including that the explosives may have been moved before U.S. troops arrived at the site.
This doesn't look too good for The Kerry Kamp's Al-QaQaa caca:
Quote:Financial Times: Russians ?may have taken Iraq explosives?
By Demetri Sevastopulo and Guy Dinmore in Washington and James Harding in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Published: October 28 2004 00:45 | Last updated: October 28 2004 00:45
The controversy over Iraq?s missing explosives intensified on Wednesday as the Bush administration rejected charges of incompetence and a senior Pentagon official claimed the munitions may have been removed by Russians before the US-led invasion.
Breaking his silence over an issue that has dominated headlines since Monday, President George W. Bush accused John Kerry, his Democratic challenger, of making ?wild charges? over the 350 tonnes of explosives and weapons.
The Pentagon is still investigating their disappearance. But Scott McClellan, White House press secretary, said there was a ?very real possibility? the munitions were taken by the Saddam Hussein regime before US troops arrived at the munitions facility at al-Qaqaa, south of Baghdad.
At a rally in Iowa on Wednesday, however, Mr Kerry claimed that Mr Bush had allowed the explosives to fall into the hands of Iraqi rebels. Later, his campaign conceded that the Hussein regime might have removed the munitions before the invasion.
But in a further development, John Shaw, a deputy under-secretary of defence, suggested that ?Russian units? had transported the explosives out of the country.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Shaw said: ?For nearly nine months my office has been aware of an elaborate scheme set up by Saddam Hussein to finance and disguise his weapons purchases through his international suppliers, principally the Russians and French. That network included. . . employing various Russian units on the eve of hostilities to orchestrate the collection of munitions and assure their transport out of Iraq via Syria.?
The Russian embassy in Washington rejected the claims as ?nonsense?, saying there were no Russian military in the country at the time.
Mr Shaw, who heads the Pentagon?s international armament and technology trade directorate, has not provided evidence for his claims and the Pentagon distanced itself from his remarks.
?I am unaware of any particular information on that point,? said Larry Di Rita, Pentagon spokesman. The issue has dominated the presidential campaign since the International Atomic Energy Agency raised it at the UN Security Council on Monday. The Iraqi government says the explosives disappeared during looting after US forces seized Baghdad. But Colonel Dave Perkins, who commanded the first troops into al-Qaqaa, yesterday said it was ?highly improbable? someone could have removed the munitions after US forces had taken control of the area.
The US has in the past raised concerns about Russian activities in Iraq before the invasion. During the war, Mr Bush called Vladimir Putin, Russian president, to voice concerns that Russian companies at least one state-owned had provided Iraq with anti-tank guided missiles, satellite jamming devices and night-vision goggles. Russia denied the charges and promised an investigation.
Quote:Wa Times: Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Washington Times | October 28, 2004
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.
The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said. The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.
The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.
Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said. "That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."
The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.
A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.
The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6. "The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.
The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime. According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken. It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.
A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.
A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.
However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said. The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.
Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said. Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.
The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said. Desides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said. "Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.
Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.
T
he director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.
Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.
The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.
Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing. The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.
Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
Quote:AP via MSNBC: Timing of military explosives? theft emerges as issue
U.S. commander says it?s unlikely it occurred after 2003 U.S. invasion
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:06 p.m. ET Oct. 27, 2004
The infantry commander whose troops first captured the Iraqi weapons depot where 377 tons of explosives disappeared said Wednesday it is ?very highly improbable? that someone could have trucked out so much material once U.S. forces arrived in the area.
Two major roads that pass near the sprawling Al-Qaqaa installation were filled with U.S. military traffic in the weeks after April 3, 2003, when U.S. troops first reached the area, said Col. Dave Perkins, who commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, the division that led the charge into Baghdad.
While he and other military officials acknowledged that some looting at the site had taken place, he said a large-scale operation to remove the explosives using multi-ton trucks would almost certainly have been detected.
Perkins, now a staff officer at the Pentagon, was made available to reporters Wednesday by Defense Department spokesmen. He provided his account of his operations in Iraq in the middle of a furious exchange of accusations between the campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry over what happened to the missing explosives.
Disappearance remains a mystery
Larry Di Rita, the Pentagon?s top spokesman, said what ultimately happened to the explosives is unknown, although it remains under investigation by the Pentagon. But Perkins? description seemed to point toward the possibility that the explosives were removed before the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and not during the chaos afterward.
The colonel himself did not directly offer that conclusion.
But the Pentagon said a statement Wednesday, ?The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd I.D.?s arrival at the facility.?
The Kerry campaign has repeatedly pointed to the missing explosives as evidence of the Bush administration?s poor handling of the war. Bush officials have responded that more than a thousand times that amount of explosives and munitions in Iraq have already been either captured or destroyed.
Window of opportunity?
Kerry adviser Mike McCurry said, ?From some of the Pentagon reporting today, there is a window that?s available there where either just prior to or just after the invasion, there could have been an opportunity for either Saddam to move the weapons or for something happening after that facility had been abandoned. And that is up to the administration to best determine how to answer that question when that happened. But they don?t have an answer, and that?s what we?re asking for.?
Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the U.N.?s International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives vanished from the Qaqaa installation as a result of ?theft and looting ... due to lack of security.?
The ministry?s letter said the explosives were stolen sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad.
The explosives were known to be housed in storage bunkers at Al-Qaqaa. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time on March 15, 2003, and reported that the seals were not broken; therefore, the weapons were still there at the time. The team then pulled out of the country before the invasion, which started on March 20.
Commanders' account
According to Perkins, his 2nd Brigade arrived in the area near the Al-Qaqaa installation on April 3, 2003, part of the first large coalition combat force to come so close to Baghdad.
His troops were attacked by Iraqi forces, who were based inside the installation, he said. Al-Qaqaa had more than 80 buildings within a massive walled complex.
He estimated the enemy forces as a few hundred fighters. He sent the 3rd Battalion of the 15th Infantry to secure the base and the surrounding area, he said. A company of mechanized infantry and a mortar platoon entered the installation and defeated the Iraqi forces there.
As the rest of Perkins? brigade moved on, the 3rd Battalion spent two days in the area, sweeping for other Iraqi forces, Perkins said. The troops didn?t specifically search for any high explosives, although they were aware that Al-Qaqaa was an important site for what was believed to be Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction programs.
Some troops found a white powdery substance on the base. But it was tested and determined it was not a chemical or biological weapon, as had been suspected, he said. Perkins did not know what it was.
Troops found other weapons, including artillery shells, on the base, he said. They didn?t specifically search for the 377 tons of high explosives, HMX and RDX, that are missing.
HMX and RDX are key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks. It is unclear whether the military is able to trace any of the missing explosives to specific attacks.
HMX is also a ?dual use? substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.
Perkins described Iraq as littered with weapons, and the Qaqaa base as one munitions depot among many. Many other depots his forces found had been cleaned out, with weapons scattered, presumably so they wouldn?t be destroyed by airstrikes.
On April 6, the battalion left for Baghdad. About four days later, another large unit, the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, moved into the area. That unit did not search the Qaqaa complex. A unit spokesman said there was heavy looting in the area at the time.
U.S. weapons hunters did not give the area a thorough search until May, when they visited on three occasions, starting May 8. They did not find any material or explosives that had been marked by the IAEA.
From a year ago, just for perspective:
Quote:Syria Storing Iraq's WMDs
By Bill Gertz
Washington Times | October 29, 2003
Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation's top satellite spy director said yesterday.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.
Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in the homes of weapons scientists, Gen. Clapper told defense reporters at a breakfast.
Gen. Clapper said he is not surprised that U.S. and allied forces have not found weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq because "it's a big place."
"Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.
Congress is investigating whether U.S. intelligence agencies overstated information indicating that Iraq had hidden its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has defended the intelligence agencies on prewar reports that the weapons were there.
Iraqi government officials "below the Saddam Hussein and the sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to dispose, destroy and disperse," he said.
Gen. Clapper said he felt strongly that the satellite imagery of Iraq's weapons facilities before the war was "accurate and balanced."
"Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we certainly felt there were indications of [weapons of mass destruction] activity," said the retired general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Gen. Clapper said the judgment was based on analysis of spy satellite photographs and was not proof of "what was going on inside of buildings."
He also said the Iraqi government carried out operations after the fall of Baghdad in April to cover up the hidden weapons programs. The chaos following might have included both looting and "organized dispersal made to look like looting," he said.
"So by the time that we got to a lot of these facilities, that we had previously identified as suspect facilities, there wasn't that much there to look at," he said.
Valuable documents on Iraq's weapons were destroyed or lost in the chaos, which included burning of major government ministries.
Saddam began dispersing his weapons and sending elements of his chemical, biological and nuclear programs out of the country in the weeks before the war, he said.
The dispersal included moving both weapons and equipment as well as documents. The activity began before the United Nations began arms inspections last fall.
"What we saw with the avoidance of inspections, there was clearly an effort to disperse, bury, conceal certain equipment prior to inspections," Gen. Clapper said.
As for shipping weapons out of Iraq, he said, there is "no question" that people and material were taken to Syria. He said he did not know whether material also was moved to Iran.
Convoys of vehicles, mostly commercial trucks, were spotted going into Syria from Iraq shortly before the start of the war March 19 and during the conflict, he said.
More:
Wa Post: U.S. Thinks Explosives Vanished in Spring '03
Slate: Al-QaQaa Hits The Fan
ChronWatch: October Surprise: A Lot of Qaqaa
And a little more fun as long as the fan is still flingin' stuff around:
Quote:ABC News: Discrepancy found in Explosives Amounts
Documents Show Iraqis May Be Overstating Amount of Missing Material
- Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.
The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.
But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing -- presumably stolen due to a lack of security -- was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.
But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility -- a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.
The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.
The missing explosives have become an issue in the presidential campaign. Sen. John Kerry has pointed to the disappearance as evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war. The Bush camp has responded that more than a thousand times that amount of explosives or munitions have been recovered or destroyed in Iraq.
Another Concern
The IAEA documents from January 2003 found no discrepancy in the amount of the more dangerous HMX explosives thought to be stored at Al-Qaqaa, but they do raise another disturbing possibility.
The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.
And it just keeps gettin' better:
Sorry no link, this is from a wire service feed:
Quote:VOICE OF AMERICA
SLUG: 2-319952 Bush / Iraq Weapons (L) DATE: 10/28/04 NOTE NUMBER: 2-319952
DATE 10/28/04
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=BUSH IRAQ WEAPONS (L ONLY)
In-Depth Coverage
NUMBER=2-319952
BYLINE=PAULA WOLFSON
DATELINE= VIENNA, OHIO
HEADLINE: Iraq Explosives a Campaign Issue
INTRO: The apparent disappearance of tons of explosives from an Iraqi military installation has become an key issue in the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign. Democratic Party nominee John Kerry says the disappearance, which was reported this week, is the latest in a series of Bush administration blunders in Iraq. But at rallies in states where the race for the White House is tight, President Bush, the Republican Party incumbent, attacked Mr. Kerry's motives. V-O-A's Paula Wolfson is traveling with the Bush campaign and filed this report from Vienna, Ohio.
TEXT: The president says Senator Kerry is making wild charges before all the facts are known, and suggests the motive is purely political.
"The senator is denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts. Unfortunately, that is part of a pattern of saying almost anything to get elected."
At a rally at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania airport, and later at stops in Ohio, Mr. Bush spoke for the first time about revelations from the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives are missing. He stressed an investigation is underway and took John Kerry to task for alleging American forces failed to find and secure the explosives after the invasion of Iraq.
"Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the sites. This investigation is important and ongoing and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as your commander in chief."
The president chose his words carefully. Instead of speaking about the dangers that could be posed by the missing explosives, he focused on the large caches of ammunitions already seized by coalition troops.
"Iraq was a dangerous place run by a dangerous tyrant who had a lot of weapons. We have seized or destroyed more than 400-thousand tons of munitions including explosives at thousands of different sights."
His remarks went over well with the highly partisan crowd which cheered as the president delivered attack after attack on his opponent.
"I want to remind the American people: if Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our global test, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could share them with our terrorist enemies."
Part of the goal for the Bush campaign in these final days is to rally the president's core supporters within the Republican Party. With polls continuing to show the candidates are virtually tied, voter turn-out is likely to be crucial and energizing his political base is essential.
Mr. Bush is also making an appeal to Democrats who might consider crossing party lines. At his stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania, he appeared with Georgia Senator Zell Miller - a Democrat who is backing the president in his bid for re-election. (SIGNED)
NEB/PW/KBK/RAE
One with a link; Reuters has picked up the "Discrepancy" angle. The Al-QaQaa has definitely hit the fan for Kerry.
Quote:Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts: ABC News
Thu Oct 28, 2004 02:10 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The amount of conventional explosives missing from an Iraqi storage facility may be substantially less than the 377 tons reported by Iraqi officials, ABC News reported late on Wednesday, citing documents obtained by the network.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo on the missing explosives was based on a "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time Iraqis said there were 141 tons of the explosives at the facility, ABC reported.
International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors record that just over three tons of high explosives were at the Al Qaqaa storage facility, ABC reported.
The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
The missing explosives have become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has raised the disappearance of the high explosives in the campaign for the White House. Kerry said it was an example of President Bush bungling the Iraq war. The IAEA, the United Nation's nuclear watchdog, said the site was never secured by the U.S. military after the March 2003 invasion.
Bush accused the Massachusetts senator of making "wild charges" about the missing explosives and told supporters at a Pennsylvania rally on Wednesday that the military is investigating a number of possible scenarios including that the explosives may have been moved before U.S. troops arrived at the site.
The Democrats may just have scored the winning goal ... for The Republicans
