Report: Iraq destroyed chemical weapons just before war
Monday, April 21, 2003 Posted: 8:29 AM EDT (1229 GMT)
NEW YORK (AP) -- An Iraqi scientist who claims to have worked in Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program told a U.S. military team that Iraq destroyed and buried chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began March 20, a newspaper reported Monday.
Members of MET Alpha -- the Mobile Exploitation Team set up to hunt for illegal weapons of mass destruction -- said the scientist led Americans to material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, according to The New York Times.
The Iraqi scientist, who was not named for fear he might be harmed, also said Iraq has secretly sent stockpiles of deadly agents and weapons technology to Syria in the mid-1990s, and more recently was cooperating with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network.
The U.S. Central Command could not confirm The New York Times report, and the White House had no immediate comment on it. The report was withheld by military censors for three days, and some details about the chemicals were not allowed to be published.
The reporter was not allowed to interview the Iraqi scientist.
The Bush administration says that U.S. forces went into Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime to rid the world of the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Military officials said the scientist told them that several months before the war, he watched as Iraqi officials buried chemical precursors for weapons and other sensitive material to conceal and protect them for future use. Four days before President Bush gave Saddam an ultimatum in March, the scientist said Iraqi
officials set fire to a warehouse where biological weapons research was conducted.
The scientist reportedly gave a note to the Army's 101st Airborne Division. That was passed on to the MET Alpha team, which tracked the scientist down at his home.
"What they have discovered could prove to be of incalculable value," the paper quoted Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, as saying.
"Though much work must still be done to validate the information MET Alpha has uncovered, if it proves out it will clearly be one of the major discoveries of this operation, and it may be the major discovery," he added.
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