Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with
his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between
the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.
The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is
fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a
U.S.-led coalition.
Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis
who told of Saddam's system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service
(IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away.
The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of
carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents
would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.
"If you leave it to border guards, then the border guards could stop the trucks
and extract their 10 percent, just like the mob would do," said a Pentagon official
who asked not to be named. "Saddam's family was controlling the black market, and it
was a good opportunity for them to make money."
Sources said Saddam and his family grew rich from this black market and personally
dispatched his dreaded intelligence service to the border to make sure the shipments
got through.
The ISG is a 1,400-member team organized by the Pentagon and CIA to hunt for
Saddam's suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents. So far,
the search has failed to find such stockpiles, which were the main reason for
President Bush ordering the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam.
But there is evidence of unusually heavy truck traffic into Syria in the days
before the attack, and with it, speculation that some of the trucks contained the
banned weapons.
"Of course, it's always suspicious," the Pentagon official said.
The source said the ISG has confirmed the practice of IIS agents going to the
border. Investigators also have heard from Iraqi sources that this maneuver was done
days before the war at a time of brisk cross-border movements.
That particular part of the disclosures has not been positively confirmed, the
officials said, although it dovetails with Saddam's system of switching guards at a
time when contraband was shipped.
The United States spotted the heavy truck traffic via satellite imagery before the
war. But spy cameras cannot look through truck canopies, and the ISG has not been able
to determine whether any weapons were sent to Syria for hiding.
In an interview in October, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., who heads the
U.S. agency that processes and analyzes satellite imagery, said he thinks that
Saddam's underlings hid banned weapons of mass destruction before the war.
"I think personally that those below the senior leadership saw what was coming,
and I think they went to some extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," said
Gen. Clapper, who heads the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. "I'll call it an
'educated hunch.' "
He added, "I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of
combat that I think there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private
homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any
number of things that they would have done."
Of activity on the Syrian border, Gen. Clapper said, "There is no question that
there was a lot of traffic, increase in traffic up to the immediate onset of combat
and certainly during Iraqi Freedom. ... The obvious conclusion one draws is the sudden
upturn, uptick in traffic which may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq
and unquestionably, I'm sure, material as well."
He also said, "Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we
certainly felt there were indications of WMD activity. ... Actually knowing what is
going on inside a building is quite a different thing than, say, this facility may
well be a place where there may be WMD."
The Iraq Survey Group, which periodically briefs senior officials and Congress, is
due to deliver its next report in September. In addition to interviewing hundreds of
Iraqis, the ISG has collected and cataloged millions of pages of documents, not all of
which have been fully examined.
Although Syria and Iraq competed for influence in the region, they shared the same
Ba'athist socialist ideology and maintained close ties at certain government levels.
The United States accused Syria during the war of harboring some of Saddam's inner
circle.
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