IRAQ NEWS, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2003 I. DAVID KAY REBUTS GELLMAN STORY, WASH POST, NOV 1 II. STEPHEN MEEKIN REBUTS GELLMAN STORY, WASH POST, NOV 1
Last Sunday, the Wash Post ran a big, front-page story, authored by Barton Gellman, to the effect that David Kay's Iraq Survey Group had pretty much concluded that Iraq did not have a significant nuclear program after 1991. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17707-2003Oct25.html Yesterday, the Post published a letter from Kay, complaining that Gellman had grossly distorted the record. One major source for the story, Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen Meekin did the same, explaining that he does not work for or report to Kay (as Gellman claimed) nor does his work have anything to do with Iraq's nuclear program (as Gellman also claimed). In a similar vein, Wash Post columnist David Ignatius writes today, "Hussein never posed the sort of imminent danger to America that administration officials implied," even as he states, "I find it impossible to fault on moral grounds the case for toppling Saddam Hussein last March, and for staying the course now." So why nit-pick? Iraq was an imminent danger, and perhaps still is. The key issue is Iraq's biological program. Don't people remember the anthrax letters that followed the 9/11 strikes and the eensy,invisible-to-the-naked- eye amount of material that constituted a lethal dose? When the extraordinary dimensions of Iraq's BW program were first revealed in the fall of 1995, as a result of Hussein Kamil's defection, Madeleine Albright, then U.N. ambassador, affirmed that Saddam could "destroy all humanity." So what happened to Iraq's BW stockpile? Several readers responded with concern to the Oct 28 AFP report quoting the head of the Defense Dep't's National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Lt. Gen. (ret) James Clapper. Clapper, as was widely reported--including in the NY Times, but not the Wash Post--explained that at least some of Iraq's proscribed weapons were probably moved to Syria before and during the war. A retired US Army colonel emphasized to "Iraq News" that the US had to get that material from Syria. He also concurred with "Iraq News" in its estimate of the potentially very damaging impact of these highly-distorted stories suggesting that Saddam was not a real threat. Those who would be most likely to push for an aggressive approach to Syria are now obliged to defend their position that a serious danger did exist. Thus, they are not so well-placed to explain why it should be an urgent US priority to determine what happened to Iraq's BW stockpile and seize it from whatever party may now be in possession of it. I. DAVID KAY REBUTS GELLMAN STORY The Washington Post Letters to the Editor The Hunt for Iraq's Weapons Saturday, November 1, 2003 The Oct. 26 front-page article "Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat" is wildly off the mark. Your reporter, Barton Gellman, bases much of his analysis on what he says was told to him by an Australian brigadier, Stephen D. Meekin. Gellman describes Meekin as someone "who commands the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to [David] Kay." Meekin does not report, nor has he ever reported, to me in any individual capacity or as commander of the exploitation center. The work of the center did not form a part of my first interim report, which was delivered last month, nor do I direct what Meekin's organization does. The center's mission has never involved weapons of mass destruction, nor does it have any WMD expertise. Gellman's description of information provided by Mahdi Obeidi, chief of Iraq's pre-1991 centrifuge program, relies on an unnamed "U.S. official" who, by the reporter's own admission, read only one reporting cable. How Gellman's source was able to describe reporting that covered four months is a mystery to me. Furthermore, the source mischaracterized our views on the reliability of Obeidi's information. With regard to Obeidi's move to the United States, Gellman writes, "By summer's end, under unknown circumstances, Obeidi received permission to bring his family to an East Coast suburb in the United States." The reader is left with the impression that this move involved something manipulative or sinister. The "unknown circumstances" are called Public Law 110. This mechanism was created during the Cold War to give the director of central intelligence the authority to resettle those who help provide valuable intelligence information. Nothing unusual or mysterious here. When the article moves to describe the actual work of the nuclear team, Gellman states that "frustrated members of the nuclear search team by late spring began calling themselves the 'book of the month club.' " But he fails to note that this was before the establishment of the Iraq Survey Group. In fact, the team's frustration with the pace of the work is what led President Bush to shift the responsibility for the WMD search to the director of central intelligence and to send me to Baghdad. One would believe from what Gellman writes that I have sent home the two leaders of my nuclear team, William Domke and Jeffrey Bedell, and abandoned all attempts to determine the state of Iraq's nuclear activities. Wrong again. Domke's assignment had been twice extended well beyond what the Department of Energy had agreed to. He and Bedell were replaced with a much larger contingent of experts from DOE's National Labs. Finally, with regard to the aluminum tubes, the tubes were certainly being imported and were being used for rockets. The question that continues to occupy us is whether similar tubes, with higher specifications, had other uses, specifically in nuclear centrifuges. Why anyone would think that we should want to confiscate the thousands of aluminum tubes of the lower specification is unclear. Our investigation is focused on whether a nuclear centrifuge program was either underway or in the planning stages, what design and components were being contemplated or used in such a program if it existed and the reason for the constant raising of the specifications of the tubes the Iraqis were importing clandestinely. We have much work left to do before any conclusions can be reached on the state of possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program efforts. Your story gives the false impression that conclusions can already be drawn. -- David Kay, Baghdad The writer is special adviser to the director of central intelligence. II. STEPHEN MEEKIN REBUTS GELLMAN STORY When Barton Gellman interviewed me last month I stressed on a number of occasions that my remarks related to Iraqi's conventional weapons program. I am responsible for aspects of that program as the commander of the coalition Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center. I did not provide assessments or views on Iraq's nuclear program or the status of investigations being conducted by the Iraq Survey Group. On the issue of Iraq's use of aluminum tubes, I did confirm, in response to a question by Gellman, that aluminum tubes form the body of Iraqi 81mm battlefield rockets and that my teams had recovered some of these rockets for technical examination. Further, I stated that the empty tubes were innocuous in view of the large quantities of lethal Iraqi conventional weapons such as small arms, explosive ordnance and man-portable air defense systems in this country. I did not make any judgment on the suitability of the 81mm aluminum tubes as components in a nuclear program. In discussing the disbanding of the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center, I told your reporter that the center's work was largely complete, and I made clear that its role was in the realm of Iraq's conventional weapons and technologies. Gellman attributed to me comments about the effect of U.N.-imposed sanctions. Again, I referred to Iraqi efforts to acquire conventional military equipment. I made no assessment about the effect of U.N. sanctions on Iraq's nuclear program. -- Stephen D. Meekin, Baghdad The writer, a brigadier in the Australian Army, is commander of the coalition's Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center in Iraq.
