CIA: Truck-Trailers in Iraq Held Bioweapons Labs

Wednesday, May 28, 2003
(2:53 PM)
By Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters Writer

“It made no sense to us nor to the other experts who have looked at it to have a mobile hydrogen manufacturing capability on a clearly quite valuable military heavy equipment transporter.”

WASHINGTON -- Reuters
Two truck-trailers found in Iraq were "ingeniously simple" mobile biological weapons factories, with other as-yet-undiscovered trailers holding the end of the production chain, the CIA said on Wednesday.

No trace of biological weapons has been found in either of the trailers, but there is little question they were constructed to make such toxins as anthrax and botulinin in quantities that potentially could kill thousands of people, U.S. intelligence officials said in telephone conference called to discuss a new report by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency.

"Our experts who are in the field right now ... have said this is an ingenious, unique and Iraqi design, not the way anyone else would have manufactured biological agent," one official said. "It's probably not how you would want to design a biological weapon. It was designed to evade inspection, not to be efficient."

One of the U.S. rationales for the invasion of Iraq was that it possessed chemical and biological weapons. None has been found, however, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday Iraq may have destroyed its weapons supplies before the U.S.-led war began in March.
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2003 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan