WASHINGTON, June 25 — U.S. intelligence officials have found decade-old plans and equipment for a nuclear weapons program in Iraq, indicating that former President Saddam Hussein might have been able to restart the weapons programs he built before the first Gulf War, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

THREE U.S. OFFICIALS told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that an Iraqi scientist who was part of what Saddam called his “nuclear mujahadeen” had led the intelligence officials to a barrel in a garden, where they found plans for a centrifuge and components of a uranium enrichment system.
The officials cautioned against reading too much into the discovery, which was first reported by CNN, stressing that it was not a “smoking gun” or evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. They said the plans dated back to the end of the first Gulf War, when Saddam was already widely known to be seeking such weapons, and came as no great surprise.
But the officials asserted that the discovery did prove that Saddam was hiding nuclear components from U.N. inspectors and could have rebuilt a weapons program once they left.
Richard Butler, the United Nations’ former chief weapons inspector, told MSNBC TV’s Lester Holt that he was “absolutely unsurprised” by the report. “We have known of [Saddam’s previous plans] for a decade.”

President Bush claimed before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March that Iraq already was harboring weapons of mass destruction and has promised that they would eventually be found.
But Butler said that the discovery of components of a uranium enrichment system suggested that Iraq was far from production of actual weapons. The need for an enrichment system established that “Iraq does not have adequate sources of natural uranium,” he said. “... It has to be, above all, enriched to get weapons grade.”
“This all adds up and makes sense,” Butler said.