Evidence of Iraqi WMD Found

Evidence of Iraqi WMD Found

CNSNews.com
Thursday, June 26, 2003

Using information provided by a former Iraqi weapons scientist, U.S. agents have found technology and documents that indicate Saddam Hussein was successful in hiding incriminating evidence from foreign inspectors.

Mahdi Obeidi told officials with the CIA that he was instructed to bury parts of equipment needed to enrich uranium under a rose bush in his back yard 12 years ago.

Then, once inspectors left Iraq, these items - as well as materials hidden by three other scientists - would be recovered and used to help rebuild that country's weapons program.

While U.S. officials were quick to point out that the new evidence was not the "smoking gun" proving Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction readily at his disposal, they indicated that none of the equipment or documents Obeidi buried was found by inspectors who went to Iraq over the past several years.

Obeidi and his family have left Iraq, and the CIA hopes others with valuable information will now see it is safe to tell coalition forces about hidden Iraqi weapons and documents.

Obeidi told CNN the hidden equipment was part of a highly sophisticated system he was ordered to hide to be ready to rebuild the bomb program.

Former U.N. arms inspector David Kay, now in charge of the CIA search told CNN: "It begins to tell us how huge our job is. Remember, his material was buried in a barrel behind his house in a rose garden.

"There's no way that that would have been discovered by normal international inspections. I couldn't have done it. My successors couldn't have done it."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Saddam Hussein/Iraq

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