Jon E. Dougherty, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, June 2, 2004

He is having a hard time finding answers as he presses officials at the CIA to account for faulty information he was given regarding Iraq's banned weapons of mass destruction programs.

Powell’s timing for his demands couldn’t be worse for the administration, which would rather focus on other issues during a heated election season.

Powell passed along information to the United Nations last year that Saddam Hussein definitely had illegal weapons and programs, several senior administration officials told The New York Times this week, because that's what the nation's foremost intelligence service told him.

The agency now considers the information to be false, but Powell wants to know more about the sources the CIA used to come to a conclusion that served as one catalyst for President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.

The Times said the CIA relied on four sources for the information, at least two of which were Iraqi defectors who were introduced to American intelligence circles through the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group formed in exile by Saddam nemesis Ahmad Chalabi.

Once considered the darling of the Iraq resistance movement, Chalabi is now under investigation by the FBI and other U.S. agencies for allegedly passing on secret information to Iran, a charge Chalabi has characterized to The Associated Press as "false" and "stupid."

Convincing 'Evidence'

In presenting the American case to the United Nations Feb. 5, 2003, Powell utilized the CIA-supplied intelligence that Saddam had developed mobile laboratories to produce banned weapons.

In past interviews, Powell described an intense intelligence-collection effort he went through at the CIA in the days and nights before delivering his globally broadcast U.N. speech.

As early as last summer Powell said the intel regarding mobile labs was "some of the most solid" evidence the U.S. had, though in the past few months he has retreated somewhat from that claim.

And two weeks ago, Powell said "the sourcing" of the information "was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading."

"And for that," he added, "I am disappointed and I regret it."

A source close to Powell told the New York Times that Powell was purposively distancing himself from the Bush administration and its Iraq policy.

Seeking Answers

Now, Powell is on a mission to find out what the CIA can divulge regarding the faulty information—revelations that could be crucial to President Bush and Vice President Cheney if revealed between now and the November elections.

Bush and Cheney are running a tight race with presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, in part because an increasing number of Americans believe media reports that the war is going badly. That, and the issue of Iraq's alleged WMD programs is being continually rehashed by liberal media and Democrats in Congress.

"[Powell] is asking the agency, 'What can you tell me about this?'" a senior State Department official told the Times.

"He has raised a number of questions over a number of months," but has yet to request a formal report, said the official.

But Powell’s knows he has the administration in the crosshairs. He can’t be fired by Bush because of the political backfire. At the same time, he can exact revenge on the administration for not having heeded his early advice to avoid a direct war with Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Suspicious Trailers

Suspicious semi-tractor trailers found in Iraq after the American invasion were initially thought by the CIA to be mobile biological weapons factories. In May 2003, the agency produced a white paper that made the case.

And as recently as January, Cheney referenced the trailers, saying if they were what they were suspected to be, he "would deem that conclusive evidence" that Saddam had developed WMD programs.

One additional note: An artillery shell containing sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent, recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.

But the administration and the CIA, save for Cheney, have since backed away from the suspicious trailer theory. They were based primarily on an INC defector to Germany known as "Curveball," senior intelligence officials say, however now most intelligence analysts believe the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons used in artillery practice.

And, one of the four sources cited by the CIA initially as suppliers of the Iraqi WMD information had been labeled a fabricator in May 2002 by the Defense Intelligence Agency—information Powell was never given before making his plea to the U.N.

The Syrian Connection

Still, the question of whether or not Saddam manufactured weapons of mass destruction has not been fully answered. Indeed, Saddam may have had an active weapons program, as the Bush administration insisted, but managed to squirrel it away before the shooting began.

Enter Syria.

Kenneth R. Timmerman, writing in Insight magazine April 26, said U.S. intelligence monitored Iraqi water tankers carrying WMD components cross into Syria repeatedly between Jan. 10 and March 10. Once there, they were met by Syrian special forces troops and escorted into a Syrian-controlled region of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where the tankers' contents were dumped in specially prepared pits and buried.

The information was first publicized by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who told Israel's Channel Two television Dec. 24, 2002, "There is information we are verifying, but we are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria."

Insight also reported the information that Iraqi WMD was streaming into Syria was seconded by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. In October 2003, he "revealed that vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to Saddam's forbidden WMD programs had been shipped to Syria before the war," the magazine said.

And Geostrategy-Direct, an online premium intelligence newsletter, reported May 20, "Over the last few months, the U.S. intelligence community has received new evidence a sizable amount of Iraqi WMD systems, components and platforms were transferred to Syria in the weeks leading up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq."

GD said the contents of the tankers were confirmed by Iraqi scientists and technicians who were questioned by U.S. officials.

"Through the use of satellites, electronic monitoring and human intelligence, the intelligence community has determined that much, if not all, of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons assets are being protected by Syria, with Iranian help, in the Bekaa Valley," GD reported.

Saddam reportedly paid $30 million to the Syrian government to prepare the pits used to dump the materials, the newsletter said.

Editor's note: