Chem Bomb Plot Flashback: Kay Warned Iraq's WMDs in Syria

Just two months before al-Qaida terrorists were caught by Jordanian police transporting chemical bombs across the Jordanian-Syrian border, U.S. weapons inspector David Kay identified Syria as a likely hiding place for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"We know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programs," Kay told the London Telegraph.

On Saturday, Jordanian officials revealed that the vehicles used by al-Qaida plotters to transport 17.5 tons of explosives into Jordan also contained chemical weapons and poison gas. Targets were said to include the headquarters of Jordan's security service and the U.S. Embassy in Amman.

Had the plot succeeded, the death toll could have reached 20,000, the officials said.

Three weeks before Kay's comments to the London paper, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf published a report from Syrian journalist Nizar Nayuf claiming that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by commanders of Saddam Hussein's Special Republican Guard.

The report included a letter to Nayuf from an Iraqi source detailing the WMD transfers.

The Iraqi source claimed:

"We received confirmations that the Iraqi weapons, which were moved to Syria by the help of General Zoul-Himla Chalich are now hidden in three places inside Syria:

"First place: a tunnel dug in the mountain close to the Al-Baïdah village, which is roughly two kilometers from Misyaf village. This place is under the 489 Safety cipher Documents' office control.

"Second place: the factory of the Air Armed Forces in the village of Tal Sinan, between the town of Hama and Salamiyyah. This factory is under the Air Force control.

"Third place: the location of Shinsar, 40 kilometers south of Homs, two kilometers east of the Homs - Damascus road.

"There are underground tunnels there, controlled by Brigade 661 of the armed air Forces. It is a Brigade of air Patrol. The tunnels are several tens of meters deep. The weapons were transported in large wooden cases and barrels, under the supervision of the General Zoul-Himla Chalich and the son of his brother Assef, who works at Al-Bachaer company.

"The company is owned by the Assad family and has offices in Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. This company also undertook the illegal Iraqi oil importation in Syria, and supplied weapons to Saddam."

In an interview last week, Jordan's King Abdullah said the al-Qaida chem bomb plot would have been devastating had it succeeded.

"It was a major, major operation. It would have decapitated the government," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Casualties would have been in the thousands. It couldn't have been more sinister."

Abdullah said, however, that he was "completely confident" that Syrian president Bashir Assad knew nothing about the WMD bomb plot. Syria has denied hiding Iraq's WMDs.

The Jordanian king is in the U.S. on a previously scheduled trip to help restart the Mideast peace process, but the al-Qaida WMD plot will likely be topic No. 1 when Abdullah meets with President Bush in Washington on Wednesday.

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