Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: What we now know

Today, we offer an in-depth look back at how Secretary of State Colin Powell's claims about Iraq's weapons programs - and the passionate debate surrounding them - played out over the past year.

With the invasion in March, the ground search for those weapons began. Over the months, there were a few promising finds: trailers that could be weapons labs; a vial of botulinum B; drone airplanes. Most turned out to be harmless.

Finally, two weeks ago, the chief weapons inspector for the United States, David Kay, resigned and told reporters that intelligence officials and other experts "were almost all wrong" about Saddam Hussein's alleged programs. President Bush called for an independent investigation. Some in the administration, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, say these weapons might yet turn up. Critics say the lack of a "smoking gun" so far proves that the administration's justification for the war was unfounded.

Today, we offer an in-depth look back at how Powell's claims - and the passionate debate surrounding them - played out over the past year.

	Colin Powell holds a vial he said could contain anthrax.

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the U.N. Security Council to explain why the United States had to go to war to disarm Iraq.

Powell showed satellite photographs of what he said were chemical and biological facilities, and drawings based on witness descriptions of trucks and rail cars converted into mobile laboratories for lethal materials. He said various records and intelligence showed that Saddam Hussein was making nuclear weapons and developing rockets and aircraft to deliver all his arms. And, Powell said, these lethal weapons could be given at any moment to terrorists who could use them against the United States or Europe.

Much of the information was given to Powell during hours of meetings with his aides at CIA headquarters. It was an extraordinary public revelation of the CIA’s tools – defectors, informants, intercepts, procurement records, photographs and comments of detainees seized in Afghanistan and elsewhere since Sept. 11, 2001.

Here is a look at how those revelations have played out in the past year.

THE PAST 12 DAYS

JAN. 23
• Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay resigns. He later tells reporters he had concluded, after nine months of searching, that Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons.
Kay also says: The Bush administration did not press the CIA to exaggerate the claims. However, the CIA owes Bush an explanation for the flawed prewar intelligence. U.S. intelligence missed how chaotic and corrupt the unconventional weapons system was in recent years, diminishing its capacity for producing viable weapons.
Iraq abandoned the production of weapons of mass destruction and largely eliminated its stockpiles in the 1990s in large part because of concerns about the U.N. weapons inspection process, which was more successful than Washington realized. No conclusive evidence that Iraq moved any WMD to Syria.

JAN. 25
• Secretary of State Colin Powell says it is an “open question” whether or not the Iraqis had stocks of weapons of mass destruction before the war. He said it remained for weapons inspectors to find the answer.

President George W. Bush

JAN. 27
• President Bush says Iraq undoubtedly posed a threat to America last year and the U.S.-led invasion was justified. “There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world. . . . The world is better off without him.”

JAN. 29
• National security adviser Condoleezza Rice becomes the first senior administration member to acknowledge publicly that prewar intelligence might have been wrong. She says there are differences between what was known before the war and what “we found on the ground.”

JAN. 30
• The Washington Post reports House and Senate intelligence committees have unearthed a series of failures in the prewar intelligence on Iraq similar to those identified by Kay, leading them to believe that CIA analysts and their superiors did not seriously consider the possibility that Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction. They believe the CIA relied too heavily on circumstantial, outdated intelligence and became overly dependent on satellite and spy-plane imagery and communications intercepts.

FEB. 1
• The New York Times quotes a State Department official as saying Secretary Powell preferred to wait “until all the facts are in,” but he said the U.N. presentation reflected the “best judgment of the best intelligence analysts we have,” adding that strong efforts were made to verify everything with multiple sources and different kinds of sources. The official said that in only a few cases were the conclusions based on defectors and that the secretary saw “no evidence of any political pressure” in any of the analysis of the intelligence. In hindsight, both Kay and close allies of the White House say, too much weight was given to untested sources of human intelligence, and too little credence given to the possibility that satellite photographs and intercepted communications might have benign interpretations.

FEB. 2
• President Bush announced Monday he would form an independent panel to help uncover “all the facts” about U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons. In London, a spokesman said British Prime Minister Tony Blair would also appoint a commission to investigate faulty intelligence before Blair’s government joined the United States in going to war with Iraq.

FEB. 4
• Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells the Senate Armed Services Committee: “It was the consensus of the intelligence community, and of successive administrations of both political parties, and of the Congress that reviewed the same intelligence, and much of the international community, I might add, that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein’s behavior throughout that period reinforced that conclusion.” He also says that weapons of mass destruction might yet be found in Iraq and that Bush did the right thing in any event by moving to depose Hussein.

TOPIC AREA: CHEMICAL - Weapons of Mass Destruction

2003

JAN. 28
• President Bush says, "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

FEB. 5
• Secretary of State Colin Powell before the U.N. Security Council:
“Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent … that is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.”
Iraq had hidden some of its chemical weapons program within civilian industries. Satellite photographs (left) showed recent activity at chemical weapons sites.

MARCH 3
• Newsweek magazine reports that in 1995, Hussein’s son-in-law and Iraqi weapons chief, Hussein Kamel, on defecting to Jordan, told interviewers Iraq had secretly destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

OCTOBER
According to the New York Times, senior intelligence officials acknowledged during an interview at the CIA’s headquarters that the actual evidence that Iraq had resumed production of chemical weapons was limited. They acknowledged that some U.S. intelligence agencies had resisted the conclusion and had voiced “very legitimate objections,” including the possibility that the suspicious movements seen in the satellite photos involved something far more benign: commercial chlorine-manufacturing activity.

OCT. 2
• Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay’s interim report:
No evidence Iraqi military units were prepared to use chemical weapons against coalition forces.
Intelligence reports that Iraq was poised to use chemical weapons against invading U.S. troops were false, and appear to have been based on faulty reports and Iraqi disinformation.

2004

JAN. 25
• Powell seems less sure of figures than in his February 2003 speech. The United States thought Hussein had banned weapons, but “we had questions that needed to be answered.” Was it “100 tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing?”

JAN. 25
• Kay testifies to a Senate committee: No stockpiles of chemical agents.

TOPIC AREA: BIOLOGICAL - Weapons of Mass Destruction

2002

OCTOBER
A declassified version of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, concluded:
With “high confidence” that Iraq was continuing its weapons of mass destruction programs. Iraq’s biological program was active and “most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.”
It possessed mobile biological weapons factories and was capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of biological agents, like anthrax and smallpox, and could deliver them by bombs, missiles and aerial sprayers.

OCT. 7
• President Bush lays out his first detailed case for the war: Iraq admitted “it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors have concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and is capable of killing millions.”

2003

JAN. 28
• In his State of the Union address, Bush cites “the 25,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin” possessed by Iraq.

FEB. 5
• In his address to the U.N. Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell says:
“There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.”
Iraq has “mobile production facilities (left) used to make biological agents. . . . We know Iraq has seven” of these factories.

LATE APRIL – EARLY MAY
Two trailers are discovered, in Mosul and farther north, that are claimed as evidence of mobile biological weapons production.

MAY 28
• The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency cite the discovery of the two trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program,” while acknowledging that analysis has turned up no residue suggesting that the labs were ever used to produce biological agents.

MAY 30
• Bush says: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.”

JUNE
• DIA investigators conclude that the two vehicles were probably used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons, according to an Aug. 9 story in the New York Times.

JUNE 5
• U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix tells the Security Council that UNMOVIC found no evidence of mobile biological production facilities, but inspections cut short.

JUNE 15
• The Observer reports that a British investigation of suspected mobile germ warfare labs found in Iraq concluded they were for the production of hydrogen gas.

	David Kay

OCT. 2
• Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay says in an interim report:
A single vial containing a strain of botulinum B biological agent had been discovered. Evidence was found of research into various biological agents, such as anthrax, but not of active production.
Documentary, circumstantial and informers’ evidence pointed to Hussein’s intentions to revive chemical and biological weapons programs in the future. However, most of Iraq’s capability had been destroyed by U.S. attacks in 1991 and 1998 and by U.N. sanctions and inspections.
No corroboration as of yet of mobile biological weapons facilities.

OCT. 17
• The Los Angeles Times reports U.N. inspectors and biological experts say the sample of botulinum B found in Iraq was purchased from the United States in the 1980s. No country has been able to use that strain as a weapon.

2004

JAN. 22

	Vice President Dick Cheney

JAN. 23
• After his resignation, Kay tells reporters:
There was no large-scale production of chemical or biological weapons since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Evidence of “test amounts” of chemical and biological weapons and continued research and development, “right up until the end” to improve production of biological agent ricin.
There was now a consensus within the U.S. intelligence community that mobile trailers found in Iraq were actually designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, or perhaps to produce rocket fuel.

FEB. 1
• The New York Times, citing a former senior intelligence official, reports that in a review that the administration has not made public, only one of 15 intelligence analysts assembled from three agencies to discuss the issue in June endorsed the conclusion that the trucks found in Iraq were mobile biological weapons labs.

TOPIC AREA: NUCLEAR - Weapons of Mass Destruction

2002

OCTOBER
The National Intelligence Estimate assessment stated that: Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program, it had imported aluminum tubes for nuclear weapon production, and it would “probably” have a nuclear weapon “during this decade.”

OCTOBER
The NIE assessment stated that Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicle program was “probably intended to deliver biological warfare agent.” The original declassified version did not include information that the Air Force said Iraq had not been able to convert planes to produce unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and that its drones were too small to carry chemical or biological agents effectively.

OCT. 7
• In the speech in Cincinnati, President Bush included claims that Iraq’s biological weapons could be dispersed across a broad area by Iraq’s “growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles” and there was a growing concern that “Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.”

2003

JAN. 28
• Bush’s State of the Union address: The British government has learned that Hussein had tried to buy “significant quantities of uranium from Africa” and to obtain aluminum tubes “suitable for nuclear weapons production.”

FEB. 5
• Secretary of State Colin Powell before the Security Council: Repeats the accusation that Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire high-strength magnets and aluminum tubes (left) used in enriching uranium.
The tubes were probably intended “to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium,” a reliable way to make the fissile material needed to manufacture a bomb.

MARCH 7
• International Atomic Energy Administration director Mohamed ElBaradei reports to the U.N. Security Council:
“No evidence . . . of the revival of a nuclear weapon program.”
“No indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.”
Documents that indicated Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger were “not authentic” and “there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment” of uranium.

APRIL
Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi tells U.S. forces he buried parts and blueprints for a nuclear centrifuge in his back yard in 1991. He says Iraq planned to restart the nuclear program once U.N. inspections ended. He also said aluminum tubes were purchased for Iraq’s rocket program, not nuclear enrichment. Another scientist, Jaffa Khai Jaffar, tells officials Iraq had not restarted its program.

	Joseph Wilson

JULY
Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson says he visited Niger in February 2002 to investigate Iraq’s alleged attempts to purchase uranium. He found the claim had no basis in fact.

JULY 11
• CIA director George Tenet apologizes for not preventing Bush from using the British-sourced claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger in his State of the Union address. Officials had doubts about the report and an independent CIA investigation had dismissed its credibility nearly a year before Bush’s speech.

OCT. 2
• Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay’s interim report:
No evidence that Iraq built nuclear weapons after 1998, although evidence of Hussein’s ambition to do so. Iraq tried to preserve some technological capability from the pre-1991 program. Part of a centrifuge, which an Iraqi scientist handed over to weapons inspectors, was buried 12 years ago and was not part of a renewed nuclear effort.

	Saddam Hussein

DEC. 13
• Saddam Hussein Captured

2004

JAN. 23
• After his resignation, Kay tells reporters:
Iraq made an effort to restart its nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001, but evidence suggests the program was rudimentary and would have taken years to rebuild.
No evidence Niger had tried to sell Iraq uranium for its nuclear weapons program.

JAN. 28
• Kay testifies to a Senate committee:
No evidence of reconstituted nuclear weapons program.

FEB. 1
• The New York Times, citing a congressional investigator, says the 2002 NIE finding that Iraq was reconstituting its program was largely based on one human source who reported that money was being put into a physics building.

TOPIC AREA: MISSLES AND DRONES - Weapons of Mass Destruction

2003

FEB. 5
• Secretary of State Colin Powell’s address to the Security Council:
Iraq has a “few dozen Scud-variant ballistic missiles” with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers and programs to develop missiles with a range of over 1,000 kilometers.
Iraq had a longstanding program for unmanned aerial vehicles and is now “developing and testing spray devices that could be adapted for UAVs.” There was “deep concern” that Iraq could use UAVs to deliver biological agents to “its neighbors, or if transported, to other countries, including the United States.”

	Hans Blix

MARCH 7
• Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix reporting to the U.N. Security Council:
Inspectors found Iraq had continued to develop ballistic missiles after inspectors left in 1998. Two-thirds of the stock of Samoud 2, which violated U.N. sanctions, had been destroyed. A decision was pending on the Fatah missile.
Unmanned aerial vehicles were found but UNMOVIC had insufficient time to determine if they were capable of carrying biological or chemical agents.
Cluster bombs were found and are possibly capable of carrying agents.

JUNE 5
• Blix tells the Security Council most long-range missiles, which were a violation of U.N. sanctions, were destroyed.

JULY
U.S. forces recover several dozen drone airplanes in Iraq. Most appear too small to disperse large amounts of chemical or biological weapons. Primary functions probably reconnaissance.

OCT. 2
• Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay’s interim report:
No corroboration of claims of Scud-type ballistic missiles, although there is evidence of programs to develop two long-range missiles. Programs were halted when U.N. inspections resumed in 2002. One informer believed one missile was intended to carry chemical agents, but no actual plans discovered.
Unmanned aerial vehicle program “remains an open question.”

OCT. 3
• Kay tells reporters that North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Il, bilked Saddam Hussein out of $10-million in an aborted deal to smuggle ballistic missile technology and other prohibited military equipment to Iraq shortly before the war. The North Koreans told the Iraqis early in 2003 that there was simply too much scrutiny, and too many U.S. surveillance operations around, to risk moving material into Iraq. They never returned the money.

2004

JAN. 23
• After resigning, Kay tells reporters there was an active ballistic missile program that was receiving significant foreign assistance right up until the start of the war. The effort to restart the nuclear program may have been because Iraq needed some kind of payload for their rockets.

JAN. 28
• Kay testifies to a Senate committee: “Biggest unknown” remains international smuggling networks that aided Baghdad with missile research.

JAN. 28
• Kay testifies to a Senate committee that he no longer believes Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the war. He calls for an independent inquiry into why U.S. intelligence agencies believed the opposite. While he says U.S. intelligence had been fundamentally flawed, he says there is no evidence it was deliberately distorted.
Hussein “kept the scientists and kept the capability” to restart his programs and thus remained a threat. Intelligence agencies and U.N. inspectors failed to realize that Hussein was “pursuing a course of constructive ambiguity” – bluffing – about WMDs after the mid-1990s in an effort to frighten his rivals at home and in Iran, to boost his prestige in the Arab world, and to deter a Western attack.

FEB. 1
• Brig. Mumtaz Abu Sakhar, an engineer with Iraq’s Military Industries Commission and a consultant on the missile project, says in the New York Times that progress on missiles was not as great as it appeared. Denied sophisticated tools, Sakhar said, Iraqi engineers were barely able to develop a missile that could stay within the maximum range allowed under the U.N. sanctions. While they sent a glowing report to Hussein announcing this, he said, the scientists did not mention that the missiles were wildly inaccurate.

Sources: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “WMD in Iraq: Evidence and implications;” BBC News, Guardian Unlimited, Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Scotsman.

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