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http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...0,1,3057510.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
The Other Weapons Threat in Iraq
Little noticed in a CIA report are details about insurgent groups' efforts to acquire chemical and biological agents to use against the Coalition.
By Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON Insurgent networks across Iraq are increasingly trying to acquire and use toxic nerve gases, blister agents and germ weapons against U.S. and coalition forces, according to a CIA report. Investigators said one group recruited scientists and sought to prepare poisons over seven months before it was dismantled in June.
U.S. officials say the threat is especially worrisome because leaders of the previously unknown group, which investigators dubbed the "Al Abud network," were based in the city of Fallouja near insurgents aligned with fugitive militant Abu Musab Zarqawi. The CIA says Zarqawi, who is blamed for numerous attacks on U.S. forces and beheadings of hostages, has long sought to use chemical and biological weapons against targets in Europe as well as Iraq.
An exhaustive report released last week by Charles A. Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons investigator in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s and never tried to rebuild them. But a little-noticed section of the 960-page report says the risk of a "devastating" attack with unconventional weapons has grown since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq last year.
The Bush administration, which went to war primarily to disarm the Baghdad regime of suspected illicit stockpiles, has not previously disclosed that the insurgent groups that have emerged and steadily expanded since Hussein's ouster are trying to develop their own crude supplies of such deadly agents as mustard gas, ricin and the nerve gas tabun.
Neither of the two chemists who worked for Al Abud had ties to Hussein's long-defunct weapons programs, and Duelfer's investigators found no evidence that the group's poison project was part of a "prescribed plan by the former regime to fuel an insurgency."
For now, the leaders and financiers of the network "remain at large, and alleged chemical munitions remain unaccounted," the report says. It adds that other insurgent groups are "planning or attempting to produce or acquire" chemical and biological agents throughout Iraq, and says the availability of chemicals and munitions, as well as sympathetic former Iraqi weapons scientists, "increases the future threat."
The discoveries are separate from several attacks this year involving chemical munitions, the report says. In May and June, insurgents used old chemical-filled artillery shells, left over from Iraq's pre-1991 stocks, in three roadside bombs. Partly because of the age of the weapons, no chemical injuries were reported. In all, U.S. forces have recovered 53 decaying chemical-filled shells or artillery rockets that apparently were looted from unguarded ammunition bunkers or other sites.
Investigators from Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group learned of the Al Abud threat by chance in March when a U.S. Army patrol raided a laboratory in a Baghdad market known for chemical supply shops. They discovered an Iraqi chemist who had successfully produced small quantities of ricin, a potentially deadly toxin made from castor beans.
After the chemist was interrogated, Duelfer quickly created a special team of covert agents, analysts and weapons experts to track down the scientist's contacts and arrest other members of the Al Abud network, named for the lab where the chemist was found.
By June, Duelfer's team was able to identify and "neutralize" the group's chemists and chemical suppliers, and other members of the network. A series of raids, interrogations and detentions "disrupted key activities at Al Abud-related laboratories, safe houses, supply stores" and organizational centers, according to Duelfer's report.
"I think this is a case where we got ahead of a problem a bit," said a senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the evidence.
Duelfer first revealed the network's existence in his testimony last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee, but he provided few details.
"I am convinced that we successfully contained a problem before it matured into a major threat," Duelfer said. "Nevertheless, it points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands. Certainly there are anti-coalition and terrorist elements seeking such capabilities."
In response to a question, he said, "We think we've got most of that particular activity not under control, but we understand it."
Duelfer said that Zarqawi "has expressed an interest in exactly this type of weapon." Duelfer's team could not determine whether the Al Abud effort was tied to Zarqawi's terrorist network or the broader insurgency in Iraq. Before the invasion, the Bush administration portrayed Zarqawi as Al Qaeda's link to Hussein's regime. Although those ties remain unclear, Zarqawi and his followers have claimed responsibility for a wave of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings. The U.S. government has placed a $25-million bounty on his head.
The Al Abud effort apparently began in December 2003, according to Duelfer's report, when Fallouja-based insurgents belonging mostly to the Jaish-e-Muhammad insurgent group recruited "an inexperienced Baghdad chemist" to help them produce tabun, mustard gas and other chemical agents. A wealthy Baghdad businessman who previously had business ties to Hussein's military and intelligence service agreed to provide financial backing.
Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, is made up largely of former members of Hussein's Baath Party, including former officers in the intelligence, security and police forces, the report says.
The group has claimed responsibility for several attacks, including the bombing of the United Nations compound in Baghdad on Aug. 19, 2003.
In interrogations, members of Jaish-e-Muhammad told Duelfer's team that they planned to use chemical-filled mortar rounds and other munitions against U.S. and other coalition forces.
Tabun, a nerve agent, can cause convulsions, paralysis or death. It is produced as a colorless, tasteless liquid and can be used as a vapor or to poison water supplies. Mustard gas, infamous since the gruesome gas attacks of World War I, is a disabling and potentially deadly blistering agent that attacks the skin, eyes and lungs.
Hussein's regime produced huge quantities of tabun and mustard gas during the 1980s, and repeatedly used them to attack Iranian troops during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran. The Iraqi gas attacks caused tens of thousands of casualties. Thousands more died when Hussein's forces used poison gas on Kurdish villages in northern Iraq.
The Baghdad chemist, who was not identified, soon helped the insurgent group acquire the pesticide malathion, which has a similar chemical structure to tabun, as well as nitrogen mustard gas precursors or ingredients from looted government supplies and chemical shops.
Despite numerous attempts, the scientist failed to produce tabun. But he managed to brew a poisonous compound, the report says. The insurgents filled nine mortar rounds with the mixture, but Duelfer's team determined that the rounds were useless because detonation would destroy the poison.
The group's focus shifted in late January and early February to production of mustard gas, the report says. Although the inexperienced chemist had the necessary materials, he used "incorrect amounts of the precursors and inadequate processes" and failed again in mid-March.
Frustrated at the lack of progress, the Al Abud group soon found and hired another young chemist in Baghdad who owned his own small laboratory. Unlike the first scientist, this recruit was "a profit-seeking mercenary" and not an insurgent, the report says.
The Al Abud group returned to the Baghdad market and obtained materials to produce a more potent mustard gas. Although the effort again failed, the Duelfer report says "with time and experience it is plausible" that the second chemist could have produced a workable weapon.
Success finally came in late March when the two chemists working together produced ricin cake, a substance that can be converted to ricin poison. Investigators later determined that their lab could produce only enough ricin to cause isolated casualties and "was not capable of facilitating a mass-casualty ricin attack."
They also found that the two scientists had prepared napalm, a highly flammable jellied gasoline used by U.S. troops in Vietnam, and sodium fluoride acetate, a poison. But Duelfer's group said the nascent effort was "highly unlikely" to be capable of causing mass casualties.
Despite his success in curbing the network's immediate threat, Duelfer said he was alarmed that the group had "quickly and effectively" found scientists, munitions and money to build chemical weapons. Had the group not been stopped, he said, "the consequences could have been devastating to coalition forces."
