IraqGate- DIA: Trailers were used for weather balloons

Mysterious Iraqi trailers may have had innocent use

Miami.com/NY Times - Sat, Aug. 09, 2003

BY DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON - Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for the two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say.

The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the CIA and the defense agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.

That report had dismissed as a ''cover story'' claims by senior Iraqi scientists that the trailers were used to make hydrogen for the weather balloons that were then used in artillery practice.

A Defense Department official said the alternative views expressed by members of the engineering team, not yet spelled out in a formal report, had prompted the Defense Intelligence Agency to ''pursue additional information'' to determine whether those Iraqi claims were indeed accurate.

Officials at the CIA and the Defense Department said Friday that the two intelligence agencies still stood by the May 28 finding, which President Bush had cited as evidence that Iraq did have a biological weapons program.

The engineering teams' findings, which officials from the Defense Department and other agencies would discuss only on the condition of anonymity, add a new layer to disputes within the intelligence community about the trailers found by allied forces in Iraq in April and May.

The State Department's intelligence branch, which was not invited to take part in the initial review, disputed the findings in a memorandum on June 2.

The fact that American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence were disputing the claims included in the CIA white paper was first reported in June, along with the analysts' concern that the evaluation of the mobile units had been marred by a rush to judgment.

But it had not previously been known that a majority of the Defense Intelligence Agency's engineering team had come to disagree with the central finding of the white paper: That the trailers were used for making biological weapons.

''The team has decided that in their minds, there could be another use, for inefficient hydrogen production, most likely for balloons,'' a Defense Department official said.

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