4.4 | The
search for WMD
A paper
prepared by the MOD on 3 May, for the Ad Hoc Ministerial Group
on Iraq
Rehabilitation
(AHMGIR) on 8 May, stated that the “most promising find so far
is of a HGV
[heavy
goods vehicle] trailer” near Irbil where an “initial assessment”
closely matched
“earlier
descriptions (from intelligence) of a vehicle that supported mobile
BW agent
The
discovery of a “BW factory” was discussed in Mr Blair’s
conversation with
President Bush
on 7 May.96
The British
Embassy Washington reported overnight on 7/8 May that the US
had used
a general
briefing on Iraqi WMD by Mr Cambone to address growing press
speculation
about the
discovery of the suspected mobile BW laboratory.97
Mr Cambone
had emphasised the scale and complexity of the task facing the
Coalition in
uncovering
and destroying Iraq’s WMD, and explained that the resources
deployed would
be
“substantially enhanced” with the arrival of the ISG.
Mr Cambone
said that the mobile laboratory was “very similar” to that which
had been
described
in Secretary Powell’s presentation to the Security Council on
5 February 2003,
and that,
while some of the equipment on the trailer could have been used for
purposes
other than
BW production, “US and UK technical experts have concluded that the
unit
does not
appear to perform any function beyond what the defector said it was
for, which
was the
production of biological agents”.
Asked
whether the trailer represented the smoking gun, Mr Cambone
had stated that he
was sure
that, as time went by, Iraq’s WMD programmes would be found to have
been as
extensive
as described to the Security Council by Secretary Powell in
February 2003.
The Embassy
added that it had raised the need for independent third-party
verification
of the find
with the National Security Council (NSC) earlier in the day.
Although that
suggestion
had been rejected on the grounds that it was highly unlikely that
samples
worth
verifying would be found in a trailer that had been scrubbed clean,
the principle of
third-party
verification, once samples had been found, was recognised as “a
good one”.
The SIS
letter of 9 May described the suspect BW trailer as “an
encouraging find” that
would be
reinforced through exploitation of other related leads in
co-operation with other
The
briefing note attached to the letter stated that the suspect BW
trailer “remained the
most
significant find to date” and had received some media attention.
There were differing
views on
the function of the trailer, however, it was believed to be part of
a transportable
production
system (TPS). SIS would be contributing to the Coalition efforts to
investigate
the
trailer’s provenance, with the aim of obtaining “a high-level view
of how it related to
other parts
of the BW programme”. There was speculation about whether anthrax
was the
original
intended product. Further debriefing and computer exploitation were
ongoing.
95 Annotated
Agenda, 7 May 2003, Ad Hoc Ministerial Group on Iraq
Rehabilitation meeting attaching
Paper MOD,
3 May 2003, ‘Annex E; WMD and the Work of the Iraq Survey
Group’.
96
Letter
Cannon to McDonald, 7 May 2003, ‘US Foreign Policy Issues:
Prime Minister’s conversation with
Bush,
7 May’.
97
Telegram
615 Washington to FCO London, 8 May 2003, ‘Iraq:
WMD’.
98
Letter SIS4
to Manning, 9 May 2003, ‘WMD in Iraq’.
461