U.S. gets report that al-Qaida has Iraq chemical weapon

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has received a credible report that Islamic extremists affiliated with al-Qaida took possession of a chemical weapon in Iraq last month or late in October, according to two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report and its source. They said government analysts suspect that the transaction involved the nerve agent VX and that a courier managed to smuggle it overland through Turkey.

If the report proves true, the transaction marks two significant milestones. It would be the first known acquisition of a nonconventional weapon other than cyanide by al-Qaida or a member of its network. It also would be the most concrete evidence to support the charge, aired for months by President Bush and his advisers, that al-Qaida terrorists receive material assistance in Iraq. If advanced publicly by the White House, the report could be used to rebut Iraq's assertion in a 12,000-page declaration Saturday that it had destroyed its entire stock of chemical weapons.

Knowledgeable officials, speaking without White House permission, said information about the transfer came from a sensitive and credible source whom they declined to discuss. Among the hundreds of leads in the Threat Matrix, a daily compilation by the CIA, this one has drawn the kind of attention reserved for a much smaller number.

"The way we gleaned the information makes us feel confident it is accurate," said one official whose responsibilities are directly involved with the report. "I throw about 99 percent of the spot reports away when I look at them. I didn't throw this one away."

Like most intelligence, the reported chemical weapons transfer is not backed by definitive evidence. The intended target is unknown, with U.S. speculation focusing on Europe or the United States.

At a time when President Bush is eager to make a public case linking Iraq to the United States' principal terrorist enemy, authorized national security spokesmen declined to discuss the substance of their information about the transfer of lethal chemicals. Those who disclosed it have no policymaking responsibilities on Iraq and expressed no strong views on whether the United States should go to war there.

Even authorized spokesmen, with one exception, addressed the report on the condition of anonymity. They said the principal source on the chemical transfer was uncorroborated, and that indications it involved a nerve agent were open to interpretation.

"We are concerned because of al-Qaida's interest in obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, and we continue to seek evidence and intelligence information with regards to their planning activity," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. Johndroe was the only official authorized by the White House to discuss the matter on the record.

"Have they obtained chemical weapons?" Johndroe said. "I do not have any hard, concrete evidence that they have." Pressed on whether the information referred to a nerve agent, Johndroe said "there is no specific intelligence that limits al-Qaida's interest to one particular chemical or biological weapon over the other."

One official who spoke without permission said a sign of the government's concern is its "ramping up opportunities to collect more, to figure out what would be the routes, where would they be taking the material, how would they deploy it, how are they transporting it, what are the personnel?" The official added: "We're not just sitting back and waiting for something to happen."

A Defense Department official, who said he had seen only the one-line summary version of the chemical weapons report, speculated that it might be connected to a message distributed last week to U.S. armed forces overseas. An official elsewhere said the message resulted only from an analyst's hypothetical concern.

Prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, last week's "Turkey Defense Terrorism Threat Awareness Message" warned of a possible chemical weapons attack by al-Qaida on the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. Incirlik is an important NATO facility from which a U.S.-led coalition in 1991 launched thousands of bombing runs to force Iraq to withdraw its army from Kuwait. Turkey has given conditional agreement to its use in the event of a new war with Iraq.

According to two officials, a second related threat report was distributed in Washington this week. The CIA message, transmitted ahead of the daily 3 a.m. compilation of the Threat Matrix, described a European ally's warning that the United States might face chemical attack in a big-city subway if war broke out with Iraq. A U.S. government spokesman said the European ally offered little evidence and "the credibility of the report has not been determined."

Among the uncertainties about the suspected weapon transfer in Iraq is the precise relationship of the Islamic operatives to the al-Qaida network. One official said the transaction involved Asbat al-Ansar, a Lebanon-based Sunni extremist group that has more recently established an enclave in northern Iraq. Asbat al-Ansar is affiliated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization and receives money from it, but officials said they did not know whether its pursuit of chemical weapons came specifically on al-Qaida's behalf.

The government is also uncertain whether the transaction involved a chemical agent alone, or an agent in what is known as a weaponized form — incorporated into a delivery system such as a rocket or a bomb. Among the reasons for suspecting VX is that it is the most portable of Iraq's chemical weapons, capable of inflicting mass casualties with a quantity that a single courier could transport.

After initial denials, Iraq admitted in the 1990s to manufacturing tons of VX and of two less sophisticated nerve agents, Sarin and Tabun. Its remaining chemical arsenal was limited to blister agents, such as mustard, that date from World War I.

First developed as a weapon by the U.S. Army, VX is an oily liquid, odorless and tasteless, that kills on contact with the skin or by inhalation in aerosol form. Like other nerve agents it is treatable in the first minutes after exposure, but otherwise leads swiftly to fatal convulsions and respiratory failure. The United States, a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, destroyed the last of its stocks of VX and other chemical agents on Johnston Atoll, 825 miles southwest of Hawai'i, in November 2000.

U.S. military forces, hazardous materials teams and some ambulance systems carry emergency antidotes. They usually come in autoinjectors containing atropine and an oxime, drugs which reverse the neuromuscular blockade of a nerve agent. Atropine-like drugs have other uses in anesthesia and in treating cardiac arrest, and are often stocked in hospitals.

During inspections by the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, in the 1990s, Iraq denied production of any chemical weapon other than mustard. Faced with contrary evidence, it eventually acknowledged manufacture of 3.9 tons of VX and 3,859 tons in all of lethal chemicals. Baghdad also admitted to filling more than 10,000 bombs, rockets and missile warheads with Sarin. It denied having done so with its most potent agent, VX, but an international commission of experts assembled by UNSCOM said the scientific evidence suggested otherwise.

UNSCOM said in its final report, in January 1999, that it could not account for 1.5 tons of the VX known to have been produced in Iraq, and could not establish whether additional quantities had been made.

The U.N. Security Council ordered Iraq in April 1991 to relinquish all capabilities to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons or long range missiles. The declared basis for the present threat of war is the U.S. view, shared by the Clinton and Bush administrations, that the Baghdad government never came close to complying.