Drafts of a report from the top U.S. inspector in Iraq conclude there were no weapons stockpiles, but say there are signs the fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to people familiar with the findings.
In a 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.
Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.
As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.
After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction — its chief argument for overthrowing the regime.
An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.
‘We were almost all wrong’
The report is expected to be similar to findings reported by Duelfer’s predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October. Kay left the post in January, saying, “We were almost all wrong” about Saddam’s weapons programs.
Duelfer’s report, however, is expected to fall between the position of the Bush administration before the war — portraying Saddam as a grave threat — and the declarative statements Kay made after he resigned.
It will also add more evidence and flesh out Kay’s October findings. Then, Kay said the Iraq Survey Group had only uncovered limited evidence of secret chemical and biological weapons programs, but he found substantial evidence of an Iraqi push to boost the range of its ballistic missiles beyond prohibited ranges.
He also said there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way.
Weapons to Syria?
Duelfer’s report doesn’t reach firm conclusions in all areas. For instance, U.S. officials are still investigating whether Saddam’s fallen regime may have sent chemical weapons equipment and several billion dollars over the border to Syria. That has not been confirmed, but remains an area of interest to the U.S. government.
The Duelfer report will come months after the Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing assessment of the prewar intelligence on Iraq.
After a yearlong inquiry, the Republican-led committee said in July the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies’ analysts, engaged in “group think” by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.
The Iraq Survey Group has been working since the summer of 2003 to find Saddam’s weapons and better understand his prohibited programs. More than a thousand civilian and military weapons specialists, translators and other experts have been devoted to the effort.