Iraqi Scientist leads US troops to Nuclear parts and Documents
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U.S. Finds Nuclear Materials Buried in Iraq
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
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WASHINGTON ? An Iraqi scientist has led the CIA (search) to nuclear materials buried in his backyard, Fox News has learned.
Mahdi Obeidi (search ) told U.S. agents in Iraq he was ordered in 1991 to hide documents and parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Obeidi said he was told the materials should remain buried in his backyard until sanctions against Iraq ended, when they would be dug up and used to reconstitute a program to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
"A box of parts and a bunch of documents were buried under the rose bushes in his backyard," one U.S. official told Fox News.
"This shows how hard a job it will be to find stuff when it's under people's rose bushes," the official added.
Obeidi told the CIA he was one of four Iraqi nuclear scientists told to hide such plans and parts. He did not know the identities of the other three and the CIA has so far been unable to locate them, a senior U.S. official told Fox News.
Officials said they believe Obeidi's statements are credible, and described the recovery of the buried materials as evidence of the lengths to which Saddam Hussein was willing to go to hide and maintain his weapons of mass destruction capability. But, one official cautioned, "This is not a 'smoking gun' -- it is not evidence of an ongoing uranium enrichment program."
Before the 1991 Gulf War (search) , Obeidi headed Iraq's program to make centrifuges that would enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, the official said. Most or all of that program was dismantled after U.N. inspections in the early 1990s.
Details of Obeidi's activities during the past decade were not immediately available, although he was interviewed often by inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency in 2002, the official said.
Obeidi turned over a two-foot-tall stack of documents that includes detailed designs for centrifuges, intelligence officials said. Obeidi told intelligence officials the parts from his garden were among the more difficult-to-produce components of a centrifuge.
Assembled, the components would not be useful in making much uranium. Hundreds of centrifuges are necessary to make enough to construct a nuclear weapon in such programs.
Obeidi and his family have left Iraq, the intelligence official said.
Since the war, U.S. teams looking for evidence of Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs have been chasing leads and tips from Iraqis who stand to win reward money offered for evidence. So far no weapons have been found.
Before the second Gulf War, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies said they had evidence that Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, although some of that evidence has since been debunked.
Other evidence, such as reports that Iraq tried to import precision-made tubes for centrifuges, was hotly debated, with some experts saying those tubes were for conventional weapons.
Earlier this year, the U.N. agency said there was no new evidence or indications that Iraq was working to revive the program
Fox News' Jim Angle and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Yes, it's circumstantial, but the circumstance that Saddam had it buried sure points in the direction of lots else of interest being buried in Iraq.
