A senior member of the CIA-led Iraq inspection team says that a year after the White House’s “bioweapons trailers” claim was discredited, the administration continued to suppress the findings. Former U.N. arms inspector Rod Barton claims a CIA officer told him it was “politically not possible” to refute the White House claims.
Barton talks about his 2004 experiences in The Weapons Detective, which was just published by Black Ink Agenda in Australia. He is known not only for reporting that the Bush administration wove a story about weapons of mass destruction out of two ordinary trailers found in Iraq, but also for refuting Australia’s claims that it had not participated in any interrogations in Iraq.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that on May 29, 2003, George W. Bush told the nation that “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.” While he was justifying the war with this revelation, U.S. intelligence officials had evidence that the so-called mobile “biological laboratories” were nothing of the kind. On May 27, two days before Bush’s speech, members of a secret fact-finding mission made its final report–that the trailers found in Iraq were harmless. However, this report was kept secret and put aside while Bush administration officials continued to talk about the “biolabs” for a year.
Former CIA officials deny that any information was stifled as late as 2004, before the Iraq Survey Group’s final report in October.
