Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. military officer who supervised the removal of as much as 250 tons of ordnance from an Iraqi weapons storage area said he didn't see any seals that would have identified the material as part of a cache of high explosives that United Nations inspectors warned is missing.
Major Austin Pearson, a U.S. 3rd Infantry Division officer who led operations at the al-Qaqaa site, said at a Defense Department briefing that he removed explosives from bunkers that were open and easily accessible. He did not see or remove any International Atomic Energy Agency seals that had been placed on some bunkers.
``My mission was to minimize the exposure of U.S. forces by taking out what was readily available,'' Pearson said. ``I did not see any IAEA seals at the locations we went into. I was not looking for that. I can't speak about what was left.'' Pearson said he was at the site on April 13, 2003.
Video shot at the site by a news crew on April 18, 2003, shows members of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division breaking the IAEA seals on a bunker filled explosives. The disappearance of the explosives has become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. Democratic challenger John Kerry cited it as evidence President George W. Bush ``failed to secure Iraq and keep it from becoming what it is today, a haven for terrorists.'' Bush said his opponent shouldn't draw conclusions before the facts are known.
Pearson said his unit hauled out on trucks material that included TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords and bullets.
Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said at the briefing that the UN report was ``significantly'' incomplete. ``The facts that we've learned since then have caused some doubt about the initial reports,'' he said.
A reported 350 tons of high explosives disappeared from the facility after April 9, 2003, due to a ``lack of security,'' the International Atomic Energy Agency said in an Oct. 25 letter to the UN Security Council. The IAEA, which inspected the arms dump before the war, today said a metal seal shown on a bunker door in the tape appears to be the type left by the agency's inspectors.
The video at the site was shot by KSTP, a station in St. Paul, Minnesota, whose crew was embedded with the 101st Airborne when it passed through the area.
The missing material includes about 195 tons of the explosive HMX, which had been under IAEA seal, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in its letter to the Security Council.
Last Updated: October 29, 2004 13:17 EDT
At 10:35 AM 10/29/2004, QuadPirate wrote:
Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP-TV, which had a crew embedded with the 101st Airborne Division during the war, released videotape that it said showed soldiers examining explosives at the massive Al-Qaqaa facility nine days after the fall of Baghdad. The video could possibly undermine Bush's suggestion the explosives were looted before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Mark
