Edited for brevity.
An adviser to the CIA hinted Thursday that U.S. and coalition personnel were close to a breakthrough in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. David Kay, the agency’s special adviser for the weapons search, said "solid progress" was being made and that Iraqi scientists involved in the weapons programs are "collaborating and cooperating." He also said searchers were using documents from Saddam Hussein’s regime in the search. Kay, a former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, said new evidence has been uncovered about how the Iraqis misled U.N. inspectors. "The active deception program is truly amazing once you get inside it," he said. "We have people who participated in deceiving U.N. inspectors now telling us how they did it."
He said details about the search won’t be released until three criteria are met: "multiple Iraqis" who are willing to talk about the weapons program, several documents are uncovered about the weapons and physical evidence of the program is obtained. "We do not want to go forward with partial information that we have to retract afterward," he said. "We’re building a solid case that will stand, and we welcome international scrutiny of that case after we have the evidence assembled." |