csua.org/u/4v8 -> www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49199-2003Oct31?language=printer
Your reporter, Barton Gellman, bases much of his analysis on what he says was told to him by an Australian brigadier, Stephen D. Gellman describes Meekin as someone who commands the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to David Kay. Meekin does not report, nor has he ever reported, to me in any individual capacity or as commander of the exploitation center. The work of the center did not form a part of my first interim report, which was delivered last month, nor do I direct what Meekins organization does. The centers mission has never involved weapons of mass destruction, nor does it have any WMD expertise. Gellmans description of information provided by Mahdi Obeidi, chief of Iraqs pre-1991 centrifuge program, relies on an unnamed US official who, by the reporters own admission, read only one reporting cable. How Gellmans source was able to describe reporting that covered four months is a mystery to me. Furthermore, the source mischaracterized our views on the reliability of Obeidis information. With regard to Obeidis move to the United States, Gellman writes, By summers end, under unknown circumstances, Obeidi received permission to bring his family to an East Coast suburb in the United States. The reader is left with the impression that this move involved something manipulative or sinister. This mechanism was created during the Cold War to give the director of central intelligence the authority to resettle those who help provide valuable intelligence information. When the article moves to describe the actual work of the nuclear team, Gellman states that frustrated members of the nuclear search team by late spring began calling themselves the book of the month club. But he fails to note that this was before the establishment of the Iraq Survey Group. In fact, the teams frustration with the pace of the work is what led President Bush to shift the responsibility for the WMD search to the director of central intelligence and to send me to Baghdad. One would believe from what Gellman writes that I have sent home the two leaders of my nuclear team, William Domke and Jeffrey Bedell, and abandoned all attempts to determine the state of Iraqs nuclear activities. Domkes assignment had been twice extended well beyond what the Department of Energy had agreed to. He and Bedell were replaced with a much larger contingent of experts from DOEs National Labs. Finally, with regard to the aluminum tubes, the tubes were certainly being imported and were being used for rockets. The question that continues to occupy us is whether similar tubes, with higher specifications, had other uses, specifically in nuclear centrifuges. Why anyone would think that we should want to confiscate the thousands of aluminum tubes of the lower specification is unclear. We have much work left to do before any conclusions can be reached on the state of possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program efforts. Your story gives the false impression that conclusions can already be drawn.
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