WASHINGTON — An Iraqi scientist who has provided what the White House yesterday called key components and blueprints for an illicit nuclear program was initially ignored by the Pentagon and jailed by U.S. military forces in Baghdad as he tried to get the materials into American hands.
After reviewing the items provided by Mahdi Obeidi, White House officials yesterday hailed the find and used it as an example of the difficulty of trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"What's notable is that this case illustrates the extreme challenge that the world community faces in Iraq as we search for evidence of WMD programs that were designed to elude detection by international inspectors," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
But Bush administration officials made the process even more difficult by initially discounting the assertions and evidence of Obeidi, who headed Iraq's uranium enrichment program in the 1980s and 1990s, said David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. Albright served as an intermediary between the scientist and the U.S. administration, taking Obeidi's information from agency to agency.
"They weren't interested at one point, and it almost fell apart," said Albright, a former International Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspector. "I got blown off by the Pentagon; they wouldn't give me the name of anyone to speak to. I called the State Department, and they didn't know who was in charge. It was a nightmare."
Albright said that after the major fighting in Iraq was over in April, Obeidi, fearing that he might be killed by Saddam Hussein loyalists or U.S. troops, wanted to come clean about what he knew about Iraq's nuclear ambitions.
The scientist figured he had something to trade with the U.S. officials: six or seven components of a gas centrifuge — a machine used to enrich uranium — and detailed designs for the machine that he had buried in his garden 12 years ago on the orders of Hussein's son Qusay.
In exchange, Obeidi wanted asylum in the United States and green cards for himself and his family, said Albright, who had been in contact with the scientist through a freelance journalist.
Albright said he began calling around to tell Bush administration officials of an Iraqi scientist with evidence of Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
"They were looking for a [nuclear] plant, and I had documents and parts," Albright said. "It was incredible that they didn't get it."
After Albright was rebuffed by the Pentagon, the CIA contacted him about Obeidi, who was still in Iraq and on a U.S. military list of wanted Iraqis.
CIA officials were initially wary about what Obeidi had to offer.
"One CIA person said, 'A lot of Iraqis say they have important documents and want a ticket to the United States,' " Albright recalled.
A senior CIA official supported Albright's account. But he added that the agency was interested in Obeidi and moved swiftly to deal with him.
"We were talking to this guy, listening to him, taking him seriously, and he did eventually produce linear feet of documents and some really cool metal parts," the CIA official said. "We shipped people out there [to Iraq] to talk to him, to interview him."
But on June 3, even as Obeidi was cooperating with the CIA, U.S. military officials arrested and jailed him.
"There was indeed, a sort of unfortunate incident that occurred, through, ah, miscommunication," the CIA official said. "Not everyone in the military was aware we were talking to this fellow, and in early June someone accidentally [busted] him," the CIA official said. " ... We quickly got him out of the hoosegow and resumed chatting with him."
The arrest left Obeidi — and Albright — nervous. Feeling that his life was in danger, and with CIA officials refusing to guarantee specifically that he would get U.S. asylum, Obeidi sat down for an interview with CNN. The move got the CIA's attention.
"If they aired it he would really be in danger, the fact that he was cooperating with the U.S. government and his mug would be out there," the CIA official said. "So we said to him, 'How about slowing down a little bit so we can get you and your family out of there, pack them up, so they don't get whacked?' "
Albright said the CIA moved Obeidi and his family out of Iraq last Friday to an undisclosed location. CIA officials say Obeidi is continuing to provide information. CNN was expected to air the interview with him last night.
Obeidi has disputed administration assertions that aluminum tubes that Iraq had tried to buy several times were for its nuclear program and said the tubes were not suited for that use.
"It's not the answer they wanted to hear," Albright said.
Still, White House officials portrayed Obeidi's evidence as significant yesterday, while downplaying whether the find is a smoking gun that could justify the U.S. war in Iraq.
"We're hopeful this example will lead to other Iraqi scientists stepping forward to provide information," Fleischer said.
Ken Fireman of the Washington bureau contributed to this story.
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