Al Qa'qaa High Explosives Controversy - Evidence Against The Claim of Removal Prior To US Arrival

Evidence Against The Claim of Removal Prior To US Arrival

• A letter from former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri (who was also a CIA asset at the time) to deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein "suggests taking the HMX from underground bunkers where it had been kept under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency and giving it to suicide bombers." The letter was written on 4 April 2003.
• Explosives were reported intact after the invasion—Col. John Peabody of the 3rd Infantry Division told AP that his troops found thousands of boxes of explosives at the facility on 5 April 2003.
• DIA confirmation—the DIA issued a report on 9 November 2003 that concluded that the "ast majority of explosives and ordnance used in anti-Coalition improvised explosive devices/IED s have come from pilfered Iraqi ammunition stockpiles and prewar established ... caches."
• Pentagon official—the AP reported on 25 October 2004 "At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity."
• videotape made by a KSTP-TV St. Paul, Minnesota television crew embedded with U.S. 101st Airborne Division troops on April 18, 2003, nine days after Hussein's fall. The television crew accompanying US troops recorded the sealed explosives containers at the site, displaying ammunition caches and explosives and clearly displaying the ammunition cache of explosives and other weapons supplies. The New York Times summarized in April 2005, "videos taken by television crews with American troops show the bunkers were still full of explosives well after the invasion."
• Mohammed al-Sharaa, head of the science ministry's site monitoring department: "It is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall. The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall."
• U.S. surveillance: the Los Angeles Times reported on 27 October 2004: "Given the size of the missing cache, it would have been difficult to relocate undetected before the invasion, when U.S. spy satellites were monitoring activity."
• Eyewitness testimony of Army reservists and National Guardsman from separate units as reported to the Los Angeles Times in November 2004.
• Iraqi Interim Government Investigation: Iraqi official Sami al-Araji reported on the Iraqi government's investigation into the theft, indicating that the looters "came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites. They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting."