V Corps team searches for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
USAREUR Public Affairs
Release Date: 06 May 2003
By Sgt. Tyrone Walker, V Corps Public Affairs
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- British and U.S. troops inspected a chicken coop Saturday suspected of being a storage site for weapons of mass destruction.
After four hours of picking through and analyzing equipment, boxes and steel drums, the team concluded that the location was not a chemical weapons warehouse but a storage area for engine parts.
"We found what we believe to be aircraft parts and machinery to maintain and repair aircraft," said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington, commander of Site Survey Team 5, a group of comprised of U.S. Army and Air Force chemical, biological and explosives experts, and British counterparts. SST 5 is one of several coalition teams scattered throughout the country that are trying to pinpoint and inspect suspected WMD sites.
Like reconnaissance teams, SSTs report their findings to upper-level leadership, who decide whether to send more specialized experts and conduct more elaborate investigations of suspected WMD sites, Harrington said.
The V Corps SST members sifted through wooden boxes, examining pipes and metal parts, and used chemical detecting devices to sniff for nerve agents near drums, bags of dry chemicals and jars filled with liquids.
The site inspection was the first for SST 5, which recently arrived at Camp Victory, just outside of Baghdad. Still, the team wasn't disappointed that nothing significant was uncovered, Harrington said. The inspection was "a good first try" at finding what has eluded United Nation inspectors for years.
Iraqi soldiers had hidden the aircraft parts and machinery on a farm to protect it from coalition bombing. SST 5 inspected the area after a U.S. Special Forces team hunting for helicopters stumbled across wooden boxes and metal containers concealed beneath plastic and camouflage there.
Inside the coop, a small structure built of mud and grass, the team found pipes, tubing, vacuum chambers and precision instrument and tools, including vertical and horizontal metal lathes.
Alongside dozens of sacks of chicken feed were bottles and bags of chemicals that included nickel sulfate, sulfuric acid and sodium chloride. Packing labels in Arabic and Cyrillic indicated the chemicals were for some sort of production. The translator and interpreter on the team reviewed manuals found on the site and helped the team figure out that the chemicals are for use in testing devices for leaks and cracks.
"There were good indicators," said V Corps' chemical officer, Col. Tim Madere of the team's findings.
After receiving the information from the Special Forces team, Madere used satellite-generated images and global positioning coordinates to lead a convoy of inspectors to the farm, in a rural village about 20 miles north of Baghdad.
After missing a left turn and circling back, Madere reviewed his maps to pinpoint the right road. "This isn't an exact science," he said.
The convoy then navigated a series of narrow paved and dirt roads lined with palm trees and irrigation canals and sandwiched between wheat and tomato fields. Children peeked from the doors of mud-brick houses with expressions of awe. Others waved. A few gestured hand to mouth, a plea for food or water.
The procession of U.S. and British vehicles stopped in front of a small cement house with a barking dog in the front yard and three grazing cows in back. A white pickup truck sat in the driveway and a school bus-colored forklift was parked just inside a wall where dozens of boxes lie hidden beneath desert-brown camouflage netting.
The farmer, Hassan Alwan Abdullah, told Special Forces troops that an Iraqi general had paid him to store the equipment and chemicals on his land. The general has not returned and Abdullah, who lives nearby with his wife and seven children, said he fears the materials are hazardous. Although none of his children or farm animals has fallen ill, he said, that could change.
"I want it taken away," he said through an interpreter.
That the Iraqi would hide aircraft parts, repair equipment and chemicals in such a rural area is an indicator of the difficulty of the task of finding weapons of mass destruction in this country.
"It gives us some insight on how the Iraqi military hid a lot of stuff out in the country," Madere said.
Finding hundreds of similar sites is going to be time-consuming, he added.
"We don't know how many more places like this are out there. (They) could be hiding in plain sight."
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