The Search For The Smoking Gun

By Romesh Ratnesar

While Iraqis were carrying off everything from leather sofas to gold-plated fixtures last week, Americans were rooting through government offices and Saddam's palaces for something else: clues to the location of Saddam's suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD). And they hit some pay dirt. Military sources told TIME that documents found in the dictator's cratered residences in Baghdad may provide new clues to specific weapons and where they are stored. On Saturday, General Amir al-Saadi, Saddam's top science adviser, surrendered to U.S. forces in Baghdad, insisting that Iraq had no WMD, but U.S. officials believe he has valuable information. The hunt was being carried out by force in western Iraq, near the town of Qaim, where U.S. troops faced heavy resistance. In this regime stronghold, U.S. officials believe Saddam may have stockpiled prohibited long-range missiles and even attempted to restart his nuclear program. Officials at U.S. Central Command speculated that the fierce defense of the site by Iraqi forces suggests that they may have something to hide.

With most of Iraq in allied hands, the search is intensifying for Saddam's suspected chemical and biological weapons. Their discovery and destruction remain the chief reasons given by the Bush Administration for going to war. "We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said last week. "This is what this war was about and is about." But the hunt has not yet produced a smoking gun. Coalition forces are only beginning to work their way through the hundreds of locations identified by U.S. and British intelligence agencies as possible WMD production and storage sites. "There's so much to be inspected," says a British official. "Of the huge number of areas we'd like to look at and scientists to interview, only 1% has been done."

Several false leads have emerged. After a group of Marines secured the Tuwaitha nuclear-research complex outside Baghdad, they detected high levels of radiation at the site and speculated that the complex may have contained enough uranium to build nuclear weapons. But weapons experts say that U.N. weapons inspectors sealed the complex more than a decade ago and that it contains "low enriched" uranium good mainly for civilian energy use. Other finds, including 20 medium-range missiles that may have been designed to carry nerve agents and barrels of chemicals seized in an agricultural facility near Karbala, are still under investigation. Pentagon officials say it will take weeks to complete tests of the materials.

Some U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that before his disappearance, Saddam may have tried to disperse his biochemical arsenal to forces in far-flung parts of the country. "No one is expecting to find a factory with lots of gleaming missiles stuffed full of WMD," says a British official. "These weapons have been dismantled into their component parts and hidden." The Pentagon's goal is to secure suspected weapons sites and then methodically inspect them--rather than blow them up, which would risk spreading deadly toxins in the air. Still, the allies need to move fast. Some U.S. and British officials fear that if chaos persists, top Iraqi scientists may attempt to flee, perhaps in the hope of selling their expertise--or even the weapons--to terrorist groups.

The longer the WMD hunt drags on, the more that opponents of the war will charge it was fought under false pretenses. And if the allies do find any material they believe could be used to build weapons of mass destruction, their claims may not be accepted unless verified by an objective body. British officials, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, endorsed the idea of sending U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq to finish the job interrupted by the war. But the Bush Administration is cool to the idea, and other nations aren't clamoring to join in the hunt. At least until the allies prove they can maintain order in Iraq, they're going to have to keep searching on their own. --By Romesh Ratnesar. Reported by J.F.O. McAllister/London, Andrew Purvis/Vienna and Michael Weisskopf/Doha

With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/London, Andrew Purvis/Vienna and Michael Weisskopf/Doha