The Iraq Survey Group will pull together all the intelligence in Iraq to piece together bits of information that will, it is hoped, lead the Pentagon to deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, according to Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, the Defense Intelligence Agency's director of human intelligence who will lead the ISG.
"The goal is to put all the pieces together in what is appearing to be a very complex jigsaw puzzle," Dayton said.
Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction was the primary rationale cited for the war by the Bush administration.
"There is a lot of information out there that simply hasn't been gathered yet," Dayton said at a Pentagon press conference. "You know, it may be more important to find out who the guard was and what he knows at a particular site than maybe a high-value target guy who may not want to tell us anything, or a truck driver who may have transported stuff from one place to another; that's what we're looking at, that sort of level of detail, instead of just going to -- again, to fixed sites that may or may not have anything."
The Pentagon went into the war with a list of some 900 "sensitive sites" where Saddam was believed to have manufactured or stored chemical and biological weapons. Weapons hunters have visited just under 300 during the last seven weeks with no results.
Many of the sites have not been guarded since the war ended and may have had incriminating materials removed by government agents or looters, acknowledged Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone.
Dayton said rather than mechanically going down that list the analysts will use the trove of information being developed from documents and interviews with prisoners and others to pick the sites most likely to have yield evidence of the illegal weapons program.
"Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there's a lot of information out there, and that's why I tell you, this is going to be a deliberate process, but it will be a long-term process as well. This is not necessarily going to be quick and easy, but it will be very thorough," Dayton said.
The Iraq Survey Group will feature around 300 weapons searchers, compared to the roughly 200 searchers resident in the 75th Exploitation Task Force, which has been in charge of the effort until now. It will also have a joint interrogation debriefing center, a joint materiel exploitation center, chemical and biological intelligence support teams and an operation center.
The main analytic effort and the media processing center will be based in Qatar, Dayton said.
In addition to searching for chemical and biological weapons the survey group will also be looking for information related to terrorism, war crimes and prisoner of war issues.
Dayton leaves Monday for Baghdad.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
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