judy miller, stephen hatfill and mobile weapons labs

summary: in light of the recent media about the fraudulent claims about iraq's 'mobile weapons labs' - this post intends to shed light on the role of stephen hatfill - and i posit that there may be some nefarious intentions behind his involvement in the design of secret mobile weapons labs.
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On April 12, 2006, we learned :

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true."

This sent people scurrying back to the reporting at the time - much of it focussed on Judy Miller's reporting - see emptywheel, and ron, for example.

The trailers were found in April 2003, and Judy was reporting by May 11 that the investigators

"were persuaded that it was a mobile lab for biological production"

and then on May 21:

"that two mysterious trailers found in Iraq were mobile units to produce germs for weapons, but they have found neither biological agents nor evidence that the equipment was used to make such arms"

On June 7:

" American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs."

Here's the thing - on July 2, 2003, Judy had another scoop about mobile weapons labs - sharing a byline with William J. Broad & David Johnston (judy was mentioned last on the byline - is that odd?):

Three years ago, the United States began a secret project to train Special Operations units to detect and disarm mobile germ factories of the sort that Iraq and some other countries were suspected of building, according to administration officials and experts in germ weaponry.

The heart of the effort, these officials said, was a covert plan to construct a mobile germ plant, real in all its parts but never actually "plugged in" to make weapons. In the months before the war against Iraq, American commandos trained on this factory.

[snip]

The secret trainer is similar to the mobile units that the Bush administration has accused Iraq of building to produce biological weapons.

Curiously, this article doesn't even mention the labs found in Iraq (also curious, the article repeatedly refers to 'trainers', not 'trailers' (!))

The odd thing is that Stephen Hatfill was in charge of building these secret labs. Given the NYT's history with Hatfill, and given this article is by Judy, it's difficult to know what to believe (I've always presumed that Hatfill was set-up by Ashcroft et al).

(note: for current purposes, I'm only interested in Iraq, although the unsolved/univestigated 2001 anthrax attacks are of much interest)

The following day, July 3, the WaPo followed up with their own article - and they discuss two separate issues - that Hatfill was secretly designing mobile weapons labs, and that there was much tension about his involvement (and peripherally that Hatfill was supposed to go to Iraq)

At the risk of a poor attempt to emulate emptywheel, let's go back to Judy's article first:

"Even after the F.B.I. began investigating Dr. Hatfill, the Pentagon continued to draw on his expertise. But tensions arose between the Justice Department and the Defense Department over their access to the mobile unit, the weapons experts said."

Note the headfake here. According to Judy, the tension is about access to the mobile weapons lab.

And if I can pull back a bit again here and remind you what Larisa said about Feith, Perle and Rhode etc getting security clearances:

So it’s astounding that despite the FBI's concerns, despite the concerns of the security clearance staff (each agency has their own staff which does the security background checks), despite past activities, these guys still were able to get their clearances reinstated under this administration. There's only one person who can override all of these various agencies - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld! No one else would have the authority to override the FBI and the security staff concerns, so he must have had interesting reasons for issuing the clearances.

OK - now back to WaPo and why Hatfill's involvement in the project was causing tension:

Hatfill's involvement with the Pentagon as the anthrax investigation intensified created tension between the FBI and the Defense Department, sources close to the investigation said.
[snip]

To facilitate Hatfill's involvement in the training program, the DIA had to appeal to its training contractor, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), to allow the bioweapons expert, who had been stripped of his security clearance, to participate, Black said.

A week before the session began, the SAIC had fired Hatfill amid mounting concern over the FBI's scrutiny of him. But after the DIA's request, the SAIC agreed to allow Hatfill to volunteer in the training program, a Hatfill associate said.

The DIA was so pleased by Hatfill's performance in the specialized training that division leader Esteban Rodriguez wrote a letter of commendation on his behalf to managers at the SAIC. In the letter, dated May 1, 2002, Rodriguez said that Hatfill "consistently displayed unsurpassed technical expertise, unique resourcefulness, total dedication and consummate professionalism. I wish to express my most sincere gratitude to this ultimate biological weapons expert."

Hatfill also secured a letter praising his work for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service. That letter referred to a "counter-measures program" Hatfill developed for State Department personnel who might encounter biological weapons threats. In another effort with the State Department, Hatfill sat in on one meeting about embassy security in the spring of 2002 but was not sent to Afghanistan on an official mission, said a spokesman for the Diplomatic Security Service.

Black said that "there is nothing to indicate that the FBI objected" to Hatfill's role in the secret training course...

But other sources said the Pentagon's insistence on using Hatfill as an instructor even as the FBI intensified its investigation of him angered and puzzled some agents on the case.

Now - I'm not Laurie Mylroie (thank god) - but why do you desperately need (to the point of over-riding security concerns) the 'ultimate biological weapons expert' involved in this stuff? Presumably the 'ultimate expert' would know how to make the stuff - but for the task at hand, all you'd need is some environmental monitoring and some ability to neutralize any dangerous situations.

Ok - now looking at Hatfill's involvement in the designing of the labs (keep in mind that by just about every account (cf Kamel) nobody actually thought that Iraq had any WMD):

"Hatfill, who once conducted research at the Army labs at Fort Detrick, Md., played an intimate role in U.S. preparations for the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, designing special equipment and countermeasures that U.S. teams could use in hostile situations. In one top-secret project, he even helped design a replica of the mobile biological weapons production laboratories that the Pentagon believed troops might encounter in Iraq.

[snip]

A more sensitive part of his job was working with defense and intelligence agencies to design equipment and countermeasures that could be used in an encounter with weapons of mass destruction.

One of Hatfill's most intriguing projects at the SAIC was his design of the mock mobile lab, which was assembled for training of the Delta Force, a commando unit of the U.S. Special Forces based at Fort Bragg. The nonfunctional lab was built on an 18-wheel trailer and fitted with a fermenter and other specialized equipment.

Hatfill planned the equipment, designed the interior layout and stored construction materials in a warehouse before building began, said a source who has seen the vehicle.

[snip]

The trailer, known at the SAIC as the "can," was under construction in late 2001 at a shop in Frederick, where Hatfill once lived in an apartment near Fort Detrick.

[snip]

Col. Bill Darley, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, said that Hatfill also designed a fixed or "static" nonfunctional bioweapons lab for use in training Special Forces in an unspecified location in the western United States.

Darley said he could not discuss details of how these labs have been used in training. The programs, he said, are at the heart of the "dark tactics, techniques and procedures" used to prepare troops for missions abroad.

it's all a bit curious huh? The narrative seems to be that they were trying to create a mock lab so that the 75th would recognize it if they stumbled across it in the Iraqi desert. Why do you need the most highly qualified expert in the world to design the thing? and why is it so uber-hush-hush?

Let's use an analogy - imagine that there's a scientist who can make the best crystal meth on the planet. Now imagine the Feds employ him/her to help local cops all over the country to recognize a basement meth lab whenever they bust into some bobo-land home. It doesn't make any sense. Something else is going on.

The expert has a set of skills - perhaps unique - to create the best 'shit' ever - but you don't need his/her refined skills to identify every generic attempt to create some home-made shit. You don't need an expert to create a 'mock' lab.

I'll also note that according to wikipedia, Curveball's nonsense about mobile weapons labs started entering the official channels in January 2000 - Curveball being an official Chalabi plant - sanctioned by Rumsfeld & Feith et al, brought to you by Wayne Downing (INC) and Francis Brooke (Rendon/BKSH, then INC) and others. And I'll further note that the judge on the Hatfill case was none other than Judge Reggie Walton - he just happens to have Libby's case, and he keeps getting assigned to Sibel Edmonds' cases.

In summary, I guess my question is this: is it possible that the egadministration was somehow planning to airlift Laurie Mylroie's wet-dream into Iraq in the shape of a perfectly-engineered anthrax-makin' mobile-weapons-lab?

What became of it? Did Brewster Jennings somehow prevent its arrival? Were they running around trying to clean up the nefariousness?

Why did Judy Miller break this story? What was she trying to pre-empt?

so many questions...

(update - hello rawstorians. you may be interested in my interview with Larisa Alexandrovna)

(update from the comments. emptywheel: "my Judy series makes a pretty compelling case that she was sent to Iraq to make sure 75th XTF got hooked up with Chalabi so Chalabi could stage some nice intell finds.")

(update - i've written another post on this issue here)

(update - and another post here - with timeline)