The Iraqi scientist ASIO chose to ignore (WMDs IRAQ)

he Iraqi scientist ASIO chose to ignore said that hundreds of chemicals and chemical weapons, including missiles and artillery shells, had been secretly stockpiled to deal with internal dissent. "They were reserved for emergencies such as another Shiite uprising. They could have been moved after I escaped Iraq, I cannot say for sure, but I doubt that. These places took years to build."

Rashid, who was issued with a temporary protection visa by the Refugee Review Tribunal in October 2000, said he had offered to identify the bunkers in the hope that he could obtain visas for his wife and children living in Damascus. "A death warrant had been issued for me and I was concerned about the safety of my family," he said.

Two officers from the Immigration Department's intelligence unit interviewed Rashid on February 7, 2003. They passed on his information to ASIO. But during the interview, Rashid was warned that once the Iraq war began, the Australian Government would not investigate his information. He said the officer told him that "if war breaks out next week, it is all academic . . . At a time like this the Government is very busy and it does not have time to chase down leads".

Present at the interview were Rashid's migration agent, Mr Young, the CEO of Australian Migration Program and Investments (AMPI), and AMPI director Michael Walker.

Mr Young said a senior ASIO officer rang him in March "to say that ASIO had no further interest in our client and would not be interviewing him. I was stunned."

Mr Young said he had subsequently forwarded to ASIO an approximate description of a storage site on an island in the Tigris River opposite Saddam University in the al-Jadriyah district, but withheld details of the other four sites. He said he heard nothing more.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock confirmed yesterday that ASIO had not interviewed Rashid but had decided that the information supplied on the site in the Tigris River was not believable.

Asked why ASIO had not interviewed the scientist or sought information about the remaining four sites, the spokesman said: "It is the information that is important, not whether somebody is staring him in the eyeballs.

"If he is withholding information, then that is his decision, but the information he has provided was found not to be credible."

Mr Young said yesterday it was surprising that his client's information had been dismissed without ASIO seeking a face-to-face meeting using an interpreter for accuracy. "We gave ASIO only approximate information on the Tigris site and no information on the other four sites because we believed ASIO would come back to us. The exact detail of how to enter the underground site on the Tigris was not provided.

"We were happy to hand all the information over, but we wanted to impress upon the Government the need to urgently secure visas for our client's family."

He said he was shocked by the decision not to interview his client given the then controversy over the existence and whereabouts of Saddam's weapons.

"The Prime Minister went to war over Saddam's WMD yet his agencies were obviously not primed to hunt down every available skerrick of information," Mr Young said.

Rashid's identity and former occupation are confirmed by the Refugee Review Tribunal, which heard and granted his appeal for refugee status.

During extensive interviews with The Age, Rashid said he had been interviewed by ASIO twice, once in early 2000 soon after his arrival in Australia for a routine identity check, and again on release from the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention centre. On the latter occasion, he was questioned by British, Australian and US intelligence about Iraq's stealth technology and the taskforce codenamed "al-Babel".

"They knew a lot about it and they were relieved to know that it had basically fallen in a heap after my arrest. We had perfected the technology in a laboratory, but it had not been put into production," he said.

"At these meetings no questions were asked about weapons of mass destruction, they were not an issue then, although I had been trained in their use and knew all about them."

Rashid - who escaped from Iraq three years before the Iraq war after being sentenced to death for his part in an assassination plot - said the sites could not be easily demolished as they were concrete underground structures. "If they want, I will go to Baghdad tomorrow and show them exactly were these sites are."

"Skerrick Sunday 1

Kel Richards writes:

The word skerrick means “a small amount; a small fragment; the slightest bit”. It’s use is almost always negative: we might easily say that we don’t have a skerrick of something, but it would unusual to say that we do have a skerrick – unusual, but not entirely unknown, as in “How much is left?” – “Just a skerrick”. Skerrick is one of those words that began life as a British dialect word, came to Australia with the early settlers, and survived here in colloquial Australian English while fading out of existence in the land of its birth. It’s recorded in Australia as early as 1854 (in a book called Gallops and Gossips) in the statement: “I have plenty of tobacco, but not a skerrick of tea or sugar” (which is, clearly, the modern sense of the word). So, where did the word come from? The 1823 edition of Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue records the word “scurrick” which is said to be thieves’ cant for a half-penny (it’s recorded in the same sense, in the same year, in a Dictionary of Turf by “Jon Bee”). And this word “scurrick” is sometimes recorded as “scuttick” and sometimes as “skiddick” so it is probably the origin of “skerrick” – especially as the meaning seems to match: a half-penny being “a small amount”."

ASIO erred in ignoring WMD info: Democrat

By Russell Skelton

April 2, 2004

Australian Democrats Leader Andrew Bartlett yesterday described ASIO's decision not to interview a top Iraqi scientist about the location of five claimed chemical weapons bunkers as extraordinary and troubling.

"On the evidence available it is strange that they did not investigate his claims further. It doesn't sound at all inspiring," Senator Bartlett said.

He said the scientist's claims should have been thoroughly scrutinised as a matter of routine. "It seems they just followed up one little piece of information and then decided to let the entire matter drop," he said.

The Age revealed yesterday that a top Iraqi scientist, who uses the pseudonym Rashid, offered the Federal Government information purporting to pinpoint the location of five secret bunkers just days before the Iraq war began. The scientist, a key member of Saddam's inner circle of scientific advisers before fleeing to Australia in 1999, offered the information to the assistant director of the Immigration Department's intelligence unit, who found him to be credible and referred the information to ASIO. But a senior ASIO manager subsequently dismissed it as being of "no further interest" and he was never interviewed.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, the minister responsible for ASIO, said last night that ASIO would be "more than happy" to investigate any additional information the scientist had on WMD sites in Iraq. "If he has other information he feels free to pass on ASIO, it will be checked out," he said. The spokesman defended ASIO's decision not to interview the scientist on the grounds that written evidence was easier to verify than verbal testimony.

"If information is put down on paper then there is no doubt as to what it is," he said. "The information he provided was assessed in Australia and the United States and found not to be credible."

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I was following up an old story trying to find out if anything developed in the time since I found this. All I could find was a story from around the time of the first one. Apparently, although the issue got to the Australian parliment, the Aussie and US Intelligence blew it off. The guy dared them, "If they want, I will go to Baghdad tomorrow and show them exactly were these sites are."

With all the money and effort they spent, they should have called him on this and feed him to the lions if it was a lie. The Duelfer report may be what the experts believe now, but they are the ones that believed Iraq was teeming with WMDs before the war.

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