QUESTION: Why doesn’t the major talk about that?
(CROSSTALK)
DI RITA: Excuse me for one moment.
The major had -- we had units that had responsibility for identifying and understanding what IAEA seals were. The major’s unit had the responsibility to go in and clear conventional ordnance.
QUESTION: But, Larry, you’ve told us that you believe part of the 250 tons represents the material under question. You have said that.
DI RITA: Represents some portion of the material.
QUESTION: The major has not said that. So we would like to hear from him...
QUESTION: Do you believe you had RDX in there?
PEARSON: I had plastic explosives in there.
QUESTION: It’s the HMX that we’re concerned about. And you’ve seen that video that the affiliate...
PEARSON: I have not.
QUESTION: You’ve not shown him the video of the barrels? Didn’t you just say you’ve shown him...
(CROSSTALK)
DI RITA: He saw some photos from yesterday, and had understood that, as I said, the palletized boxes -- I think you said those were the kinds of things you removed. The barrels that some people have said is HMX that I don’t know is accurate and I’m not prepared to stipulate whether it is or is not was not.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) a symbol on it though that...
DI RITA: The one we have seen on some of the photos is a symbol that identifies a class of ordinance.
PEARSON: Hazardous division class. This is one of the techniques we teach to ordnance and how you use -- it’s an international symbol for shipping hazardous materials. The Haz Class Division 1.1D (ph) -- there’s multiple types of ordinance in that class. Off the top of my head, I’m sure there is at least 80 or 90 different types. And whether it’s HMX, I couldn’t verify it.
QUESTION: You talk about this procedure though. You say there’s a procedure in place and they know what to do. And yet apparently the major didn’t know he was even looking for HMX or what was there or what to do if you found it sealed.
Do you remember seeing the IAEA seals?
PEARSON: There was -- I do not -- I did not see any IAEA seals at the locations that we went into. I was not looking for that.
My mission specifically was to go in there and to prevent the exposure of U.S. forces and to minimize that by taking out what was easily accessible and putting it back and bringing it into our captured ammunition holding area.
DI RITA: And some of these are good questions that we are still trying to better understand and as we do that we will try and provide it.
QUESTION: I’m not understanding your conclusion, Larry.
Based on what the major has said, how do you come to the conclusion that some of the 250 tons this unit removed is the materiel under question?
QUESTION: How do you make...
DI RITA: As we’re developing our better understanding of this, we have a -- the term that was being used throughout the theater for RDX is plastic explosives. It was, sort of, an interchangeable term.
So we don’t -- I can’t say that RDX that was on the list of the IAEA is in what the major pulled out. The major has said, and I think in terms of the way we have tried to understand this, is that we believe that some of the things that they were pulling out of there was RDX.
Was it RDX that is associated with what the IAEA declared? My only point on that is I’m not sure what we know what the IAEA declared, because they first said there were some 141 tons of it there. We are now trying to better understand some of the reports that indicate there may have been only three tons of it at that particular building.
QUESTION: Isn’t that tonnage discrepancy already accounted for by the IAEA by the fact it is stored at a nearby facility that is called the...
DI RITA: We are trying to understand that better. I’m not in any position to comment on that.
The initial report was 141 tons at this facility. We are hearing some more refined explanation by the IAEA, that, well, maybe this facility really meant another facility 30 kilometers away. So it’s a fair question. And we don’t have an answer. And we are not prepared to talk to that today.
QUESTION: Could you describe the palletized boxes? Mr. Di Rita just mentioned palletized boxes. Could you describe what kind of boxes they were?
Did you actually go into bunkers or just go to those materiels that were easily accessible, because we’ve seen much of it lying around on the ground?
PEARSON: We went into the bunkers that were easily accessible. We used a palletized loading system, was our vehicle transport. Most of the ammunition had to be loaded on to that, either manual or using a forklift. There are small boxes, 24 square, but it’s a vary, depending on what you had. The det cord comes in large rolls; from my recollection, about a three foot diameter of a roll of detonation cord.
QUESTION: So the palletized boxes, were they wooden boxes? Cardboard?
PEARSON: Wooden boxes, sir.
QUESTION: Can I ask one question -- actually two questions. One is, you said you had nine vehicles, 33 tons each, roughly. That’s 297 tons. Was that more like it, or is it 250? Do we know?
PEARSON: Sir, the way -- I’m calculating, and it’s an estimation on my part of what we did, I went in there with nine vehicles, so it’s a truck and a trailer, which equates to 18.
PEARSON: On one of those trailers I had a 6K forklift on one of those trailers. So that gives me 17.
And just if you look at the configuration and the packing and the characteristics by weight and cube of how you’re going to pack that ammunition, it brings you down to the ballpark of around 250 as an estimation, just by how much I could fit if I compare it with what I know about U.S. ammunition, which is just very similar. It’s about 3,600 pounds to a four-by-four pallet, which is a standard international pallet and how many can fit on a flat rack.
QUESTION: OK. Just to follow up, just two things.
