One is you don’t have the percentage of what we are calling HMX and RDX, the plastic explosives. You don’t have a percentage of that total lift -- like an estimate that you think how much it might be of that -- what you took out of those bunkers. Is there an estimate?
PEARSON: No, sir.
Before, when my company left out of there we, one, because this was all classified. Everything -- all our documentation was classified. And the procedures that we followed -- was I turned it into my rear area operations center, which when they left the country, they turned it into their rear operation center. All I...
DI RITA: And they’re pursuing that to determine that (inaudible).
QUESTION: Last question: Judging by what it took for you to remove that 200 tons, with the forklifts, the tractor trailers, et cetera, do you believe it’s possible to move that much materiel in a short period of time while U.S. military convoys are moving up and down those roads?
It would be from -- the last time would be April 18th -- let’s say the new video -- to May 8th, when the inspection team comes in and doesn’t find the IAEA-marked material. So it would be about -- I don’t know? -- 20 days.
Is it possible to get all of that done? The forklifts, the trucks -- without anybody in the U.S. military knowing?
DI RITA: You mean if somebody else were doing it?
QUESTION: Right. Yes. Yes. I’m saying, insurgents or looters, or whatever.
PEARSON: Sir, I know what -- we went in there, we did it in about a day. It’s not -- it seems like an exorbitant amount, but when you take it in the scope of we were managing 7,000 tons of ammunition, we just completed a major mission in Baghdad, this wasn’t that significant of an operation.
At the time when I was in Objective Elms, that area was very pacified where there wasn’t a lot of civilians in the area at that time.
PEARSON: If they were, they were very respectful to U.S. forces. They were very respectful to us. I didn’t see any hostilities at that location at that time.
DI RITA: But if I can just provide a little more -- Colonel Perkins, when he was here speaking about that -- and Colonel Perkins was the brigade commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division who was there just a few days prior to Major Pearson -- he talked a little bit about that.
And it was his perception that that size of an operation, while small in terms of the total number of weapons we were finding, would have been something his forces, which were the combat forces, would certainly have noticed; that a large number of trucks that Iraqis were trying to move up and down those roads were something his unit would certainly have -- he believes they would have noticed that.
QUESTION: Major Pearson, just to remove any confusion about what you’re telling us, can you tell us definitively that any of the materiel that you or your unit destroyed was among the 300-plus tons of the high explosives under IAEA seal? Can you tell us that definitively?
PEARSON: I can tell you that I recovered captured enemy ammunition from Objective Elms and I moved that approximately 200 to 250 tons of ammunition to the captured ammunition holding area at Dogwood, which I managed.
QUESTION: Wait a second, can he tell us whether that was the materiel -- the 300 plus tons that were under IAEA seal? Can you tell us that that was the same materiel? Are we talking about the same materiel?
DI RITA: You don’t know, sir?
PEARSON: I don’t know. I don’t have that information.
DI RITA: And let me help you with that.
I get that you guys really want the definitive answer, and so do we. The difference is that that takes understanding facts, and we have tried to uncover facts over the last week, at a point after which many people thought they had the definitive answer, and we simply do not.
So it is perfectly understandable that people would like to have somebody at this podium say definitively, “This happened. “
Even the number you used is not definitive: 300 tons of this or that. It’s in a report provided by Saddam Hussein in June of ’02 -- I think June or July. It’s in a report repeated in October of ’04 by the Iraqi government.
In between there are other reports by the IAEA that we are trying to better understand because they don’t, at least at first glance and deeper analysis, seem to track the same numbers.
So we’re trying our best to understand it.
You want a definitive answer. Others have said that they think they know the definitive answer.
DI RITA: We’re simply saying we don’t.
QUESTION: HMX was under seal. HMX is the only thing under seal. Did you see seals? Did you go into locked bunkers? You said you only went into bunkers that were easily accessible.
PEARSON: My mission was to go into bunkers and to prevent the exposure...
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
PEARSON: I went to in bunkers that we would easily get into and remove that.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
QUESTION: What does that mean? Sorry. Can you clarify?
PEARSON: That it was open, and I was able to take my troops in there, and that was exposed.
QUESTION: There were no seals. So that would...
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
PEARSON: No seals. I did not see any seals.
QUESTION: ... it was not HMX.
DI RITA: Unless somebody had come by and already opened the seals.
QUESTION: But you saw the video of April 18th.
DI RITA: Right.
