QUESTION: The video of April 18th shows U.S. forces going into bunkers that are locked, and there are seals on some of those...
DI RITA: And that’s correct. And it’s not -- we don’t know. Certainly Major Pearson had no responsibility. And we just don’t know to this point. And as we learn, I think we’ve tried to demonstrate, as we learn things we’ll be sure to tell you.
QUESTION: Major, do you have the longitude and latitude and/or GPS coordinates of Objective Elm?
DI RITA: That’s what on the chart.
PEARSON: That’s specified on the chart.
DI RITA: By grid coordinates.
PEARSON: By grid coordinates.
DI RITA: And it overlaps with the facility.
QUESTION: What date were we talking about?
PEARSON: To my best recollection, based on information I have, it was April 13th, 2003.
QUESTION: You were there prior...
DI RITA: That is correct.
QUESTION: ... to the video the ABC affiliate showed of the bunkers being opened.
DI RITA: Of some bunkers being opened, by the 101st Airborne Division personnel who were the ones who asked for this assistance from Major Pearson’s unit sometime...
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) tell us what these pictures show that we haven’t seen yet? Because perhaps that would additionally clarify the matter, if you can. What do they show?
PEARSON: Ma’am, the pictures I have were digital photos as a commander on the ground that I took. All right, this is a soldier inside the bunker, just like a few -- this wasn’t an investigative photos. And that’s how I, sort of...
DI RITA: One picture I saw, just to describe it -- and if we can we’ll try to make it available -- is a picture of boxes that look very similar to the kinds of boxes that we see the 101st Airborne Division personnel looking at the following week.
QUESTION: Major, if you mission was to clear the ammo, were there troops waiting for your arrival guarding this area or was it wide open?
PEARSON: There was no troops waiting for my arrival. My mission was to go in there and to assist the corps support group that was supporting the 101st in their area to minimize the exposure of their troops to capture enemy munition.
DI RITA: But 101st was -- had, as General Petraeus has said -- they were on the facility. I mean, that was their facility at that point.
QUESTION: When you left the facility, how much explosives were still there?
PEARSON: I don’t know. I can’t speak about what was left. I can speak about what I took out of the facility.
QUESTION: But did you -- I mean, you took out as much as you could, but there was more there. Is that right?
PEARSON: My intent was to go in there and the stuff that was easily exposed. I completed my mission, I got what I needed to get. And we went back to captured munition holding area to continue the operations to support 3rd I.D.
DI RITA: It’s almost certain there was more, because we have seen the 101st -- if the dates are correct from the reporters that were embedded with the 101st.
QUESTION: The other bunkers that you left, you didn’t check, the ones that you didn’t go into -- what was the status of them? Was there dirt pushed up against them? Were they locked? What happened?
PEARSON: I did see some bunkers, some earth-covered magazines that had berms of earth and gravel pushed up in front of them. This is a technique I’ve seen repeatedly, it’s a common military technique to limit access to earth-covered magazines, especially at abandoned sites.
I have seen that at multiple different locations throughout Iraq and...
(UNKNOWN): A common U.S. military technique or...
PEARSON: Common U.S. military -- and -- I can’t say who did it, but it’s a common military technique to prevent access.
DI RITA: I think we have time for one more.
QUESTION: Let me just ask you how you square all of this with the fact that less than 24 hours ago, in two radio interviews, Secretary Rumsfeld said that he didn’t feel the facts were known. He wanted to know more, but yet he said that it was his view it was most likely that the stuff was removed prior to the war by the Saddam Hussein regime because he didn’t see how anything else was possible.
How do you square...
DI RITA: I haven’t seen the transcript of what the secretary said, although I was there when he made his comments. I just don’t remember how precisely he worded it.
What I think he would emphasize, and what I’m certainly emphasizing, is that there’s a lot we don’t know.
We also -- I think the point he was trying to make is that there was certainly activity, and I would describe it only because that’s the way the people describe these things as unusual activity at this facility prior to the arrival of U.S. forces and after the departure of inspectors from Baghdad.
DI RITA: Unusual activity meaning large trucks in front of bunkers. Doing what? We don’t know. But it was at a period of time when only Saddam Hussein was in control of that facility.
We have seen other photos, photos we didn’t release, because we don’t know them well enough, that show a significant number of large trucks on that site, near those bunkers.
QUESTION: What should we take away from this very capable, well- informed major here as to what he’s telling us? Is this just another potential scenario you’re outlining for us?
DI RITA: No. We have no scenario.
What I would think you would take away is what I have tried to describe, which is there’s probably more we don’t know about that 377 tons than what we know, other than we’ve destroyed 400,000 tons of ammunition in that country. We had people moving about freely on that facility prior to the arrival of U.S. forces, armed people, Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard. They attacked our forces from inside that facility.
And as we try to better understand what happened to 1/1,000 of the ammunition that we have already identified or destroyed, we will provide those facts.
That’s about all we got time for. Thank you very much.
END
