Covert Unit Hunted for Iraqi Arms

It is possible, as some administration officials assert, that "exploitation" of files and captured Iraqis -- the intelligence term for using one lead to generate another -- may have brought the search to the brink of major results.

"People who say there are no weapons are going to be quite embarrassed within weeks or months, when the material comes out," the high-ranking official said. He said that "there are things we are finding that are in train," under preparation for public disclosure, but he declined to elaborate.

But many of those most knowledgeable about Task Force 20's work, some of whom observed it at close quarters, said there is no sign of decisive evidence in the information gathered to date. They said most of Task Force 20's successes -- seizing files, wanted scientists and potentially "hot samples" of lethal substances -- came early in the war.

Intelligence specialists at the team's Baghdad airport headquarters, where many of the most important Iraqi prisoners are held, are interrogating leaders of the former Iraqi weapons program in cooperation with the CIA and the DIA. But the highest-ranking Iraqi weaponeers -- including Rihab Rashid Taha, known in the West as Dr. Germ, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a Texas-trained microbiologist dubbed Mrs. Anthrax -- have disclosed almost nothing.

"Most of the very senior people, the [deck of 55] cards people, are saying very little," said a career national security official who is in a position to give an authoritative assessment. "What they are saying is largely BS -- 'I was not very close to Saddam,' 'I don't know anything about WMD.' It's all very orchestrated."

Though the weapons hunt was Task Force 20's primary assignment, some of its greatest successes came in the three additional missions for which it was organized.

One was "direct action" against time-sensitive targets in enemy-held territory. Among the disaster scenarios envisioned by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the Central Command chief, before the war was the prospect that Iraqi forces might destroy the Haditha Dam, which holds vast floodwaters on the Euphrates River 130 miles northwest of Baghdad. Its demolition would likely have killed a great many Iraqi civilians, "caused an ecological catastrophe and flooded the Euphrates plain, which was a primary approach to Baghdad" for the 3rd Infantry Division, a knowledgeable officer said.

Task Force 20, including a detachment from the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, took the dam intact after three to four days of intense combat beginning April 2. It found no evidence that the Iraqis in fact attempted to blow up the dam.

Task Force 20 was also assigned to capture or kill "high-value targets," the U.S. military's euphemism for high-ranking wanted Iraqis. Some, such as Taha and Ammash, played important roles in the weapons program, and others, including Abbas, were sought for unrelated reasons. The team's third mission was prisoner rescue, and it led the mission to retrieve Lynch from her Iraqi hospital bed in early April.

In its weapons hunting assignment, the special mission unit at the core of Task Force 20 had many advantages over the Defense Department's more public search teams. The teams operating openly lacked reliable communications gear, Arabic linguists, on-call helicopters and personnel with experience in Iraq. They often visited sites without knowing the extensive histories of U.N. inspections there. One team leader did not recognize Iraq's second-largest nuclear waste storage facility.

"We do not have the capability to fight for intelligence," the leader of one search team said. "We do not have the capability to fight for materiel. We do not have the capability to take people for questioning against their will. There are other units in the armed services that do that."

Task Force 20 employs the best-trained combat forces in the U.S. military. It can launch a mission with less than an hour's notice and communicate securely from anywhere in Iraq. It is equipped with the most advanced detection technology, including DNA identification of pathogens. Its biological and chemical laboratories, from the Theater Army Medical Laboratory, fit inside a collapsible tent that could be transported on the back of a Humvee. And it has full-time access to stealthy helicopters -- MH-60 Pave Hawks, MH-47 Special Operations Aircraft, and AH/MH-6 Little Bird gunships -- that enabled it to move covertly and defend itself.

Task Force 20 was able to reach most of its early target sites before they could be stripped by Iraqi insiders or looters from the general population. Because of that, the team took many more potentially "hot samples" than the openly operating search units. It has shipped hundreds of samples to Army and Navy laboratories in Maryland, one senior officer said, including about 90 this month. Knowledgeable sources said that none of the samples has produced a definitive hit.

Site survey teams attached to conventional military units, which most often found their targets looted and burned, occasionally learned to their chagrin that mysterious U.S. forces had already been there. Col. Richard McPhee and his subordinates at the conventional headquarters took to calling them "secret squirrels." In one case, Task Force 20 was still working when a survey team arrived. Its leader, who did not provide details of his unit or mission, ordered the survey team to leave.

"They were all in uniform, but some were obviously civilians -- long hair, guts on them, some old guys," said a regular Army officer who was present. "There was no attempt at deconfliction at all," he added, using the military term for avoidance of duplicate effort.