Photos point to removal of weapons

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Originally published 11:55 p.m., October 28, 2004, updated 12:00 a.m., October 29, 2004

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U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.

The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."

The official said the convoys are believed to include shipments of sensitive armaments, including equipment used in making plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.

About 380 tons of RDX and HMX, used in making such arms, were reported missing from the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility, though the Pentagon and an embedded NBC News correspondent said the facility appeared to have been emptied by the time U.S. forces got there.

The photographs bolster the claims of Pentagon official John A. Shaw, who told The Washington Times on Wednesday that recent intelligence reports indicate Russian special forces units took part in a sophisticated dispersal operation from January 2003 to March 2003 to move key weapons out of Iraq.

In Moscow, the Russian government denied that its forces were involved in removing weapons from Iraq, dismissing the claims as "far-fetched and ridiculous."

"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structural divisions could not have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because Russian servicemen were not in Iraq long before the beginning of the American-British operation in that country," Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Vyacheslav Sedov told Interfax news agency.

Bush administration officials reacted cautiously to information provided by Mr. Shaw, who said details of the Russian "spetsnaz" forces' involvement in a program of document-shredding and weapons dispersal came from two European intelligence services.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was unaware of the information in The Times report.

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