title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Some of the players suggested the e-mail was intended as humorous irony. Administrators asserted the e-mail was an imitation of Patrick Bateman, the protagonist in the Bret Easton Ellis novel, "American Psycho", which was read and lectured upon in more than one Duke class, as shown by the e-mail responses from other players. One response read, "I'll bring the Phil Collins," another reference to the "American Psycho" book and film. Police released the McFadyen e-mail but refused to release the following e-mail exchanges, leaving the impression that the McFadyen e-mail was actually intended as a serious threat. McFadyen thereafter received a thousand death threats in one week.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: The e-mail led many people to assume guilt on the part of the players. McFadyen was not charged with any crime, but he was temporarily suspended from Duke, with the university citing safety concerns. He was invited back to Duke to continue his studies later that summer.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On March 14, 2006, the day after the party, the Durham Police Department (DPD) began their investigation into the rape allegations by interviewing Mangum and searching 610 North Buchanan pursuant to a warrant. The three team captains who lived at the house, including Evans, voluntarily gave statements and DNA samples to police and offered to take lie detector tests. The police turned down the offer. The DPD made their investigation public on March 15, when Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the police supervisor, posted on a digital community bulletin board that they were investigating the rape of a young woman by three males at 610 North Buchanan on March 13, and asking anyone in the area who saw or heard anything unusual to contact Investigator Benjamin Himan.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Between March 16 and 21, police showed Mangum photo arrays in an attempt to have her identify her attackers. Each photo array only contained photographs of lacrosse team members, and did not follow the DPD's recommended policy of including photos of individuals not regarded as potential suspects (known as "fillers"). Mangum identified Seligmann as someone who attended the party, but not as an attacker, and did not identify Evans at all despite seeing his photo twice.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On March 27, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong received his first briefing on the case from Gottlieb and Himan. Within a few hours of receiving the briefing, Nifong made his first public statement on the case. Over the following week, Nifong by his own estimate gave fifty to seventy interviews and devoted more than forty hours to reporters. After that, he continued to make statements, although less frequently. Many of these statements concerned the team members' alleged failure or refusal to provide information to law enforcement authorities; their invocation of their constitutional rights; or Nifong's own opinions that a crime had occurred, that it was racially motivated, and that one or more lacrosse players were guilty.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Mangum was shown another photo array containing only photos of the 46 white lacrosse team members, including members who had not attended the party, and with no fillers. The photos were shown to Mangum as a PowerPoint presentation, with each photo projected individually to Mangum, instead of displaying all the pictures arrayed together. For the first time, Mangum identified photos of Seligmann, Evans, and Finnerty as her attackers. She also identified at least one other photo as being a player who was present at the party; further investigation showed he had not been there.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On April 10, an attorney retained by one of the lacrosse players stated that time-stamped photographs existed which showed that Mangum was already injured when she arrived at the party, and was very impaired. Players' attorneys announced that DNA testing by the North Carolina state crime lab had failed to connect any members of the Duke men's lacrosse team to the alleged rape.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Seligmann and Finnerty were arrested and indicted on April 18 on charges of first degree forcible rape, first degree sexual offense and kidnapping. The same day, search warrants were executed on Finnerty and Seligmann's dorm rooms. Seligmann reportedly told multiple teammates, "I'm glad they picked me", alluding to a solid alibi in the form of ATM records, photographs, cell phone records, an affidavit from a taxi driver, and a record of his DukeCard being swiped at his dorm.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: DNA Security Inc. (DSI), a private company engaged by Nifong to perform a second round of DNA testing, produced an incomplete report which contained an analysis of DNA found on false fingernails discarded by Mangum in the bathroom trash bin, and concluded that 2% of the male population, including Evans, could not be excluded from a match with the fingernail DNA. DSI director Brian Meehan later testified that, pursuant to an agreement between himself and Nifong, he had deliberately withheld information from the lab's report.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On May 15, 2006, former team captain and 2006 Duke graduate Evans became the third player to be indicted on charges of first-degree forcible rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. Just before turning himself in at the Durham County Detention Center, he made a public statement declaring his innocence and his expectation of being cleared of the charges within weeks.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Court documents revealed that Roberts, in her initial statement, had said she was with Mangum the entire evening except for a period of less than five minutes. Additionally, after hearing Mangum claim she was sexually assaulted, she called her claims "a crock".


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On December 22, 2006, Nifong dropped the rape charges against all three lacrosse players after Mangum told an investigator a different version of events and said she was no longer sure about some aspects of her original story. The kidnapping and sexual offense charges were still pending against all three players.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On December 28, 2006, the North Carolina bar filed ethics charges against Nifong over his conduct in the case, accusing him of making public statements that were prejudicial to the administration of justice and heightened public condemnation of the accused, and of engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. The 17-page document accused Nifong of violating four rules of professional conduct, listing more than 100 examples of statements he made to the media.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On January 12, 2007, Nifong sent a letter to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper asking to be taken off the case, citing the responsibility of the case to the Attorney General's office. The following day, January 13, Cooper announced that his office would take over the case.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On January 24, 2007, the North Carolina State Bar filed a second round of ethics charges against Nifong for a systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion that was prejudicial to the administration of justice when he withheld DNA evidence to mislead the court.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On March 23, 2007, Justin Paul Caulfield, a legal analyst for the sports magazine "Inside Lacrosse", stated on Fox News that the charges against Evans, Finnerty, and Seligmann would soon be dropped. While the North Carolina Attorney General's Office first disputed the report, on April 11, 2007, it announced that it had dismissed all charges against the three lacrosse players. Cooper not only dismissed the charges but also took the unusual step of declaring the accused players innocent. Cooper also announced that Mangum would not be prosecuted, stating that investigators and attorneys that had interviewed her thought "she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling ... it's in the best interest of justice not to bring charges".


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On April 12, 2007, the attorney general, in declaring Seligmann, Finnerty, and Evans innocent, also called Nifong a "rogue prosecutor".


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Shortly after the party, the prosecution ordered 46 of the 47 lacrosse team members to provide DNA samples, although some members had been absent from the party. The sole black member of the team was exempt because Mangum had stated that her attackers were white. On April 10, 2006, it was announced that DNA testing by the state crime lab had failed to connect any of the 46 tested team members to the alleged rape.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: After the initial tests by the state crime lab, prosecutor Nifong sought the services of a private laboratory, DNA Security, Inc. (aka DSI) of Burlington, North Carolina, to conduct additional tests. DNA from multiple unidentified males was found inside Mangum and upon the rape kit items that had been tested, but none matched any of the lacrosse players. Nifong falsely represented to the court and the public that DNA had only been found from a single male source, Mangum's boyfriend.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In a motion made on December 15, 2006, defense attorneys argued that the DNA analysis report written by DSI and provided to them by Nifong's office was incomplete, because it omitted information showing that none of the genetic material from several men found on Mangum matched any DNA sample from the lacrosse team. Brian Meehan, the director of DSI who wrote the misleading report, testified that his lab did not try to withhold information, but acknowledged that the decision not to release the full report violated the lab's policies. Meehan testified that after discussions with Nifong, he decided to withhold the names of the persons excluded by the DNA testing (all 46 tested members of the lacrosse team) to protect the privacy of players not implicated in the case, despite the fact that two players (Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty) had already been indicted for rape more than three weeks prior to the release date of the report. Meehan was later fired in October 2007 based on this incident.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: DNA was also taken from all surfaces of three of Mangum's false fingernails retrieved from the trash in the party house bathroom (widely but inaccurately reported as DNA taken only from the "underside" of a single fingernail). According to DNA Security, the fingernail DNA showed some characteristics similar to lacrosse player David Evans's DNA. However, the match was not conclusive, as 2% of the male population (including Evans) could not be excluded based on the sample. In addition, because Evans lived in the house, defense attorneys contended that any DNA present might have come from the tissue paper, cotton swabs, or other hygiene-related trash that had been in the garbage can along with the fingernail. This was confirmed later by Attorney General Cooper's investigation: "to the extent that Evans's DNA could not be excluded, the SBI experts confirmed that the DNA could easily have been transferred to the fingernails from other materials in the trash can".


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Nifong contended that lack of DNA evidence is not unusual and that 75–80% of all sexual assault cases lack DNA evidence. Rape victims often delay reporting by days or weeks, inadvertently destroying DNA evidence. However, in this case, Mangum had a rape-kit exam administered only hours after the end of the party, so the absence of DNA evidence was considered unlikely by legal experts.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: At Nifong's subsequent ethics trial on June 14, 2007, the complete DNA findings were revealed during defense attorney Brad Bannon's testimony. According to conservative estimates, the lab had discovered at least two unidentified males' DNA in Mangum's pubic region; at least two unidentified males' DNA in her rectum; at least four to five unidentified males' DNA on her underpants; and at least one identified male's DNA in her vagina.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In November 2005, Finnerty and two of his Chaminade High School lacrosse teammates were charged with misdemeanor simple assault in Washington, D.C., following an altercation with a Washington man outside a Georgetown bar. Finnerty was accused of threatening and taunting the man.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Although the man alleged that Finnerty had pushed and threatened him, the man was actually punched by a third party (a friend of Finnerty), who admitted to the punch. Witnesses later testified that Finnerty himself had actually been hit in the head by a friend of the alleged victim. Although the man alleged that Finnerty and his companions had called him "gay" (among other derogatory names), the incident was not prosecuted as a hate crime. Finnerty was initially accepted into a diversion program for first offenders, allowing for the simple assault charge to be dismissed upon his completion of community service.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: However, after the Durham charges appeared, the Washington, D.C. prosecutor cancelled his diversion agreement and proceeded with the assault charge. At trial, the chief defense witness was not permitted to testify and police officers presented details which were not in their notes.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Finnerty was convicted and sentenced to six months' probation. Afterwards, he was repeatedly threatened by the judge (John H. Bayly, Jr.) with confinement; once, after an anonymous blog post falsely accused him of violating an order preventing him from being in Georgetown; and again after he was absent from home and missed an obligatory curfew in order to be in Durham to work on his defense there, an absence which he had previously cleared with the judge. Some observers noted the similarity of this treatment with previous attempts by the government to pressure witnesses to testify in a certain manner. On December 28, 2006, shortly after the Durham rape charges against Finnerty were dropped, Judge Bayly ended Finnerty's probation.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In January 2007, Finnerty's assault conviction was vacated (by an order signed by Bayly) and his record was cleared.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Lawyers for the Duke lacrosse players have said that Mangum was intoxicated with alcohol and possibly other drugs on the night of the party. By the accuser's own admission to police, she had taken prescription Flexeril and drank "one or two large-size beers" before she went to the party.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: The Attorney General's office later noted that Mangum had taken Ambien, methadone, Paxil, and amitriptyline, although when she began taking these medications is uncertain. She had a long history of mental problems and suffers from bipolar disorder.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Over the course of the scandal, police reports, media investigations, and defense attorneys' motions and press conferences brought to light several key inconsistencies in Mangum's story.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: However, it was later revealed that DNA from multiple males who were neither the lacrosse players nor Mangum's boyfriend had been found, but that these findings had been deliberately withheld from the Court and the defense.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Lawyers and media have questioned the methods of the photo identification process, and have argued that the police supervisor in the case, Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, has unfairly targeted Duke students in the past.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Lawyers and media reports alike suggested the photo identification process was severely flawed. During the photo identifications, Mangum was told that she would be viewing Duke University lacrosse players who attended the party, and was asked if she remembered seeing them at the party and in what capacity. Defense attorneys claimed this was essentially a "multiple-choice test in which there were no wrong answers", while Duke law professor James Earl Coleman Jr. posits that "[t]he officer was telling the witness that all are suspects, and say, in effect, 'Pick three.' It's so wrong."


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: U.S. Department of Justice guidelines suggest including at least five non-suspect filler photos for each suspect included, as did the Durham Police Department's own General Order 4077, adopted in February 2006.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Ross (the only player she identified as attending the party with 100% certainty during both procedures) provided police investigators with evidence that he was with his girlfriend at North Carolina State University before, during, and after the party through cell phone records and an affidavit from a witness. Another person whom the accuser had identified in April also provided police with evidence that he did not attend the party at all. In regards to Seligmann's identification, Mangum's confidence increased from 70% in March to 100% in April. Gary Wells — an Iowa State University professor and expert on police identification procedures — has asserted that memory does not improve with time.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: According to the transcript of the photo identification released on "The Abrams Report", Mangum also stated that David Evans had a mustache on the night of the attack. Evans's lawyer stated that his client has never had a mustache and that photos as well as eyewitness testimony would reveal that Evans has never had a mustache.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Defense lawyers suggested police used intimidation tactics on witnesses. On May 11, Moezeldin Elmostafa, an immigrant taxi driver who signed a sworn statement about Seligmann's whereabouts that defense lawyers say provides a solid alibi, was arrested on a 2½-year-old shoplifting charge. Arresting officers first asked if he had anything new to say about the lacrosse case. When he refused to alter his testimony, he was taken into custody. An arrest and conviction would have destroyed his chance for citizenship and could have led to his deportation. Elmostafa was subsequently tried on the shoplifting charge and acquitted, after a grainy security tape proved that a security guard who was the prosecution's chief witness had "misremembered" events.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Police also arrested Mangum's former husband, Kenneth McNeil; her boyfriend, Matthew Murchison; and another friend, with the disposition of their own separate cases entirely in the hands of District Attorney Nifong. The daughter of Durham's police chief was arrested on an old warrant, and the chief himself remained absent from duty and invisible to the press for most of the case.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: "The News & Observer" suggested that the supervisor of the lacrosse investigation, Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, had unfairly targeted Duke students in the past, putting some of his investigational tactics into question. Gottlieb has made a disproportionate number of arrests of Duke students for misdemeanor violations, such as carrying an open container of alcohol. Normally, these violations earn offenders a pink ticket similar to a traffic ticket.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: From May 2005 to February 2006, when Sgt. Gottlieb was a patrol officer in District 2, he made 28 total arrests. Twenty of those arrests were Duke students, and at least 15 were handcuffed and taken to jail. This is in stark contrast to the other two officers on duty in the same district during that same 10-month period. They made 64 total arrests, only two of which were Duke students. Similarly, "The News & Observer" charges that Gottlieb treated non-students very differently. For example, he wrote up a young man for illegally carrying a concealed .45-caliber handgun and possession of marijuana (crimes far more severe than the Duke students who were taken to jail committed), but did not take him to jail. Residents complimented Gottlieb for dealing fairly with loud parties and disorderly conduct by students.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Duke's student newspaper, "The Chronicle", depicted other examples of violence and dishonesty from Sgt. Gottlieb. It published that one student threw a party at his rental home off-East Campus before a Rolling Stones concert in October 2005. The morning after the concert, at 3 A.M., Sgt. Gottlieb led a raid on the home with nine other officers while the students were half asleep. It reported that one student was dragged out of bed and then dragged down the stairs, that all seven housemates were put in handcuffs, arrested, and taken into custody for violating a noise ordinance and open container of alcohol violations. Sgt. Gottlieb reportedly told one student, an American citizen of Serbian descent, that he could be deported. Other stories include the throwing of a 130 pound male against his car for an open container of alcohol violation, refusing the ID of a student since he was international, searching through a purse without a warrant, refusing to tell a student her rights, and accusations of perjury.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: At the time the rape allegations were made in March 2006, Mike Nifong was in the midst of a difficult Democratic primary election campaign to keep his position as Durham County District Attorney, facing strong opposition. It was understood that if Nifong lost the primary, he would very likely lose his job. Some commentators have opined that Nifong's prosecution of the Duke lacrosse players and his many statements to the media were driven by his political strategy to attract African-American voters. The primary was held on May 6, 2006, and Nifong won by a slim margin of 883 votes. Results showed Nifong won the primary on the basis of strong support from the black community. Nifong went on to win the general election in November 2006, although by a lower margin than usual for Democratic candidates in Durham County at that time.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Nifong hired Linwood E. Wilson as his chief investigator. During Wilson's private detective career, at least seven formal inquiries into his conduct were performed. In 1997, Wilson was reprimanded by the state commission. After his appeal of the decision was rejected, he allowed his detective license to expire. In response to criticism, Wilson stated that no one had ever questioned his integrity. On June 25, 2007, shortly after Nifong's disbarment and removal from office, it was reported that Nifong's replacement, interim district attorney Jim Hardin Jr., fired Wilson from his post.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Mike Pressler, the coach of the lacrosse team, received threatening e-mails and hate calls, had castigating signs placed on his property, and was the frequent victim of vandalism in the aftermath of the accusations. On April 5, 2006, he resigned (later revealed to have been forced) shortly after the McFadyen e-mail became public. Through his lawyer, he stated that his resignation was not an admission of wrongdoing on his part. On the same day, Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University, suspended the remainder of the lacrosse season.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Other Duke faculty members (sometimes referred to as the Group of 88 or the "Gang of 88") have been criticized for their "Social Disaster" letter as well as individual comments and reactions which created a perception of prejudgment.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Shortly after the party, the University's president warned in a school-wide e-mail of threats of gang violence against Duke students. Other Duke students claimed they had been threatened. Mobs protested outside the house that had been the site of the party, banging pots and pans at early hours of the morning.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Photographs of lacrosse team members had been posted prominently around Durham and on the Duke University campus with accompanying captions requesting that they come forward with information about the incident.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Fox News was the sole national television news outlet to reveal Mangum's photo following the dismissal of the case, although MSNBC and "60 Minutes" revealed her name. Several major broadcasters did not publish Mangum's name at any point, including ABC, PBS, CNN, and NBC.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Partially obscured photos of Mangum at the party were broadcast by "The Abrams Report" on cable news channel MSNBC and by local television affiliate NBC 17 WNCN in North Carolina. On April 21, 2006, outspoken talk-radio host Tom Leykis disclosed Mangum's name during his nationally syndicated talk-radio program. Leykis has disclosed identities of accusers of sexual assault in the past. On May 15, 2006, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson disclosed Mangum's first name only on his show, "Tucker". Court records presented by the defense revealed Mangum's name.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On April 11, 2007, several other mainstream media sources revealed or used Mangum's name and/or picture after the attorney general dropped all the charges and declared the players innocent. These sources include: CBS, "The News & Observer", WRAL, all The McClatchy Company's newspapers (which includes 24 newspapers across the country), Fox News, "The Charlotte Observer", the "New York Post", Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" (airdate April 12, 2007) and MSNBC.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: The allegations have inflamed already strained relations between Duke University and its host city of Durham, with members of the Duke lacrosse team being vilified in the press and defamed on and off campus. On May 1, 2006, the New Black Panthers held a protest outside Duke University. The case drew national attention and highlighted racial tensions within the Durham area.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In 2006, Jesse Jackson promised the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition would pay the college tuition for Mangum. Jackson said the tuition offer would still be good even if Mangum had fabricated her story.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On June 16, 2007, the North Carolina State Bar ordered Nifong disbarred after the bar's three-member disciplinary panel unanimously found him guilty of fraud, dishonesty, deceit or misrepresentation; of making false statements of material fact before a judge; of making false statements of material fact before bar investigators, and of lying about withholding exculpatory DNA evidence.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Following the state bar's announcement, Nifong submitted a letter of resignation from his post as Durham County district attorney, that would have become effective in July 2007. However, on June 18, Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson ordered that Nifong be immediately removed from office.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On August 31, 2007, Nifong was held in criminal contempt of court for knowingly making false statements to the court during the criminal proceedings. Durham Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III sentenced Nifong to one day in jail, which he subsequently served.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On December 15, 2006, it was reported that Mangum was pregnant and the judge in the case ordered a paternity test.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In May 2008, Mangum graduated from North Carolina Central University with a degree in police psychology.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On August 22, 2008, a press release announced the planned publication in October 2008 of a memoir by Mangum, "The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story".


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: The press release indicated the book "can't and doesn't deal with the complex legal aspects of the case" but that "the muddling of facts about Crystal's life, along with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper's desire to settle the dispute over open file discovery, swallowed the case whole". Defense attorney Joseph Cheshire responded to the news by saying that if the book was truthful, "I think it would be fabulous, and I don't think anybody would think badly about her in any way, shape or form", but that if the memoir did not acknowledge the falsity of her allegations against the players, that he would advise them to initiate civil action against her. Her book was published later that year. In it, she continued to contend that she had been raped at the party and that the dropping of the case was politically motivated. The book outlined her earlier life, including a claim that she was first raped at the age of 14.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In November 2013, she was found guilty of second-degree murder after she stabbed boyfriend Reginald Daye, who died 10 days after. She argued that she acted in self-defense, fearing that Daye would kill her. She was sentenced to 14 to 18 years in prison.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On June 18, 2007, Duke University announced that it had reached a settlement with Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans. No details of the settlement were disclosed.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Duke reportedly agreed to pay $60 million to the three accused (with each player receiving $20 million) subject to confidentiality requirements. Seligmann's attorney told the "New York Daily News" that the settlement was "nowhere near that much money".


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Seligmann enrolled as a student at Brown University in the fall of 2007, and was an important part of Brown reaching the 2009 NCAA lacrosse tournament as well as a number 10 national ranking. He became an active fundraiser and supporter for the Innocence Project. He graduated from Brown in 2010 and from Emory University School of Law in 2013. He has stated that his experience during the Duke lacrosse case motivated him to attend law school and pursue a legal career.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Finnerty enrolled at Loyola College in Maryland, leading the team in scoring as the Greyhounds qualified for the 2010 NCAA lacrosse tournament. Finnerty graduated from Loyola in May 2010.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: David Evans, who had already graduated from Duke before being charged, received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in May 2012.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In January 2007, lacrosse team member Kyle Dowd filed a lawsuit against Duke University and against a visiting associate professor and member of the Group of 88, Kim Curtis, claiming he and another teammate were given failing grades on their final paper as a form of retaliation after the scandal broke. The case was settled with the terms undisclosed except that Dowd's grade was altered to a P (for "Pass").


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Professor Houston Baker, who continued to accuse Dowd and the others of being "hooligans" and "rapists", called Dowd's mother "the mother of a farm animal" after she e-mailed him. Duke Provost Peter Lange responded to Baker, criticizing Baker for prejudging the team based on race and gender, citing this as a classic tactic of racism.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Duke's Athletic Director at the time, Joe Alleva, who forced lacrosse coach Mike Pressler's resignation, faced criticism for his handling of this case. In 2008, Alleva announced he was leaving Duke for the Athletic Director position at Louisiana State University. The lacrosse team, reinstated for the 2007 season, reached the NCAA Finals as the #1 seed. The Blue Devils lost to the Johns Hopkins University Blue Jays in the championship, 12–11.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In May 2007, Duke requested that the NCAA restore a year's eligibility to the players on the 2006 men's team, part of whose season was canceled. The NCAA granted the team's request for another year of eligibility, which applies to the 33 members of the 2006 team who were underclassmen in 2006 and who remained at Duke in 2007. Four of the seniors from 2006 attended graduate school at Duke in 2007 and played for the team. In 2010, the final year in which the team included fifth-year seniors (freshmen in 2006), Duke won the NCAA Lacrosse Championship beating Notre Dame, 6–5 in overtime, to give the school its first lacrosse championship.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On June 7, 2007, it was announced that lacrosse coach Mike Pressler and Duke had reached a financial settlement. Pressler was later hired as coach by Division II (now Division I) Bryant University in Rhode Island. In October 2007, Pressler filed suit seeking to undo the settlement and hold a trial on his wrongful termination claim on the grounds that Duke spokesman John Burness had made disparaging comments about him. After Duke failed in an attempt to have the case dismissed, the matter was settled in 2010 with Duke apologizing in a press release but refusing to comment regarding any compensation to Pressler.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On August 25, 2007, multiple sources predicted the players would file a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city of Durham.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On September 29, 2007, Duke President Brodhead, speaking at a two-day conference at Duke Law School on the practice and ethics of trying cases in the media, apologized for "causing the families to feel abandoned when they most needed support."


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On July 12, 2010, Duke demolished the house where the party had taken place, 610 North Buchanan Boulevard, after it had sat unoccupied for the four years following the Duke lacrosse case.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: In July 2014, Sgt. Mark Gottlieb committed suicide in DeKalb County, Georgia, where he had worked as a paramedic.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On September 7, 2007, it was reported that the three accused players (Seligmann, Finnerty, and Evans), who had already settled with Duke University, planned to file a lawsuit for violations of their civil rights against the city of Durham and several city employees, unless the city agreed to a settlement including payment of $30 million over five years and the passage of new criminal justice reform laws. The city's liability insurance covers up to $5 million.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Durham declined the settlement offer and on October 5, 2007, the three accused players filed a federal lawsuit alleging a broad conspiracy to frame them. Named in the suit were Nifong, the lab that handled the DNA work, the city of Durham, the city's former police chief, the deputy police chief, the two police detectives who handled the case and five other police department employees. The players were seeking unspecified damages, and also wanted to place the Durham Police Department under court supervision for 10 years, claiming the actions of the police department posed "a substantial risk of irreparable injury to other persons in the City of Durham". According to the suit, Nifong engineered the conspiracy to help him win support for his election bid. Nifong reportedly told his campaign manager that the case would provide "'millions of dollars' in free advertising".


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On January 15, 2008, the city of Durham filed a motion to remove itself as a defendant, arguing it had no responsibility for Nifong's actions. On the same day, Nifong filed for bankruptcy. On May 27, 2008, Judge William L. Stocks lifted the stay from Nifong's bankruptcy filing and ruled that the plaintiffs' lawsuit could go forward.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On March 31, 2011, Judge James Beaty issued a ruling on the "Evans et al." case, upholding claims against Nifong and his hired investigator Wilson for conspiracy to commit malicious prosecution in the course of their investigation; the city of Durham for negligence; Nifong, Wilson, and police investigators Gottlieb and Himan for malicious prosecution, concealment of evidence, and fabrication of false evidence. However, the players' civil rights claims, which constituted the bulk of their Complaint, were dismissed on the grounds that the applicable civil rights laws pertained only to persons of African-American descent.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Plaintiffs contend that they have alleged race discrimination as white plaintiffs. However, the § 1985 claims based on this *971 contention fails for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit have indicated an intent to limit the protections of § 1985 to discrimination against "those classes of persons who are, so far as the enforcement of their rights is concerned, 'in unprotected circumstances similar to those of the victims of Klan violence.'" Buschi, 775 F.2d at 1258 (quoting United Bhd. of Carpenters, 463 U.S. at 851, 103 S.Ct. at 3368); see also "Cloaninger v. McDevitt", No. 106cv135, 2006 WL 2570586 (W.D.N.C. Sept. 3, 2006) ("As recognized by the controlling law in the Fourth Circuit, the only class of persons protected by Section 1985(3) are African Americans.") (citing Harrison, 766 F.2d at 161-62); "Stock v. Universal Foods Corp.", 817 F. Supp. 1300, 1310 (D.Md.1993) (dismissing § 1985(3) claim because plaintiff, as a white male, was not a member of a class that has suffered historically pervasive discrimination); "Blackmon v. Perez", 791 F. Supp. 1086, 1093 (E.D.Va.1992) (dismissing § 1985(3) claims by white plaintiffs because "plaintiffs do not represent a class of persons who [do] not enjoy the possibility of []effective state enforcement of their rights" (internal quotations omitted)).


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On December 17, 2012, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected all of the players' federal claims in "Evans v. Chalmers"


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: To recapitulate, we hold as follows. We reverse the district court's denial of all defendants' motions to dismiss the federal claims alleged against them. We reverse the court's denial of the City's motion for summary judgment as to the state common-law claims alleged against it. We affirm the court's denial of Officers Gottlieb and Himan's motions to dismiss the state common-law malicious prosecution claims alleged against them. We reverse the court's denial of the officers' motions to dismiss all other state common-law claims. We dismiss for lack of appellate jurisdiction the City's appeal of the state constitutional claims alleged against it. Finally, we remand the cases for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: The only claims to survive this decision were state constitutional claims. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III concurred, ruling:


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: A few additional observations may underscore the overblown nature of this case. Plaintiffs have sought to raise every experimental claim and to corral every conceivable defendant. The result is a case on the far limbs of law and one destined, were it to succeed in whole, to spread damage in all directions.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On October 7, 2013, the United States Supreme Court denied the Petition for Certorari filed by Seligmann, Finnerty, and Evans, declining to review the decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On May 16, 2014, the three accused lacrosse players and the City of Durham settled their long-running lawsuit. Seligmann, Finnerty, and Evans agreed to dismiss their lawsuit and received no monetary compensation whatsoever. The city agreed to make a $50,000 grant to the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: On February 21, 2008, the families of 38 of the lacrosse team's 47 members who were not accused filed a 225-page lawsuit against Duke University, the Duke University Hospital, the city of Durham, and various officials of each organization for multiple claims of harassment, deprivation of civil rights, breach of contract and other claims.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: A Duke University spokesperson responded that "we have now seen the lawsuit and as we said before, if these plaintiffs have a complaint, it is with Mr. Nifong. Their legal strategy – attacking Duke – is misdirected and without merit. To help these families move on, Duke offered to cover the cost of any attorneys' fees or other out-of-pocket expenses, but they rejected this offer. We will vigorously defend the university against these claims." The city never released an official response to the suit. The lawsuit against the university was settled out of court in 2013. Neither side would discuss the details of the settlement.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: The 2016 documentary film "Fantastic Lies", which centered around the case and its aftermath, was part of ESPN's "30 for 30" film series. It premiered on March 13, 2016, 10 years to the day after the lacrosse players hosted the house party where Mangum claimed she was raped.


title: Duke lacrosse case

text: Among the journalists invited to contribute was ESPN college basketball analyst and Duke graduate Jay Bilas, who in his other capacity as a practicing attorney later wrote a letter to the university administration criticizing their handling of the entire situation and describing president Brodhead as "incapable of effectively leading Duke into the future." Crystal Mangum was approached by the film crew to tell her side of the story and agreed to do so, but prison officials would not allow her to be filmed. None of the players involved in the case appeared in the film, but Reade Seligmann's parents and Colin Finnerty’s father did.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council. The fifth president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was internationally condemned for his use of chemical weapons during the 1980s campaign against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during and after the Iran–Iraq War. In the 1980s, Saddam pursued an extensive biological weapons program and a nuclear weapons program, though no nuclear bomb was built. After the Gulf War (1990–1991), the United Nations (with the Government of Iraq) located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials; Iraq ceased its chemical, biological and nuclear programs.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In the early 2000s, U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair both asserted that Saddam Hussein's weapons programs were still actively building weapons and that large stockpiles of WMDs were hidden in Iraq. Inspections by the UN to resolve the status of unresolved disarmament questions restarted between November 2002 and March 2003, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which demanded Hussein give "immediate, unconditional and active cooperation" with UN and IAEA inspections, shortly before his country was attacked. The United States asserted that Hussein's frequent lack of cooperation was a breach of Resolution 1441, but failed to convince the United Nations Security Council to pass a new resolution authorizing the use of force due to lack of evidence. Despite this, Bush asserted peaceful measures could not disarm Iraq of the weapons he alleged it to have and launched a second Gulf War instead. A year later, the United States Senate officially released the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq which concluded that many of the Bush Administration's pre-war statements about Iraqi WMD were misleading and not supported by the underlying intelligence. United States–led inspections later found that Iraq had earlier ceased active WMD production and stockpiling; the war was called by many, including 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a "mistake".


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Iraq signed the Geneva Protocol in 1931, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969, and the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, but did not ratify it until June 11, 1991. Iraq ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in January 2009, with its entry into force for Iraq coming a month later on February 12.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: 1959 August 17 USSR and Iraq signed an agreement for the USSR to build a nuclear power plant and established a nuclear program as part of their mutual understanding.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: 1968 a Soviet supplied IRT-2000 research reactor together with a number of other facilities that could be used for radioisotope production was built close to Baghdad.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: 1975 Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow and asked about building an advanced model of an atomic power station. Moscow would approve only if the station was regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but Iraq refused. However, an agreement of co-operation was signed on April 15, which superseded the one of 1959.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: After 6 months France agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% uranium and built a nuclear power plant without IAEA control at a price of $3 billion.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s. As part of Project 922, Iraq built chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP) ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering Trading.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: The United States supported Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war with over $500 million worth of dual-use equipment that were approved by the Commerce department. Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraq's nuclear program. The non-profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease Control sold or sent biological samples of anthrax, West Nile virus and botulism to Iraq up until 1989, which Iraq claimed it needed for medical research. A number of these materials were used for Iraq's biological weapons research program, while others were used for vaccine development. For example, the Iraqi military settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive anthrax strain for use as a biological weapon, according to Charles Duelfer.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: The United States government invited a delegation of Iraqi weapons scientists to an August 1989 "detonation conference" in Portland, Oregon. The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy conference featured experts that explained to the Iraqis and other attendees how to generate shock waves in any needed configuration. The conference included lectures on HMX, a powerful explosive generally preferred for nuclear detonation, and on flyer plates, which are devices for generating the specific type of shock waves necessary for nuclear bomb ignition. Both HMX and flyer plates were in fact later found at Iraqi nuclear research sites by United Nations weapons inspectors.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In the late 1980s, the British government secretly gave the arms company Matrix Churchill permission to supply parts for Saddam Hussein's weapons program, while British Industry supplied Gerald Bull as he developed the Iraqi supergun. In March 1990, a case of nuclear triggers bound for Iraq was seized at Heathrow Airport. The Scott Report uncovered much of the secrecy that had surrounded the Arms-to-Iraq affair when it became known. The British government also financed a chlorine factory that was intended to be used for manufacturing mustard gas.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Iraq's nuclear weapons program suffered a serious setback in 1981 when the Osiraq reactor, which would have been capable of breeding weapons-usable nuclear material, was bombed by Israel before it could be commissioned. David Albright and Mark Hibbs, writing for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, disagree with this view, however. There were far too many technological challenges unsolved, they say.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 1980, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency filed a report stating that Iraq had been actively acquiring chemical weapons capacities for several years, which later proved to be accurate. In November 1980, two months into the Iran–Iraq War, the first reported use of chemical weapons took place when Tehran radio reported a poison gas attack on Susangerd by Iraqi forces. The United Nations reported many similar attacks occurred the following year, leading Iran to develop and deploy a mustard gas capability. By 1984, Iraq was using poison gas with great effectiveness against Iranian "human wave" attacks. Chemical weapons were used extensively against Iran during the Iran–Iraq War. On January 14, 1991, the Defense Intelligence Agency said an Iraqi agent described, in medically accurate terms, military smallpox casualties he said he saw in 1985 or 1986. Two weeks later, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested showed an immunity to smallpox, which had not occurred naturally in Iraq since 1971; the same prisoners had also been inoculated for anthrax. The assumption being that Iraq used both smallpox and anthrax during this war.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: "The Washington Post" reported that in 1984 the CIA secretly started providing intelligence to the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq War. This included information to target chemical weapons strikes. The same year it was confirmed beyond doubt by European doctors and UN expert missions that Iraq was employing chemical weapons against the Iranians. Most of these occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, but chemical weapons were used at least once against the Shia popular uprising in southern Iraq in 1991. Chemical weapons were used extensively, with post-war Iranian estimates stating that more than 100,000 Iranians were affected by Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons during the eight-year war with Iraq. Iran today is the world's second-most afflicted country by weapons of mass destruction, only after Japan. The official estimate does not include the civilian population contaminated in bordering towns or the children and relatives of veterans, many of whom have developed blood, lung and skin complications, according to the Organization for Veterans. Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions. Many others were affected by mustard gas. Despite the removal of Saddam Hussein and his administration by American forces, there is deep resentment and anger in Iran that it was Western nations that helped Iraq develop and direct its chemical weapons arsenal in the first place and that the world did nothing to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons throughout the war. For example, the United States and the UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticized Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority to condemn this use. On March 21, 1986, the United Nation Security Council recognized that "chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian forces"; this statement was opposed by the United States, the sole country to vote against it in the Security Council (the UK abstained).


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On March 23, 1988, western media sources reported from Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, that several days before Iraq had launched a large-scale chemical assault on the town. Later estimates were that 7,000 people had been killed and 20,000 wounded. The Halabja poison gas attack caused an international outcry against the Iraqis. Later that year the U.S. Senate proposed the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, cutting off all U.S. assistance to Iraq and stopping U.S. imports of Iraqi oil. The Reagan administration opposed the bill, calling it premature, and eventually prevented it from taking effect, partly due to a mistaken DIA assessment which blamed Iran for the attack. At the time of the attack the town was held by Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas allied with Tehran. The Iraqis blamed the Halabja attack on Iranian forces. This was still the position of Saddam Hussein in his December 2003 captivity. On August 21, 2006, the trial of Saddam Hussein and six codefendants, including Hassan al-Majid ("Chemical Ali"), opened on charges of genocide against the Kurds. While this trial does not cover the Halabja attack, it does cover attacks on other villages during the Iraqi "Anfal" operation alleged to have included bombing with chemical weapons.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In the terms of the UN ceasefire set out in Security Council Resolution 686, and in Resolution 687, Iraq was forbidden from developing, possessing or using chemical, biological and nuclear weapons by resolution 686. These binding resolutions also proscribed missiles with a range of more than 150 kilometres. The UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was created to carry out weapons inspections in Iraq, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to verify the destruction of Iraq's nuclear program.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was set up after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities. It was headed first by Rolf Ekéus and later by Richard Butler. During several visits to Iraq by UNSCOM, weapons inspectors interviewed British-educated Iraqi biologist Rihab Rashid Taha. According to a 1999 report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the normally mild-mannered Taha exploded into violent rages whenever UNSCOM questioned her about al-Hakam, shouting, screaming and, on one occasion, smashing a chair, while insisting that al-Hakam was a chicken-feed plant. "There were a few things that were peculiar about this animal-feed production plant", Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM's deputy executive chairman, later told reporters, "beginning with the extensive air defenses surrounding it." The facility was destroyed by UNSCOM in 1996.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector, Dr. Rod Barton from Australia, showed Taha documents obtained by UNSCOM that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth medium from a British company called Oxoid. Growth media is a mixture of sugars, proteins and minerals that provides nutrients for microorganisms to grow. It can be used in hospitals and microbiology/molecular biology research laboratories. In hospitals, swabs from patients are placed in dishes containing growth medium for diagnostic purposes. Iraq's hospital consumption of growth medium was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it. Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulinum toxin; 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver failure; "Clostridium perfringens", a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene; and ricin. She also admitted conducting research into cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniques as smallpox, but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq had a smallpox outbreak in 1971 and the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) believed the Iraqi government retained contaminated material.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: The inspectors feared that Taha's team had experimented on human beings. During one inspection, they discovered two primate-sized inhalation chambers, one measuring 5 cubic meters, though there was no evidence the Iraqis had used large primates in their experiments. According to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter in his 1999 book "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis", UNSCOM learned that, between July 1 and August 15, 1995, 50 prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison were transferred to a military post in al-Haditha, in the northwest of Iraq. Iraqi opposition groups say that scientists sprayed the prisoners with anthrax, though no evidence was produced to support these allegations. During one experiment, the inspectors were told, 12 prisoners were tied to posts while shells loaded with anthrax were blown up nearby. Ritter's team demanded to see documents from Abu Ghraib prison showing a prisoner count. Ritter writes that they discovered the records for July and August 1995 were missing. Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and refused UNSCOM access to certain sites like Baath Party headquarters. Although Ekéus has said that he resisted attempts at such espionage, many allegations have since been made against the agency commission under Butler, charges which Butler has denied.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In April 1991 Iraq provided its first of what would be several declarations of its chemical weapons programs. Subsequent declarations submitted by Iraq in June 1992, March 1995, June 1996 came only after pressure from UNSCOM. In February 1998, UNSCOM unanimously determined that after seven years of attempts to establish the extent of Iraq's chemical weapons programs, that Iraq had still not given the Commission sufficient information for them to conclude that Iraq had undertaken all the disarmament steps required by the UNSC resolutions concerning chemical weapons.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In August 1991 Iraq had declared to the UNSCOM biological inspection team that it did indeed have a biological weapons program but that it was for defensive purposes. Iraq then provided its first biological weapons declaration shortly after. After UNSCOM determined such declarations to be incomplete, more pressure was placed on Iraq to declare fully and completely. A second disclosure of the biological weapons came in March 1995. After UNSCOM's investigations and the discovery of inreffutable evidence, Iraq was forced to admit for the first time the existence of an offensive biological weapons program. But Iraq still denied weaponization. Further UNSCOM pressure resulted in a third prohibited biological weapons disclosure from Iraq in August 1995. Only after General Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Minister of Industry and Minerals and former Director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, with responsibility for all of Iraq's weapons programs, fled Iraq for Jordan, Iraq was forced to reveal that its biological warfare program was much more extensive than was previously admitted and that the program included weaponization. At this time, Iraq admitted that it had achieved the ability to produce longer-range missiles than had previously been admitted to. At this point, Iraq provides UNSCOM and IAEA with more documentation that turns out Hussein Kamel al-Majid had hidden on a chicken farm. These documents gave further revelation to Iraq's development of VX gas and its attempts to develop a nuclear weapon. More declarations would follow in June 1996 and September 1997. However, in April and July 1998, the biological weapons team and UNSCOM Executive Chairman assessed that Iraq's declarations were as yet "unverifiable" and "incomplete and inadequate", seven years after the first declarations were given in 1991.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In August 1998, Ritter resigned his position as UN weapons inspector and sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the UN Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused UN Secretary General Kofi Annan of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding UNSCOM's work. "Iraq is not disarming", Ritter said on August 27, 1998, and in a second statement, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike." In 1998 the UNSCOM weapons inspectors left Iraq. There is considerable debate about whether they were "withdrawn", "expelled" from the country by Iraqi officials (as alleged by George W. Bush in his "axis of evil" speech), or they chose to leave because they felt their hands were tied sufficiently to see the mission as hopeless. According to Butler himself in his book Saddam Defiant, it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes which eventually took place from December 16–19, 1998.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In August 1998, absent effective monitoring, Scott Ritter remarked that Iraq could "reconstitute chemical biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In June 1999, Ritter responded to an interviewer, saying: "When you ask the question, 'Does Iraq possess militarily viable biological or chemical weapons?' the answer is no! It is a resounding NO. Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Can Iraq produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Ballistic missiles? No! It is 'no' across the board. So from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed." Ritter later accused some UNSCOM personnel of spying, and he strongly criticized the Bill Clinton administration for misusing the commission's resources to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military. According to Ritter: "Iraq today (1999) possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In June 2000, Ritter penned a piece for Arms Control Today entitled "The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament". 2001 saw the theatrical release of his documentary on the UNSCOM weapons inspections in Iraq, "". The film was funded by an Iraqi-American businessman who, unknown to Ritter, had received Oil-for-Food coupons from the Iraqi administration.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 2002, Scott Ritter stated that, by 1998, 90–95% of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities, and long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons, had been verified as destroyed. Technical 100% verification was not possible, said Ritter, not because Iraq still had any hidden weapons, but because Iraq' had preemptively destroyed some stockpiles and claimed they had never existed. Many people were surprised by Ritter's turnaround in his view of Iraq during a period when no inspections were made.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: During the 2002–2003 build-up to war, Ritter criticized the Bush administration and maintained that it had provided no credible evidence that Iraq had reconstituted a significant WMD capability. In an interview with "Time" in September 2002 Ritter said there were attempts to use UNSCOM for spying on Iraq. According to the New York Times and Washington Post media of Jan. 8, 1999, "In March [1998], in a last-ditch attempt to uncover Saddam Hussein's covert weapons and intelligence networks, the United States used the United Nations inspection team to send an American spy into


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: UNSCOM encountered various difficulties and a lack of cooperation from the Iraqi government. In 1998, UNSCOM was withdrawn at the request of the United States before Operation Desert Fox. Despite this, UNSCOM's own estimate was that 90–95% of Iraqi WMDs had been successfully destroyed before its 1998 withdrawal. After that, for four years (from 1998 to 2002) Iraq remained without any outside weapons inspectors. During this time speculations arose that Iraq had actively resumed its WMD programs. In particular, various figures in the George W. Bush administration, as well as Congress, went so far as to express concern about nuclear weapons.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: There is a dispute about whether Iraq still had WMD programs after 1998 and whether its cooperation with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was complete. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said in January 2003 that "access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect" and Iraq had "cooperated rather well" in that regard, although "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance of the disarmament." On March 7, in an address to the Security Council, Hans Blix stated: "Against this background, the question is now asked whether Iraq has cooperated "immediately, unconditionally and actively" with UNMOVIC, as is required under paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002)... while the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as "active", or even "proactive", these initiatives 3–4 months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute "immediate" cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance." Some U.S. officials understood this contradictory statement as a declaration of noncompliance.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: There were no weapon inspections in Iraq for nearly four years after the UN departed from Iraq in 1998, and Iraq asserted that they would never be invited back. In addition, Saddam had issued a "secret order" that Iraq did not have to abide by any UN Resolution since in his view "the United States had broken international law".


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 2001, Saddam stated: "we are not at all seeking to build up weapons or look for the most harmful weapons . . . however, we will never hesitate to possess the weapons to defend Iraq and the Arab nation". The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in Britain published in September 2002 a review of Iraq's military capability, and concluded that Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained. However, IISS also concluded that without such foreign sources, it would take years at a bare minimum.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who created Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program that had successfully enriched uranium to weapons grade before the 1991 Gulf War, stated in an op-ed in "The New York Times" that although Iraqi scientists possessed the knowledge to restart the nuclear program, by 2002 the idea had become "a vague dream from another era."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Possession of WMDs was cited by the United States as the primary motivation instigating the Iraq War.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In late 2002 Saddam Hussein, in a letter to Hans Blix, invited UN weapons inspectors back into the country. Subsequently, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 was issued, authorizing new inspections in Iraq. The United States claimed that Iraq's latest weapons declaration left materials and munitions unaccounted for; the Iraqis claimed that all such material had been destroyed, something which had been stated years earlier by Iraq's highest-ranking defector, Hussein Kamel al-Majid. According to reports from the previous UN inspection agency, UNSCOM, Iraq produced 600 metric tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, VX and sarin; nearly 25,000 rockets and 15,000 artillery shells, with chemical agents, are still unaccounted for.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In January 2003, United Nations weapons inspectors reported that they had found no indication that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons or an active program. Some former UNSCOM inspectors disagree about whether the United States could know for certain whether or not Iraq had renewed production of weapons of mass destruction. Robert Gallucci said, "If Iraq had [uranium or plutonium], a fair assessment would be they could fabricate a nuclear weapon, and there is no reason for us to assume we would find out if they had." Similarly, former inspector Jonathan Tucker said, "Nobody really knows what Iraq has. You really can not tell from a satellite image what is going on inside a factory." However, Hans Blix said in late January 2003 that Iraq had "not genuinely accepted UN resolutions demanding that it disarm." He claimed there were some materials which had not been accounted for. Since sites had been found which evidenced the destruction of chemical weaponry, UNSCOM was actively working with Iraq on methods to ascertain for certain whether the amounts destroyed matched up with the amounts that Iraq had produced. In the next quarterly report, after the war, the total amount of proscribed items destroyed by UNMOVIC in Iraq can be gathered. Those include:


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In an attempt to counter the allegations that some WMD arsenals (or capability) were indeed hidden from inspectors, Scott Ritter would argue later;


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Ritter also argued that the WMDs Saddam had in his possession all those years ago, if retained, would have long since turned to harmless substances. He stated that Iraqi Sarin and tabun have a shelf life of approximately five years, VX lasts a bit longer (but not much longer), and finally he said botulinum toxin and liquid anthrax last about three years.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On March 17, 2003, Lord Goldsmith, Attorney General of the UK, set out his government's legal justification for an invasion of Iraq. He said that Security Council resolution 678 authorised force against Iraq, which was suspended but not terminated by resolution 687, which imposed continuing obligations on Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction. A material breach of resolution 687 would revive the authority to use force under resolution 678. In resolution 1441 the Security Council determined that Iraq was in material breach of resolution 687 because it had not fully carried out its obligations to disarm. Although resolution 1441 had given Iraq a final chance to comply, UK Attorney General Goldsmith wrote "it is plain that Iraq has failed so to comply". Most member governments of the United Nations Security Council made clear that after resolution 1441 there still was no authorization for the use of force. Indeed, at the time 1441 was passed, both the U.S. and UK representatives stated explicitly that 1441 contained no provision for military action. Then-U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte was quoted as saying:


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: There's no "automaticity" and this is a two-stage process, and in that regard we have met the principal concerns that have been expressed for the resolution [...] Whatever violation there is, or is judged to exist, will be dealt with in the council, and the council will have an opportunity to consider the matter before any other action is taken.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns about "automaticity" and "hidden triggers" – the concern that on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action; that on a decision so crucial any Iraqi violations should be discussed by the Council. Let me be equally clear in response, as one of the co-sponsors of the text we have adopted: there is no "automaticity" in this Resolution.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: The UN itself never had the chance to declare that Iraq had failed to take its "final opportunity" to comply as the U.S. invasion made it a moot point. American President George W. Bush stated that Saddam Hussein had 48 hours to step down and leave Iraq.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On May 30, 2003, Paul Wolfowitz stated in an interview with "Vanity Fair" magazine that the issue of weapons of mass destruction was the point of greatest agreement among Bush's team among the reasons to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He said, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but, there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In an interview with BBC in June 2004, David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, made the following comment: "Anyone out there holding as I gather Prime Minister Blair has recently said the prospect that, in fact, the Iraq Survey Group is going to unmask actual weapons of mass destruction, [is] really delusional."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 2002, Scott Ritter, a former UNSCOM weapons inspector heavily criticized the Bush administration and media outlets for using the testimony of alleged former Iraqi nuclear scientist Khidir Hamza, who defected from Iraq in 1994, as a rationale for invading Iraq:


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: We seized the entire records of the Iraqi Nuclear program, especially the administrative records. We got a name of everybody, where they worked, what they did, and the top of the list, Saddam's "Bombmaker" [which was the title of Hamza's book, and earned the nickname afterwards] was a man named Jafar Dhia Jafar, not Khidir Hamza, and if you go down the list of the senior administrative personnel you will not find Hamza's name in there. In fact, we didn't find his name at all. Because in 1990, he didn't work for the Iraqi nuclear program. He had no knowledge of it because he worked as a kickback specialist for Hussein Kamel in the Presidential Palace.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: He goes into northern Iraq and meets up with Ahmad Chalabi. He walks in and says, I'm Saddam's "Bombmaker". So they call the CIA and they say, "We know who you are, you're not Saddam's 'Bombmaker', go sell your story to someone else." And he was released, he was rejected by all intelligence services at the time, he's a fraud.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: And here we are, someone who the CIA knows is a fraud, the US Government knows is a fraud, is allowed to sit in front of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and give testimony as an expert witness. I got a problem with that, I got a problem with the American media, and I've told them over and over and over again that this man is a documentable fraud, a fake, and yet they allow him to go on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and testify as if he actually knows what he is talking about.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On June 4, 2003, U.S. Senator Pat Roberts announced that the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence that he chaired would, as a part of its ongoing oversight of the intelligence community, conduct a Review of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On July 9, 2004, the Committee released the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. On July 17, 2003, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an address to the U.S. Congress, that history would forgive the United States and United Kingdom, even if they were wrong about weapons of mass destruction. He still maintained that "with every fiber of instinct and conviction" Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On February 3, 2004, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced an independent inquiry, to be chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, to examine the reliability of British intelligence relating to alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Butler Review was published July 14, 2004.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In the buildup to the 2003 war, "The New York Times" published a number of stories claiming to prove that Iraq possessed WMD. One story in particular, written by Judith Miller, helped persuade the American public that Iraq had WMD: in September 2002 she wrote about an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes which the NYT said were to be used to develop nuclear material. It is now generally understood that they were not intended (or well suited) for that purpose but rather for artillery rockets. The story was followed up with television appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all pointing to the story as part of the basis for taking military action against Iraq. Miller's sources were introduced to her by Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile favorable to a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Miller is also listed as a speaker for The Middle East Forum, an organization which openly declared support for an invasion. In May 2004 the New York Times published an editorial which stated that its journalism in the buildup to war had sometimes been lax. It appears that in the cases where Iraqi exiles were used for the stories about WMD were either ignorant as to the real status of Iraq's WMD or lied to journalists to achieve their own ends.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: But what wasn't wrong was Saddam Hussein had invaded a country, he had used weapons of mass destruction, he had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction, he was firing at our pilots. He was a state sponsor of terror. Removing Saddam Hussein was the right thing for world peace and the security of our country.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In a speech before the World Affairs Council of Charlotte, NC, on April 7, 2006, President Bush stated that he "fully understood that the intelligence was wrong, and [he was] just as disappointed as everybody else" when U.S. troops failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Intelligence shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq was heavily used as support arguments in favor of military intervention, with the October 2002 C.I.A. report on Iraqi WMDs considered to be the most reliable one available at that time.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: "According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons." Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) – Congressional Record, October 9, 2002


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On May 29, 2003, Andrew Gilligan appeared on the "BBC's Today" program early in the morning. He reported that the government "ordered (the September Dossier, a British Government dossier on WMD) to be sexed up, to be made more exciting, and ordered more facts to be...discovered."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On May 27, 2003, a secret Defense Intelligence Agency fact-finding mission in Iraq reported unanimously to intelligence officials in Washington that two trailers captured in Iraq by Kurdish troops "had nothing to do with biological weapons." The trailers had been a key part of the argument for the 2003 invasion; Secretary of State Colin Powell had told the United Nations Security Council, "We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. We know what the fermenters look like. We know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like." The Pentagon team had been sent to investigate the trailers after the invasion. The team of experts unanimously found "no connection to anything biological"; one of the experts told reporters that they privately called the trailers "the biggest sand toilets in the world." The report was classified, and the next day, the CIA publicly released the assessment of its Washington analysts that the trailers were "mobile biological weapons production." The White House continued to refer to the trailers as mobile biological laboratories throughout the year, and the Pentagon field report remained classified. It is still classified, but a "Washington Post" report of April 12, 2006, disclosed some of the details of the report. According to the "Post":


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group's final report in September 2004 15 months after the technical report was written said the trailers were "impractical" for biological weapons production and were "almost certainly intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: General Tommy Franks was quoted as saying: "I think no one in this country probably was more surprised than I when weapons of mass destruction were not used against our troops as they moved toward Baghdad."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On February 6, 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush named an Iraq Intelligence Commission, chaired by Charles Robb and Laurence Silberman, to investigate U.S. intelligence, specifically regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. On February 8, 2004, Dr Hans Blix, in an interview on BBC TV, accused the U.S. and UK governments of dramatising the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to strengthen the case for the 2003 war against the government of Saddam Hussein.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On May 30, 2003, The U.S. Department of Defense briefed the media that it was ready to formally begin the work of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), a fact-finding mission from the coalition of the Iraq occupation into the WMD programs developed by Iraq, taking over from the British-American 75th Exploitation Task Force.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Various nuclear facilities, including the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility and Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, were found looted in the month following the invasion. (Gellman, May 3, 2003) On June 20, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that tons of uranium, as well as other radioactive materials such as thorium, had been recovered and that the vast majority had remained on site. There were several reports of radiation sickness in the area. It has been suggested that the documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned in Iraq by looters in the final days of the war.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On September 30, 2004, the U.S. Iraq Survey Group issued its Final Report. Among its key findings were:


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: The report found that "The ISG has not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but [there is] the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant capability." It also concluded that there was a possible intent to restart all banned weapons programs as soon as multilateral sanctions against it had been dropped, with Hussein pursuing WMD proliferation in the future: "There is an extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD after sanctions were lifted..." No senior Iraqi official interviewed by the ISG believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On October 6, 2004, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Charles Duelfer, announced to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that the group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had produced and stockpiled any weapons of mass destruction since 1991, when UN sanctions were imposed.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: After he began cooperating with U.S. forces in Baghdad in 2003, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who ran Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program until 1997, handed over blueprints for a nuclear centrifuge along with some actual centrifuge components, stored at his home buried in the front yard awaiting orders from Baghdad to proceed. He said, "I had to maintain the program to the bitter end." In his book "The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind", the Iraqi nuclear engineer explains that his nuclear stash was the key that could have unlocked and restarted Saddam's bombmaking program. However, it would require a massive investment and a re-creation of thousands of centrifuges in order to reconstitute a full centrifugal enrichment program.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In a January 26, 2004, interview with Tom Brokaw of NBC news, Kay described Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs as being in a "rudimentary" stage. He also stated that "What we did find, and as others are investigating it, we found a lot of terrorist groups and individuals that passed through Iraq." In responding to a question by Brokaw as to whether Iraq was a "gathering threat" as President Bush had asserted before the invasion, Kay answered:


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It's not a technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In June 2004, the United States removed 2 tons of low-enriched uranium from Iraq, sufficient raw material for a single nuclear weapon.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Demetrius Perricos, then head of UNMOVIC, stated that the Kay report contained little information not already known by UNMOVIC. Many organizations, such as the journal "Biosecurity and Bioterrorism", have claimed that Kay's report is a "worst case analysis".


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Operation Iraqi Freedom documents refers to some 48,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that were captured by the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many of these documents seem to make clear that Saddam's regime had given up on seeking a WMD capability by the mid-1990s. Associated Press reported, "Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon." At one 1996 presidential meeting, top weapons program official Amer Mohammed Rashid describes his conversation with UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus: "We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the details." At another meeting, Saddam told his deputies, "We cooperated with the resolutions 100 percent and you all know that, and the 5 percent they claim we have not executed could take them 10 years to (verify). Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD. We have nothing." U.S. Congressman Peter Hoekstra called for the U.S. government to put the remaining documents on the Internet so Arabic speakers around the world can help translate the documents.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, several reported finds of chemical weapons were announced, including half a dozen incidents during the invasion itself.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In April 2003, US Marines stumbled across a number of buildings which emitted unusual levels of radiation. Upon close inspection the troops uncovered "many, many drums" containing low-grade uranium, also known as yellowcake. According to an expert familiar with UN nuclear inspections, US troops had arrived at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center and the material under investigation had been documented, stored in sealed containers and subject to supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1991. The material was transported out of Iraq in July 2008 and sold to Canadian uranium producer Cameco Corp., in a transaction described as worth "tens of millions of dollars."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: A post-war case occurred on January 9, 2004, when Icelandic munitions experts and Danish military engineers discovered 36 120-mm mortar rounds containing liquid buried in Southern Iraq. While initial tests suggested that the rounds contained a blister agent, subsequent analysis by American and Danish experts showed that no chemical agent was present.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On May 2, 2004, a shell containing mustard gas was found in the middle of a street west of Baghdad. The Iraq Survey Group investigation reported that it had been previously "stored improperly", and thus the gas was "ineffective" as a useful chemical agent. Officials from the Defense Department commented that they were not certain if use was to be made of the device as a bomb.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On May 16, 2004, a 152 mm artillery shell was used as an improvised bomb. The shell exploded and two U.S. soldiers were treated for minor exposure to a nerve agent (nausea and dilated pupils). On May 18 it was reported by U.S. Department of Defense intelligence officials that tests showed the two-chambered shell contained the chemical agent sarin, the shell being "likely" to have contained three to four liters of the substance (in the form of its two unmixed precursor chemicals prior to the aforementioned explosion that had not effectively mixed them). Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told the Associated Press that "he doubted the shell or the nerve agent came from a hidden stockpile, although he didn't rule out that possibility." Kay also considered it possible that the shell was "an old relic overlooked when Saddam said he had destroyed such weapons in the mid-1990s." It is likely that the insurgents who planted the bomb did not know it contained sarin, according to Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, and another U.S. official confirmed that the shell did not have the markings of a chemical agent. The Iraq Survey Group later concluded that the shell "probably originated with a batch that was stored in Al Muthanna CW complex basement during the late 1980s for the purpose of leakage testing."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In a July 2, 2004, article published by The Associated Press and Fox News, it was reported that sarin gas warheads dating back to the last Iran–Iraq War were found in South Central Iraq by Polish Allies. The Polish troops secured munitions on June 23, 2004, but it turned out that the warheads did not in fact contain sarin gas but "were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals"—and it transpired that the Poles had bought the shells for $5,000 each.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 2004, hundreds of chemical warheads were recovered from the desert close to the Iran–Iraq border. According to "The Washington Post", the munitions "had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran". Officials did not consider the discovery as evidence of an ongoing weapons program that was believed to be in existence before the invasion began.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: The Iraqi government informed the United Nations in 2014 that insurgents affiliated with the Islamic State terror group had seized control of the Muthana State Establishment, including a chemical weapons depot northwest of Baghdad. The facility was partially destroyed and placed under the supervision of UNSCOM following the 1991 Gulf War. It housed some 2,500 sarin-filled rockets at the time of their departure in 1999. The U.N. said that the munitions were of "poor quality" and "would largely be degraded after years of storage under the conditions existing there."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 2005, the CIA collaborated with the Army Intelligence Corps in contacting an unnamed Iraqi individual who had knowledge and possession of remnant chemical weapon stockpiles and munitions in Iraq dating to its abandoned weapons program. Foreign materials exploitation specialists from the 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion as well as chemical specialists and ordnance disposal units were assigned the task of aiding the destruction of recovered weapons; ultimately, at least 400 Borak rockets were acquired and destroyed.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: It is unknown how the individual acquired their stockpile. Many of the weapons were badly degraded and were empty or held nonlethal liquid, but some of the weapons analyzed indicated a concentration of nerve agents far higher than military intelligence had initially expected given their age, with the highest "agent purity of up to 25 percent for recovered unitary sarin weapons". At least once the undisclosed seller attempted to sell weapons with fake chemical components. In addition, he once "called the intel guys to tell them he was going to turn them over to the insurgents unless they picked them up."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: On June 21, 2006, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released key points from a classified report provided to them by the National Ground Intelligence Center on the recovery of chemical weapons in Iraq. The declassified summary stated that "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent", that chemical munitions "are assessed to still exist" and that they "could be sold on the black market". All weapons were thought to be manufactured in the 1980s and date to Iraq's war with Iran. The report prompted US Senator Rick Santorum to hold a press conference in which he declared "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: During a House Armed Services Committee meeting convened to discuss the topic, the center's commander, Army Colonel John Chiu, elaborated that the munitions are "badly corroded in most cases [and] some were deliberately dismantled, if you will, to prevent them from being used." Nonetheless, in response to a question from committee member Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania), Col. Chui agreed that the munitions met the technical definition of weapons of mass destruction. "These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention and yes, sir, they do constitute weapons of mass destruction." Weapons expert David Kay, who also appeared before the committee, disagreed with the assessment, contending that any chemical weapon produced by Iraq in the 1980s would not remain a viable weapon of mass destruction today. Kay said the chemical agent, though hazardous, is "less toxic than most things Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point". Speaking on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation", weapons expert Charles Duelfer agreed with Kay, saying: "We said in the [ISG] report that such chemical munitions would probably still be found. But the ones which have been found are left over from the Iran-Iraq war. They are almost 20 years old, and they are in a decayed fashion. It is very interesting that there are so many that were unaccounted for, but they do not constitute a weapon of mass destruction, although they could be a local hazard.


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In September of the same year, the report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on "Postwar Findings" stated that such discoveries were consistent with the ISG assessment that "Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. The ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran-Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward deployed along the frequently and rapidly shifting battle front."


title: Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

text: In October 2014, "The New York Times" reported that the total number of munitions discovered since 2003 had climbed to 4,990, and that U.S. servicemen had been exposed and injured during the disposal and destruction process. US soldiers reporting exposure to mustard gas and sarin allege they were required to keep their exposure secret, sometimes declined admission to hospital and evacuation home despite the request of their commanders. "We were absolutely told not to talk about it" by a colonel, a former sergeant said. "All [munitions] had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area."