signs of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The team did not find any of the explosives sealed by the IAEA inspectors two months earlier. On April 13, a team from the 3rd Infantry Division led by Maj. Austin Pearson arrived at Al-Qaqaa. Pearson said at a Pentagon news conference that his mission was to secure and destroy ammunition and explosives. He estimated that his team, "Task Force Bullet", removed 250 tons of material including TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords and munitions. Pearson's story provoked skepticism as it came the morning after new videotape surfaced indicating that the explosives were still at the base after Saddam's fall; the videotape (from April 18, 2003) shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels bearing IAEA seals. "The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al-Qaqaa", David A. Kay, who directed the hunt in Iraq for WMD and visited the site, told The New York Times. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an IAEA seal." The situation did not become publicly known for over a year afterwards, but IAEA officials reportedly warned as early as May 2003 that looting at Al Qa'qaa could be "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Although IAEA inspectors were unable to inspect the site themselves due to the US ban on their presence, they were able to obtain commercial satellite imagery in late 2003 that showed severe damage to the facility. Two of roughly ten bunkers in which high explosives had been stored appeared to have been leveled by blasts. Other bunkers were damaged and some were untouched. On October 10, 2004, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote to the IAEA to say that the Qa'qaa stockpile had been lost after April 9, 2003, because of the "theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security." Nearly 340 tonnes of HDX and RDX explosives, an amount equivalent to 40 ten-ton truckloads, was said to be missing. The news led to an immediate controversy in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Presidential challenger John Kerry has accused President George W. Bush of presiding over an inexcusable failure to prevent the loss of the explosives, while President Bush has criticized Senator Kerry for "jump[ing] to conclusions without knowing the facts." On October 28, 2004, the DoD released