[Zahn:] There may be videotape showing some of the explosives at the al Qa Qaa weapons storage site when U.S. troops were there during the war. Now, that is important because the Bush administration says Saddam Hussein's forces may have removed those explosives before his regime was toppled last year. Dean Staley, who was then a reporter for KSTP-TV in Minneapolis, was embedded with the Army's 101st Airborne Division and was with a cameraman who believes he took pictures of what could be those explosives when he was there nine days after Saddam's defeat. Dean Staley joins me from Seattle. Also joining us tonight from San Francisco is Michael Lysobey, a former U.N. weapons inspector who was in Iraq from 1996 to 1998. Glad to have both of you with us. First of all, Dean, are you convinced of the fact that you actually were at the al Qa Qaa weapons site?
[Dean Staley, Reporter, Kstp-tv:] Almost certainly. I think in terms ever what I've been able to learn about where it is, just how big it is and where it is in relation to the place that we were camped with the 101st Airborne, I don't think there's any question that we were in some part of the al Qa Qaa compound.
[Zahn:] Did anybody try to stop you from entering it?
[Staley:] Oh, absolutely not. The place was absolutely deserted. There were bunker after bunker after bunker of munitions. There were also some places where you could tell they had been making munitions. There were bombs laying around on the ground. Other places we poked around actually had shoulder-fired rockets and rocket-propelled grenades actually sitting on the ground, just all sorts of weapons.
[Zahn:] Now, we're looking at some large barrels. We can't see any discernible seals here, but we are told these were definitely taken at al Qa Qaa. When you were embedded about with the 101st Airborne Division, or with a division, did they tell you that they had been asked to search these sites, that they seemed to be aware that the IAEA had warned our government about the danger of the site?
[Staley:] No, not at all. In fact, we were absolutely ignorant about this place. We went there only because we were with the 101st Airborne. We were sort of stationed outside of Baghdad at the time at an old airfield. And the 101st at the time didn't have a new mission. So everyone was just sort of waiting around. And so were getting antsy. We were ambitious. We wanted to try to find if there was some other story outside the camp. And so we left the camp on a very unofficial sort of trip with a couple of other soldiers, a couple soldiers in our unit, got in a Humvee and just drove around to see what we could see. And this is one of the things we came upon.
[Zahn:] Let's check in with Michael for a moment here. What do you make of these highly conflicting stories? You hear Dean's account. We know the date is on that tape. It's encrypted on the tape. So, on one hand, that would seem to indicate that some of those weapons were there after the war began, and yet, the Pentagon today releases a satellite photo that they claim was taken two days before the war got under way showing activity which appear to be trucks perhaps maybe moving some of these materials away from the site.
[Michael Lysobey, Former Weapons Inspector:] Well, the materials at that site or the materials that I saw in the video are not necessarily the HMX, which is the high explosive used in a nuclear implosion device. What we saw in the tape were a bunch of barrels and a bunch of explosive caps. Al Qa Qaa is an explosives facility. So that's what we'd expect to see. The explosives that we're worried about, we don't know. This isn't definitive proof that those explosives were there.
[Zahn:] So which theory do you favor at the moment?
[Lysobey:] Well, it seems to me, if the question is whether or not there were explosives at the facility that we saw and those explosives were taken by insurgents, I would say yes. I ascribe to that theory. It seems logical to me. With the HMX, I couldn't say that that was at the facility when the U.S. troops arrived. And I think that gets to the problem of whether or not there were qualified weapons inspectors with the troops at the time.
[Zahn:] And, Dean, based on your observations, you don't think that was the case, do you?
[Staley:] Well, I should be clear. I don't think I'm not saying for a minute that I know that the munitions and the explosives that we stumbled upon were in fact the munitions or the explosives in question. All I can say with certainty is that, on that day, there were bunker after bunker after bunker of explosives, tons of them, that were unguarded. We went in and looked at some of them. I don't have the sort of expertise to tell you whether or not those were exactly what they're talking about when they say that these how many odd tons of explosives went missing. I know that these explosives existed, that they were not guarded either when we got there or when we left. And some of the bunkers weren't even locked. We had to break a couple of padlocks to get into some of them. Others, we did not. They were wide open. We also saw Iraqis at the time driving around in a pickup truck, an old beat-up pickup, clearly scavenging, clearly sort of looking around. We kept an eye on them because this was sort of no-man's land. It was a deserted, obviously old military facility. And so we were wary about who was around us, keeping an eye out for anyone else. So, clearly, it was a place that Iraqis had access to, Iraqi civilians did.
[Zahn:] Michael, we want to shift our attention to a different source of video now, this video from several years ago provided by the IAEA. And it shows us some seals that were placed at the site by teams there. Exactly what materials would the IAEA mark like this?
[Lysobey:] The IAEA would mark prohibited items that were identified by Security Council Resolution 687. This would include the high explosives. It would also include a wide variety of other items that the Iraqis or someone else could use in a nuclear weapons program. So I just saw very quickly there a seal and it looked to me like an IAEA seal. These are tamper-proof, so that the inspectors know whether or not the site has been opened or the barrel or whatever it is has been tampered with since the inspectors were last there.
[Zahn:] Now, Dean, your station actually managed to try to compare the image of that seal that we just saw in that video with some of what you saw as you wandered through the site. What kind of conclusions did you come up with?
[Staley:] Well, I think some of the video is similar. I don't think it's definitive. But I will say, in terms of the seals, one of the bunkers that we entered, we actually broke a seal on. And it was a thin wire. It was the sort of thing that could have been nothing else but a seal, because it didn't serve any purpose in terms of keep people out. In fact, at the time, it was this very thin wire, the sort of thing you see maybe like on an electric meter, those sort of seals to make sure things aren't tampered with. We thought it might have been some sort of booby trap, because it was such a thin wire. But we broke the lock and broke that wire to get in. Now, I don't have the sort of expertise and didn't then to look at it and say, well, I know who put this there and I understand what the acronym is or who these people are who sealed this. But I do know that at least one of those bunkers had one of thin wire seals on them.
[Zahn:] Mike, I need a brief answer to this question. Do you think we'll ever know exactly when these 380 tons of explosives vanished?
[Lysobey:] From the evidence that I've seen, I don't think we'll ever know, but it does appear if there was a seal there and if they broke it to get in to one of these barrels or whatever it was, that the site contained some type of prohibited items which aren't there now.
[Zahn:] Dean Staley, Michael Lysobey, you for both of your perspectives. Appreciate it.
[Staley:] You bet.
[Zahn:] And that is where the story stands tonight. When we come back, two top senators weigh in. We'll be back in a moment.