Mystery Unfolds Over Hunt for WMD in Iraq

Friday September 2, 2005 7:46 PM

By CHARLES J. HANLEY

AP Special Correspondent

Beneath the giant dome of a Baghdad palace, facing his team of scientists and engineers, George Tenet sounded more like a football coach than a spymaster, a coach who didn't know the game was over.

``Are we 85 percent done?'' the CIA boss demanded. The arms hunters knew what he wanted to hear. ``No!'' they shouted back. ``Let me hear it again!'' They shouted again.

The weapons are out there, Tenet insisted. Go find them.

Veteran inspector Rod Barton couldn't believe his ears. ``It was nonsense,'' the Australian biologist said of that February evening last year, when the then-chief of U.S. intelligence secretly flew to Baghdad and dropped in on the lakeside Perfume Palace, chandelier-hung home of the Iraq Survey Group.