A leading U.S. newspaper reports that a secret U.S. fact-finding mission concluded that trailers found in Iraq after the invasion had no connection to biological weapons - despite claims by President Bush that they were mobile weapons labs.
The Washington Post quoted officials who requested anonymity as saying the secret mission transmitted its unanimous findings to Washington - two days before Mr. Bush's statement on May 29, 2003.
At that time, Mr. Bush proclaimed that two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile biological weapons laboratories.
A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency denied to the Post that the mission's findings were ignored or suppressed, and he said they were incorporated into the official search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States had cited claims of the mobile weapons labs as a reason for going to war.