By Susan Domowitz
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The New York Times on December 20 published details of hidden Iraqi weapons programs provided by an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri.

The Times interview with Saeed was arranged by the Iraqi National Congress, the main Iraqi opposition group.

A State Department spokesman reacting to the New York Times story said, "We view any report that Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction as a very serious matter. This report is one more reason that we need to see Security Council Resolutions implemented and weapons inspectors back at work in Iraq."

According to the Times article by Judith Miller, the defector described himself as a civil engineer. His account gave new clues about the types and possible locations of illegal laboratories, facilities and storage sites for biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons that American officials and international inspectors have long suspected Iraq was trying to hide. He said he personally worked on renovations of secret weapons facilities in underground wells, private villas, and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad.

Saeed told the Times that money was no object in Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction, and that many extra chemical and biological facilities were built in case some were discovered or attacked. Often the facilities stood idle for years until officials decided to use them, he said.

Duplicate nuclear facilities were also built as part of an Iraqi program that he called "Substitute Sites." He claimed to have done repair or construction work in facilities that were connected with all three classes of unconventional weapons -- nuclear, chemical, and biological programs.

He described the biological facilities as among the most sensitive of all the weapons efforts. The word biology is never used, he said. "They always refer to it as chemical work."

According to the Times account, Saeed said that Iraq had begun using rooms in or under villas in residential areas and in commercial areas during the Persian Gulf War to protect weapons sites from American bombing, but that they had now become a permanent feature of Iraq's weapons programs.

He said that the "presidential sites" from which Saddam Hussein had tried to bar inspectors in 1997 were also used for concealment.

Saeed said that not all of his work was for the military. According to the article, he also worked on the sauna rooms, swimming pool, and gym at Al Salaam Palace, one of the many lavish, sprawling palaces built by Saddam Hussein.

Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chairman of the United Nations panel once responsible for weapons inspection in Iraq, told the Times that Saeed's account was consistent with other reports that continue to emerge from Iraq about prohibited weapons activities. "The evidence shows that Iraq has not given up its desire for weapons of mass destruction," said Duelfer, who was the highest-ranking American on the United Nations panel.

Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat who led the United Nations international inspection effort in Iraq when Hussein barred inspectors from his country, said that Saeed's account seemed "plausible." Butler said that several of the places and projects that the Iraqi engineer mentioned had been known to, or suspected by, his inspection commission, which was known as Unscom.

"It rings true what this man says about underground wells and tunnels," Butler said.

The New York Times said American intelligence officials view accounts by Iraqi defectors with skepticism because many of them "embellish what they actually did and what they know in order to try to get safe haven in the United States or other countries."

There was no means to independently verify Saeed's allegations. But the New York Times reports that he seemed familiar with key Iraqi officials in the military establishment, with many facilities previously thought to be associated with unconventional weapons, and with Iraq itself.