Afterward, Pletka and I met with her husband, Steve Rademaker, in the Senate office building cafeteria. Rademaker had been hard at work briefing influential congressmen, especially Ben Gillman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, about the VX lab report. “We’ve got their attention,” Rademaker said, “and I think you’ll find that serious pressure will be brought on the Clinton administration to better support your work.” Pletka then took me back to where I had started, the office of Randy Scheunemann. Once again I was ushered in to see Sen. Lott, who thanked me for my service. “This is very important, and we’re very glad you brought the lab report to our attention. Be assured that this matter will be handled with the utmost discretion.” As I got up to leave, Scheunemann brought up the issue of future collaboration. I said that my being a weapons inspector made such collaboration difficult. Lott intervened. “Well, maybe we can find a way to bring you down here working for us. That might be the most useful thing to do.” Chalabi’s schemes seemed to have some substance behind them.

Armed with that potential job offer, I left Washington and returned to New York. Richard Butler was due back at the U.N., where he was planning to announce a “major breakthrough” regarding Iraq’s approach to disarmament. There was to be no mention of the specific details of the VX lab report findings, although Butler had alluded to their existence, and the Iraqi rejection of these findings. Butler was to make a presentation to the Security Council on June 25th.  However, my visit to Washington produced results that dramatically altered his planned presentation.

On June 23rd, The Washington Post published a front-page story headlined “Tests Show Nerve Gas Agent in Iraqi Weapons.” The article made the main gist of the Aberdeen lab results public. It also reported on the political work undertaken by Lott and the Republicans based on that information. According to the Post story, “The new indications of Iraqi deception also are likely to reverberate in U.S. politics, where conservative Republicans are increasingly critical of what they see as a failure by the Clinton administration to support strongly either aggressive UNSCOM inspections for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or efforts to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.”

Senate Majority Leader Lott was quoted in the article as being “deeply disturbed” by reports that the administration had not acted on the VX information. “The latest example of a failed policy toward Iraq will not be swept under the rug,” the Post quoted him as saying. I was just about to conclude that my visit had been a tremendous success when I caught a line in the middle of the article. “The Washington Post obtained a copy of the U.S. Army lab report from officials of the Iraqi National Congress, the principal Iraqi exile opposition group.” After watching the Republicans build up Chalabi, I should have known that they could not have passed up this opportunity to interject his name into the limelight. “This is a smoking gun,” Chalabi said to The Washington Post. “It shows that Saddam is still lying, and that this whole arrangement based on his turning his weapons of terror over to the United Nations is not workable.” The Post then quoted a “Republican Senate source” who echoed Chalabi’s concern: “This report means that they have VX out there now, and can use it. They have lied from the start.”

Today, in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq, I think back on my visit to Washington and my dinner with Ahmed Chalabi and his friends. The ramifications of that visit were many.