Returning to Baghdad in late 2003 to join the CIA-commissioned Iraq Survey Group in a senior role, Barton found that specialists had dismissed the "biotrailer" suspicions. Strong evidence showed the units were instead designed to make hydrogen for weather balloons, as Iraqis claimed.
David Kay, then chief inspector, has since said that in December 2003 George J. Tenet, then CIA director, wouldn't accept this finding.
That February, Tenet claimed in a Washington speech that the trailers could be used to make bioweapons.
Barton says he, too, ran into roadblocks in early 2004 when he sought to include the trailer analysis in a report.
Barton quotes the American head of the biological team, whom Barton doesn't name, as telling him, "You don't understand how difficult it is to say anything different" from the public CIA line.
Remember the flap about the Washington Post saying that they knew the trailers weren't weapons labs before Bush said they were? It turns out they had that information surpressed so they could keep saying it.
