Adding to my post on Tarhuna from yesterday (Tarhuna CW Facility, March 25, 2007), Paul observes that the unclassified Final Report of the The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction makes a special effort to point out the limits of overhead imagery in identifying chemical weapons facilities:
That being said, it should be noted that there are few distinguishing characteristics that enable the identification of chemical or biological facilities through imagery or other technical means. Moreover, much of the technology and expertise required for chemical and biological programs is dual-use, making it easier to acquire and more difficult for the Community to track.
That would suggest, to me at least, that the Tarhuna intelligence was wrong.
The document I would love to see is NIE 2004-05HJ from May 2004—based on the WMD Commission’s footnotes (the title is classified), this appears to be the IC “rethink” on Libya.