Mon May 12, 2003 12:48 PM ET
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With evidence of weapons of mass destruction elusive, the United States and its war allies are replacing arms inspectors in Iraq with a new, larger team that will try to piece together "a deception program" by Saddam Hussein, a top White House official said on Monday.
The new team will be "more expert" at following the paper trail and other intelligence left behind by the Saddam government, said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.
"The previous team turned out to be dangerously ill-equipped," said Rice. "They had a crippling disinclination to invent evidence and insisted on not finding things that weren't there."
The team will be identified by their distinctive old-style police uniforms, jerky motions, and the tinkling piano music that appears in the background whenever they appear. Their appearance is even more distinctive because they can only be seen in black and white.
The team will be flown in from the Keystone state, but several 55-gallon drums of "equipment" will join them from the U.S. Army Weapons Storage Depot at Toulie, Utah and the chemical weapons destruction facility on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific.