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The man in charge of destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- should any be found -- doesn't expect he'll have much work to do.

"I would be very, very surprised if we were to find any sizable amount" of weapons, said Douglas Englund, director of the Iraq Weapons Elimination Directorate for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense. "I frankly thought that we would have found something."

Englund initially said he wouldn't offer an opinion on the weapons intelligence that was the Bush administration's main justification for the invasion of Iraq. But he later said: "We went in, and the bottom line is we didn't find anything. So you have to say, if you're being blunt, the intelligence wasn't very good."

Englund is a Kansas University graduate who returned to campus Monday for a lecture.

He also helped the United Nations destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. He said Monday he thought the United Nations largely eliminated Saddam Hussein's stockpile during that time.

"Clearly, at one time he had a booming program," Englund said in an interview with the Journal-World. "But I think ... the scope it was in ended in the Gulf War and was largely eliminated by the United Nations."

History's hot spots

Englund, who received his master's degree in 1973 from KU, was on campus as a guest of the university's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies. He spoke Monday night.

His career has taken him through the hot spots of modern American history. As an Army officer, he served two tours of duty in Vietnam. After the war, he served as an assistant military attaché with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War and oversaw U.S. monitoring of Soviet weapons destruction in the late 1980s under terms of the INF Treaty.

• Audio clips from Douglas Englund • Roberts asserts WMD program existed in Iraq (10-26-03) • Aide: Saddam strategy on WMD backfired (8-2-03) • U.S. cites 'high probability' of al-Qaida use of WMD (6-10-03)

It was this last position, with the On-Site Inspection Agency, that led to his U.N. role in Iraq after the first Gulf War.

"When Desert Storm ended and they were looking for somebody to help the U.N. do inspections, the first place they looked was the On-Site Inspection Agency," he said. "If truth were known, I was pretty much the guy who answered the phone."

Englund's job was to plan the destruction of Iraq's chemical weapons.

"It was fairly sizable," he said. "Close to 40,000 chemical munitions, 600-plus tons of bulk chemical agents. They credit us with destroying 58 scuds, and a whole bunch of other stuff."

And when Englund left the United Nations in 1993, he believed the job was largely finished.

"I thought it was exceptionally successful," Englund said. "And in fact, to the best of my knowledge, nothing was really found after that."

Renewed suspicions

But suspicions about Iraq's weapons persisted, and in 1998 the United States bombed Iraq when U.N. weapons inspectors said they were no longer receiving cooperation from Saddam Hussein's government.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, the Bush administration began making the case that Iraq still had a weapons of mass destruction program that could be used to aid anti-American terrorists.

"I can't speak to the evidence," Englund said. "That's not my part of the house. We're a defense agency, implementers and executors.

"Having said that, I believe that the U.N. did a creditable job in" eliminating weapons of mass destruction, Englund said.

And though such weapons were the chief justification for war, none have been found.

"You don't know what you don't know," Englund said. "If they have successfully hidden it, we have not found it."

Englund's team of 98 people, about half private contractors from Raytheon Corp., have spent their time instead searching for "orphan radiological sources" -- low-level radioactive material normally used in medical, agricultural and industrial processes. Such materials could be used in a "dirty bomb."

Englund said his team had gathered up 570 radioactive items. But he said he didn't consider himself battling terrorists to find the material.

"I don't get a sense there's a race on," Englund said. "Certainly this is preventive, to make sure they're not available, but it also has a certain public health aspect. Because people who go in and loot are very often unsophisticated and don't know what they're taking."

In the meantime, the Bush administration maintains weapons of mass destruction still could be found in Iraq. And Englund's team must remain ready."Until someone says, ‘OK, the exercise is over,'" Englund said, "we still have to be prepared to eliminate weapons."

Englund has been to Iraq twice since the war. He oversees the weapons program from an office in Virginia.