WASHINGTON -- A top Bush administration weapons investigator told Congress in closed testimony last week that he has uncovered solid information from interviews, documents, and physical evidence that Iraqi military forces were ordered to attack US troops with chemical weapons, but did not have the time or capability to follow through, according to senior defense and intelligence officials.

The alleged findings by David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector now working for the United States, would buttress the administration's claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction -- a key component of President Bush's case for war that has since fallen into dispute.

Kay's report acknowledged that his team of 1,400 investigators had not yet found any such weapons, raising the possibility that Hussein either hid them, destroyed them, or was simply bluffing in his orders to the Republican Guard.

Kay told Congress his team is searching new sites almost daily, interviewing scientists and captured leaders, and sifting through thousands of pages of documents, officials said.

A summary of his report, described by officials who have seen it, said Republican Guard commanders were ordered by Hussein's regime to launch chemical-filled shells at oncoming coalition troops, and that Kay believes he will soon know why the shells weren't launched.

''They have found evidence that an order was given,'' but no definitive explanation for why the weapons weren't used, said a senior intelligence official with access to Kay's report who asked not to be identified.

Before the war, US defense officials, citing what they described as intercepted Iraqi military communications, said that Iraqi forces were ordered to use chemical weapons. .

On March 28, one week into the war, US Central Command's deputy director for operations, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, said, ''We have seen indications through a variety of sources . . . [that] orders have been given that at a certain point chemical weapons may be used.''

Brooks cited the discovery of hundreds of chemical protection suits at locations south of Baghdad as an indication that Iraqis were prepared to engage in chemical warfare.

But despite Kay's report, some specialists are skeptical.

David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who has worked with Kay, said Kay has long been a zealous advocate of the idea that Iraqis had been poised to use chemical weapons, even asserting after the war that the weapons had been dumped in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

No weapons have been found in the rivers.

''He started with such a strong view that this is true that I am suspicious,'' said Albright, now president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. ''If the military had this order, where did the weapons go?''

A former paid commentator for NBC News, Kay has alienated some people by having network cameras follow him as he searches for weapons.

Still, US officials expressed confidence that Kay not only would substantiate the claims that Iraqi commanders were given orders to use chemical weapons, but that he would show what happened to the weapons.

''It sounded like they had something that they could hold up and say `Here is the reason why it didn't take place,' '' said a defense official who also has read Kay's progress report.

Another senior defense official, who had not read the report, suggested that the United States may have convinced Iraqi field commanders not to use the weapons, by warning them through leaflets, radio broadcasts, and secret communications that they could face war-crimes charges.

''We tried to dissuade them in very public ways, and there were clearly covert ways as well,'' the official said on condition of anonymity.

Other officials had a variety of explanations of why the weapons were not used. Among the possibilities: In the chaos that ensued during the war, the weapons could not be delivered to front-line units; they were hastily hidden and have yet to be found; or they were destroyed by Iraqi officials or US air attacks. Some even hold out the possibility that the orders were part of a disinformation campaign to deter coalition troops from invading.

Kay, speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill last week, suggested he believes the weapons were hidden away.

''The active deception program is truly amazing once you get inside it,'' he said. ''We have people who participated in deceiving UN inspectors now telling us how they did it.''

Other top administration officials this week expressed new confidence that illegal weapons will ultimately be found in Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday, said the recent discovery of Russian-built fighter aircraft buried in the Iraqi desert was a ''classic example'' of Iraq's adeptness at hiding things.

''We had not known where they were, and we'd been operating in that immediate vicinity for weeks and weeks and weeks,'' he said.

Proof that Iraqi troops were poised to use chemical weapons might ease criticism that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Hussein.

But Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that it would not justify the adminstration's depiction of Hussein as an imminent threat to the United States.

''Most of us believe that there was some program and some weapons hidden,'' he said. ''But the debate wasn't over weapons, it was over war. In four months, not a gram of anthrax has been found, not an ounce of mustard gas. Was the threat so great we had to go to war? The question for Kay is not was there mustard gas, but was there a substantial amount of mustard gas? If this is all he has -- if he has it -- this just isn't enough.''

Kay said he would unveil his findings publicly within six months, officials said.

''We do not want to go forward with partial information that we have to retract afterwards,'' he said while briefing reporters last week. ''We're building a solid case that will stand.''

Indeed, one intelligence official said Kay and his team are preparing a ''legal case'' to prove Iraq's violations of weapons restrictions, though it is the court of public opinion, not any judicial proceeding, that the administration must sway.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 8/8/2003.

They couldn't find them either I guess haha.

There was alot of disruption to the Iraqi communications by US forces. The EA-6B Prowler comes to mind here, its a carrier based electronic warfare airplane.

Remember to that alot of Iraqi soldiers did not follow orders to fight. Many surrendered, many more changed into civilian clothes and deserted.

yea true..

I wonder why saddam hadn't preordered his entire army to attack with chemical weapons incase of emergency before the bombing began...

He had ample time to plan the stuff.

Who can say?

Saddam Hussien did alot of strange things over the years.