The White House is coming under intense scrutiny after the Washington Post revealed that the administration kept asserting it had uncovered mobile biological labs in Iraq even after a team of Pentagon investigators had concluded no such labs had been found. On May 27, 2003 the Pentagon made its findings available. Two days later President Bush said “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.” Days later Secretary of State Colin Powell said “We have already discovered mobile biological factories… There is no question in our mind that that’s what their purpose was. Nobody has come up with an alternate purpose that makes sense.” The Bush administration continued with its faulty claim for more than a year.

In Washington, Press Secretary Scott McClellan attempted to spin the controversy of mobile labs by criticizing the press for covering a story based on what he described as rehashed, old information. He called the story “an embarrassment for the media” and irresponsible because the Bush administration has already admitted its pre-war intelligence on Iraq was mistaken. But McClellan could not answer whether the President knew of the Pentagon’s conclusions before he publicly said the trailers were proof Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.