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WASHINGTON -- Despite vigorous efforts, the U.S. government has been unsuccessful so far in finding key senior Iraqi scientists to support its prewar claims that former president Saddam Hussein was pursuing an aggressive program to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed on the subject.

The sources said four senior scientists and more than a dozen at lower levels who worked for the Iraqi government have been interviewed by U.S. officials under the direction of the CIA. Some have been arrested and held for months, others have made deals in return for information and at least one has agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq.

No matter the circumstances, however, all of the scientists interviewed have denied that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998. Several key Iraqi officials questioned the significance of evidence cited by the Bush administration to suggest that Saddam was stepping up efforts to develop new weapons of mass destruction programs.

The White House, for instance, has cited the case of nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi, who recently dug up plans and components for a gas centrifuge that he said he buried in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War. The White House has pointed to the discovery as a sign of Saddam's continuing nuclear ambitions, but Obeidi told his interrogators that Iraq's nuclear program was dormant in the years before war began in March.

The sources said Obeidi also disputed evidence cited by the administration -- namely Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes that various officials said was for a new centrifuge program to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Obeidi said the tubes were for rockets, as Iraq had claimed before the war.

CIA analysis do not believe he has told the whole truth, said one Bush administration official. Obeidi has left Iraq under CIA auspices after being arrested briefly by U.S. Army troops.

Jaafar Jaafar, who once was jailed by Saddam for not working on the nuclear program and later came back to head it in the 1980s, was also interviewed recently by CIA personnel outside Iraq and he too denied the nuclear program had been restarted.

Bush administration officials have hoped that extensive debriefings of former top officials of Saddam's government would provide some of the backing for its prewar assertion that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States. So far, the U.S. has discovered no undisputed physical evidence that Saddam had stocks of chemical or biological weapons or was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.

David Kay, the CIA's representative in Iraq to coordinate the search for weapons of mass destruction, returned to Washington this week and met with President Bush Tuesday. Kay is scheduled to appear today before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Administration officials said they expect him to tell the senators that there have been no breakthroughs but progress is being made in understanding Saddam's weapons programs and research that could be associated with them. The United States is interviewing lower-level Iraqi security and intelligence officials associated with the programs, but searching of alleged weapons sites has all but halted, officials said.

Bush indicated that he still expects evidence of weapons of mass destruction to surface in Iraq. He said Kay described a complex process that includes the need to "analyze the mounds of evidence, literally the miles of documents that we have uncovered."

"It's going to take awhile and I'm confident the truth will come out," Bush said.

As described by government officials and their families, the U.S. has used aggressive tactics to find and question key Iraqi scientists. Amir Saadi, Iraq's 65-year-old chief liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors since last year, has been held incommunicado since his voluntary surrender in Baghdad to American military police more than three months ago, according to his wife Helma.

The night before he gave himself up, Saadi saw himself listed on BBC satellite television as one of the men being sought by U.S. forces. In a recent interview at her home in Baghdad, his wife said that he told her, "I want to surrender. I want to cooperate. It will be just a matter of a few hours and I'll be back.'

Just hours before his April 12 surrender, Saadi gave a television interview to a German television reporter during which he said, "There were no weapons of mass destruction and time will bear me out." It is the same message he sent to United Nations chief inspector Hans Blix in a message that arrived at U.N. headquarters on March 19, the day the war began.

Saadi's surrender encouraged the wife and daughter of Gen. Hossam Amin, head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate to get him to surrender and he, too, has not been heard from since, Helma Saddi said.

Helma Saadi said her husband was a chemical engineer who worked on Iraq's rocket programs, not chemical weapons. He served in the military during his career, got the rank of general, though after the Gulf Was he was acting minister of oil and later minister of industry. After retirement in 1994, when she said his position went to a Baath party member, he was given the honorific title of science adviser to Saddam. She described that as a "way of keeping him and others on the payroll even after retirement and using them when needed."

Since his arrest, Helma Saadi said she had had no official notification of where he is being held, although she believes it was somewhere near Baghdad International Airport. She has had one communication with him, a June 15 letter delivered by the Red Cross which stated: "Today the Red Cross visited me and I was happy just to talk to someone. I am in good health and being treated correctly ... love and kisses, Amer."

The letter led her to believe he is being kept in solitary confinement because he said in his letter he was glad to have someone to talk to. U.S. sources familiar with the process say al Saadi may have knowledge of Saddam's chemical weapons program, and may be held to give testimony about that. His wife said she suspects her husband is being held out of sight because "he is telling the truth ... They have realized there are no weapons of mass destruction and the quagmire they have created. They want to hold someone as a scapegoat."

After hiring a lawyer, she sent a written request to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq. She never got an answer from Bremer to that letter or one sent more recently. She did receive a response to a letter she sent asking if her husband could be represented by a lawyer. On June 27. Col. Marc Warren of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Corps assigned to Bremer's office, said her husband's status "is being investigated" under Geneva Convention rules to see if he entitled to prisoner of war status or some other category. Meanwhile, former government officials, scientists and professionals are still being arrested.

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