Maybe The WMDs Were Cleaning Solvents?

After discovering a leftover cache of poisonous gas in the United Nations I suppose this would be rather embarrassing:

When officials said that a potentially deadly chemical from Iraq had been found last month in a Midtown United Nations office, many questions followed. How did the sample get here? How did it get misplaced? And how could it sit in a box, unnoticed, for more than a decade at a world agency in the middle of New York?

But now, heaping embarrassment upon embarrassment, it appears that the chemical was merely a commercial solvent, a law enforcement official said.

Initially, officials said the substance was phosgene, an old-generation nerve-gas component used extensively at the end of World War I, and in Iraqi attacks against Kurds in the 1980s.

“We learned later,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, “that initial tests indicated it might be some kind of over-the-counter solvent, though we don’t know what kind.”

The sample, sealed in a container inside a plastic bag, which itself was inside a metal box, was reported to the State Department late last Wednesday and to other federal authorities on Thursday. It was discovered on Aug. 24 in an office of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission at East 48th Street, which was shutting down. Workers happened upon it while clearing out filing cabinets and boxes, said Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the agency.

Location Scout: United Nations.