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"I want to tell you that your fact sheet on the [Missile Technology Control Regime] is very well done and useful for me when I have to speak on MTCR issues."

– Amb. Thomas Hajnoczi
Chair, MTCR
May 19, 2021
Iraq

Intelligence: The Achilles Heel of the Bush Doctrine

Gregory F. Treverton

There is not yet a clearly articulated “Bush doctrine” of national security. Yet the pointers so far, especially the victory in Iraq, suggest the shape of one that is stunning in its ambition. Focused on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the emerging Bush doctrine is anticipatory, pre-emptive, and, if need be, unilateral. Yet the emerging doctrine is bedeviled at its core by legitimacy and capacity, including, critically, the capability of U.S. intelligence. Although the United States has the military power to take out whatever miscreant state it chooses, it still lacks the ability to precisely locate and pre-emptively target WMD, despite all the technical wizardry of its intelligence. Indeed, even determining whether a potential adversary, such as Iraq, is developing and deploying nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons will continue to prove difficult. Taking out a foe’s real or suspected WMD is likely to continue to require taking out the foe.

Parsing the Bush Doctrine

In his 2002 national security strategy, President Bush was explicit about acting first:

We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they can threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. …To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively.

Or, as he put it more colorfully in his speech to the nation on March 19:

We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

He had foreshadowed the new strategy in his speech at West Point in June 2002:

By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem; we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.

In making its case for war, the administration did not point to a specific set of deployments or threats that would have constituted the grounds for “anticipatory self-defense” under international law. Instead, the administration argued that, given its nature, Iraq would pose a threat to international peace if it came to possess WMD—an argument that hinged on the link between the nature of the Iraqi regime and its internal and external behavior. As Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address, “The gravest danger facing America and the world is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.” (Emphasis added.)

In other words, democratic France might be trusted with nuclear weapons, but Saddam Hussein surely could not. He could not be deterred with any certainty. Nor could Saddam be trusted not to transfer weapons to other rogue states or terrorist groups, even though the evidence connecting Saddam to terrorism was weak at best. Thus, he had to be denied access to them. In Bush’s words: “We must work together with other like-minded nations to deny weapons of terror from those seeking to acquire them.”

The Limits to Muscular Pre-emption

Although it is logical to meet the WMD threat now with military force abroad so that first responders at home do not have to, the emerging Bush doctrine of pre-emption or preventive war places stresses on intelligence that it cannot bear. America’s capacity for “ISR”—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—is unparalleled, truly in a class by itself. It is also improving rapidly. However, its shortcomings actually mirror the techniques used in enemy WMD programs. Existing ISR is not good at detecting objects that are hidden under foliage, buried underground, or concealed in other ways. Nor is it good at precisely locating objects by intercepting their signals. Would-be proliferators can exploit these weaknesses, taking pains to conceal their facilities or change the pattern of activities at weapons sites, as India did before its 1998 explosion of a nuclear weapon.

None of the limitations on U.S. intelligence-gathering capacity will ease dramatically, at least not soon. Progress is most apparent in locating moving objects using satellites and, especially, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—and, soon, expendable optical sensors launched from airplanes—though sorting out such objects from other “traffic” or ground clutter will continue to remain demanding. Predator and Global Hawk UAVs came of age in Iraq.1 They flushed out Iraqi air defenses, targeted missiles, and provided real-time video surveillance of every mission. The armed version of the smaller, lower-flying Predator fired more than a dozen Hellfire missiles, and it was a Predator operated by the CIA that blasted a car in Yemen last fall, killing a suspected al Qaeda operative and five others.

Locating and targeting moving objects better will surely be important at the opening of any war, especially one involving the possible use of WMD. That capability, though, will not greatly help the United States to pre-emptively destroy nascent WMD facilities. Other technical innovations in intelligence will help identify suspicious facilities in the future. Hyperspectral imagery, for instance, can contribute to what is called MASINT (measures and signatures intelligence) by permitting analysts to identify the composition of facilities and their emissions. But such capabilities remain limited today.

Reading the Intelligence Record

Iraq and North Korea point to the limits of the administration’s emerging national security strategy. Months of scouring have yet to produce more than possible husks of proscribed WMD in Iraq, demonstrating the limits of strategic intelligence. The United States’ tactical wartime intelligence was impressive, however. As in Afghanistan, with absolute air supremacy, U.S. intelligence had layers of sensors, from satellites to UAVs to the tactical intelligence aboard warplanes, supporting both advance special operations forces and advancing main force units. John P. Abizaid, whom President Bush has nominated to head U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 25, “Intelligence was the most accurate that I’ve ever seen on the tactical level, probably the best I’ve ever seen on the operational level, and perplexingly incomplete on the strategic level with regard to weapons of mass destruction.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations before the war contained indications of the range of U.S. sources, especially imagery and intercepted communications between Iraqi leaders.2 In intercepted communications, Iraqi officials spoke of concealing “forbidden ammo” and made references to “nerve agents.” Powell showed satellite photographs of buildings, said to be chemical and biological weapons bunkers, with “decontamination trucks” parked outside. Another set of aerial photographs, said to have been taken two days before inspections began in November, showed a convoy of trucks and a crane, which Powell said indicated pre-inspection “housecleaning.”

The latest advance in what used to be called “all source analysis”—that is, putting together indicators from the various intelligence sources, or INTs—and what later was called “fusion” is now “multi-INT.” It involves teams of computer-savvy analysts, using today’s robust communications capabilities, to very quickly put together satellite and aircraft imagery (or IMINT) with intercepted signals (or SIGINT) and any human-source intelligence (or HUMINT), such as defector reports or interviews with recently captured Iraqis.

One intelligence tip on the eve of the war resulted in the attack on Baghdad, which was targeted at Saddam—though that appears to have been a “single-source” tip from an individual. Throughout the war, the communications problems that had hampered U.S. operations in earlier conflicts, including Afghanistan, were much less in evidence. There was much better intelligence coordination between ground and air forces, enabling air strikes against enemy ground forces with fewer casualties to friendly forces.3 In the fog of war, American forces were occasionally surprised and sometimes made mistakes, but U.S. intelligence told them where enemies were and allowed them to target foes with precision weapons to a degree unprecedented in the annals of warfare.

Still, however the debate over prewar intelligence turns out, it was plain that U.S. intelligence was far from good enough to identify, let alone target, specific Iraqi biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons with any precision. Whether Iraq successfully hid evidence of its WMD, moved the weapons on the eve of the invasion, or didn’t have many to begin with, the United States could not locate weapons of mass destruction—before or after the war.

And, in many respects, Iraq was a convenient case if not an easy one. Not only had the United States and its intelligence been working on the country solidly for more than a decade, it also had been Iraq’s ally during Baghdad’s war with Iran. Iraq’s prominence among U.S. national security concerns ensured regular collection of all kinds against Iraqi targets, and U.S. analysis had a constancy and depth during the 1990s that distinguished Iraq from many others. Moreover, while weapons inspectors with the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, left Iraq in 1998, their years of work provided at a baseline for later efforts by the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC.

Pre-empting Against North Korea

The North Korea case is a harder one still for the would-be pre-emptor. As one illustration, U.S. intelligence has judged since the mid-1990s that North Korea had enough plutonium to build one or two hidden nuclear weapons.4 But it has had little idea where those weapons, if they exist, might be located in North Korea’s mare’s nest of underground tunnels.

The most recent North Korean crisis also serves as a reminder of how hard it is for intelligence to know of, let alone locate and still less target, incipient WMD programs. Over the summer of 2002, U.S. intelligence concluded that, in addition to its known plutonium facilities, North Korea was operating a covert uranium-enrichment program. The program apparently began in the late 1990s, but U.S. intelligence only confirmed its existence during 2001 by monitoring activities, such as North Korea’s extensive purchases of materials for construction of a gas-centrifuge enrichment facility. The CIA contended in November 2002 that the facility was at least three years from becoming operational, but analysts believed that a completed facility could ultimately produce sufficient fissile material for “two or more nuclear weapons per year.”5

Sheer numbers and warning time compound the problem of taking out North Korea’s WMD. For delivery vehicles, it has an estimated 12,000 artillery tubes and 2,300 multiple rocket launchers that, from their current emplacements, are capable of raining 500,000 shells per hour on U.S. and South Korean troops. Five hundred long-range artillery pieces are able to target Seoul, which is only about 20 miles from the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea.6

By one estimate, much of North Korea’s forward-based force is protected by over 4,000 underground facilities in the forward area alone, including tunnels under the demilitarized zone that would enable the North Koreans to rapidly insert forces behind the defenders. Warning times for U.S. and South Korean forces would be short—24 hours or less—if North Korea invaded using this forward-leaning posture.

Not surprisingly, recent history is also cautionary about pre-emption. The last major nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula erupted in 1993, when North Korea was caught extracting bomb-making plutonium from spent reactor fuel produced by its 5-megawatt research reactor at Yongbyon. The United States came close to war, and there was much talk in Washington and Seoul about “surgical strikes” against these nuclear facilities. In the end, the Clinton administration took the path of negotiation. Given the proximity of the North and its weaponry, the death toll from war could have run into the hundreds of thousands, with large-scale casualties among the 37,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea. The eventual result was the Agreed Framework of 1994, under which the United States agreed to provide fuel oil and two light-water reactors in return for North Korea suspending its nuclear program.7 The Bush administration, however reluctantly, is likely to be forced down a similar negotiating path when dealing with Pyongyang.

International Inspections

The cases of North Korea and Iraq suggest both the value and the limits of on-site inspections, such as those conducted by UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in buttressing national intelligence. On the down side, no system of international inspection can be foolproof, not least because nations can dismiss the inspectors, as North Korea did with the IAEA late last year. And inspectors will almost always be too few in number and too limited in their ability to conduct surprise inspections anywhere in a country. UNSCOM’s years of inspections in Iraq in the 1990s were a cat-and-mouse game, a constant struggle between Iraq’s restrictions and UNSCOM’s struggle against those restrictions.

Indeed, according to one analyst, it would not be possible to verify a North Korean commitment to freeze or dismantle its uranium program.8 Instead of running 3,000 centrifuges at one site to produce several bombs’ worth of uranium per year, groups of centrifuges could be hidden in some of the country’s thousands of caves. Unlike North Korea’s declared plutonium production facilities, whose locations are known and whose operation can be detected by satellite, much of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program appears to be out of sight at indeterminate underground locations. With centrifuge enrichment technology, there is much less need to centralize production at a single site than is the case for plutonium production, so it is more difficult to determine whether a country has acquired the requisite equipment.

Yet the contrast between the two countries also suggests the value of on-site inspection. There is little baseline data on Pyongyang’s nuclear activities. In contrast, although the UNSCOM inspectors were harassed, they did fan out across Iraq for seven years, from l991 through l998, visiting both declared and undeclared sites. In contrast, IAEA inspectors conducted only one routine inspection of North Korea’s declared nuclear facilities, and that was 10 years ago.

Other circumstances no doubt will circumscribe how closely U.S. intelligence can cooperate with international inspectors, but the experience in Iraq drives home the desirability of doing so when possible.9 As the prospect of war loomed, the earlier sensitivities about information sharing between U.S. intelligence and a UN body, UNMOVIC, diminished. U.S. U-2s, along with other allied aircraft, began flying reconnaissance for UNMOVIC, giving the inspectors much more capacity to see developments at suspected facilities over time.

If the United States contemplates preventive or pre-emptive action, in principle it will want the widest possible international support and authorization for doing so. Yet, as the Iraq example demonstrated, that is precisely what it cannot get. The problem arises not from the fecklessness of the UN but rather from asking nations to take hard, potentially dangerous decisions about dealing with threats that have not yet materialized, and whose imminence is a matter of judgment.

In those circumstances, the United States will want to make the best case it can. Ideally, it will want an “Adlai Stevenson moment,” a moment like that in 1962 when the U.S. ambassador to the UN brandished incontrovertible images of Soviet missile bases in Cuba taken from a U-2 spy plane. Otherwise, even if intelligence is good enough to undertake the military pre-emption, the United States will run the risk of looking like a bully who wants rules to apply to others but not itself.


NOTES

 

 

1. Eric Schmitt, “In the Skies Over Iraq, Silent Observers Become Futuristic Weapons,” The New York Times, April 17, 2003. The various UAV programs are comprehensively surveyed in a new CRS report. See Elizabeth Bone and Christopher Bolkcom, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Background and Issues for Congress,” (Washington: Congressional Research Service, April 25, 2003).

 

2. Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, “Satellite Images, Communications Intercepts and Defectors’ Briefings,” The Washington Post, February 5, 2003.

 

3. Ronald O’Rourke, Iraq War: Defense Program Implications for Congress, (Washington: Congressional Research Service, June 4, 2003), pp. 59-60.

 

4. See U.S. National Intelligence Council, “Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015,” December 2001, at https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/missilethreat_2001.pdf.

 

5. “CIA Report to the U.S. Congress on North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Potential,” November 19, 2002, as published at http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/cia111902.html.

 

6. Willis Stanley, “From Vietnam to the New Triad: U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Korean Security,” March 11, 2003 at http://www.nautilus.org/VietnamFOIA/analyses/StillValid.html#Stanley.

 

7. For background on the framework, see Jonathan D. Pollack, “The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework,” Naval War College Review, Summer 2003.

 

8. Henry Sokolski, “Contending With a Nuclear North Korea,” December 23, 2002, available at http://nautilus.org/fora/security/0228A_Sokolski.html.

 

9. Damian Carrington, “Spy Planes ‘Significant’ Boost to Weapons Inspections,” The New Scientist, February 17, 2003, available at http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993399.

 

 


Gregory F. Treverton is a senior analyst at RAND and associate dean of the RAND Graduate School. He was vice chair of the National Intelligence Council in the first Clinton administration, and his Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information was published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press.

 

 

 

 

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Verifying Arms Control Agreements

An Interview With Hans Blix

Although the United States has stepped up its search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), no such weapons have yet been found.

Hans Blix, outgoing executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), shared his perspective on a number of Iraq disarmament issues during a June 16 interview with Arms Control Today editor, Miles Pomper, and ACA research analyst, Paul Kerr.

[Note: What follows is an edited, excerpt of the full transcript. To access the complete version please click here.]


 

ACT: So let me just start with maybe the most general question, I’m sure one that you’ve heard before: Are you surprised that U.S. forces haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction [WMD] yet?

Blix: No, I would not say I am surprised, but nor would I have been surprised if they had found something. Our position was always that there was a great deal that was unaccounted for, which means that it could have been there and the Iraqis had not explained what had happened to it, except to say in a general way that it was all destroyed in the summer of 1991.

We warned, and I warned specifically and explicitly, against equating “not accounted for” with “existing.” And you’ll find that we consistently said that Iraq must present any proscribed items or provide evidence of what has happened to them. And if they do not succeed in providing evidence, then the conclusion for us is that one cannot have confidence that these are gone and that therefore, at least in the past, in terms of the past resolutions, there was not a ground for lifting sanctions.

I am surprised, on the other hand, that it seems that so many of the U.S. military seemed to have been convinced that there would be lots of weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical weapons, for them to take care of as soon as they went in and that they would practically stumble on these things. If anyone had cared, in the military circles, to study what UNSCOM [the United Nations Special Commission] was saying for quite a number of years, and what we were saying, they should not have assumed that they would stumble on weapons.

ACT: What do you think accounts for the discrepancy between this assumption on the U.S. military side and what was in the UNSCOM reports and what you found in your investigations?

Blix: I think primarily little attention to the United Nations and what it does up in New York and more attention to the huge organization that is the U.S. military force.

ACT: It’s not a question of different intelligence methods of gathering things or political pressures or other factors?

Blix: No—well, of course there was a lot of political feeling that [then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein] was bad, which was true, and which I shared. [Laughter.] But going from there to saying that “well, it was a foregone conclusion that there was a lot” [of WMD] was not really tenable logic. It is true that he had the intention and he had these programs; we all know that. And, in popular thinking, maybe, if you have someone committing a crime once, you are inclined to think there will be a second time. But if you are a lawyer, if you are in a court, you are not supposed to say that it is automatic that someone who is accused a second time is guilty because he was guilty the first time. I think the matters have to be looked at on the merits, and this is what we tried to do here, and…we were being cautious.

ACT: What do you think the lack of prohibited weapons finds says about the effectiveness of the investigations that you carried out and that the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] carried out? You got a lot of criticism at the time from the administration and other people about how effective they were, and do you think that this shows you were more effective than they claim?

Blix: Let’s distinguish between what is said at the official level with what is said at other levels. I mean, my relations with the U.S. mission here, with their representatives to the Security Council, with their representatives in the State Department, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, were—there was no criticism of what we were doing. On the contrary, there was support for it. And even at the time, when the media were suggesting that we were withholding some evidence, there was no such suggestion made on the Security Council. These were spins that came at a lower level.

ACT: On the substance of the question, do you think that your investigations were more effective than perceived at the time, whatever the origin of the criticism?

Blix: I think our investigations were quite effective, but we never claimed that we could get into the last cave or corner in Iraq, and, when I was at the IAEA, [current IAEA Director-General Mohamed] ElBaradei and I both said that there will always be a residue of uncertainty, however far you can get. Now I think that given the many things unaccounted for we were relatively far from hitting that residue; so we were never conclusive about it. There is only one case when we really got very close to asserting that there was something left, and that was with the anthrax, where I think we certainly had strong indications that everything hadn’t been destroyed in 1991. But having gone through the evidence of that case with the particular scientists here, I came to the conclusion that the evidence was not compelling, so we stopped short of saying that it does exist.

Now, we too, of course, were aware that the Iraqis must have learned a lot about concealment in the years and knew a lot about the techniques of the inspectors. So, we could not be sure that there were not underground stores that exist. We, in fact, were looking for ways in which one could explore that particular area, but you can’t look into every cave in a big country. We were also looking into the question of mobile transport of WMD because it was alleged that they moved things around all the time, which is hardly plausible for a whole stock of chemical weapons for a country, but there could have been some. And this was an area in which we were really looking for things. So we didn’t exclude that we could stumble upon something. And the question came then when, you remember, we found the chemical weapons warheads, which were empty of any chemicals. But we found 12 of them and then another four, I think. And we asked ourselves, and I said to the Security Council: “Is this the tip of the iceberg? Or is it simply broken up pieces of an ice that has broken in the past?” And I wouldn’t answer it at the time, kept both possibilities open. As I look at it today, perhaps I’m a little more inclined to think that it was debris from the past.

We looked at the stash of documents which we found on the basis of a tip from an intelligence agency. And, again, this had been said from intelligence in the past that the Iraqis were farming out documents to farmhouses and individuals and did not have them in archives. So the find was fitted into that picture. Could it have been part of a more general behavior? We still don’t know. But it could also have been an individual scientist who brought documents home, even though some were confidential. Both possibilities are open, and we never found another one, but I don’t exclude that it could have happened.

ACT: Can you speculate on why—

Blix: Ah, one point more. That is that, if you study our latest report, in the appendix we have information about when did UNSCOM, in particular, find things and when did they destroy things. And you’ll find that, in the first place, UNSCOM hardly ever stumbled upon something or found something that really was concealed. It was declared—either the sites were declared or the weapons were declared. And they destroyed practically all—the vast majority was destroyed before the end of 1994. After 1994, through their investigations and through the Kamel papers,1 they managed to identify that a number of things had been tainted, had been used, in installations. Equipment had been used for the production of weapons. Then they decided, this must be destroyed. So the little things were destroyed of that but not weapons. And I think that it is a detail now that the U.S. hasn’t found anything and we didn’t find anything. I think it’s interesting to go back and see that, in fact, after 1994, not much was found and destroyed. That has escaped attention. I don’t think we have called much attention to it either, but it struck me, and so we brought that forward.

ACT: Let’s talk a little about the Kamel papers. One of the criticisms that was made before was that the investigators didn’t find things on their own, that they were basically relying on defector testimony. How would you rate [defector testimony] versus on-the-spot investigations in terms of their effectiveness of getting at weapons programs and what is there?

Blix: Well, of course, if you count Kamel as a defector, which he was, this was a very valuable source of documents. But it did not lead anybody to a new weapon that was hidden. It demonstrated that they had weaponized biological weapons and, according to what the Iraqis said, then destroyed them. So it was a very interesting piece of history. It showed that they’d been lying, but [defectors] didn’t lead directly to any weapons. In the nuclear field, it revealed that the Iraqis had a crash program under Kamel from the end of 1990 and to some part of 1991 in order to make a nuclear weapon out of fissionable material, which were under safeguards, and that they just didn’t have time to do it. However, it did not lead the IAEA to any more fissionable material. It had already been taken out of Iraq by the time they found the Kamel papers. So it was very interesting historically, revealed something that the Iraqis had kept quiet about, but it did not lead the IAEA to any weapons.

And when it comes to comparison between the value of defectors and the value of other intelligence or what the inspectors found, I would say that the IAEA, for which I was responsible at the time, did a pretty good job, with the exception of these crash programs about which we knew nothing. However, it was in discussions with Professor Jaffar [Dhai Jaffar, deputy chairman of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission] that the big revelations came about the program, and through very painstaking research by our team, led by Professor [Maurizio] Zifferero [former deputy director of the IAEA and head of the IAEA’s Iraq Action Team], not by David Kay [chief inspector of a nuclear weapons inspection team in Iraq and now special adviser for strategy to the Bush administration in the WMD search in Iraq]—he had no notion of their nuclear program. He was not a nuclear physicist. But Professor Zifferero, vilified by Mr. [Gary] Milhollin [director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control], he was the one who really traced the program and understood it.

ACT: You mentioned the mobile laboratories when we were talking a little bit earlier. If they were, as the Iraqis claim, not used for biological weapons but were actually producing hydrogen [for civilian purposes], why didn’t they declare them? Doesn’t it strike you as strange?

Blix: Yes, a little. I mean, we were the ones who said to the Security Council that we asked the Iraqis for the images or declarations of whatever could have been seen as mobile, and they gave us a number of photographs, and none of these really fit with the ones that have now been discovered. Maybe there is some explanation for it, but we are not aware of it. And I agree, it is puzzling—and not the only puzzling detail.

ACT: More broadly, let’s say that the Iraqis have been telling the truth all along and that they don’t have these weapons. Why would they not show the evidence of that and avoid a war?

Blix: Why didn’t they declare everything?

ACT: Yeah, why not come clean?

Blix: When it came to biological, clearly they were lying, and they knew that. Now, why did they do that if they had no weapons left? I’m not sure that the logic and the emotions and psychology works exactly the same way as they might do here. Maybe they felt ashamed to admit weaponization? I mean one theory why they—if they had no weapons after ’91, then of course there’s a much bigger enigma than that, and that is why did they behave all along as they did during the whole 1990s? Because they suffered through sanctions all the way through. And I’ve been speculating about it, and I think more people than I will speculate about it.

One speculation that’s been made in The Washington Post, which may have been plausible, is that, while on the one hand they would say to the Security Council, “We’ve done everything, now you lift sanctions.” On the other hand, maybe they did not mind that people say, “Well maybe they have something”—a deliberate ambiguity. It’s possible—the mystique of maybe having some biological weapons. Maybe they’re playing around. That is one possibility. Now, why should such a mystique—why should they pursue that until they are occupied? That seems a little peculiar. Maybe by the force of its own logic or by miscalculation, brinksmanship.

And I have one other speculation, and that’s regarding pride. I saw that the chief minder of the chemical sector—when he was asked this question—he talked about pride. And I think that goes fairly deeply into my view of how inspections should operate here, that the Iraqis are very proud, as are the Pashtuns in Pakistan. The Afghans are extremely proud people. And that [the Iraqis] felt that, okay, these resolutions are accepted by us. We will live by them but not one inch longer, not more intrusion than is absolutely [necessary]. And they were legalistic about this.

I find it very hard to understand some of their denials of access that they had otherwise, where they were quibbling about five inspectors or 10 inspectors going in and eventually going into a house that was totally empty. There must have been a strong element of pride, and that was why, when I came here from the very outset, I said we are in Iraq for effective and correct inspections. We are not there for the purpose of humiliating them, harassing them, or provoking them. There were many other elements too that we differed from UNSCOM, but this was one, and I still think that pride might have been an element. And while we had lots of frictions and difficulties with them, in any case, we had, I think, a less difficult relation than UNSCOM had. We had, in particular, never any denial of access, and we had a good deal of cooperation when it came to setting up the infrastructure. So did UNSCOM have cooperation, but they, of course, had many denials of access.

ACT: As you said, [the Iraqis] seemed to be getting a little more cooperative, at least giving you the semblance of cooperation toward the end. If the inspections had continued, do you think you would have been able to get more substantive cooperation out of them, or was it bogged down in this difficult process?

Blix: Well, it seems to me that the interview process would have been the most promising of them. Maybe they would have found some further documents, occasionally found some, but not very many. We thought that after we had found this stash of documents, that when they appointed [former Minister of Oil General Amer] Rashid, and it was the [Rashid] Commission that could get the documents all over the country. I thought that if they had them—now this is a moment for them to [turn over the documents] without loss of face—they would find themselves in the right. I applauded their department officials. The same way with the commission they appointed after we had found the 12 warheads. It is far better—this now could be done without loss of face. But nothing came of it.

Now what would have happened then, if we had not been able to clear up and give really solid evidence, was that there would have been more indications of cooperation in substance, yes, but still a lot of things would have—might have—remained unaccounted for, which wouldn’t have been very satisfactory. And we don’t know where we would have gone, maybe the U.S. would have said, “Well we are waiting for two months, this is it, that’s the end of it.” And others would have said, “They are really cooperating now, there are no problems.” What we really [would have been] in now is continued containment. Now, that was not a welcomed word in Washington. They didn’t like the idea of containment; they wanted something decisive. And, well, their patience was not even enough for us going until March, so at what time point would they have lost patience? I don’t know.

I’m not opposed to containment, and I said so at the time. I agree that containment has its drawbacks. In particular, and I think I mentioned it publicly, that there could be a fatigue in the Security Council, that the guard will be let down. I understand that also. So it has some shortcomings. At the same time, I think one must be—then see what shortcomings has the other solution. All of the lives lost, all of the destruction. And we haven’t seen all the other drawbacks that may come from it; nor have we seen all the benefits that could have come from it. They’ll be on there—the balance of that particular account is not finished. But I was not personally against aerial containment actually that we had for a long time.

And, in particular, when you look at the most important—I mean we, you and me, talk about WMD as if it were one homogenous area, which, of course, it is not. I mean, the nuclear is vastly more important, and there’s a question of whether we really want to call chemical weapons “weapons of mass destruction.” Biological [weapons are] more like terror weapons than weapons of mass destruction. However, in the nuclear field, I think that it was clear that it would have taken quite some time before they were up and running again because the whole infrastructure was destroyed. They could have, I agree they could have, succeeded in importing 18 kilograms of plutonium. They might have had the expertise to make a bomb, yes, but even that would have required some infrastructure; so the matter of intervention to prevent further development in the nuclear field was probably the weakest. It was the most important area, I agree, but it was the weakest.

ACT: When you had to leave Iraq, what were the disarmament tasks that were the most pressing, the issues you really wanted to get resolved?

Blix: I think that mobile business was. That and the underground [facilities for concealing prohibited weapons and related equipment]. And we had taken it up with the Iraqis, both of these items, and we were discussing concepts for how to approach the mobile business with the Iraqis and with others. We talked about having checks at the roads with Iraqi staff and us having helicopters, dashing in here and there, taking samples of these random checks and so forth. We never got to that; it wouldn’t have been easy. None of the police forces we talked with gave us a really good model for it, but we were working on that.

And this goes back—the mobile thing went back to my experience in the IAEA in 1991. After all, the calutrons were on trucks, and they were—it was an IAEA team headed by Mr. Kay, who helped to take pictures of it. So we had experience that the Iraqis did move things around on trucks, but whether they were live things or debris, that was another matter. In any case, they had the habit of moving things by trucks in the big country, so that was not implausible. This was one experience from the past. But as [General Amir] al-Saadi [a senior adviser to Saddam Hussein] said to me when we talked about moving biological stuff around, he shook his [head] and said merely the collision risk of all this stuff on the highways would have deterred him. I didn’t write it off because of his remark, but I understood him.

ACT: How would you describe…the U.S. participation and commitment to the inspection process before the war? Was the United States doing all it could do to enable your inspections to succeed? Were other countries, such as France and Russia, doing all they could do to support the inspections?

Blix: Well, in the early stages, there was not so much intelligence, and we asked for it from [Secretary of State] Colin Powell and others—Condoleezza Rice—and we were sure that we would get it. I would say that after 1441, the resolution, was adopted and after the president had met Mr. ElBaradei and myself, there was more intelligence given, and at no time did we really complain about lack of support—lack of intelligence, yes; but lack of support, no. No, they helped us to run courses here, offered us equipment, et cetera. We were not complaining about that.

And, as of January—some time around January, I guess—I did not also complain about the number of sites intelligence that we were getting. The problem was rather that the U.S. or elsewhere—I don’t want to distinguish between the various intelligence agencies—that they did not lead us to interesting sites. As I have said publicly several times, we went to a lot of sites given to us by intelligence from around the world, and in only three cases did we find anything; and in none of these cases did it relate to weapons of mass destruction. Now, at this stage, in the middle of June, when the U.S. inspectors have been there for quite some time and, I think, have probably gone to all of the rest of the sites, and they haven’t found them very helpful either. So should anyone be surprised then, in retrospect, that we did not?

Now where did [the information about] these sites come from? Some came from satellites, and it’s not so easy to see everything and conclude the right things from satellites, and many came from defectors. So while I by no means want to belittle the value of defectors’ information, I think I like the more experienced—the professionals in the intelligence [community] are very cautious about the information they get from defectors, and I think the whole case of the Iraqi affair bears out that you have to treat such affairs with prudence.

ACT: There is speculation that Iraq destroyed prohibited weapons pretty recently, before the U.S. invasion. Do you think this is possible, given UNMOVIC and IAEA’s presence, that they could have destroyed the weapons without your knowledge?

Blix: This is not the only explanation we heard. One explanation is that they took things to Syria. Another one was that they dug it down so deep that they didn’t have time to dig it up. The third one would be that they have already given it to terrorists. And the fourth one is they destroyed it just before the U.S. came or just before the inspectors came. Well, I see these explanations with increasing, accelerating interest and curiosity, but I’d like to see evidence of any one of them.

But to your precise question, I think it would have been difficult for them to hide the destruction of rather large stashes of chemical weapons under the noses of the inspectors. I don’t exclude anything in this world.

ACT: If you had to assess your own tenure there, how successful were you? How would you sum it up?

Blix: I would say that we have—we showed something that was not a foregone conclusion. Namely, that it was possible to create an international inspection mechanism that was effective, that worked under the Security Council, and that was independent of intelligence agencies but cooperated with them and had assistance from them. And I think that this is a valuable experience for the future because I think that there may yet be a need for international inspections. …

ACT: Now that you’re moving on, in terms of UNMOVIC, at this point, what role can and should UNMOVIC play?

Blix: Well, it’s entirely up to the Security Council. We are its humble servants.

ACT: Presumably, they might take your advice.

Blix: I’m not so sure. Well, maybe some of them. [Laughter.] No, I think there are two things that could be in the future. One is the verification of disarmament. A report by the inspectors who are there now would have greater international credibility if they were examined and if the reality were examined by international inspectors. Whether they are interested in that, I don’t know.

The second is long-term monitoring. Will they want to have long-term monitoring in Iraq? That’s still not rescinded from the resolutions. It was in all the resolutions, and the resolutions also talk about this future zone free of weapons of mass destruction. I think there’s something a little paradoxical about reducing the institutionalized transparency by doing away with something that was there, especially if we are looking for an enhanced verification for the region at some stage, including the Additional Protocol, [an agreement designed to provide for more rigorous IAEA inspections]. And you would do away then with any verification [that Iraq does not possess biological weapons]. So you would have inspectors presumably on safeguards and the NPT [nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and chemicals, maybe. But they would be a step backwards on inspections. So for the long term, it’s a possibility, and I think that would be better in the hands of international inspectors than national ones.

But for the rest, the UN Security Council had in UNSCOM’s and UNMOVIC’s archives and personnel a unique, elite, trained force. Especially the roster of inspectors is a practical and inexpensive way of holding an inspectorate ready—valuable particularly regarding missiles, a priority for which you have no international organization. I do not think that the council wants to send ad hoc inspections every week, but it could be from time to time, and it would not need to have a very big stable force here. We would organize the training forces and organize the roster and the readiness.

For the rest, I think that they should write up the experiences here in some sort of digest because if they do not retain UNMOVIC, then maybe they will set up something in the future, and the document has experiences from both [UNSCOM and UNMOVIC] which are valuable. …


NOTE

1. Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law who directed Iraq’s illicit weapons programs, defected in 1995. Shortly after, Baghdad provided inspectors with papers from Kamel’s farm detailing Iraq’s offensive biological weapons program.

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Blix Discusses UNMOVIC Experience As Controversy Over Iraq's Weapons Continues

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For Immediate Release: June 20, 2003
Press Contacts: Daryl Kimball, Executive Director, (202) 463-8270 x107; Paul Kerr, Research Analyst, (202) 463-8270 x102

(Washington, D.C.): Although the United States has stepped up its search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), no such weapons have yet been found. As a result, Congress is holding inquiries into the use of pre-war intelligence on Iraq's prohibited weapons by the Bush administration. Investigating this intelligence, however, is only part of the larger task of evaluating the effort to deny Iraq nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and how to deal with other states intent on acquiring WMD.

Hans Blix, outgoing Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), shared his perspective on a number of Iraq disarmament issues during a June 16 interview with Arms Control Today editor, Miles Pomper, and ACA research analyst, Paul Kerr.

Regarding the fact that U.S. forces have not yet found prohibited weapons in Iraq, Blix told Arms Control Today: "I would not say I am surprised, but nor would I have been surprised if they had found something. Our position was always that there was a great deal that was unaccounted for, which means that it could have been there and the Iraqis had not explained what had happened to it. Except to say in a general way that it was all destroyed in the summer of 1991." He added, "We warned, and I warned specifically and explicitly, against equating 'not accounted for' with 'existing.'"

Blix answered questions on other issues, including:

  • UNMOVIC's experience performing WMD searches in Iraq;
  • The future role for UNMOVIC in Iraq;
  • The role of international weapons inspections elsewhere; and
  • Why U.S. inspectors have not found prohibited weapons and why Iraq was not more forthcoming.

Excerpts from the Blix interview will appear in the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, which will include two feature articles on the role of national intelligence in combating weapons proliferation:

Greg Thielmann, a recently retired senior State Department intelligence official, details how a 1998 commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld manipulated threat assessments on foreign ballistic missile development to justify proposals for the rapid deployment of a national missile defense.

Gregory V. Treverton, a senior RAND analyst and former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, questions whether U.S. intelligence alone can support a policy of preemption to take out nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs in states of concern.

The full Blix interview is available at http://www.armscontrol.org/events/blixinterview_june03.asp.

More information resources on Iraq are available online at http://www.armscontrol.org/country/iraq/.

# # #

The Arms Control Association is an independent, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies to address security threats posed by nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as conventional arms.

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Interview with Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)

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Hans Blix, outgoing Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), shared his perspective on a number of Iraq disarmament issues during a June 16 interview with Arms Control Today editor, Miles Pomper, and ACA research analyst, Paul Kerr.

What follows is a transcript of the interview.

ACT: So let me just start with maybe the most general question, I'm sure one that you've heard before: Are you surprised that U.S. forces haven't found any weapons of mass destruction [WMD] yet?

Blix: No, I would not say I am surprised, but nor would I have been surprised if they had found something. Our position was always that there was a great deal that was unaccounted for, which means that it could have been there and the Iraqis had not explained what had happened to it, except to say in a general way that it was all destroyed in the summer of 1991.

We warned, and I warned specifically and explicitly, against equating "not accounted for" with "existing." And you'll find that we consistently said that Iraq must present any proscribed items or provide evidence of what has happened to them. And if they do not succeed in providing evidence, then the conclusion for us is that one cannot have confidence that these are gone and that therefore, at least in the past, in terms of the past resolutions, there was not a ground for lifting sanctions.

I am surprised, on the other hand, that it seems that so many of the U.S. military seemed to have been convinced that there would be lots of weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical weapons, for them to take care of as soon as they went in and that they would practically stumble on these things. If anyone had cared, in the military circles, to study what UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] was saying for quite a number of years, and what we were saying, they should not have assumed that they would stumble on weapons.

ACT: What do you think accounts for the discrepancy between this assumption on the U.S. military side and what was in the UNSCOM reports and what you found in your investigations?

Blix: I think primarily little attention to the United Nations and what it does up in New York and more attention to the huge organization that is the U.S. military force.

ACT: It's not a question of different intelligence methods of gathering things or political pressures or other factors?

Blix: No--well, of course there was a lot of political feeling that Saddam was bad, which was true, and which I shared (laughter). But going from there to saying that "well it was a foregone conclusion that there was a lot" [of WMD] was not really tenable logic. It is true that he had the intention and he had these programs; we all know that. And, in popular thinking, maybe, if you have someone committing a crime once you are inclined to think there will be a second time. But if you are a lawyer, if you are in a court, you are not supposed to say that it is automatic that someone who is accused a second time is guilty because he was guilty the first time. I think the matters have to be looked at on the merits, and this is what we tried to do here and that we were being cautious.

ACT: What do you think the lack of prohibited weapons finds says about the effectiveness of the investigations that you carried out and that the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] carried out? You got a lot of criticism at the time from the administration and other people about how effective they were and do you think that this shows you were more effective than they claim?

Blix: Let's distinguish between what is said at the official level with what is said at other levels. I mean, my relations with the U.S. mission here, with their representatives to the Security Council, with their representatives in the State Department, and Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, were--there was no criticism of what we were doing. On the contrary, there was support for it. And even at the time when the media were suggesting that we were withholding some evidence, there was no such suggestion made on the Security Council. These were spins that came at a lower level.

ACT: On the substance of the question, do you think that your investigations were more effective than perceived at the time, whatever the origin of the criticism?

Blix: I think our investigations were quite effective, but we never claimed that we could get into the last cave or corner in Iraq, and, when I was at the IAEA, [current IAEA Director-General Mohamed] ElBaradei and I both said that there will always be a residue of uncertainty, however far you can get. Now I think that given the many things unaccounted for we were relatively far from hitting that residue, so we were never conclusive about it. There is only one case when we really got very close to asserting that there was something left, and that was with the anthrax, where I think we certainly had strong indications that everything hadn't been destroyed in 1991. But having gone through the evidence of that case with the particular scientists here, I came to the conclusion that the evidence was not compelling, so we stopped short of saying that it does exist.

Now, we too, of course, were aware that the Iraqis must have learned a lot about concealment in the years and knew a lot about the techniques of the inspectors. So, we could not be sure that there were not underground stores that exist. We in fact were looking for ways in which one could explore that particular area, but you can't look into every cave in a big country. We were also looking into the question of mobile transport of WMD, because it was alleged that they moved things around all the time. Which is hardly plausible for a whole stock of chemical weapons for a country, but there could have been some. And this was an area in which we were really looking at for things. So we didn't exclude that we could stumble upon something. And the question came then when, you remember, we found the chemical weapons warheads which were empty of any chemicals but we found 12 of them and then another four I think, and we asked ourselves, and I said to the Security Council: "Is this the tip of the iceberg? Or is it simply broken up pieces of an ice that has broken in the past?" And I wouldn't answer it at the time, kept both possibilities open. As I look at it today, perhaps I'm a little more inclined to think that it was debris from the past.

We looked at the stash of documents which we found on the basis of a tip from an intelligence agency. And again this had been said from intelligence in the past that the Iraqis were farming out documents to farmhouses and individuals and did not have them in archives. So the find was fitted into that picture. Could it have been part of a more general behavior? We still don't know. But it could also have been an individual scientist who brought documents home, even though some were confidential. Both possibilities are open and we never found another one, but I don't exclude that it could have happened.

ACT: Can you speculate on why--

Blix: Ah, one point more. That is that, if you study our latest report, in the appendix we have information about when did UNSCOM, in particular, find things and when did they destroy things. And you'll find that, in the first place, UNSCOM hardly ever stumbled upon something or found something that really was concealed. It was declared--either the sites were declared or the weapons were declared. And they destroyed practically all--the vast majority was destroyed before the end of 1994. After 1994, through their investigations and through the Kamel papers,1 they managed to identify that a number of things had been tainted, had been used, in installations, equipment had been used for the production of weapons-then they decided, this must be destroyed. So the little things were destroyed of that, but not weapons. And, I think that it is a detail now that the U.S. hasn't found anything and we didn't find anything. I think it's interesting to go back and see that, in fact, after 1994, not much was found and destroyed. That has escaped attention. I don't think we have called much attention to it either but it struck me, and so we brought that forward.

ACT: Let's talk a little about the Kamel papers. One of the criticisms that was made before was that the investigators didn't find things on their own, that they were basically relying on defector testimony. How would you rate [defector testimony] versus on-the-spot investigations in terms of their effectiveness of getting at weapons programs and what is there?

Blix: Well, of course, if you count Kamel as a defector, which he was, this was a very valuable source of documents. But, it did not lead anybody to a new weapon that was hidden. It demonstrated that they had weaponized biological weapons and, according to what the Iraqis said, then destroyed them. So, it was a very interesting piece of history. It showed that they'd been lying, but [defectors] didn't lead directly to any weapons. In the nuclear field, it revealed that the Iraqis had a crash program under Kamel from the end of 1990 and to some part of 1991, in order to make a nuclear weapon out of fissionable material, which were under safeguards, and that they just didn't have time to do it. However, it did not lead the IAEA to any more fissionable material. It had already been taken out of Iraq by the time they found the Kamel papers. So, it was very interesting historically, revealed something that the Iraqis had kept quiet about, but it did not lead the IAEA to any weapons.

And when it comes to comparison between the value of defectors and the value of other intelligence or what the inspectors found, I would say that the IAEA, for which I was responsible at the time, did a pretty good job, with the exception of these crash programs about which we knew nothing. However, it was in discussions with Professor Jaffar [Jaffar Dhai Jaffar, Deputy Chairman of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission] that the big revelations came about the program. And through very painstaking research by our team, led by Prof Zifferero [Maurizio Zifferero, former Deputy Director of the IAEA and head of the IAEA's Iraq Action Team] not by David Kay [chief inspector of a nuclear weapons inspection team in Iraq and now Special Advisor for Strategy in the WMD search in Iraq]-he had no notion of their nuclear program. He was not a nuclear physicist. But Professor Zifferero, vilified by Mr. Milhollin [Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control], he was the one who really traced the program and understood it.

ACT: You mentioned the mobile laboratories when we were talking a little bit earlier. If they were, as the Iraqis claim, not used for biological weapons but were actually producing hydrogen [for civilian purposes], why didn't they declare them? Doesn't it strike you as strange?

Blix: Yes, a little. I mean, we were the ones who said to the Security Council that we asked the Iraqis for the images or declarations of whatever could have been seen as mobile and they gave us a number of photographs and none of these really fit with the ones that have now been discovered. Maybe there is some explanation for it but we are not aware of it. And I agree, it is puzzling and not the only puzzling detail.

ACT: More broadly, let's say that the Iraqis have been telling the truth all along and that they don't have these weapons, why would they not show the evidence of that and avoid a war?

Blix: I agree with you, I think it is a little bizarre. Maybe they considered them to be not a dual-use item. If they were to produce hydrogen, as they say, for weather balloons, was that a dual-use item at all? Maybe it had not drifted up to Amin and to al Saadi [Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate and Amir Al Saadi, a senior adviser to then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein].

Ewen Buchanan (UNMOVIC Public Information Officer): Maybe they didn't bother to tell the others.

Blix: I do not immediately jump to the conclusion that it was a lie. It could be.

ACT: Not just on that particular program but in the general sense of all their--of all the things you were missing.

Blix: Why didn't they declare everything?

ACT: Yeah, why not come clean?

Blix: When it came to biological, clearly they were lying and they knew that. Now, why did they do that if they had no weapons left? I'm not sure that the logic and the emotions and psychology works exactly the same way as they might do here. Maybe they felt ashamed to admit weaponization? I mean one theory why they - if they had no weapons after '91, then of course there's a much bigger enigma than that, and that is why did they behave all along as they did during the whole 1990s? Because they suffered through sanctions all the way through. And I've been speculating about it and I think more people than I will speculate about it.

One speculation that's been made in the Washington Post, which may have been plausible is that, while on the one hand they would say to the Security Council, "We've done everything, now you lift sanctions." On the other hand, maybe they did not mind that people say, "Well maybe they have something"-a deliberate ambiguity. It's possible-the mystique of maybe having some biological weapons, maybe they're playing around. That is one possibility. Now, why should such a mystique - why should they pursue that until they are occupied? That seems a little peculiar. Maybe by the force of its own logic or by miscalculation, brinksmanship.

And I have one other speculation and that's regarding pride. I saw that the chief minder of the chemical sector --when he was asked this question-he talked about pride. And I think that goes fairly deeply into my view of how inspections should operate here, that the Iraqis are very proud, as are the Pashtuns in Pakistan, the Afghans are extremely proud people. And that [the Iraqis] felt that, okay, these resolutions are accepted by us. We will live by them, but not one inch longer, not more intrusion than is absolutely [necessary], and they were legalistic about this.

I find it very hard to understand some of their denials of access that they had otherwise, where they were quibbling about five inspectors or ten inspectors going in, and eventually going into a house that was totally empty. There must have been a strong element of pride, and that was why when I came here from the very outset, I said we are in Iraq for effective and correct inspections. We are not there for the purpose of humiliating them, harassing them, or provoking them. There were many other elements too that we differed from UNSCOM, but this was one and I still think that pride might have been an element and, while we had lots of frictions and difficulties with them, in any case, we had I think a less difficult relation than UNSCOM had. We had, in particular, never any denial of access, and we had a good deal of cooperation when it came to setting up the infrastructure. So did UNSCOM have cooperation, but they of course had many denials of access.

ACT: In your recent report, you said that Iraq was cooperative in terms of process but not equally cooperative in terms of substance, and that the long list of unresolved disarmament issues had not shortened. On the other hand, you also said that inspections contributed to a better understanding of previous weapons programs. Could you elaborate a little bit? How does the inspection produce a better understanding if no outstanding disarmament issues were resolved?

Blix: Well, I think that there are biologists that learned more about [the Iraqi] biological program. We were given access, for instance, to some binder of documents-a fairly extensive thing-which did give them a better understanding. But it did not explain or give evidence that 8,500 liters were all they had [the total anthrax production that the Iraqis had acknowledged to UNMOVIC] or that they'd all been destroyed.

In the chemical field, we were interested in explanations about VX and whether it was stabilized or not stabilized. I'm told, by the experts that they understood some things better, obviously.

Buchanan: If I could chime in. From the UNSCOM days, it is true, the better understanding often led to more questions rather than anything else.

Blix: That's true. Take the Air Force documents.2 I mean, they did give us the Air Force documents. The famous Air Force document was given to us and we examined it and everybody agreed it was authentic. And it raised new questions. There was one enigma gone and another one coming up.

But as to the first part of your question about the difference between cooperation on process and on substance: Yes, of course, from the outset they were cooperative on process, and this was a marked difference from the past. And we were also trying to be as professionally correct as we could, although they accused us of being spies from time to time and asked "why could you ask such questions, these are not legitimate questions." But at the same time we felt that on the substance, they were to be active-as the council resolution required-and the 12,000 pages that we received as the declaration we thought were not really containing much new, mostly repetition of old finally complete declarations from the past. This was almost arrogant--that was our view, maybe we were mistaken in this judgment, but that was how we saw it, and similarly when they gave us 400 names, we had more names ourselves. And, combined with their assertion that these are "so-called disarmament issues," it was a somewhat arrogant attitude - we perceived it as such.

And that was the background for my statement in January, that they were not of substance, and that statement shook them. When I came back the next time, they were--[Iraqi Vice President Taha] Ramadan was indignant about it. It shook them clearly. And then it seemed to me that they changed very much, and they suggested all kinds of methods. They also zeroed in on the points which they knew that we were particularly interested in: on the VX, and on the anthrax, and on the SCUD missiles. So from that time, they became proactive, not just active but proactive. And we welcomed that.

However, we had to look at everything with cold eyes and examine [these efforts, which] didn't really solve anything. And in that respect, I warned the council that it may not, and eventually as we analyzed and submitted our thirteenth report, no we don't think that it really solved any of the issues of the past. As an example, we talked about the idea they had that we should take soil in places where they had poured anthrax into the ground, examine the soil, and look at the products that were there and see whether we could draw some conclusions about the quantities of anthrax that had been poured into there. Well our scientists were skeptical about it, but we were willing to go along and try the experiment. And so there was an effort, but whether this was an attempt to throw more dust in our eyes, or whether it was a genuine desperation on their part, that they had no other evidence, we don't know. We simply had to conclude that we did not have more evidence.

We also said in the discussion of interviews that, if you don't have any documents, then clearly interviews become even more important. They gave us lots of names of people who had taken part in the transport of missiles and the destruction of anthrax and the destruction of VX, and this was the most interesting avenue we would have pursued if we had remained, with all the handicaps that you have, in pursuing interviews in a totalitarian country. And I still feel a little puzzled that they could have detailed lists about even who transported what in 1991 without keeping any records of how much they transported. That's mystifying to me, though I do not exclude that there could be some natural explanation that they could destroy all the stuff, they could destroy all of the documents, but they couldn't destroy all the people, even in a country like Iraq.

ACT: As you said, they seemed to be getting a little more cooperative, at least giving you the semblance of cooperation, toward the end, if the inspections had continued, do you think you would have been able to get more substantive cooperation out of them or was it bogged down in this difficult process?

Blix: Well, it seems to me that the interview process would have been the most promising of them. Maybe they would have found some further documents, occasionally found some, but not very many. We thought that after we had found this stash of documents, that when they appointed [former Minister of Oil, General Amer] Rashid, and it was the [Rashid] Commission that could get the documents all over the country. I thought that if they had them-now this is a moment for them to do it [turn over the documents] without loss of face-they would find themselves in the right. I applauded their department officials. The same way with the commission they appointed after we had found the 12 warheads. It is far better-this now could be done without loss of face. But nothing came of it.

Now what would have happened then, if we had not been able to clear up and give really solid evidence, was that there would have been more indications of cooperation in substance yes, but still a lot of things would have - might have - remained unaccounted for, which wouldn't have been very satisfactory. And we don't know where we would have gone, maybe the U.S. would have said, "Well we are waiting for two months, this is it, that's the end of it." And others would have said, "They are really cooperating now, there are no problems." What we really are in now is continued containment. Now that was not a welcomed word in Washington, they didn't like the idea of containment, they wanted something decisive. And, well, their patience was not even enough for us going until March, so at what time point would they have lost patience? I don't know.

I'm not opposed to containment, and I said so at the time. I agree that containment has its drawbacks. In particular, and I think I mentioned it publicly that, there could be a fatigue in the Security Council, that the guard will be let down. I understand that also. So, it has some shortcomings. At the same time, I think one must be-then see what shortcomings has the other solution. All of the lives lost, all of the destruction, and we haven't seen all the other drawbacks that may come from it, nor have we seen all the benefits that could have come from it. They'll be on there - the balance of that particular account is not finished. But I was not personally against aerial containment actually that we had for a long time.

And in particular when you look at the most important-I mean, we-you and me talk about WMD as if it were one homogenous area, which of course it is not. I mean, the nuclear is vastly more important and there's a question of whether we really want to call chemical weapons "weapons of mass destruction." Biological [weapons are] more like terror weapons than weapons of mass destruction. However, in the nuclear field, I think that it was clear that it would have taken quite some time before they were up and running again because the whole infrastructure was destroyed. They could have, I agree they could have, succeeded in importing 18 kilograms of plutonium. They might have had the expertise to make a bomb, yes, but even that would have required some infrastructure, so the matter of intervention to prevent further development in the nuclear field was probably the weakest; it was the most important area, I agree, but it was the weakest.

ACT: When you had to leave Iraq, what were the disarmament tasks that were the most pressing, the issues you really wanted to get resolved?

Blix: I think that mobile business was. That and the underground [facilities for concealing prohibited weapons and related equipment]. And we had taken it up with the Iraqis, both of these items, and we were discussing concepts for how to approach the mobile business with the Iraqis and with others. We talked about having checks at the roads with Iraqi staff and us having helicopters, dashing in here and there, taking samples of these random checks and so forth. We never got to that, it wouldn't have been easy. None of the police forces we talked with gave us a really good model for it, but we were working on that.

And this goes back-the mobile thing went back to my experience in the IAEA in 1991. After all, the calutrons were on trucks, and they were, it was an IAEA team headed by Mr. Kay, who helped to take pictures of it. So we had experience that the Iraqis did move things around on trucks, but whether they were live things or debris, that was another matter. In any case, they had the habit of moving things by trucks in the big country, so that was not implausible. This was one experience from the past. But as Al-Saadi said to me when we talked about moving biological stuff around, he shook his and said merely the collision risk of all this stuff on the highways would have deterred him. I didn't write it off because of his remark, but I understood him.

ACT: I just have a couple of questions about the inspections, the process, getting into the weeds a little more. I have heard some say that there is no such thing as no-notice inspections, and he asserted that even during UNMOVIC's time in Iraq that the Iraqis had advance notice, that it was routine practice to give the Iraqis advance notice of inspections. Is that accurate? If it's not, was there any evidence that you noticed that the Iraqis knew you were coming?

Blix: No, we have heard people say that UNSCOM was penetrated and for that reason, the Iraqis would have known and, in some cases at any rate, that we were coming. We know that when our inspectors set out from the Canal hotel, Iraq would watch in what direction they were going and I know there were some cases our people sort of went around Baghdad so they alerted them all around the country. But once, of course, you are on the road, well then, they will observe that and the minders will inform those who maybe are in the direction they are coming and could prepare. However, we do not believe we were penetrated by the Iraqis here or in the Canal hotel. We do not think that any of these [Iraqis] actually knew where we were coming, until we were setting out on the road and they could start guessing it.

Now, added to that, I think is that, if they have a few hours notice, there is no way you can dismantle a missile program or move out a hell of a lot of chemical weapons. But you can of course squirrel away documents, vials-yes, that can be done. And UNSCOM had seen in the past how they were taking away some documents. But as for hardware, I think that's much harder unless it's small pieces of various kinds.

Buchanan: I think there was a common misunderstanding. Just because the Iraqis went out with us didn't mean to say they knew where we were going. People say, "why do you take them along with you?" They just followed, quite literally. And, yes, it's true, we would say to the chemical minder, "We want to meet you tomorrow in the morning at 8 o'clock because we're going out again." We just say the chemical team is going out at 8 in the morning but not where. There were some of these commentators that we talk of, yes and tomorrow we want you to take us to al-Qa'qa.

Blix: The only cases where we or the IAEA actually told them were in cases where we needed equipment to do something in particular, but they were very few cases. So I don't think this is really tenable.

ACT: I was going to ask you about a comment that [President Bush's national security adviser] Condoleezza Rice made during a March 9 interview3 when she said that "the IAEA missed--"

Blix: Yeah, thank you, wonderful. I've been looking for that. What date was it?

ACT: March 9th.

Blix: Nine. Nine of March. Good. (laughter) I'd like to see the evidence for that. (laughter) I'm sure she didn't find that evidence herself.

ACT: But my question was--

Blix: She refers to 1991, '95, and '98.

ACT: Right, and I was asking if you could comment on the accuracy of that statement.

Blix: Well, I've been intrigued by this statement, and [Secretary of State] Colin Powell also referred to, I think 1991, and I've seen [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz says that we were ready to close the nuclear weapons chapter before--when?

ACT: Three months after the end of the Gulf War.

Blix: I don't frankly understand. I'd love to see what evidence they have, in fact I love evidence in general (laughter). But I'd love in particular to see this since I was responsible for the IAEA at the time. Now, what we can say and I have said to [all this] is that, before the Gulf War, the IAEA had a safeguard system that was constructed by august member states, and which we operated to the full satisfaction of the said august member states. (laughter) And that this system was inadequate to discover undeclared installations and it was even asked to go to strategic points, to stretch its limitations to see what it could do within it. And the said august states woke up to the necessity of beefing up the system when it was discovered that Iraq had a great deal that was not declared. It would not have been politically possible to move in that direction before this disaster. And I am part of the disaster, yes. But neither did the CIA nor even Mossad to my knowledge know that the Iraqis had undeclared installations. Well we were in good company and I do not see why the IAEA alone should bear the burden for that.

We did take steps to beef it up when they came to fruition in 1997, the additional protocols which have not yet been ratified by-there are lots of people, states that have not done it. But nevertheless they are on the way and this is an interesting and promising development.

Now so much for '91. We did not see evidence of a nuclear weapon at the first inspection, but I think almost very shortly after the first inspection. We were there before UNSCOM- we could see that they had a program of enrichment, the calutrons were discovered there relatively early and identified. We did not jump from that conclusion that they have the bomb, nor would it have been permissible to do so. However, we asked - we certainly did not say or conclude that they have it. And it was relatively soon - or soon enough that they came with a drawing of the weapon. And so, I don't understand what the critics have mention in 1991. (It's true that in the safeguards report, that came in early 1991, the safeguards department probably reported that it had not seen any diversion of any fissionable material under safeguards but it didn't pronounce itself about anything that was not placed under safeguards.

So, that's 1991. For 1995, the critics have in mind the Kamel papers that revealed the crash program that Iraq had in 1990 and 1991. We didn't know about that. Well, the program failed, but we couldn't fail. This was nothing that went on in 1995; it was going on in 1990. And for 1998, I had no idea what the critics referred to.

So I think it would be very interesting if these criticisms that were never made at the time, by the United States or anybody else, at the IAEA--that this be substantiated. I've seen Mr. Milhollin and others say this - that doesn't surprise me the slightest - but I was taken aback when it came from Condoleezza Rice. I know she didn't do the research herself; I'm sure it would have been more solid then. But I would be very interested to know what was that basis of it.

ACT: How would you describe-since you're talking about Dr. Rice-how would you describe the U.S. participation and commitment to the inspection process before the war? Was the United States doing all it could do to enable your inspections to succeed? Were other countries, such as France and Russia, doing all they could do to support the inspections?

Blix: Well, in the early stages, there was not so much intelligence, and we asked for it from Colin Powell and others-Condoleezza Rice-and we were sure that we would get it. I would say that after 1441, the resolution, was adopted, and after the president had met Mr. ElBaradei and myself, there was more intelligence given, and at no time did we really complain about lack of support-lack of intelligence yes, but lack of support no. No, they helped us to run courses here, offered us equipment, etc. We were not complaining about that.

And, as of January-some time around January, I guess-I did not also complain about the number of sites intelligence that we were getting. The problem was rather that the U.S. or elsewhere-I don't want to distinguish between the various intelligence agencies-that they did not lead us to interesting sites. As I have said publicly several times, we went to a lot of sites given to us by intelligence from around the world and in only three cases did we find anything and in none of these cases did it relate to weapons of mass destruction. Now, at this stage, in the middle of June, when the U.S. inspectors have been there for quite some time and I think have probably gone to all of the rest of the sites and they haven't found them very helpful either. So should anyone be surprised then, in retrospect, that we did not?

Now where did [the information about] these sites come from? Some came from satellites, and it's not so easy to see everything and conclude the right things from satellites, and many came from defectors. So, while I by no means want to belittle the value of defectors' information, I think I like the more experienced - the professionals in the intelligence [community] - are very cautious about the information they get from defectors, and I think the whole case of the Iraqi affair bears out that you have to treat such affairs with prudence.

ACT: U.S. officials were reportedly frustrated with some of your reports to the Security Council. Is that accurate, and how would you respond to that?

Blix: If they are, I think they ought to be more articulate. My boss was the Security Council. I take my instructions from them, I read every ounce of criticism that came from the council. I do not see any criticism there.

ACT: So these were, as you said, certain lower level people?

Blix: Well, maybe that's a technique that you give spins on something at a lower level and you read in the newspapers what some people feel there at the official level. This might be suppressed, I don't know, but in any case at no time did I feel any criticism from the Security Council. On the contrary, I think I felt support and appreciation.

I read about, of course, the most flagrant cases, where allegations to the newspapers that we had suppressed information about the drones and about the cluster bombs probably. But we felt both cases were areas where we were exploring, where we were not ready to say that these are violations. And I have not seen that the U.S. has come out to say that these were violations, that these were smoking guns. So, I don't think that we were so wrong. If they had still felt that way, I assume they would not have been all that tight -lipped about it.

ACT: If you had to assess your own tenure there, how successful were you? How would you sum it up?

Blix: I would say that we have - we showed something that was not a foregone conclusion. Namely, that it was possible to create an international inspection mechanism that was effective, that worked under the Security Council, and that was independent of intelligence agencies but cooperated with them and had assistance from them. And I think that this is a valuable experience for the future because I think that there may yet be a need for international inspections.

Inspections under international organizations have greater acceptability in the world and I think they have also greater credibility than national inspections. Thereby, I don't say that national inspections have no credibility. If the inspectors who are in Iraq now come up with 100 tons of chemical weapons, well that's it. But we have seen how they have been jumping somewhat to conclusions on the mobiles. And I can see the pressure they're under but nevertheless one has to be cautious about that. So, I think there may be use in the future for this and that the experience is valuable and it's my reading of the Security Council that this is also the view of the council. I have not heard the U.S. dissent from it. Sure, the U.S. is a big country and there are many people in Washington, and I understand-as well as you-I understand there are some people there who are deeply skeptical about it and also people who would like to see it under their own control, rather than under of some more-or-less anonymous, international civil servants. This I understand, but there are arguments against this and that is both the credibility and the acceptability of it.

Now this is intriguing because we have different kinds of inspections in the world, and I remember saying at the State Department when we discussed Resolution 1441 that you could have had another one - that the Security Council could have asked the United States to set up the inspections from the beginning, just as it asked the U.S. to lead them in the Korean War. But that was not what they did. In resolution 1284, they said we should set up an inspection that was independent and where the inspectors were international civil servants, as contrasted to the inspectors under UNSCOM who remained civil servants and had per diems and travel expenses from the United Nations. Now there was a signal in this that we were to have a geographical distribution as in the United Nations system, that it was to be an international inspectorate and not any kind of adjunct to western intelligence.

ACT: You were saying something about this permanent body and lessons for the future. You wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago about inspections everywhere.

Blix: Well, the headline was theirs, don't you know. The headlines are always yours, I take no responsibilities for headlines. (laugh)

ACT: Yes, but could you elaborate more on what your notion of this organization and how this would function?

Blix: Well, we read now about the North Korean situation that the U.S. and others say that it must be irreversible and it must be verifiable, so I ask myself now what kind of verification are they planning for North Korea? Are they planning bilateral American inspections? Or are they still looking at the IAEA, or do they want to have inspection system under NATO, or what? I don't know. But the IAEA has the safeguards agreement with the operator, and to my knowledge the U.S. is supporting the safeguards system, even to the extent of asking for more funds for it. Although I haven't seen that they do the same thing for the OPCW [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-the international organization that carries out inspections under the Chemical Weapons Convention]. Maybe they did, I haven't seen it.

So I think the U.S. is also not throwing out inspections but it's natural for some people who have command of an area that they would like to have it all under their control. Well, I understand these guys, but there are some things you can gain by being together with others. You may have to give something, but you also gain something. Therefore, I think there may yet be opportunities for it.

I can go back to the early days of the nuclear sphere, when the U.S. sold technology and hardware to other countries, and they had bilateral American inspections. There were American inspectors going to the countries to check that what they had sold was used only for peaceful purposes. Now that was transferred to the IAEA, through explicit agreements, transferred to be multilateralized and institutionalized. And there were several reasons behind that. I think that's what both UNSCOM and UNMOVIC have shown is that we can have very effective inspections under an international system. In Iraq, maybe with the exception of something that will come up, we have not been accused of not having been effective. They were both correct and effective.

Now things might have been different if the Iraqis had stonewalled, but then you report [that]. I mean, the chances that inspectors will catch anybody red-handed are not very great. A country that is about to act in such a way would rather deny access, but then you would have smoke. Rather than a smoking gun, you have smoke. And that is interesting enough because that sets in motion the alarm bells and sets in motion the diplomatic, economic, and other measures that the government can take.

This is what happened in the case of North Korea. We didn't find a smoking gun-in fact, we don't know how much more plutonium they had than they declared. But they were not - it was not an honest report that they had. They had reprocessed more than once, [although North Korea declared that they had only reprocessed once] so they must have had more plutonium now. This was smoke. The Pentagon and the CIA came to the conclusion later that they had one or two bombs. Well, the IAEA has never said that. It's possible, because they might have reprocessed the whole batch. It's conceivable, but it's the worst case scenario, as it were. It's legitimate for them to play with that

But what the IAEA achieved then was getting the smoke coming up, setting in motion the whole procedure with the Security Council and the formidable [Robert Gallucci, lead U.S. negotiator on the 1994 Agreed Framework that attempted to freeze North Korea's nuclear weapons program] who came to an Agreed Framework, which I think probably was the best-or least bad-we could do at the time. I've never felt any criticism here.

ACT: There is speculation that Iraq destroyed prohibited weapons pretty recently before the U.S. invasion. Do you think this is possible, given UNMOVIC and IAEA's presence, that they could have destroyed the weapons without your knowledge?

Blix: This is not the only explanation we heard. One explanation is that they took things to Syria. Another one was that they dug it down so deep that they didn't have time to dig it up. The third one would be that they have already given it to terrorists. And the fourth one is they destroyed it just before the U.S. came or just before the inspectors came. Well, I see these explanations with increasing, accelerating interest and curiosity, but I'd like to see evidence of any one of them.

But to your precise question, I think it would have been difficult for them to hide the destruction of rather large stashes of chemical weapons under the noses of the inspectors. I don't exclude anything in this world.

ACT: Do you think any chemical or biological weapons that are still there would still be viable?

Blix: It varies. Any biological weapons that were dried, like dried anthrax, that would be viable. Even slurry might--might not be. A lot of the chemicals would not be viable.

Buchanan: A lot depends on the agent. Botulinum toxin has a very short life.

Blix: And the precursors might be there.

ACT: Now that you're moving on, in terms of UNMOVIC, at this point, what role can and should UNMOVIC play?

Blix: Well, it's entirely up to the Security Council. We are its humble servants.

ACT: Presumably, they might take your advice.

Blix: I'm not so sure. Well, maybe some of them (laughter). No I think there are two things that could be in the future. One is the verification of disarmament. A report by the inspectors who are there now would have greater international credibility if they were examined and if the reality were examined by international inspectors. Whether they are interested in that, I don't know.

The second is long-term monitoring. Will they want to have long-term monitoring in Iraq? That's still not rescinded from the resolutions. It was in all the resolutions and the resolutions also talk about this future zone free of weapons of mass destruction. I think there's something a little paradoxical about reducing the institutionalized transparency by doing away with something that was there, especially if we are looking for an enhanced verification for the region at some stage, including the Additional Protocol [an agreement designed to provide for more rigorous IAEA inspections]. And you would do away then with any verification [that Iraq does not possess biological weapons]. So you would have inspectors presumably on safeguards and the NPT [nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and chemicals maybe. But they would be a step backwards on inspections. So for the long-term it's a possibility, and I think that would be better in the hands of international inspectors than national ones.

But for the rest, the UN Security Council had in UNSCOM's and UNMOVIC's archives and personnel a unique, elite trained force. Especially the roster of inspectors is a practical and inexpensive way of holding an inspectorate ready. Valuable particularly regarding missiles, a priority for which you have no international organization. I do not think that the council wants to send ad hoc inspections every week, but it could be from time-to-time, and it would not need to have a very big stable force here. We would organize the training forces and organize the roster and the readiness.

For the rest, I think that they should write up the experiences here in some sort of digest because if they do not retain UNMOVIC then maybe they will set up something in the future and the document has experiences from both [UNSCOM and UNMOVIC] which are valuable.

ACT: For some sort of institutional memory ?

Blix: We have ourselves some of that already. We have the handbook that we worked out and which was not made public but which was used and made available to our College of Commissioners that might not be applicable in the same way to another situation because it was somewhat tailored to the resolutions, of course. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be learned, I think we can learn for the future. We have tried to commit to paper some of these experiences.


NOTES

1. Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who directed Iraq's illicit weapons programs, defected in 1995. Shortly after, Iraq provided inspectors with papers from Kamel's farm detailing their offensive biological weapons program

2. A document indicating that Iraq had used fewer chemical munitions during the Iran-Iraq war than it had previously stated.

3. Excerpt from "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," ABC TV, March 9, 2003:

Condoleezza Rice: It's extremely important not to draw conclusions too early about who is making progress on a nuclear program. I was a little concerned that IAEA remarks about the Iraqi nuclear program the other day seemed to draw certain conclusions.

George Stephanopoulos (Off Camera): It said they hadn't revived the nuclear program.

Condoleezza Rice: Right, and the IAEA of course missed the program in '91, missed the program in '95, missed it in '98. We need to be careful about drawing those conclusions particularly in a totalitarian state like Iraq.

Description: 
Interviewed by Miles A. Pomper and Paul Kerr

Country Resources:

The Case of Iraq's "Missing" Weapons

Daryl G. Kimball

The stated rationale for President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was intelligence indicating the presence of chemical and biological weapons and renewed nuclear weapons work. Turning its back on a UN arms inspections process it never fully supported, the administration embraced pre-emptive war as its preferred method of curtailing the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

After scouring Iraq for more than two months, however, the Pentagon has thus far failed to uncover evidence backing up the administration’s prewar claims. The case of the “missing” Iraqi weapons requires that we re-examine the administration’s rush to war in Iraq, as well as the use of intelligence to justify pre-emptive action against other states. It also underscores the enduring technical and political value of international weapons inspections.

To be sure, Iraq has possessed chemical and biological weapons, used chemical weapons, and pursued nuclear weapons in the past. During the 1990s, the first group of UN inspectors destroyed the bulk of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons and dismantled its nuclear bomb program, but the Iraqi government failed to cooperate fully. For this very reason, arms control advocates pressed for the prompt return of the UN inspectors with expanded capabilities and authority. After three months of renewed inspections in 2002 and 2003, scant evidence of WMD was uncovered. Still, more time and cooperation was needed to resolve a number of serious questions about unaccounted-for nerve and mustard agents, as well as chemical and biological munitions.

Although the administration now cites several reasons for the war, its chief claim was that UN weapons inspections had failed and that Iraq’s WMD posed an imminent threat. In his February 5 presentation to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell asserted that “Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons.” A British government report suggested that such weapons could be ready for use within 45 minutes. Vice President Dick Cheney went even further, saying March 16 that Iraq had “reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

Now it is the Bush administration urging patience, as the U.S. “military exploitation teams” that are searching Iraq come up empty-handed. Bush has even suggested that suspected WMD might have been destroyed before or during the invasion. Although it dismissed France’s prewar proposal to boost the number of UN inspectors, the Pentagon has belatedly decided to increase the number of U.S. specialists looking for Iraq’s banned weapons.

Should the absence of dramatic weapons finds be surprising? Not really, given the likelihood that UN inspections had effectively denied Iraq militarily significant WMD capabilities. Neither should it be surprising if the Pentagon finds dual-use technology and documentation about prohibited weapons work in the past—after all, Iraq did have active WMD programs at a time when Hussein was considered an ally by Washington.

What is shocking is the failure of U.S. and British forces to secure known Iraqi nuclear facilities in the final days of the war. The Department of Defense says only 200 personnel were assigned to the task. Reports indicate that widespread looting occurred at the Tuwaitha facility and six other sites in early April. As a result, dangerous nuclear materials might now be in unfriendly hands—one of the dangers Bush said the war would prevent. Not until late last month did the Pentagon agree to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to return to help secure the sites.

The lack of clear evidence of Iraqi WMD makes it all the more apparent that the latest round of tougher UN inspections were successful in stopping Iraq from assembling a militarily significant chemical or biological weapons arsenal and that they blocked further nuclear weapons activities. UN and IAEA inspectors should be allowed to return to Iraq to complete the task of long-term monitoring and disarmament. Unfortunately, the U.S.-drafted Security Council resolution on postwar arrangements effectively denies UN inspectors the opportunity to do so.

The case of Iraq also underscores the limitations of national intelligence as a basis for pre-emptive war. A good deal of the administration’s case against Iraq was built on information from groups with an interest in the overthrow of Hussein, such as the Iraqi National Congress. In a 2002 report, the CIA itself documented the unreliability of such sources.

If, over time, the dire prewar assessments of Iraq’s weapons prove false, it will be harder to win support for efforts to check the proliferation behavior of foes and even friends. In the long run, the United States can ill-afford to undermine international inspection efforts or injure its own credibility by invoking shaky assessments of weapons dangers to fit preconceived political or military objectives.

 

With War in Iraq Over, Where Are the Weapons?

Paul Kerr

One month after President George W. Bush’s May 1 declaration of an end to major combat operations in Iraq, U.S. forces are continuing their search for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons but have so far failed to make any significant discoveries. The future of UN weapons inspections in Iraq remains uncertain.

Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith told the House International Relations Committee during a May 15 hearing that the United States has searched about 20 percent of approximately 600 known weapons of mass destruction sites, warning that the process “will take months, and perhaps years.”

Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone told reporters during a May 7 briefing that the United States was sending an additional 2,000 personnel to Iraq to augment search efforts. The personnel will comprise the Iraq Survey Group, tasked with finding prohibited weapons. Cambone emphasized the importance of interviewing knowledgeable Iraqi officials and the evaluation of documentary evidence.

Explanations for the failure to find weapons vary. Administration officials have previously attributed the lack of discoveries to Iraq’s skill at concealing weapons, the need to interview scientists knowledgeable about Iraq’s weapons programs, and the possibility that Iraq might have destroyed prohibited weapons or transferred them to another country. (See ACT, May 2003.)

U.S. officials continue to assert that the coalition forces will locate chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. During a May 16 interview with Russian television, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Baghdad’s submission of an incomplete declaration about its prohibited weapons programs to the UN Security Council as evidence that the regime had been hiding such weapons.

Security Council Resolution 1441 required Iraq to submit a “currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its [weapons of mass destruction] programmes.” Iraq turned over a 12,000-page declaration to UN officials in Baghdad last December, but it contained little useful information and left many questions unanswered.

The most important weapons-related find has been the discovery of two trailers that U.S. officials believe were built to produce biological weapons agents. The first trailer was found April 19, and the second was discovered May 9, U.S. officials said. The second trailer did not appear to have been completed.

Powell told the Security Council February 5 that Iraq was using mobile biological laboratories as part of a larger effort to conceal its prohibited weapons programs.

U.S. experts say the trailers “appear to have had no purpose but to produce biological agents, and that they are…almost identical, in some respects,” to the vehicles Powell described, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher stated in a May 21 press briefing. Powell said in a press briefing that same day that U.S. experts do not know whether the trailers were used to produce biological agents because they “have been cleaned” with disinfectants and experts “can’t find actual germs on them.”

Role for the IAEA and the UN?

Meanwhile, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are planning to return to Iraq, according to a May 23 agency press statement. The United States agreed to let the inspectors return following repeated calls from IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei. Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the inspectors are planning to return “before the end of the week,” according to a May 26 Associated Press article.

Expressing deep concern about press reports indicating that civilians have been looting nuclear sites, ElBaradei called for the United States to “allow IAEA experts to return to Iraq” in a May 19 statement. He indicated that he had warned the United States on April 10 of the “need to secure the nuclear material stored at Tuwaitha”—Iraq’s nuclear research center—and provided Washington with the “information about the nuclear material, radioactive sources, and nuclear waste in Iraq.”

ElBaradei said he wrote to the United States again April 29 because, although the IAEA had received “assurances” from the United States that the site was being protected, he was concerned by further reports of looting. The United States did not respond to that message, he added.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged during a May 14 hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee that looting had taken place at nuclear sites that were unguarded by U.S. forces.

In response to ElBaradei’s May 19 suggestion, Washington is making arrangements with the agency to “conduct a joint inspection of the safeguarded storage area near Tuwaitha,” Boucher said May 21. He emphasized that the IAEA’s inspection of the Tuwaitha sites will fulfill its responsibilities under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and is a separate issue from the question of whether the agency will conduct the intrusive inspections mandated by Security Council resolutions concerning Iraq.

The nuclear material stored at Tuwaitha has been under IAEA safeguards since 1991. The IAEA is responsible for monitoring safeguards agreements undertaken by states-parties to the NPT.

ElBaradei called the security problems a “safety and security” issue in his May 19 statement. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming stated that the Tuwaitha site contains “radioactive sources that could be used” to make radiological weapons, according to a May 6 Agence France-Presse report. A radiological weapon uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material, but such a device would not come close to causing the destruction of a nuclear weapon, which is triggered by a nuclear reaction.

Meanwhile, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1483 on May 22 by a 14-0 vote, ending economic sanctions on Iraq and spelling out the United Nations’ postwar role in the country. Some sanctions on military goods remain in place.

The resolution also “reaffirms that Iraq must meet its disarmament obligations...and underlines the intention of the Council to revisit the mandates of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission” and the IAEA, but it does not specify whether those organizations should resume inspections in Iraq.

UN weapons inspectors left Iraq March 18—the day before the coalition invasion started—after almost four months of work, following U.S. failure to gain support from Security Council members opposed to the immediate use of force against Iraq.

Intelligence Investigated

Several reviews of the intelligence community’s assessments of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological programs are underway. A CIA spokesperson said in a May 27 interview that a review of intelligence gathering in Iraq was “put in motion” last October as part of a “lessons-learned” exercise. A team of retired intelligence officials is conducting the review, which has been underway for several weeks, the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, Congress initiated two other investigations of the intelligence community. The chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Porter Goss (R-FL) and Jane Harman (D-CA), sent a letter asking for detailed information about intelligence assessments of Iraq’s weapons programs, as well as other matters, a committee staff member said in a May 27 interview.

Describing the investigation as a “routine step,” Goss said in a May 25 appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation that its purpose is to “understand how good [intelligence community] sources and methods are.” Harman added during the same broadcast that the lack of chemical or biological weapons discoveries in Iraq to date “raises some questions” about the quality of U.S. intelligence.

On the Senate side, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA), have asked the CIA and the State Department to conduct “a formal investigation” into the intelligence community’s use of intelligence documents that were apparent forgeries.

 

 

One month after President George W. Bush’s May 1 declaration of an end to major combat operations in Iraq, U.S. forces are continuing their search for nuclear, chemical...

Military Authorized to Use Riot Control Agents in Iraq

Kerry Boyd

President George W. Bush has authorized the use of riot control agents in Iraq under specific circumstances, such as controlling rioting civilians, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed April 23. Although Pentagon officials say that the authorization is legal under U.S. and international law, many experts say using riot control agents in a military operation would violate the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and offend U.S. allies. (See ACT, April 2003.)

In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11850, renouncing “first use of riot control agents in war except in defensive military modes to save lives.” (See ACT, March 2003.) The order calls on the secretary of defense to ensure the military does not use riot control agents in war “unless such use has Presidential approval, in advance.” The order lists four cases in which U.S. troops may use riot control agents: “in areas under direct and distinct U.S. military control,” such as to control rioting prisoners of war; in a situation where hostile forces use civilians “to mask or screen attacks”; for rescue missions; and “in rear echelon areas outside the zone of immediate combat to protect convoys from civil disturbances, terrorists and paramilitary organizations.” The order remains in effect today.

“There is a very careful process for the decision as to whether or not riot control agents may be used on the battlefield, requiring presidential authorization, which may be delegated to the combatant commander,” W. Hays Parks, special assistant to the Army judge advocate general, said in a Defense Department briefing April 7. “But it’s not something that we do lightly,” he added.

Although U.S. troops in Iraq are now operating under rules of engagement that allow them to use riot control agents under certain circumstances, those rules do not extend to all coalition forces. British Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon said in a March 27 press conference that British troops would not use “non-lethal chemical weapons…in any military operation or on any battlefield.”

The Debate

The British decision not to use riot control agents hints at a significant difference in interpretation of the CWC between the United States and many other CWC member states. The treaty, which bans chemical weapons, allows states-parties to possess riot control agents but is vague on the legality of their use. The treaty defines riot control agents as chemicals that “can produce rapidly in humans sensory irritation or disabling physical effects which disappear within a short time following termination of exposure.”

The CWC, which entered into force in 1997, bans the use of riot control agents “as a method of warfare.” However, it allows the use of “toxic chemicals and their precursors” in “law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes,” provided that “the types and quantities are consistent with such purposes.” The gray area between using riot control agents for domestic law enforcement and for warfare remains undefined.

The Pentagon argues that using riot control agents in Iraq under the circumstances allowed by U.S. law would not violate the CWC, which the United States signed in 1993. In a March 9 written response to an article in London’s The Independent that criticized U.S. policy, Victoria Clarke, assistant secretary of defense, said, “[U]se of these agents for defensive purposes to save lives would be consistent with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare.”

Many arms control experts and, apparently, other CWC member states disagree. They argue that using riot control agents in Iraq would undermine the CWC, which is intended to prevent the use of chemical weapons. Critics say U.S. use of chemical agents would appear hypocritical, since U.S. leaders cited Iraq’s possession of lethal chemical agents as a major justification for invading the country. Some experts also argue that using riot control agents against a military, such as Iraq’s, that possesses gas masks would only harm civilians while not affecting enemy soldiers.

In addition to riot control agents, some arms control analysts had speculated that the United States might use chemical calmatives, which have a much more serious effect on the body and behavior than riot control agents. In her response to The Independent, however, Clarke wrote, “The allegation that the U.S. intends to use calmative agents in a prospective war with Iraq is absolutely false.”

 

 

 

Military Authorized to Use Riot Control Agents in Iraq

Troops Search for Weapons in Iraq; UN Debates Sanctions

Paul Kerr

U.S. military forces are continuing their so-far fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. Meanwhile, a debate has begun about whether United Nations weapons inspectors should return to Iraq, now that the military conflict has mostly ended.

Although there have a been a number of press reports that coalition forces have located evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, no conclusive proof has been found. For example, reports that U.S. forces had discovered mobile laboratories for making biological weapons agents turned out to be false, according to U.S. Army Chief Monte Gonzales in an April 15 CNN interview. General Vincent Brooks stated April 22 that U.S. forces have “not found any weaponized chemicals, biological agents, or any nuclear devices at this point.”

U.S. officials have repeatedly claimed that coalition forces will find evidence that Iraq has a hidden WMD program but say it will be necessary to interview Iraqi scientists and other officials to find prohibited weapons. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserted during an April 13 interview on CBS’s Face the Nation that “we’re not going to find” prohibited weapons without the help of knowledgeable Iraqis.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher argued April 9 that the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provides an opportunity for Iraqi scientists to speak without fear of intimidation, saying the Hussein regime “never allowed” Iraqi scientists to speak freely to UN inspectors. UN inspectors reported that the Iraqi government had allowed them to conduct some interviews without the presence of government officials or recording devices a few weeks before the invasion.

Rumsfeld introduced an additional theory to explain the lack of weapons discoveries in an April 13 interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying the United States has “reports” that Iraq might have sent prohibited weapons to a neighboring country. Boucher refused to say during an April 21 press briefing whether the United States had evidence that this had occurred.

President George W. Bush offered a third explanation for troops’ failure to find WMD, asserting during an April 24 interview with NBC’s Tom Brokaw that Iraq “perhaps…destroyed some” prohibited weapons.

U.S. officials emphasized that the process will take time. Major General Stanley McChrystal stated April 14 that the inspections process “will go for an extended period of time” and that inspection teams have visited only a “small percentage” of suspected weapons sites.

Although U.S. officials had said they possessed intelligence information suggesting that some Iraqi forces had chemical weapons and the authority to use them, no such weapons were used during the conflict.

UN weapons inspectors left Iraq March 18—the day before the coalition invasion started—after almost four months of work, when the United States failed to gain support from Security Council members opposed to the immediate use of force against Iraq.

UN Inspectors’ Role Debated

Meanwhile, the Security Council debated the future role UN weapons inspectors might play in Iraq. Under existing Security Council resolutions, sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until inspectors from the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) determine that Iraq has complied with disarmament requirements imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Several resolutions also call for inspectors from UNMOVIC and the IAEA to perform a long-term monitoring role to prevent reconstitution of prohibited weapons programs.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said in an April 22 press briefing that Washington wants the Security Council to pass a new resolution to lift the sanctions, arguing that they “no longer serve a useful purpose.” Boucher indicated April 21 that Washington wants to maintain “some restrictions on…military goods.”

Although Boucher said April 23 that the administration has not ruled out a future role for UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, Fleischer indicated April 22 that the administration was cool to the idea, saying “the United States and the coalition have taken on the responsibility for dismantling Iraq’s WMD.” A UN official stated in an April 28 interview that the United States has approached some members of the UNMOVIC staff and asked them to join U.S. inspection teams.

Exactly when the United States wants the sanctions lifted is unclear. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte said in an April 22 press statement that the sanctions “should be lifted as soon as possible.” Boucher stated, however, that the sanctions should be lifted “at an appropriate time,” after the United Nations makes necessary adjustments to the UN-administered oil-for-food program.

France proposed suspending the sanctions during an April 22 Security Council meeting, French Ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Marc de la Sabiliere told reporters. Russia and France had previously supported lifting the sanctions only in accordance with existing UN resolutions, which would require UN inspectors—rather than U.S. inspection teams—to verify Iraq’s disarmament.

Boucher described the French proposal as “a move…in the right direction” during an April 23 press briefing, but he also said that “more work [needs] to be done” to settle the issue. He added that the United States is reluctant to cut a deal in the United Nations over the inspections issue.

UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix briefed the Security Council April 22, stating that UNMOVIC inspectors are completing the “analysis and assessment of data” from past inspections. He added that UNMOVIC is maintaining a field office in Cyprus and has 85 inspectors under contract until mid-June. After that, UNMOVIC would have to reactivate inspectors from its 315-person roster, he said.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Blix argued that the Security Council “would like to have the inspection and verification [completed by UN teams], which bear the imprint of that independence and of some institution that is authorized by the whole international community.” He added that UNMOVIC inspectors could work with coalition forces, saying “I don’t see an adversarial relation.”

IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei also said that his agency should resume work in Iraq “as soon as possible” in an April 22 statement to the Security Council, adding that “the IAEA continues to be the sole organization with legal powers…to verify Iraq’s nuclear disarmament.”

Fleischer stated April 22 that the United States’ existing disarmament procedures provide sufficient transparency and credibility.

 

 

 

Troops Search for Weapons in Iraq; UN Debates Sanctions

U.S. Issued Warning on Threat of Possible Iraqi WMD Use

Wade Boese

One of the unknowns leading up to and during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was the U.S. response if Iraqi forces used chemical or biological weapons against U.S. troops or allies. Fortunately, Iraq did not carry out such an attack, sparing an answer.

Nevertheless, the question lingers and remains relevant because other countries hostile to the United States are known or thought to possess chemical and biological weapons.

At various times in the past, U.S. officials have said that the United States might respond to a chemical or biological weapons attack with nuclear weapons. The United States has pledged, however, not to use nuclear weapons against countries not possessing them that are party to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty unless such a country joined a nuclear-armed country in attacking the United States, its forces, or allies. Proliferation experts have also debated whether a nuclear response would be proportionate to chemical or biological weapons use.

As the likelihood of war grew and then became reality, Bush administration officials narrowed their public comments about how the United States would respond to a chemical or biological attack. It is not known if any private threats were communicated to Iraqi leaders.

Over the first months of this year, U.S. officials would not forswear, although they did downplay, the possibility of retaliating with nuclear weapons if Iraq used chemical or biological arms, arguing that no option would be ruled out. Both in the days prior to the outbreak of the war and during the fighting, top officials did not threaten to retaliate with or even allude to possible U.S. nuclear use. Instead, they directed their public statements to Iraqi military commanders and soldiers, telling them that they would be punished as war criminals if they used chemical or biological weapons.

When President George W. Bush issued an ultimatum March 17 that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons had 48 hours to leave Iraq or face military action, he warned Iraq’s military not to obey any order to use weapons of mass destruction, a term referring to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. If Iraq employed these types of weapons, Bush indicated that the act would constitute a war crime and stated that those responsible would be prosecuted as war criminals. He warned, “And it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.’”

Bush did not say that the United States would reserve the right to respond any way it wanted—warnings that other senior officials previously voiced—but neither did he refute the earlier statements.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press January 26, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card suggested that the United States might retaliate with nuclear weapons to a chemical or biological attack. Hussein “should anticipate that the United States will use whatever means necessary to protect us and the world from a holocaust,” Card said. When asked if that included nuclear weapons, Card responded, “I’m not going to put anything on the table or off the table.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer also declined in January and February to explicitly renounce nuclear weapons as an option in a possible conflict with Iraq, saying U.S. policy was not to rule anything out. Powell, however, noted February 9, “It does not mean we are going to use nuclear weapons.”

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took a similar line in a February 13 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, contending past U.S. policy dictated that the United States “not foreclose the possible use of nuclear weapons if attacked.” He added, however, that the United States could accomplish what it needed to with conventional capabilities and described the implication of one news article that nuclear weapons might be used in Iraq as “unfortunate.”

A day after the U.S.-led invasion began March 19, Rumsfeld repeated Bush’s warning that the use of weapons of mass destruction would be a war crime and the perpetrators would be found and punished. Rumsfeld repeated this message over the next several days.

Bush also reiterated his earlier statement when questioned March 27 whether the United States would use nuclear weapons in response to an Iraqi chemical or biological attack. At first, the president answered vaguely, replying, “We will deal with it.” But in response to a follow-up question, he stated, “Well, they’ve been sent a message…if you launch a weapon of mass destruction, you’ll be tried as a war criminal. And I urge those Iraqi generals who have any doubt of our word to be careful, because we’ll keep our word.”

The U.S. military sought to deter or prevent Iraqi use of chemical or biological weapons through a variety of methods. In addition to seizing territory from which the weapons could be launched and striking potential delivery systems and possible storage sites, leaflets were dropped from planes to dissuade Iraqi soldiers from using such weapons. One leaflet read, “No one benefits from the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

U.S. warnings were targeted at Iraqi decision-makers and those with their “fingers on the trigger,” in the words of General Tommy Franks, who commanded the U.S.-led attack. Franks added March 24, “We have very carefully said, ‘Don’t do it.’” Brigadier General Vincent Brooks claimed April 7 that chemical weapons had not been used, in part, due to “influence against decision-makers.”

Another explanation could be that Iraq did not have or possessed limited quantities of such weapons. No chemical or biological weapons have been unearthed since the war started.

In December 2002, the Bush administration released a document, titled “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,” asserting that the United States would reserve the right to respond to any weapon of mass destruction attack with “overwhelming force—including through resort to all of our options.” Reportedly, the Bush administration adopted as U.S. policy a more explicit formulation in September 2002. That classified document, known as National Security Presidential Directive 17, is said to authorize the use of nuclear weapons as an option in retaliation for a chemical or biological weapons attack. (See ACT, January/February 2003.)

U.S. Issued Warning on Threat of Possible Iraqi WMD Use

Unfinished Business in Iraq

IAEA and UNMOVIC Outline Remaining Disarmament Tasks

Wade Boese

On March 19, the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) submitted work programs to the UN Security Council detailing the status of their efforts to verify Iraq’s disarmament and future steps to realize that goal. UNMOVIC was charged with overseeing Iraq’s elimination of its proscribed biological, chemical, and missile programs, while the IAEA was responsible for the abolition of Baghdad’s nuclear weapons program.

The presentation of the work programs had a surreal quality. All of the arms inspectors had departed Iraq the day before under the prospect of a looming U.S.-led invasion of Baghdad, an action that U.S. and British officials said was intended to disarm Iraq. That attack began March 19. Backed by the United Kingdom and several smaller countries, the Bush administration argued force was needed to accomplish what it said the inspectors could not do. Many other countries, including China, France, Germany, and Russia, disagreed.

Although it appears that the UNMOVIC and IAEA work programs might have come to an end with the U.S.- led invasion, the inspectors’ lists of key remaining disarmament tasks may well serve as a starting point for any post-war effort to account fully for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.

The IAEA expressed confidence that it had a “coherent” picture of Iraq’s illegal nuclear weapons program and had succeeded in eliminating it by 1998 when inspectors first left Iraq—only days before Washington and London carried out military strikes against Baghdad for its failure to cooperate fully with inspectors. Upon resuming its Iraq inspection work in November 2002, the IAEA set out to determine whether Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program during the four-year absence of inspectors. This year, the IAEA has reported several times to the UN Security Council that it “found to date no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.” With that said, the IAEA still has some unresolved questions about Iraq’s past nuclear weapons efforts, which the IAEA’s work program was designed to answer.

UNMOVIC’s predecessor, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), had said it succeeded in dismantling the key facilities involved in Iraq’s efforts to acquire chemical and biological weapons and in supervising the destruction of significant quantities of proscribed weapons, including missiles. Yet, it had a much more difficult time than the IAEA in accounting for Iraq’s past weapons efforts. UNMOVIC inherited from UNSCOM a host of unresolved questions and most of those remain unanswered, which UNMOVIC’s much more extensive work program makes clear.

Summarized below is the IAEA’s list of actions Iraq needs to take with regard to its past and current nuclear activities as well as the dozen disarmament issues in the biological, chemical, and missile fields that UNMOVIC highlighted as remaining unresolved.

IAEA

Saying its main task—the elimination of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program—has been accomplished, the IAEA focused its work program on obtaining as complete a picture as possible of Iraq’s past nuclear efforts as well as a clear understanding of any current Iraqi activities or personnel that could be employed to reconstitute an illicit weapons program. To achieve these objectives, the IAEA said Iraq must provide full technical descriptions of its past nuclear weapons activities; turn over all documents related to nuclear activities; name and make available for interviews all personnel previously involved in Iraq’s nuclear weapons program; describe any industrial infrastructure improvements over the past four years; list and explain any procurement activities that could be related to a nuclear weapons program; and describe its current procurement system. The IAEA also called on Baghdad to institute laws and create administrative bodies for enforcing UN prohibitions against weapons of mass destruction.

UNMOVIC

1. Scud Missiles and Associated Biological and Chemical Warheads

Beginning in 1974, Iraq began importing Scud-B missiles, which are surface-to-surface ballistic missiles with an estimated range of 300 kilometers. Iraq claimed it imported a total of 819 Scud-B missiles, a matching number of conventional warheads, and liquid missile propellants. Iraq also initiated its own programs to develop similar capabilities. Those programs, according to Iraq, resulted in the production of seven “training” engines for its own missiles and 121 Scud-type warheads. It is uncertain whether they were biological, chemical, or conventional warheads. Iraq also imported turbo-pumps needed to produce its own missiles.

  • Although UNSCOM concluded that 817 of Iraq’s 819 imported Scud-B missiles had been “effectively” accounted for—meaning that inspectors verified each missile’s destruction or use—UNMOVIC reported, “It cannot be excluded that Iraq retained a certain number of the missiles.” In addition, UNMOVIC said Iraq had not provided evidence to support its claims that it had destroyed the seven training engines. Also unaccounted for were some 21 imported turbo-pumps and a significant amount of the liquid propellant. Iraq stated that the liquid propellant would no longer be usable even if it did exist, a contention UNMOVIC disputed. UNMOVIC further found it could not verify Iraq’s claim to have destroyed approximately 50 Scud-type warheads. Iraq could not account for a 50-ton trailer that it had imported to convert into a mobile missile launcher.

Some, perhaps all, of Iraq’s domestically produced Scud-type warheads were to be filled with chemical or biological agents. Baghdad repeatedly altered its claims as to how many “special warheads” it built and the ratio of chemical to biological warheads. The last Iraqi statement on the issue claimed that 50 chemical and 25 biological warheads were manufactured, although UNSCOM had received evidence suggesting that at least 100 total special warheads had been produced.

  • UNSCOM verified the destruction of 73-75 special warheads. Due to Iraq’s various claims, discrepancies in evidence, and its attempts to mislead UNSCOM about its biological weapons program in general, UNMOVIC assessed that “uncertainty remains concerning the types and numbers of chemical and biological agents [Iraq] filled into the special warheads.”

2. SA-2 Missile Technology

In the early 1970s, Iraq started importing SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, which are also called Volga missiles. Iraq launched a number of programs to modify or reverse engineer the SA-2 missiles into surface-to-surface missiles. Early projects were the Fahad-300 and Fahad-500 missiles. Later, when UNSCOM was in Iraq (1991-1998), Iraq initiated covert programs, G-1 and al Rafidain, based on the SA-2. Iraq subsequently claimed it had canceled these programs with few results, but it did not provide evidence to back up its assertion.

In a December 7, 2002 declaration to UNMOVIC, Baghdad admitted production of al Samoud-2 missiles, which were based on the SA-2. Iraq contended the new missile was legally compliant with the UN prohibition against any Iraqi missile capable of traveling 150 kilometers or more. But al Samoud-2 flight tests exceeded the limit, and UNMOVIC ordered Iraq to destroy its 76 al Samoud-2 missiles, 118 warheads, and 9 launchers. By the time UNMOVIC left Iraq in March, it had supervised Iraqi destruction of 72 missiles and 47 warheads.

Related to its al Samoud program, Iraq illicitly purchased an undetermined number of Volga engines. Iraq initially claimed importing 131 Volga engines, but UNMOVIC discovered 231 such engines, and one Iraqi engineer said a total of 567 Volga engines had been acquired all together.

  • UNSCOM oversaw the elimination of nine Fahad-300 missiles but said it could not confirm the total number of SA-2 missiles that Iraq modified or used in testing. UNMOVIC stated, “It cannot be excluded that some Fahad-300 missiles still remain in Iraq.” Overall, UNMOVIC remained concerned about the amount of uncertainty regarding how all the SA-2-based programs were interrelated and how much progress Iraq made on each. UNMOVIC noted, “Other missile systems with ranges in excess of 150 kilometers may possibly be under development or planned.” UNMOVIC supervised the destruction of solid propellant casting chambers that could be used to build proscribed missiles. As a result of this action, UNMOVIC described Iraq’s ability to produce large rocket motors as “diminished.”

3. R&D on Missiles Capable of Proscribed Ranges

Around the mid-1980s, Iraq began researching the development of medium-range ballistic missiles capable of traveling 1,000-3,000 kilometers. Iraq also said it looked into development of a space-launch vehicle. Baghdad further explored technology to enable warheads to separate from their boosters and imported a different fuel than what was needed for Scud-B missiles. UNSCOM uncovered Iraqi efforts initiated after 1991 to develop turbo-pumps for a proscribed missile as well as a computer disk with missile flight simulation information for illegal missiles.

  • UNMOVIC said it would be unlikely that Iraq could build proscribed missiles based on the computer simulations. The inspectors declared, however, “What is of concern is the apparent intent behind such activities and, in particular, the conscious decision to act in contravention” of UN prohibitions. UNMOVIC also stated that Iraq could use its past prohibited research and development to make headway on “less ambitious and less complex proscribed missile systems.”

4. Munitions for Chemical and Biological Agent Fill

Iraq began domestically producing a low-altitude bomb that could be filled with chemical or biological agents for use by combat aircraft in 1990. Iraq designated this bomb the R-400. Iraq initially claimed in 1992 that it had produced 1,200 R-400 bombs for chemicals but amended the figure to 1,550 following revelations about its biological weapons program in 1995. Iraq provided various figures on how many R-400 bombs had been filled with what type of agent.

  • UNSCOM could not account for at least 300-350 R-400 bombs. (Two UN reports in 1999 put this figure at 500.) Claiming that it is “impossible” to confirm production or destruction tallies for R-400 bombs, UNMOVIC stated that it “cannot discount the possibility that some [chemical] and [biological] filled R-400 bombs remain in Iraq.” UNMOVIC further noted that Iraq possesses the knowledge and resources to produce R-400-type bombs “easily.”

Iraq made or acquired more than 30,000 “major aerial bombs” for delivering chemical or biological agents between 1983 and 1990. An Iraqi Air Force document seen by UNSCOM—later handed over to UNMOVIC—suggested that Iraq used roughly 6,500 fewer chemical bombs during its eight-year war with Iran than Baghdad claimed, casting doubt on Iraq’s declarations. Iraq explained that the air force document was incomplete.

  • UNSCOM could not confirm Baghdad’s assertion that it destroyed some 2,000 empty bombs. Nor could UNSCOM verify that some 450 bombs filled with mustard, a chemical blistering agent, were destroyed in a fire. UNMOVIC noted that, although much of Iraq’s chemical and biological aerial bomb arsenal was “presumably eliminated, its ability to reconstitute that inventory remains largely intact.”

Before 1991, Iraq declared it filled some 70,000 155-millimeter artillery shells and more than 100,000 122-millimeter rocket warheads with chemical agents.

  • UNSCOM could not account for 550 155-millimeter artillery shells or some 15,000 empty 122-millimeter rocket warheads that Iraq said it had destroyed. UNMOVIC inspectors found a total of 14 empty 122-millimeter rocket warheads in January 2003, and Iraq handed over another four. UNMOVIC expressed concern about the inability to account for the 550 155-millimeter artillery shells because it determined that the mustard in the shells would still be potent. UNMOVIC further noted that Iraq possesses “significant stocks” of conventional 155-millimeter artillery shells and 122-millimeter rocket warheads that Iraqi industry could modify for chemical agents.

Starting in the 1980s, Iraq explored using cluster munitions to deliver chemical agents but denied it ever made much progress. Iraq also claimed it never investigated using cluster munitions for biological agents. UNSCOM, however, noted that Iraq’s main chemical production facility, the Muthanna State Establishment, was involved in testing sub-munitions that could be useful for cluster-type weapons. A high-ranking Iraqi official, who recanted in front of his superiors, also linked cluster bombs and biological weapons together in an interview.

  • UNMOVIC discovered a 122-millimeter cluster sub-munition component for either chemical or biological agents at the warehouse of a cluster bomb factory in February 2003. UNMOVIC concluded, “Iraq’s interest in cluster munitions, and the developments it did make, may have progressed well beyond what it had declared.”
    Iraq claimed that it explored, but abandoned in 1988, developing a warhead to deliver chemical agents for a short-range battlefield rocket known as FROG. Documents dated March 1989 and August 1990, however, were found that suggested such work was still ongoing at those times.
  • UNMOVIC assessed that no evidence exists that Iraq continued work on a chemical warhead for the FROG beyond 1990, but added that “the possibility cannot be ruled out.”

5. Spray Devices and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Iraq researched two types of devices for spraying chemical and biological weapons from the air: modified auxiliary fuel tanks and modified agricultural sprayers. Iraq provided conflicting accounts of when it tested these systems and for what purposes. Baghdad said its plans to modify 12 auxiliary fuel tanks for use with a Mirage F-1 combat aircraft were frustrated by a shortage of valves. Iraq claimed it only managed to build three modified fuel tanks and one prototype. Baghdad said the prototype and the Mirage jet were destroyed during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and that it destroyed the three other tanks.

The other serious Iraqi research program on a spray device entailed developing biological weapon aerosol generators for a modified crop-dusting helicopter. This system was called the “Zubaidy” device. Iraq described field tests of the helicopter system as inconclusive. Iraq also separately explored using a MiG-21 fighter and a L-29 training jet as remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) for delivering various payloads.

  • Arms inspectors were never able to confirm that the Mirage F-1 combat aircraft and prototype fuel tank were destroyed. In addition, a document was found suggesting that Iraq had an excess, not a shortage, of valves for modifying fuel tanks. UNSCOM also found an Iraqi report indicating the helicopter field tests went well. None of the components of that system were ever accounted for. UNMOVIC asserted, “Spraying devices modified for [chemical and biological weapon] purposes may still exist in Iraq” and reported that Iraq possesses many agricultural aircraft spray systems identical to the ones converted to disseminate biological weapons. UNMOVIC found modified fuel tanks in December 2002, which Iraq explained as being part of an air force agricultural spray system. With regard to Iraqi RPV/UAV programs, UNMOVIC said more investigations must be done.

6. VX and Its Precursors

Iraq initiated laboratory research into VX, a potentially lethal nerve agent, as early as 1975 and intensified its work in 1985. Iraq explored four different methods for producing VX. Initially, Iraq denied that it ever produced more than a few grams of VX, but it started changing its story in 1995. Iraq eventually admitted to producing 3.9 tonnes of VX. Baghdad claimed it used or destroyed its entire stockpile. Iraq further denied ever weaponizing VX, but samples of warhead remnants revealed traces of VX.

  • Although arms inspectors found the presence of VX at the sites where Iraq contended it destroyed the chemical, no determination could be made about the actual quantities destroyed. The absence of complete production records, including for all of 1990, have frustrated inspectors’ efforts to conclude how much VX Iraq made. UNMOVIC stated, “Given Iraq’s history of concealment with respect to its VX programme it cannot be excluded that it has retained some capability with regard to VX.” UNMOVIC further highlighted that there are “significant discrepancies in the accounting for all the key precursors…required to produce VX.”

7. Mustard Gas and Its Precursors

The largest quantity of illegally produced chemical agent acknowledged by Iraq was mustard. Between 1982 and 1990, Iraq churned out 2,850 tonnes of mustard agent. However, Iraq did not provide arms inspectors with a complete accounting of its production, weaponization, and use of mustard gas, raising questions about the accuracy of its declarations.

  • As stated above, arms inspectors have been unable to verify Iraq’s claims of destroying 550 155-millimeter artillery shells and 450 major aerial bombs filled with mustard. In addition, the Iraqi air force document suggesting that Iraq used roughly 6,500 fewer chemical bombs in its war against Iran raises doubts that all of Iraq’s mustard weapons have been accounted for. UNMOVIC declared, “It is possible that viable Mustard filled artillery shells and aerial bombs still remain in Iraq.” UNMOVIC reported that Iraq is not currently capable of producing new mustard because it lacks a dedicated facility. UNMOVIC added, however, that Iraq does have the necessary equipment spread throughout the country to assemble such a facility and it has the necessary starting materials, making mustard the “easiest agent for Iraq to produce indigenously.”

8. Sarin, Cyclosarin, and Their Precursors

Sarin and cyclosarin, two related nerve agents, constituted about 20 percent of Iraq’s chemical arsenal. Iraq claims that from 1984-1990 it produced 795 tonnes of sarin-type agents using two methods. UNSCOM assessed Iraq’s sarin-type agents as being of relatively low quality.

  • UNMOVIC cited discrepancies in Iraq’s claims about the status of nearly 4,800 rocket warheads and 12 aerial bombs filled with sarin-type agents. That would be proportionate to about 40 tonnes of the chemical agent. Due to the low quality of Iraqi sarin-type agents, however, UNMOVIC asserted that it would be “unlikely that [past sarin-filled munitions] would still be viable today.” UNMOVIC noted that uncertainties remain about the amount of precursors Iraq acquired for making sarin-type agents and whether Iraq ever instituted large-scale production of binary artillery shells and rockets for use with sarin-type agents. Unless Iraq retained the right precursors after the 1991 conflict or smuggled them into the country afterward, UNMOVIC concluded Iraq would not be able to produce sarin or cyclosarin. UNMOVIC noted that its inspections had not uncovered any evidence of precursors.

9. Anthrax and Its Drying

After denying the existence of a biological weapons program up until 1995, Iraq subsequently admitted producing, over a two-year period, 8,445 litres of anthrax—a bacteria commonly found in the soil that causes diseases in animals and can be very lethal to humans in certain forms. Iraq claimed to have limited its production of anthrax to two sites, but evidence of it was also found at a third. Iraqi officials several times revised their accounts of how many bombs and warheads they filled with anthrax. Iraq’s last statement was that it had filled 50 R-400 aerial bombs and five al Hussein warheads with anthrax. Iraq contends it destroyed all of its stored anthrax in 1991.

  • UNMOVIC cited several findings by UNSCOM that cast doubt on Iraq’s declarations. UNSCOM determined that, based on Iraq’s production capabilities, it could have produced 22,000-39,000 litres of anthrax. Iraq’s unaccounted for growth media could have contributed to the production of anthrax in the range of 15,000-25,000 litres. UNSCOM further determined that at least seven, not five, al Hussein warheads had been filled with anthrax. UNMOVIC described Iraq’s claim to have ended anthrax production in 1990 as not plausible. UNMOVIC further estimated that the total amount of biological agent—the majority of it suspected to be anthrax—in bombs, warheads, and storage at the time of the 1991 Gulf War as being at least 7,000 litres more than Iraq contended. UNMOVIC concluded, “Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist.” Moreover, UNMOVIC assessed that Iraq “currently possesses the technology and materials, including fermenters, bacterial growth media and seed stock, to enable it to produce anthrax.”

In general, biological agents are produced in a way that results in a liquid product. Converting an agent into a dry form typically means it can be stored for longer periods of time. Iraq reported that it did not conduct any bulk drying of biological agents.

  • UNMOVIC said it did not have evidence to dispute Iraq’s claim, “but given Iraq’s interest in drying, the existence of large quantities of liquid bulk agent in 1991, the availability of suitable dryers and the expertise that Iraq had developed, UNMOVIC cannot be certain that Iraq did not dry agent.”

10. Botulinum Toxin

Iraq began researching botulinum toxin, a lethal bacteria that can be 15,000 times stronger than VX, in the 1970s, but it did not commence dedicated research and development work until 1986. Iraq said it produced a total of 19,000 litres of botulinum toxin and estimated that it filled 100 R-400 aerial bombs and 16 al Hussein warheads with the agent. These munitions and some 7,500 litres of botulinum toxin were destroyed in 1991, according to Iraq.

  • UNSCOM estimated that Iraq could have produced double the amount of botulinum toxin claimed. UNMOVIC assessed that it was unlikely that any remaining or stored botulinum toxin would be very potent. UNMOVIC reported that it was important to obtain a clear understanding of the amount of botulinum toxin produced because that would affect estimates on the quantities of other biological agents, particularly anthrax, that Iraq could have produced. Essentially, this is an issue of fermenter availability. UNMOVIC concluded that Iraq could “rapidly” recommence botulinum toxin production because it has the necessary expertise, equipment, and materials.

11. Undeclared Agents, Including Smallpox

In addition to its major research and development of anthrax, botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin, Iraq said it investigated a variety of other agents for biological weapons purposes. These efforts, according to Iraq, yielded little.

  • UNMOVIC noted that its predecessor did not find any “substantial evidence” that any of the biological agents, apart from those identified by Iraq as part of its biological weapons program, was produced for weapons purposes. Yet, UNMOVIC reported that Iraq’s failure to account for certain types of growth media raised questions because that growth media is suited for biological agents Iraq declared it did not produce. “Accounting for the outstanding media…would greatly reduce the uncertainty surrounding this issue,” UNMOVIC stated.

Iraq also briefly set up a viral research program, which Baghdad claimed looked at three incapacitating but not necessarily deadly agents (enterovirus 70, rotavirus, and camel pox). Baghdad says its biological weapons virus research lasted only 47 days.

  • Although it assessed Iraq’s viral research as probably being “short-lived,” UNMOVIC noted that the scope of the research “remains unclear.” UNMOVIC further reported, “There is no evidence that Iraq had possessed seed stocks for smallpox or had been actively engaged in smallpox research.” UNMOVIC concluded that it was unlikely Iraq accomplished much through its viral research program, but it added that “these areas of research identify the possible future directions of a [biological weapons] programme and should be followed up.”

12. Any Proscribed Activities Post-1998

UNSCOM left Iraq in December 1998. Iraq contends that, during the intervening period prior to UNMOVIC’s arrival in November 2002, it did not undertake any proscribed activities. UNMOVIC warned that, given the history of Iraq’s illicit weapons programs, Baghdad “could have made considerable advancements in that time, particularly in the biological and chemical fields.” UNMOVIC also noted it had received many reports contradicting Iraq’s claim.

  • According to some governments, Iraq has mobile biological weapons facilities, namely trucks mounted with production equipment, such as fermenters. UNMOVIC noted that Iraq did seriously consider such an option in the late 1980s, but Iraqi officials said the concept was abandoned as impractical. Investigating whether Iraq does have mobile biological facilities would be “inherently difficult,” according to UNMOVIC.
  • Governments have also charged that Iraq has underground facilities for producing chemical and biological weapons. When UNMOVIC was provided with sufficiently specific information, it looked into the charges. UNMOVIC reported that “no underground facility of special interest has been found,” although it added it does not “dismiss the possibility that such facilities exist.”
  • UNMOVIC reported it had not been able to substantiate allegations that Iraq is moving proscribed items around the country deliberately to thwart arms inspectors.
  • In reviewing Iraq’s legal chemical and biological activities, UNMOVIC reported that it detected “no proscribed activities,” although it cautioned, “There are a number of chemical and biological facilities or production units that could be used for both proscribed and non-proscribed purposes.”
  • Iraq’s “largest failing” in its semi-annual declarations, according to UNMOVIC, was in providing adequate information on suppliers of its illicit programs. Iraq failed to provide sufficient information in roughly 40 biological, 70 chemical, and 500 missile cases.
  • UNMOVIC further reported that Iraq had not been forthcoming in providing names of individuals involved with its proscribed weapons programs.

On March 19, the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) submitted work programs to the UN Security Council...

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