Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Amy Smithson is a Senior Fellow at the Washington, D.C. Office of the James Martin Center for Non-proliferation Studies where she researches issues related to chemical and biological weapons proliferation, threat reduction mechanisms, and homeland security. Before joining the James Martin Center, she worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Center―where she founded the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project. Previously, she worked for Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation and the Center for Naval Analyses. The author, co-author, or editor of 16 books and book-length reports, as well as numerous articles, Dr. Smithson has appeared frequently before Congress and is a regular commentator in the electronic and print media.

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Germ Gambits

Stanford University Press

Contents

Foreword Rolf Ekeus............................................................ixAcknowledgments..................................................................xiiiIntroduction.....................................................................11 UNSCOM's Inception and Infancy.................................................92 UNSCOM's Initial Biological Inspections........................................353 From Hiatus to the Hunt........................................................574 UNSCOM Shreds Iraq's Cover Stories.............................................755 Defection and Artifice.........................................................946 Inspections in a Fact-Free Zone................................................1197 Tentacles and Disintegration...................................................1468 Lessons Experienced I: Inspection Prerequisites................................1709 Lessons Experienced II: Sharpening the Tools of Inspection.....................20310 Gambits Present and Future....................................................228Notes............................................................................253Index............................................................................357

Chapter One

WITH IRAQI ARMED FORCES at a significant disadvantage, the outcome of the 1991 Gulf War was sufficiently foreseeable for some to turn to post-war planning before the onset of hostilities. Before 1990 ended, possible ceasefire conditions and mechanisms were discussed in the capitals of major Coalition partners, particularly with regard to the disposition of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after the war. As policymakers mulled over whether to demand Iraq's complete unconditional surrender against less draconian options, the draft of what became United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 687 began to circulate in the Security Council's chambers. The resolution stipulated that Iraq agree unconditionally to allow the UN to remove, render harmless, or destroy its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles; established the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) to effect the majority of that mandate; and directly linked the lifting of trade sanctions to Iraq's compliance with the disarmament mandate. The Security Council's approval of Resolution 687 on April 3, 1991, set UNSCOM on a course of forced disarmament of a sovereign nation defeated in war, a feat rarely attempted, much less successfully executed, in modern history.

This chapter first recounts the circumstances surrounding the creation of UNSCOM. Iraq's initial null and elliptical declarations about its biological activities are then juxtaposed against the Western intelligence assessment of Iraq's bioweapons status prior to the 1991 war. The narrative then describes UNSCOM's early inspections, the strategy and tactics Iraq employed to try to dupe the inspectors, the reasons Saddam Hussein sought to retain a biological weapons capability, and the adjustments the inspectors began to make to contend with Iraq's uncooperative behavior.

From the outset, UNSCOM and Baghdad took calculated risks. As Iraq chanced that it could swiftly hide incriminating evidence and fool the inspectors, UNSCOM's meager corps of inspectors set out to disarm it unaware of Saddam's already activated concealment strategy and the true scope of Iraq's unconventional weapons programs. Just as UNSCOM's inspectors did not know how far and hard they could push Iraq to find the truth, Saddam could not predict the skill level and determination of the inspectors or the Security Council's resolve to enforce the ceasefire conditions. Amidst those early postwar months, the leaders of UNSCOM and Iraq received disquieting glimpses of the challenges ahead but neither knew just how demanding it would be for UNSCOM to certify Iraq's disarmament to the Security Council or for Iraq to persuade UNSCOM and the Security Council that its unconventional weapons ambitions and capabilities were a thing of the past.

OPTIMISTIC EXPECTATIONS

The U.S. and British governments prepared the first draft of Resolution 687, putting UNSCOM in charge of all disarmament efforts in Iraq. Without expert technical advice on what would be needed to find and secure Iraq's chemical arsenal and ballistic missiles, to determine the extent of its suspected nuclear and biological weapons programs, and to disarm it of these capabilities, Resolution 687's architects based the disarmament framework largely on what U.S. and British intelligence services knew about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the idea that a step-by-step process would be needed. The group drafting process took a week or two at the most. "We were really under intense time pressure," said Robert Gallucci, who later became UNSCOM's first deputy executive chairman. The French argued that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which judged Iraq's nuclear pursuits before the 1991 Gulf War to be purely peaceful in nature, had to be in charge of destroying any nuclear weapons capabilities that might be uncovered. The final version of Resolution 687 thus directed the IAEA to carry out these duties with UNSCOM's cooperation and assistance but gave UNSCOM alone the authority to designate additional sites for inspection that Iraq did not voluntarily identify as being involved with prohibited weapons activities.

One feature of the ceasefire resolution quick to draw derision was its "laughable" deadlines for reporting and activity, described in Table 1.1. Those with field experience in the safe destruction of weapons found fault even with the fifteen-day deadline for Iraq to submit a declaration, the simplest task to be accomplished. Deadpanned one such expert, "People who didn't have a great deal of expertise came up with those deadlines." The group that penned Resolution 687 "just made those deadlines up," conceded Gallucci. The resolution's terms reflected the political pressure to end hostilities, the unusual international political environment just after the Cold War, and the speed of Iraq's defeat. An overall sense of optimism infused multilateral efforts to address global problems in the early 1990s, making for a "gold rush mood ... that everything would be over in a few months. It wasn't apparent right away that the inspections would get tough." Recalling this buoyant period, "We took on the Iraqis, they got whipped, everything of interest had been bombed to smithereens, and the Iraqis would want to get out from underneath the sanctions and would cooperate. In that sense, the deadlines weren't seen as unrealistic."

Before long, the U.S. State Department shifted Gallucci to New York to buttress U.S. Ambassador to the UN Thomas Pickering's drive to win Security Council approval of the resolution and to set up UNSCOM. Joking that he had not been to the UN since a fifth-grade field trip, Gallucci was thrown into meetings with Secretary-General Javier Peres de Cuellar and UN Undersecretary for Disarmament Yasushi Akashi, who advised following UN practice and staffing UNSCOM with diplomats representing an equitable geographic balance from around the world. Knowing that specific technical skill sets would be required to locate and eliminate Iraq's weapons and that "diplomats from Uruguay don't do that," Gallucci felt that he "was awkwardly positioned in these talks." Worse, he was firmly instructed not only to press for Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekeus as UNSCOM's executive chairman but to nominate himself as Ekeus's deputy. This "doubly ugly, perfectly awful" situation mortified Gallucci, who groped for the right words to convey U.S. preferences to the world's top diplomats.

On April 3, the clock started ticking on Resolution 687's deadlines. Ambassador Ekeus remembered being approached the very next day about the UNSCOM job. Regarding the text of Resolution 687, Ekeus was struck by how unmistakably paragraph 22 tied Iraq's disarmament to the lifting of trade sanctions. Ekeus believed that Baghdad had a strong motivation to cooperate fully with UNSCOM since oil sales were Iraq's primary source of income. Moreover, he anticipated sharp criticism from Iraq if he did not proceed summarily. As he swung into action to launch UNSCOM, the humanitarian costs of extended sanctions weighed heavily on him: "I felt I had to rush, that I couldn't even allow more than one day than is absolutely necessary before completing my task." Convinced that Iraq could be swiftly disarmed, Ekeus accepted the UNSCOM chairmanship on the condition that the Swedish government did not replace him as ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, allowing him to return to Geneva within a year or so. As with Ekeus, prevailing opinion among policymakers and UNSCOM insiders held that UNSCOM would only be in existence for a year or two at the most.

Landing in New York, Ekeus provided UNSCOM dexterous leadership. A "hands-off" manager, Ekeus's "let-science-lead-the-way" philosophy about running UNSCOM put scientists in the field for the technical work of inspection and destruction while he stuck to the diplomacy, informing the Security Council of their progress and sustaining support for UNSCOM's operations. UNSCOM inspectors lauded Ekeus for his discretion, attentive listening, reasonable command of the technical issues, readiness to innovate, and willingness and ability to navigate political pressures in search of the truth. Ekeus also got very high marks for seeking his inspectors' counsel, asking the right questions, giving them liberty to do their work, heeding their recommendations, and backing his inspectors in public even if he privately disagreed with them. Everyone wanted something from this Swedish diplomat with the shock of white hair, but Ekeus adroitly juggled it all until the timing was right for action. One of his juggling tools was language. Fluent in English, Ekeus spoke it with an intonation and phrasing that alternately charmed, informed, or paralyzed his inspectors, the Iraqis, international envoys, policymakers, and the media. Plying this "Swinglish," "Ekeus could be very unclear if he chose to do so," said Gallucci, "but very precise when he wished." By all accounts, Ekeus was the right steward for UNSCOM.

To illustrate, Gallucci credited Ekeus with a structural proposal for UNSCOM that found the acceptable middle ground between doing things the typical UN way and the need to send technically qualified inspectors quickly into Iraq. A group of international diplomats would advise UNSCOM, while technical experts would do the heavy lifting, inspections. "Splitting the difference, the UNSCOM commissioners were the geographically equitable bit and the small inspectorate was filled with specialists who did the pointy-end-of-the-stick work." Thus the Secretary-General's plan for UNSCOM called for a headquarters staff of roughly twenty-five people, divided into nuclear, ballistic missile, chemical, biological, and future compliance sections to provide planning and operational support for inspections. As needed, governments would loan technical experts to UNSCOM for the inspections. The inspectorate's tasks were basically to gather and assess information, dispose of weapons and relevant facilities, and monitor and verify compliance. Otherwise, Washington's expectations for UNSCOM were modest, according to Charles Duelfer, who later followed Gallucci as Ekeus's deputy: "We assumed UNSCOM would resolve some war termination issues temporarily and that its activities would keep sanctions in place, sort of kicking the rock down the road, which was the traditional U.S. approach with Iraq."

IRAQ'S INITIAL DECLARATIONS

Meanwhile, Saddam was also banking on UNSCOM to be short-lived. As elaborated further on, Saddam's inner circle concocted a scheme to dupe the UN's inspectors and the world into believing that Iraq was meeting the disarmament mandate. Accordingly, Iraq's April 18, 1991, declaration contained data about Iraq's chemical arsenal but was silent on Iraq's production and weaponization of the nerve agent VX, understated Iraq's holdings of long-range missiles, claimed its nuclear activities were civilian and peaceful, and asserted that Iraq did not hold "any biological weapons or related items." These declarations and Iraq's revelations to the first bioweapons inspection team roughly paralleled the open source data about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs.

Of Iraq's first declarations, one European diplomat said with a grin, "[W]e expected to be entertained by Iraq's dishonesty and indeed we were." Inside UNSCOM, similar sarcasm greeted Iraq's complete denial of nuclear and biological weapons programs. "There was only one surprise about the initial Iraqi declaration—that they declared their chemical weapons," said Gallucci. "Our job was to find and destroy their weapons. We took that declaration to mean that they weren't going to help us do that." For his part, Ekeus was certain Iraq had used chemical weapons during the 1980s war, but he "wasn't sure what Iraq may or may not have done" in the biological weapons area and "didn't like that they submitted a very few lines." He was "a bit skeptical, but I thought perhaps their declaration was sloppy" because they had just fifteen days to assemble it.

Surmising that Iraq had moved many pertinent items during the war, Ekeus gave Iraq the opportunity to "get it straight." He fired off a letter that inferred that Iraq surely had equipment and materials relevant to the manufacture of biological weapons because many such dual-use items are employed in legitimate activities. Ekeus requested that Iraq detail its biological production capacity and activities involving dangerous pathogens. He pointed Iraq specifically to the list of items that negotiators in Geneva had compiled as useful for possible monitoring of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the 1975 germ weapons ban that Iraq acceded to in mid-1991. Thus Ekeus signaled his dissatisfaction with the lack of content in Iraq's biological declaration, his sense of fair play, and his savvy in high-stakes maneuvering in the international arena.

Iraq's initial declarations revealed just how tall an order it would be to meet the deadlines to render harmless or destroy Iraq's weaponry. First, the declaration had sufficient data to underscore that the destruction of Iraq's chemical arsenal alone was a mammoth task. Ekeus quickly assembled a special advisory panel in mid-May 1991 to plot UNSCOM's first chemical weapons inspections as UNSCOM's advisory commission convened for the first time. Among the commissioners, "nobody even raised an eyebrow at the absence of a biological weapons declaration," said Ron Manley, who oversaw the inventorying and destruction of Iraq's chemical weapons. At this juncture, the concerns that policymakers, intelligence analysts, and weapons experts relayed to UNSCOM focused on the small number of long-range missiles that Iraq declared. "Everyone thought they were playing with one or two things at Salman Pak. Why would countries be more concerned at that time about a biological program in Iraq if they still weren't concerned about a Soviet biological program? Of course, there were rumors, and people might think the declaration was not the truth," said a senior UNSCOM official, "but they didn't think there was much to the Iraqi program anyhow." Although the commissioners made no particular fuss about Iraq's skimpy biological declaration, there were nagging worries that Iraq's nuclear, biological, and ballistic missile declarations omitted more than they revealed.

In mid-May 1991, Iraq twice emphasized to UNSCOM that it did not have a biological weapons program. First, Baghdad sent UNSCOM a brief statement that Iraq did not have biological weapons. Then, the Iraqis clarified their initial declaration, stating that they did not have a central military research laboratory and did not immunize their armed forces against diseases other than typhoid. Although the Al Daura Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Production Department, which made vaccine, had biosafety containment capacity of the highest level, namely "P4" containment for work with highly infectious pathogens, Iraq declared no other P3 or P4 containment facilities. Iraq also sub mitted a one-half page table that listed three vaccine production facilities, the Al Daura plant, the Al Kindi Company at Abu Ghraib, and the Serum and Vaccine Institute at Al Ameriyah, with the latter two equipped with basic laboratory capabilities. Al Ameriyah manufactured cholera and typhoid vaccines for humans while Al Kindi, which Iraq said was destroyed by bombing, had made ten livestock vaccines. Iraq identified a fourth facility, the "Al-Hukm plant," with basic laboratory capabilities and facilities to maintain and repair equipment to make vaccines, single-cell protein, and other products.

On July 18, Iraq sent the UN a list of ten dual-use biological facilities. This list described Al Hukm (or Al Hakam) as having mostly inoperable fermentation equipment moved from Al Kindi and Al Taji. Along with additional detail about the four sites named in mid-May, Iraq briefly mentioned the Al Taji plant, the Agricultural Research and Water Resources Center at Al Fudhaliyah, and Salman Pak, stating the latter had a laboratory to test foods and liquids for contamination. Three bakeries with large production capacities capped Iraq's list. With these clarifications, Iraq began shifting from complete denial of a bioweapons program to an attempt to hide it in the open, stepping up its public relations campaign to show that it was cooperating fully with UNSCOM and shedding its prohibited weapons to quicken the lifting of economic sanctions. Baghdad later boasted, for example, that Iraq had declared Salman Pak to UNSCOM before the inspectors arrived, though it failed to mention that it had characterized the site as a food-testing laboratory, not a center of bioweapons activities.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Germ Gambitsby Amy E. Smithson Copyright © 2011 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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