FSO Editorials: "Where Are Saddam's WMDs?" by Joseph D. Douglass, Jr 04/29/2003

On April 24, President Bush said with conviction, “It’s going to take time to find them, but we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we’re going to find out the truth.”

Finding the truth may not be easy. As of April 27, no evidence that Iraq had WMD stockpiles has been found. CIA intelligence on the Middle East has been notoriously bad, as explained by its own former operatives.[i]

Thus, the reality may be that the intelligence on Saddam’s WMD came not from the CIA but from another intelligence service; that is, from Israeli intelligence. While all intelligence services respect Israelis agents throughout the Middle East, their reports respecting Iraq would have to be subject to serious question because Israel’s clear self-interest in having the United States attack Iraq and force a regime change favorable to Israel.[ii] That is, Israeli intelligence requires good confirmation, which probably would not be readily available.

A second alternative is that the information came from Iraq defectors or recruited agents. That is where the best information came from in the 1990s. This, however, is also very dangerous because the CIA has been a notable embarrassment in its pronounced tendency to recruit and rely upon spies that turn out to have been “double agents” actually working for the enemy or someone else. In a re-appraisal of recruited spies in the wake of the Aldrich Ames case, the conclusion reached was that 100 percent of all CIA East German spies were doubled, 100 percent of all CIA Cuban spies were doubled, and 90 percent of all CIA Communist country spies were questionable.

The possibility that Iraq destroyed its WMD just before or during the military conflict, is certainly possible, but this seems unlikely because of the serious disposal problems. Secretary Collin Powell explained to the UN that Iraq had 50 to 100 tons of WMD agents (in particular, nerve agents such as the extremely toxic and persistent U.S. chemical warfare agent VX, and biological warfare agents, such as anthrax and botulinum toxin). Destroying this large quantity (the U.S. only had 30 tons at its peak) of extremely toxic agents in a hurry without causing casualties and accidental releases would presuppose a significant capability beyond even that of the United States, let alone Iraq. Did they just empty the drums underground, and, if so, when?

Unfortunately, nothing has been said to indicate how current the information Secretary Powell released was, and much of it seems upon careful analysis to have been ten years old and older. So whether the 50 to 100 tons referred to the 1980s, 1990s, or later and precisely what the information did say (for example, is the total what they were assessed has having been capable of manufacturing) is not publicly known.

Additionally, there is the small matter of tens of thousands of munitions from artillery shells and mines to rocket warheads, not to mention the drones and other aircraft configured to deliver chemical and biological warfare agents and mobile biological agent production trucks, a few of which may have just been captured. Were most of these delivery systems also destroyed at the last minute and if so, how, without being detected?

In light of the substantial U.S. air and satellite intelligence capabilities, is it any more reasonable to entertain the thought that significant quantities were moved across the border to Syria or Iran preceding or during the war?

If so, then this would represent a serious error in the war plans unless the possibility of Hussein and many of his compatriots and WMD escaping to Syria or Iran was deliberately left open in the war plans. There is a plausible reason for doing this: it could be used later to help justify an assault on Syria or Iran. A more palatable reason is that no one wanted to mobilize the total force required to seal the borders, which would have meant perhaps another 50 to 100 thousand trained soldiers and all the airborne reconnaissance systems available. Nevertheless, a good effort could have been mounted – Iraq is not a jungle environment like Vietnam with politically protected roads like the Ho Chi Min trail.

The third possibility on President Bush’s list is that the stockpiles of agents and munitions were and remain hidden. Still, 50 to 100 tons of agent and tens of thousands of delivery systems occupies a lot of volume. Moving a stockpile of this size is not a relatively simple matter, such as moving some equipment by truck the day before the UN inspectors arrive.

Again, the only reasonable assumption is that U.S. intelligence had the whole of Iraq under a surveillance microscope for a year or more before the invasion and certainly during the invasion, night and day. The only activities that would not have been noticed would have been underground activities, and by now we should have hundreds of special force gofers throughout the entire Baghdad rabbit warren. The rest of Iraq outside the cities should have been thoroughly surveyed by now with earth-penetrating radars and any such stockpiles less than 300 meters deep, which is very deep, should already have been pin-pointed. So far, however, there has been no indication that any stockpiles have been located.

The question that arises is precisely how do we know that Hussein had these enormous stockpiles of WMD and yet not have a clue where they are? Were they moved to Syria before 9-11? Was the information simple the same as was reported in 1989-1991?

There is yet another possibility that has not been mentioned in the public debate and may be the most important of all the possibilities.

Since the end of the first Gulf War, the main Iraqi effort may have been not in producing WMD but in R&D: developing and testing new agents, establishing the production techniques, and obtaining critical chemical components or microorganisms so that actual agents could be produced later when needed.

This is the most logical path for any country to take. Producing agents and filling munitions in advance is not advisable unless a surprise major enemy attack is feared. The reason is that agents and/or filled munitions pose problems in storage and moving and especially if they have to disposed of. Some agents, such as nerve agents, can be very corrosive and leakage can become a serious problem. Why produce agents or fill delivery munitions/systems in advance when they can be more easily produced when needed at much lower cost and risk.

This focus on development and production/delivery know-how is particularly true of biological warfare agents, where new and better agents can be anticipated each year. It is much better to know how to produce different ones and be reasonably prepared to produce them, but not to produce the actual agents or weapons until needed. This is, incidentally, the approach that the Soviet Union adopted in the late 1960s and the Soviets have been Saddam’s principal helpers and advisors in WMD.

The information that has come out from Iraq thus far supports this type of approach much more than the “we know he has them, we just have to learn where they are” approach, although actual WMD, or small quantities of WMD, may still be well hidden or moved someplace. It is also possible that quantities of obsolete or old agents were destroyed, which could account for the testimony of Tariq Aziz, who said that Saddam’s WMDs were destroyed.

Most important in halting the spread of WMD is the people who have developed the agents and know how to produce them and handle them. The technical people and their records, along with strains of biological agents, are worth more than bulky agent stockpiles, especially those the United States is looking for. Stockpiles of agents can always be duplicated, but not so easily the people. It is the technical expertise that is most valuable to another country such as Syria or Iran or to a terrorist group like al-Qaeda.

This is why the recent surrender of oil minister and former weapons delivery systems expert Amin Rashid Muhammed al-Ubaydi is so important. His wife, Dr. Rihad Taha, also known as “Dr. Germ,” is the most valuable known link to Saddam’s biological weapons program. She was presumably in charge of a major portion, if not all, of the biological weapons development program. She would also be expected to know something about modern chemical warfare agents such as toxins and neuroleptic agents, as the Soviets used to call them. Here it is also useful to recall that the most powerful and frightening chemical and biological agents used by the Soviets in Afghanistan were not of the traditional nature. They are one of the types of agents she might have been most interested in developing and testing.

Learning the whereabouts of Dr. Taha and of any discussions she had with her husband regarding different ways of delivering toxins and biological organisms could be far more important to countering proliferation and to WMD defenses in Europe and the United States than finding 100 tons of nerve agent, anthrax, and aflatoxin. Worrying about the location of the WMD and finding the truth as to whether they were moved, hidden, or destroyed is easy to understand, but in the final analysis it is mostly important from a safety rather than security point of view.

The most important security information is the agents the Iraqis knew how to make and deliver, who among the technical people were proficient in this knowledge, and the ease with which this knowledge could be transferred to another technical group in Iran or Syria or with which production could be accomplished covertly in a safe-house somewhere in the United States, Mexico, or Canada.

[i] See for example, Robert Baer, See No Evil, and Reuel Marc Gerecht, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game,” in Atlantic online, February 1998 and “Liberate Iraq” in The Weekly Standard, May 14, 2001.

[ii] See Ralph Hallow, “’Neocons’ get boost in defeat of Saddam,” The Washington Times, April 27, 2003 and Stephen Sniegosky, “War In Iraq – Conceived In Israel,” Current Concerns, 1 2003, http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/20030102.php .