WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Talk of the Nation
August 28, 2002 Wednesday
HEADLINE: Threat that Iraq poses to the United States
ANCHORS: NEAL CONAN

NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

Earlier this week, Vice President Dick Cheney argued the case against Saddam Hussein to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, a speech that's been described as the administration's most forceful presentation of the case to date. While the vice president reiterated that President Bush has not yet decided how to proceed against Iraq, he said that doing nothing was not an option. The focus of the speech was on weapons of mass destruction. The vice president said that failure to act would give Saddam Hussein more time to develop chemical and biological weapons and he warned that Iraq would construct nuclear weapons soon. Vice President Cheney dismissed the idea of a new round of UN weapons inspections, noting Iraq's extensive efforts to hide its nuclear weapons programs in the past. (Soundbite of speech)

Vice President DICK CHENEY: "Saddam also devised an elaborate program to conceal his active efforts to build chemical and biological weapons. And one must keep in mind the history of UN inspection teams in Iraq. Even as they were conducting the most intrusive system of arms control in history, the inspectors missed a great deal. Before being barred from the country, the inspectors found and destroyed thousands of chemical weapons and hundreds of tons of mustard gas and other nerve agents. Yet Saddam Hussein had sought to frustrate and deceive them at every turn and was often successful in doing so.

I'll cite just one instance: During the spring of 1995, the inspectors were actually on the verge of declaring that Saddam's programs to develop chemical weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles had been fully accounted for and shut down. Then Saddam's son-in-law suddenly defected and began sharing information. Within days, the inspectors were led to an Iraqi chicken farm. Hidden there were boxes of documents and lots of evidence regarding Iraq's most secret weapons programs."

CONAN: In a moment, we'll hear from two former weapons inspectors about what they found, how they found it and what they think Iraq may have now. What can we know about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its capability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons? How big a threat is Iraq? Later in the program, we'll ask why the administration believes that the policies that contained the Soviet threat wouldn't work against Iraq.

If you have questions about Iraqi weapons and how dangerous they might or might not be, give us a phone call. Our number is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.

Joining us now is Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 through 1998. He was the chief of the Concealment Investigations Unit, and he joins us from his home in Albany, New York.

And good to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.

Mr. SCOTT RITTER (Former UN Weapons Inspector): Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

CONAN: So you were listening as we played that clip of tape from Vice President Cheney's speech. Did you guys, the inspectors, miss a lot?

Mr. RITTER: That's a deeply disturbing comment that the vice president made because it reflects either the fact that he's totally ignorant of the reality of what was transpiring, or if he is truly cognizant of what happened, he lied to the American public. And I'd hate to think the vice president is lying. But the fact of the matter is, we were never close to giving Iraq a clean bill of health on ballistic missile and chemical weapons in 1995. We had concerns. We were prepared to say that we had fundamentally disarmed Iraq and that if we had a monitoring regime in place we were confident that we could prevent Iraq from reconstituting its capabilities. But, you know, we weren't sitting there being dupes for anybody.

And it's also misleading to talk about Saddam's son-in-law the way he did. The fact of the matter is, if one reviews the transcripts of the debriefings that the CIA, British intelligence and UNSCOM, the weapons inspectors, had with Hussein Kamel, and I have these transcripts, it's amazing that--you know, what Hussein Kamel says is that he ordered all the weapons destroyed, that there were no weapons left. Hussein Kamel's revelations never led us to a chicken farm. The Iraqi government led us to the chicken farm as part of their damage control. And after years of evaluating the documents in the chicken farm, it did not further our understanding fundamentally of what we had accomplished in terms of disarming Iraq.

So not only does it prove that the inspectors weren't dupes, it also proves we did a pretty darn good job. And I think the vice president and other Bush administration officials better be careful before they start misrepresenting the work of myself and other weapons inspectors in such an egregious manner.

CONAN: Well, why don't we go through the categories of weapons of mass destruction in order. Chemical weapons: What did Iraq have? How much did you find and how easy was it to find it?

Mr. RITTER: Well, Iraq had a massive chemical weapons program. They produced mustard agent. They produced nerve agent, sarin and tabun, and they produced a particularly lethal form of nerve agent known as VX. We destroyed the factories that produced mustard, sarin and tabun. We eliminated the production equipment associated with these agents. We destroyed the vast majority of the weapons produced by these factories. VX is a different category altogether. Iraq at first denied having a VX nerve agent program and after the inspectors didn't accept that answer and pursued this through forensic investigation, we uncovered a research and development laboratory. The inspectors uncovered it. It was destroyed. We uncovered the fact that Iraq had procured production equipment for a future VX factory. We destroyed this equipment. We uncovered the fact that Iraq lied about having stabilized the VX; that means allowing the VX, once it's manufactured, to have a long shelf life.

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RITTER: In the end, we still have some outstanding questions about VX, but there is no production capability for VX in Iraq today. And if weapons inspectors were in Iraq doing the kind of monitoring that we successfully carried out from 1994 to 1998, Iraq would have no chance of producing VX. Now that the inspectors are gone, there is a possibility that Iraq could reconfigure its domestic civilian chemical industry to produce VX. But again, this is something that would be detectable if inspectors returned.

CONAN: So you think there is a possibility that they do have it, though?

Mr. RITTER: No. I said there's a possibility that Iraq could have reconstituted a manufacturing base. But this is something that's eminently detectable by the intelligence services of the United States, Great Britain, Israel and other nations. It's not something that's done in a basement or a cave. And if Iraq had done this, I believe there's enough information that would be able to be collected that we would know this for a fact and not have to rely upon rhetorically laid speculation. We should have hard facts to back this up, and void of any hard facts, my bet is that Iraq hasn't done this.

CONAN: All right. Biological weapons?

Mr. RITTER: Biological weapons: Iraq had a massive infrastructure to produce anthrax and botulinum toxin, which are the two main agents that they had weaponized. They did research and development on other agents such as clostridium perfringens. They produced something called aflatoxin, which is a wheat smut, and actually put it in a weapon. No one can figure out why they did this because aflatoxin is not immediately lethal. It has long-term possible carcinogenic effects that give you liver cancer 30 years down the road. But it makes no sense as a weapon. But the main weapons were anthrax and botulinum toxin. Iraq produced these in liquid bulk agent. They had not perfected the means of aerosolizing this or turning it into a dry, powdered form, which means they didn't have a biological weapon. They had sludge that they put in a bomb or they put in a warhead, but the fact is, when this bomb or warhead hit the ground, it buried itself in the ground and all you had was a hole full of useless sludge. The only way an Iraqi biological weapon would ever kill you, we used to joke, is if it hit you on the head.

But even saying that, science takes over. Let's say one of the big concerns is Iraq's biological program, particularly anthrax, is that they procured enough growth media, that is the food used to grow biological agent, the bacterium, to produce a huge quantity of this. And their factory was massive. So there is a possibility they could have run off a considerable production run and Iraq didn't have documentation to support, you know, how much was produced so we assume the worst. We assumed they produced a tremendous amount and that they were lying about the minimal amount. But science and technology takes over. After three years, liquid bulk anthrax germinates. It becomes useless sludge. It has a three-year storage life under ideal circumstances. So even if Iraq lied to us, retained anthrax, it's no longer viable.

And again I come back to the reality: We destroyed the production facility. There is no way Iraq could have anthrax or botulinum toxin today unless they reconstitute a manufacturing base, and in order to do that they would have to procure large-scale fermentation units, which again is a controlled item carefully watched by a number of intelligence services, and nobody has provided information that Iraq has done this.

CONAN: Nuclear capabilities?

Mr. RITTER: Nuclear: Of the four categories, nuclear is the one that was most thoroughly eradicated; two aspects of the program, weaponization and enrichment. Enrichment is 100 percent eradicated. We destroyed the facilities. We destroyed the means of production. And of all the aspects of weapons of mass destruction, this is the one that's most difficult to reconstitute. It would require a major reacquisition of technology, almost all of which is controlled technology, very difficult to obtain even under the most favorable of circumstances, especially not easy when you have economic sanctions and the entire world's collective intelligence apparatus looking at you. And then you'd have to rebuild the facilities, which again is eminently detectable, not something that's done underground or in a basement or in a cave. And again, void of any data or facts that show Iraq has done this, don't need to worry about enrichment.

Which means if Iraq is to have a weapon, they need to acquire the fissile material, the highly enriched uranium or plutonium, from an outside source. And contrary to popular belief, there just is not a viable market out there for highly enriched uranium. It's not on the market. There isn't sellers out there. It's not something that's readily available. Iraq does have a weapons design. They have solved the problem of designing and building a device and I believe it's possible for Iraq to construct this device in Iraq today using indigenous capabilities. But that device minus highly enriched uranium or plutonium is just a very expensive high-explosive bomb. It's not a nuclear weapon. So again, I'm not too worried about Iraq's nuclear program.

CONAN: In an op-ed piece published earlier this summer in Newsday, you wrote, 'If a substantiated case can be made that Iraq possesses actual weapons of mass destruction, then the debate is over. The justification for war is clear. But to date,' you add, 'the Bush administration has been unwilling or unable to back up its rhetoric concerning the Iraqi threat with any substantive fact.' Has that changed?

Mr. RITTER: No. I agree with this 100 percent. If Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction or is seeking to reacquire weapons of mass destruction, more than a decade after the international community through the form of the Security Council has banned these weapons, then clearly we have a problem. Saddam Hussein would be a pariah leader at the head of a rogue nation that means ill will to the world, and the United States would have a case for war. And I'll tell you this, if we can substantiate that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capacity, we would not be standing alone. We would be able to get Security Council acquiescence on military action and we would be able to build a viable coalition with, you know, depth throughout the international community to confront Saddam Hussein.

So that's why, again, I'm puzzled by the fact that if we have a case against Saddam, why aren't we making it? Why are we committing diplomatic suicide by standing alone in this fashion, having the entire world desert us if, in fact, this is, you know, the threat that we say it is?

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RITTER: The Israeli chief of staff came out just yesterday and said he's not losing any sleep over Iraq. And, you know, this is Israel we're talking about, the nation that would bear the brunt of any Iraqi weapon of mass destruction. And Israeli intelligence...

CONAN: Scott...

Mr. RITTER: ...doesn't see that Iraq is a threat along the level that Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration have said. So what's going on here?

CONAN: We just have less than a minute left here. Baghdad blows hot and cold on the idea of new inspections. Is there anything that you can think of that might convince them to give UN inspectors unfettered access?

Mr. RITTER: We have to remember why there aren't inspectors in Iraq today, and it's not because Iraq kicked them out, it's because the United States ordered them out before they began bombing Iraq in 1998, using intelligence information gathered by inspectors to target Saddam. So for inspectors to return with unfettered access, there would have to be some sort of honest broker mechanism, a confidence-building mechanism in place to ensure that when the inspectors went in, they would not be used or susceptible for the kind of manipulation that occurred in the past. If we can get that, and Canada has offered their services to do this, I believe we can get inspectors in and they would succeed in doing their job.

CONAN: Scott Ritter, thanks very much.

Mr. RITTER: Thank you.

WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION INDEX          INDEX