- As the war storm against Iraq swirls and gathers momentum,
seeded by the efforts of the American and British governments, serious
doubts arise as to the credibility of their intelligence sources, particularly
the issue of Iraq's nuclear capability. It has been often noted that reliable
intelligence on this matter is not immediately forthcoming. Moreover, such
intelligence as has been presented is spurious and often contradictory.
Perhaps it is not too late to rectify this misinformation campaign.
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- I worked with the Iraqi nuclear program from 1968 until
my departure from Iraq in late 1998. Having been closely involved in most
of the major nuclear activities of that program, from the Russian research
reactor in the late sixties, to the French research reactors in the late
seventies, the Russian nuclear power program in the early eighties, the
nuclear weapons program during the eighties and finally the confrontations
with U.N. inspection teams in the nineties, it behooves me to admit that
I find present allegations about Iraq's nuclear capability, as continuously
advanced by the Americans and the British, to be ridiculous.
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- Let us go back to 1991. A week before the cessation of
a two-month saturation of bombings on the target-rich Iraq, the Americans
realized that a certain complex of buildings in Tarmiah, that had just
been carpet bombed for lack of any other remaining prominent targets, exhibited
unusual swarming activity by rescuers the next morning. When they compared
the photographs of that complex with other standing structures in Iraq,
they were surprised to find an exact replica of that complex in the north
of Iraq, near Sharqat, which was nearing completion. They directed their
bombers to demolish the northern complex a few days before the end of hostilities.
My family, along with the families of most prominent Iraqi nuclear scientists
and the top management of the northern complex, were residing in the housing
complex. The Tarmiah and Sharqat complexes were designed for housing the
Calutron separators, similar to those used by the American Manhattan Project
to develop the first atomic bombs that were dropped by the Americans on
Japan.
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- At the end of 1991, after that infamous U.N. inspector,
David Kay, got hold of many of the nuclear weapons program's reports (reports
whose maintenance and security I had been in charge of), the Americans
realized that their saturated bombing had missed a most important complex
of buildings: that complex at Al-Atheer, which was the center for the design
and assembly of the nuclear bomb. A lone, single bomb, thermally guided,
had hit the electric substation outside the perimeter of the complex, causing
little damage.
-
- The glaring and revealing detail about these two events
is the utter lack of any intelligence about these building complexes --
information that should have caused the repository of American and British
intelligence to overflow. That is to say, American and British intelligence
had no idea of the programs that those buildings harbored -- programs that
had been ongoing at full steam for the previous ten years!
-
- What really happened to Iraq's nuclear weapon program
after the 1991 war?
-
- Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, the entire
organization that was responsible for the nuclear weapons project turned
its attention to the reconstruction of the heavily damaged oil refineries,
electric power stations, and telephone exchange buildings. The combined
expertise of the several thousand scientific, engineering, and technical
cadres manifested itself in the restoration of the oil, electric and communication
infrastructure in a matter of months -- an impressive accomplishment, by
any measure.
-
- Then the U.N. inspectors were ushered in. The senior
scientists and engineers among the nuclear cadre were instructed many times
on how to cooperate with the inspectors. We were also asked to hand in
to our own officials any reports or incriminating evidence, with heavy
penalties (up to the death penalty, in some cases) for failing to do so.
In the first few months, the "clean sheets" were hung up for
all to see. As the scientific questioning mounted, our scientists began
to redirect the questioners to the actual technical documents, themselves,
that had been amassed during the ten years of activity. These documents
had been traveling up and down and throughout Iraq in a welded train car.
Then the order was issued to return the project's documents to their original
location. At that point, David Kay pounced on them in the early morning
hours of September 1991. Among the documents were those of Al-Atheer and
the bomb specifics.
-
- In the following few years, the nuclear weapons project
organization was slowly disbanded. By 1994, its various departments were
either elevated to independent civilian industrial enterprises, or absorbed
within the Military Industrial Authority under Hussain Kamil, who later
escaped to Jordan in 1996 and then returned to Baghdad where he was murdered.
-
- Meanwhile, the brinkmanship with the U.N. inspectors
continued. At one heated encounter, an American inspector remarked that
the nuclear scientists and engineers were still around, and hinted accusingly
that those scientists and engineers may be readily used for a rejuvenated
nuclear program. The retort was, "What do you want us to do to satisfy
you? Ask them to commit suicide?"
-
- In 1994, a report surfaced claiming that Iraq was still
manufacturing a nuclear bomb and had been working on it since 1991. The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors brought the report
to Baghdad, demanding a full explanation. The inspectors requested my opinion
on the authenticity of the report, inasmuch as I was the responsible agent
for the proper issuance and archiving of all scientific and engineering
documents for the nuclear weapons project during the eighties. It was my
opinion that the report was well done, and most probably had been written
by someone who had detailed knowledge of the established documentation
procedures. However, as we pointed out to the IAEA inspectors, certain
words used in the report would not normally be used by us, but, rather
by Iranians, and we supplied an Arabic-Iranian dictionary to verify our
findings. The IAEA inspectors never referred back to that report.
-
- During these years, crushing economic inflation was growing.
It would spell the end for most of the Iraqi nuclear scientists' and engineers'
careers in the following years.
-
- In 1996, Hussain Kamil, who was in charge of the entire
range of chemical, biological and nuclear programs, announced from his
self-imposed exile in Amman that there were hidden caches of important
documentation on his farm in Iraq. (Apparently, he had had his security
entourage stealthily salvage what they thought were the most important
pieces of information and documentation in these programs.) The U.N. inspectors
pounced on this, and a renewed string of confrontations occurred, until
the inspectors were asked to leave Iraq in 1998.
-
- In the last few years of the nineties, we did our utmost
to produce a satisfying report to the IAEA inspectors concerning the entire
gamut of Iraq's nuclear activities. The IAEA finally issued its report
in October 1997, mapping these activities in great detail. The inspectors
raised vague, "politically correct" queries which seemed obligatory
in their intent.
-
- In the meantime, and this is the gist of my discourse,
the economic standing of the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers (along
with the rest of the civil servants and the professional middle class)
has been pathetically reduced to poverty level. Even with occasional salary
inducements and some insubstantial benefits, many of those highly-educated
persons have been forced to sell their possessions just to keep their families
alive. Needless to say, their spirits are very low and their cynicism is
high. Relatively few have managed to leave Iraq. The majority are too gripped
by poverty, family needs, and fear of the brutal retaliation of the security
apparatus to even consider a plan of escape. Their former determination
and drive, profoundly evident in the eighties, has been crushed by harsh
economic realities; their knowledge and experience grow rusty with the
passage of time; their skills atrophy from lack of activity in their fields.
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- Since my departure from Iraq in late 1998, one cannot
help but notice the mien of those former nuclear scientists and engineers
as being but a wispy phantom of a once elite cadre representing the zenith
of scientific and technical thought in Iraq. Pathetic shadows of their
former selves, the overwhelming fear that haunts them is the fear of retirement,
with a whopping pension that equates to about $2 a month.
-
- Yet, the American and British intelligence community,
obviously influenced by the war agenda, vainly attempts to continue to
provide disinformation. For example, a consignment of aluminum pipes (the
intelligence experts opine) might conceivably be used in the construction
of highly advanced, "kilometers long" centrifugal spinners. The
consideration that there are no remaining Iraqi personnel qualified to
implement and maintain these supposed spinners seems to have eluded the
intelligence agencies' reports.
-
- Last month, a group of journalists was taken on a guided
tour of a "possible" uranium extraction plant in Akashat in western
Iraq. The Iraqi guide pointed to the obviously demolished buildings and
asked tongue-in-cheek, "Who would make any use of these ruins? Maybe
your experts would tell us how."
-
- It is true that the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers
did not commit suicide. But for all the remaining capability they possess
to rebuild a nuclear weapons program, they may as well have.
-
- Bush and Blair are leading their public by the nose,
attempting to cloak shoddy and erroneous intelligence data with hollow
patriotic urgings and cajolery. But the two parading emperors have no clothes.
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- Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University
of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from
the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the
Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 till 1998. He was able to leave
Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network
administrator in Toronto, Canada.
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- Imad Khadduri encourages your comments: imad.khadduri@rogers.com
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