of cooperation as meaning Iraq is in compliance. There must be a harsh penalty for non-compliance that is supported in acvance by all PS members of the UNSC Implicit in immediate and unconditional access to sites is a need for short travel times from base locations to sites to be visited. UNSCOM operated from a central site in Baghdad that provided Iraq with several hours unintended notice of inspections when such inspections were at locations in the far western, northern, or southern regions of Iraq. This should be changed for reliable monitoring. As such, additional satellite inspection teams should be established and located on a permanent basis in these oubying regions. This will have significant personnel, logistical, transportation, and financial implications that goes beyond that envisioned by UNMOVIC. Another factor of concern with a monitoring system that would have limitations or conditions imposed on it is Iraq's consideration for using mobile production facilities. This was considered (and allegedly discarded) in 1987/1988 when Iraq decided to establish the Al Hakam production facility. A determined Iraq even with a greatly reinforced monitoring system might (if it has not already) reconsider this option. Such a facility on a limited scale would be virtually impossible for monitors to identify; it need not have and is unlikely to have any signatures that would identify it from other transport vans. Finally, it nust be recognized that Iraq has and uses the full resources of a nation state with its centrally directed military industry and security apparatus to deal with a limited number of international inspectors reporting to an international body with shifting goals and attention. Issue of Non-declared sites: Should Iraq consent to the return of inspectors, it is most unlikely that Iraq would then conduct overt BW activities at declared sites. It therefore follows that Iraq would do everything to prevent or hinder inspection of undeclared sites. Although UNMOVIC is on record as retaining options for undeclared site inspections, the degree that such inspection of an undedared site would need to go, through a series of review procedures, before such an inspection could occur may not bode well for its success. The ability for UNMOVIC to keep information from leaking to Iraq is presumed to be no better than UNSCOM; as such, an undeclared visit would be undeclared in name only and only negative findings could be expected. What are the potential consequences? Should Iraq be allowed to retain its BW (and other WMD programs) it will remain a menace, not only to its neighbors, but to the world at large because of the concomitant instability it would create in the region. The Gulf States would need to judge all their actions in light of the Iraqi threat. The regime is unpredictable. It is already openly supplying support to the Palestinians. Would Iraq even more overtly risk using WMD on Israel? What would be the repercussions from such a foolhardy action? Others are better equipped than I to speak to these matters. Bloterrorism Threat: The world's press in recent weeks has cited the opposition of most nations in the Middle East and Europe to any action against Iraq. It is cited that Iraq is weakened and does not pose any immediate and significant threat. It seems to me this does not address the terrorist threat posed by Iraq's WMD programs. One would think after 9/11, a more realistic appraisal of Iraq's capability and willingness to use WMD as terrorist weapons would be forthcoming. As I cited above, Iraq's BW program from its inception included a terrorist component. The threat that Iraq's BW program poses as a bioterrorist weapon to any of its perceived enemies is enormous. While much attention is focused on bioterrorism against people, the economic devastation that could be wreaked on the food animal or food crop industry may be far greater in the long term effect. Clearly the greater danger for the US at home and abroad that is posed by Iraq's WMD activities is the potential for its use in terrorism, whether by Iraq directly or through support to terrorist organizations. Should Iraq be involved with using its BW expertise in bioterrorist activities, it may be impossible to find a "smoking gun" that would implicate Iraq. BW agents are unlikely to have a signature that will definitively pinpoint a laboratory or a country as the origin. Concern for BW terrorism is not limited to immediate manifestation of such uses. It is worth recalling Iraq's developing and alleged weaponization of aflatoxin. Such an agent has no military relevant application and would only have relevance where an enemy did not know it was attacked or could not fight back. Iraq has shown a willingness to use CW agents on its neighbor and its own population, might it also have used or intended to use aflatoxin on such defenseless populations? It takes ten years or more for aflatoxin to manifest its carcinogenic and liver damaging effects. Iraq's BW program in 2002: I intentionally left this discussion to the end because much of the above discussions affect this response. In 1990, as stated above, Iraq's BW program was still in expansion and development. It probably had three bacterial agents, one bacterial toxin, one mycotoxin and one anticrop agent in its arsenal. Although Iraq denies it, Iraq had the equipment and know-how to dry BW agents in a small particle that would be highly dispersable into an aerosol. (Iraq acknowledges testing aflatoxin and Smut spores mixed with silica gel.) It still retains the necessary personnel, equipment (including spray dryer), and supplies to have an equal or expanded capability in this regard. It has had 12 years to advance its viral capability and, as I have cited elsewhere, this almost certainly includes smallpox as an agent. Even more ominous is Iraq's successful efforts to acquire the necessary equipment and reagents for adding genetic engineering to its BW repertoire. This was particularly alarming because, at the same time, key personnel in Iraq's virus and bioengineering BW program were no longer functional at their stated work locations. There is no doubt in my mind that Iraq has a much stronger BW program today than it had in 1990. Perhaps of most concern would be anthrax and tularemia bacteria and smallpox virus as well as antianimal and anticrop agents. Testimony Delivered by before the House Armed Services Committee For more than a decade, the international community has sought unsuccessfully a longterm solution to an Iraq led by Saddam and armed with WMD. Indeed, the start of any sensible long-term approach to Iraq is to understand why the United Nations arms inspections slid into irrelevance and four years ago came to and end. UNSCOM's efforts to eliminate Saddam's WMD capacity, which effectively ended in 1998 when the inspectors left Iraq, were based on four assumptions, all of which turned out to be false. These were: ⚫ Saddam's rule would not survive the disasters suffered by Iraq as a result of its invasion of Kuwait; • Iraq's WMD capabilities were not extensive nor significantly indigenous; · · A post-Saddam Iraq would declare to UNSCOM all of Iraq's WMD capabilities; UNSCOM would be able to "destroy, remove or render harmless” Iraq's WMD capabilities leaving an Iraq that would not have WMD capability as an enduring legacy. The reasoning of US Administration officials at the end of the Gulf War that no regime could survive a disaster as compelling as Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War was no doubt true for a democratic system. Saddam's endurance, however, stands as yet another stark reminder of the dangers of attempting to understand the world on the basis solely of our own values and experience. Saddam's Iraq was and is a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship that can survive as long as it maintains coercive power over its citizens. Once Saddam's survival became a fact, all hope of his voluntarily yielding up the very weapons that allow him to hope to dominate the region was lost. What is much less well understood is the impact that the discovery of the gigantic scope and indigenous nature of Saddam's weapons program had on the prospects of being able to eliminate this program by inspection alone. We now know that the Iraqi efforts to build an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction: • Spanned more than a decade; • Cost more than $20 Billion; · Involved more than 40,000 Iraqis and succeed in mastering all the technical and most of the productions steps necessary to acquire a devil's armory of nuclear, 'David A. Kay led for the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNSCOM, three arms inspection missions as chief nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq during 1991-92. Now a Senior Corporate vice president with San Diegoheadquartered Science Applications International Corp., he is based in McLean, Va. The views expressed here are entirely his own and do not represent those of SAIC. chemical and biological weapons as well as the missiles necessary to deliver them over vast distances. The capability to produce weapons of mass destruction arising from a national program on the scale of that of Iraq's cannot be eliminated by simply destroying "weapons" facilities. And while we should credit the UN inspection process with destroying a substantial nuclear weapons establishment in Iraq that was largely unidentified at the time of the Gulf War and that had survived largely unscathed the coalition bombing campaign. The nuclear weapons secrets are now Iraqi secrets well understood by Iraq's technical elite, and the production capabilities necessary to turn these "secrets" into weapons are part and parcel of the domestic infrastructure of Iraq which will survive even the most draconian of sanctions regimes. Simply put, Iraq is not Libya, but very much like post-Versailles Germany in terms of its ability to maintain a weapons capability in the teeth of international inspections. As long as a government remains in Baghdad committed to acquiring WMD, that capability can be expected to become and without much warning - a reality. To compress a lot of bitter history: In December 1998, the United States conducted military attacks against Iraq after UNSCOM reported that it could not achieve its mandated disarmament and monitoring tasks with the limited access and cooperation Iraq allowed. All UNSCOM activities in Iraq then ceased. UNSCOM, the first UN effort to eliminate Iraq's WMD program, passed out of existence and was replaced by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) through the adoption of Security Council resolution 1284 on 17 December 1999. UNMOVIC was to be more acceptable to Iraq, led by a Commissioner that Iraq and their sympathizers on the Security Council found more acceptable. Even under this more favorable inspection regime, however, Iraq has continued to refuse UN inspectors. In the nuclear area, there is a set of critical questions that need to be considered to understand Iraq's nuclear potential: • How has the Iraqi nuclear program changed from the Persian What impact has UN sanctions had on the weapon program? • How has international opinion of the Iraqi nuclear threat changed The point of beginning to think about how one would describe Iraq's nuclear program today is to recognize the serious impediments that we all face in trying to understand that program. On-site inspections in Iraq were never easy, and by 1995-96 Iraq had put in place a major deception and concealment effort designed to mislead inspections as to the intent, scope and continuing activities in the nuclear area. When UNSCOM inspections managed, as they often did, to penetrate this web of deceptions, Iraq resorted to physical denial of access and threats of violence to neck down the scope of inspections. By 1997, effective, sustained inspections in Iraq had come to an end. The final ending of all inspections in 1998 was in fact an anti-climax. Lacking on-site inspections, with unfettered access to all of Iraq, for four years has meant that it is impossible to be sure where their nuclear program stands today. It also means that even if inspections were to begin tomorrow, it would be impossible to answer this question without a very long, sustained period of unfettered inspections. The baseline of Iraq's nuclear program is broken and it will be impossible to quickly re-establish it. It is very unlikely that national intelligence efforts can add much clarity to the exact status of Saddam's nuclear program. The same deception and concealment capabilities that were directed at the inspectors will have hindered national intelligence services. WMD programs have long been the hardest targets for intelligence service to unravel, even when they are very large. One should remember that the very large Soviet-era biological program, which included putting smallpox on long-range ballistic missiles aimed at the West, went undiscovered until after the end of the Cold War. The size of the Soviet uranium enrichment program was seriously underestimated and major nuclear production facilities unidentified until after the fall of the Soviets. Based on Iraq's activities before 1998 and sketchy insights available from defectors and exposure of continued Iraqi attempts to acquire nuclear related capabilities, one can say a few things with high confidence: ⚫Iraq's pre-war nuclear accomplishments have ensured that if it can acquire fissionable nuclear material from any outside source it will be able to fabricate at ⚫ Iraq will have dispersed and shielded with elaborate deception arrangements its nuclear activities, requiring highly intrusive inspection techniques if there were to be any hope of discovering these activities. Iraq understands the methods used by inspectors and will be ready to frustrate all efforts to get close to activities they are determined to shield. • Iraq has not abandoned its efforts to acquire WMD. A recent defector has stated that an explicit order to reconstitute the nuclear teams was promulgated in August 1998; at the time Iraq ceased cooperation with UN-led inspections. There should be no doubt that Iraq, under Saddam, continues to seek nuclear weapons |
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