by Con Coughlin
Procurement teams were dispatched to Europe and the United States disguised as commercial representatives for various front companies. The closest they came to duping a foreign country into building a poison gas plant was with an approach, made through French intermediaries, to the Pfaulder Company, of Rochester, New York, which specialized in the manufacture of equipment for mixing toxic chemicals. Believing that they were being asked to build a plant for the manufacture of pesticides, Pfaulder dispatched two engineers to Baghdad to meet with a team of officials from the Ministry of Agriculture. An amiable Iraqi official gave the Americans a detailed explanation of how Iraq’s attempts to develop its agricultural productivity were being hampered by the inability of Iraqi farmers to protect their crops from the ravages of desert locusts and other pests. “A modern pesticide plant could change all that,” said the official. The Americans were impressed, but aware of the difficulties of producing highly toxic pesticides in the Third World, they proposed constructing a pilot plant to train the local workforce and identify potential problem areas.
To this end in January 1976 Pfaulder presented a detailed proposal for a pilot plant. Apart from containing detailed design specifications, it stipulated the type of special equipment necessary for blending toxic chemicals. The Iraqis were unhappy about building a pilot plant; they wanted to go into production right away. The Iraqis’ impatience disturbed the two engineers, as did the Iraqis’ insistence that when production finally got under way they would want to manufacture four highly toxic organic compounds—Amiton, Demeton, Paraoxon, and Parathion. All four of these chemicals are first cousins to nerve gas agents, and could be readily transformed into deadly weapons. The final straw for the Americans came when the Iraqis indicated that they wanted to build production lines big enough to turn out 1,200 tons of these chemicals per year. At a stormy meeting in mid-1976 at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Iraqis said they wanted a full-scale plant immediately, and when the Americans stuck to their insistence on building a pilot plant first, the Iraqis withdrew from the negotiations.5 The Iraqi team did not go away completely empty-handed. The blueprints and specifications for the pilot project provided by Pfaulder were sufficient to enable the Iraqis to build their own plant.
Next the Iraqis turned their attention to Europe. Saddam remained convinced that if Iraq could build up its chemical weapons capability then it could achieve total independence from its weapons suppliers. In late 1976 Saddam’s procurement teams approached two British companies, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Babcock and Wilcox. Once again the Iraqis’ cover story was that they wanted to build a pesticides plant capable of producing Amiton, Demeton, Paraoxon, and Parathion. The Iraqis even produced the plans that had been drawn up by Pfaudler the year before, showing the corrosion-resistant reactor vessels, pipes, and pumps that were needed for nerve gas production. ICI officials were immediately suspicious and declined the offer “because of the sensitive nature of the materials and the potential for misuse.” At the same time ICI tipped off intelligence officers at the Secret Intelligence Service in London. Having failed in Britain the Iraqis visited two Italian companies, the giant chemical firm Montedison and the engineering concern, Technipetrole. Both companies have denied helping the Iraqis acquire chemical weapons, although both of them have since been named on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s list of Iraq’s chemical weapons suppliers. Still desperate for expertise and equipment, the Iraqis finally turned their attention to Germany, the spiritual home of poison gas.
During a meeting with Karl Heinz Lohs, the director of the Leipzig Institute for Poisonous Chemicals, in what was then East Germany, the Iraqis were unapologetic about their intentions. “You Germans have great expertise in the killing of Jews with gas,” said the official. “This interests us in the same way…. How [can] this knowledge…be used to destroy Israel?” Lohs made many visits to Iraq to give lectures on the terrible effects of chemical weapons use, although he later claimed that his visits were used by the East German authorities as a cover to get their chemical weapons experts into Baghdad to assist with the development of Iraq’s chemical weapons program.6
The final piece in the chemical weapons jigsaw concerned the development of the phosphate deposits in western Iraq, which the Iraqis wanted to exploit for nerve gas production. The Belgian engineering company Syberta was already contracted to build a huge phosphate mine at Akashat. Phosphate mining in itself is a perfectly acceptable enterprise for a developing country such as Iraq, and there were many countries, such as Morocco, that had become a major exporter of fertilizer, in Morocco’s case manufactured from phosphate deposits in the Sahara. After work had begun on the mine, the Iraqis signed a second contract to build a fertilizer complex 150 kilometers (100 miles) away at Al Qaim. To move the raw material from Akashat to Al Qaim a Brazilian company was contracted to build a rail link. No expense was to be spared for Saddam’s pet project. None of the companies involved in the project seemed concerned about the unusual specifications demanded by the Iraqis, such as reinforced concrete fortifications around certain buildings. British, French, American, Austrian, German, Swiss, Danish, and Swedish companies all contributed expertise to the Akashat/Al Qaim project, all believing that they were helping with the construction of a fertilizer production plant. But the project turned out to be a classic example of dual-use technology. American and British intelligence officials have since confirmed that Iraq’s first nerve gas plant was constructed at Akashat at an estimated cost of $40 million, and a separate facility was constructed at Al Qaim.
The plant was completed at about the time Saddam became president and during the next ten years Saddam was able to draw on the expertise of a number of foreign companies that enabled Iraq to produce significant amounts of chemical weapons, including a refined form of Distilled Mustard (HD), as well as the Tabun nerve agent and the more potent VX nerve agent. The manufacture of biological weapons also underwent significant expansion to the extent that Iraq was able to produce agents such as anthrax, typhoid, and cholera. It was an irony not lost on the teams of United Nations weapons inspectors who were given the task of dismantling Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991 that many of the agents they were trying to track down originated in either Europe or the United States.
Of all the schemes to develop nonconventional weapons the one that was closest to Saddam’s heart, however, concerned the Iraqi effort to acquire a nuclear arsenal. From the mid-1970s Saddam and other leading Baathists had preached about the necessity of Iraq making the most of the latest scientific developments if it were to turn itself into a modern nation. “For the Arab nation, the need for scientific advancement is tantamount to the need to live since it is impossible for any nation to lead a dignified existence…without respect for science and a defined role in its exploration and exploitation,” Saddam had declared. Science had a key role to play in a wide variety of economic activities in Saddam’s Iraq, from developing the petrochemical industry to the massive reconstruction program of roads, homes, and public utilities. But the area of science that most fascinated Saddam was that of nuclear technology. Indeed his fascination was so great that it rubbed off on his children. In 1980 one of Saddam’s official biographers was given the opportunity to meet his family. During his visit to the family home he met Uday, Saddam’s eldest son and a precocious sixteen-year-old. Uday informed his interviewer that he was good at physics and chemistry and that he wanted to go to the university to study nuclear physics. The reason he was set on this particular career path was that “Iraq would need scientists in this field once it had entered the nuclear club.”7
At a special meeting in 1975 of his three-man committee on weapons procurement, Saddam had set a target for acquiring nuclear weapons of within ten years—i.e., by 1985. Apart from the status that accrued from having a nuclear weapons capability, there were many reasons why Saddam was so determined to acquire this particular arsenal. To start with there was a determin
ation within the Arab world to match the nuclear capability that it was widely believed Israel had developed after purchasing the Dimona nuclear reactor from France in the 1950s. It would also be a useful deterrent against any future threat from Iran, a country that was three times larger than Iraq. Saddam was well aware that by joining the likes of the United States, Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union in the elite “nuclear club,” Iraq’s position as the undisputed champion of the Arab world would be secure.
The Iraqi authorities had initiated their quest for nuclear technology as early as the late 1960s when the Arif government had purchased an experimental research reactor from the Soviet Union. The Iraqis built their first nuclear research center in the desert at Thuwaitha, about fifteen miles south of Baghdad, to house the modest-sized IRT 2000 light-water reactor. Later the Soviets upgraded the reactor and trained at least one hundred Iraqi nuclear physicists. But when in April 1975 the Iraqis asked to purchase more advanced technology, Brezhnev and Kosygin politely but firmly declined the request. According to the Palestinian writer Said Aburish, who makes no apology for assisting Saddam with his arms buildup in the 1970s, Saddam personally authorized his officials to conduct a worldwide search for suitable equipment: Aburish himself was instructed to approach Atomic Energy of Canada, which proved unsuccessful.8 Saddam could easily have been assisted in his search for weapons of mass destruction by opportunists like Aburish who, apart from earning a handsome fee in commissions, felt “a special sense of elation” at being part of the effort to create “a balance of terror” between Israel and the Arabs.9 The activities of Aburish and his associates, however, achieved little.
Thwarted by the Russians and everyone else he approached, Saddam finally got what he was looking for when he turned his attentions toward his most favored international ally, France. Saddam had already struck up a strong personal understanding with Jacques Chirac, the French prime minister. Although he had drawn heavily on Josef Stalin in his attempts to create a totalitarian regime in Iraq, Saddam remained at heart very much the nationalist his uncle Khairallah had brought him up to be. It was no surprise therefore that he should be attracted to a committed Gaullist like Chirac. General de Gaulle, who had withdrawn France from NATO’s integrated military command structure rather than put France’s nuclear weapons under NATO control, was a man after Saddam’s heart. The Gaullists preached that national sovereignty was sacred, as did Saddam’s wing of the Baath Party, and nuclear technology, as Chirac and his advisers constantly argued, was very much a sovereignty issue.
Saddam and Chirac had developed a close understanding during the lengthy negotiations that had taken place in 1975 for Iraq to purchase the new Mirage-F1 fighter plane, an upgraded version of the aircraft that had been used by the Israeli air force to defeat the Arabs in the 1973 war. During a visit to Paris in September 1975 to conclude the Mirage deal, Saddam was taken by Chirac on a tour of Provence. On their way to the bullfights at Les Baux, Chirac’s party made a brief detour to enable Saddam to visit the Cadarache nuclear research center, a few miles north of Marseilles. The Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA) had just set up its first experimental fast-breeder reactor, called Rapsodie. The basic principle of a fast-breeder reactor is to “breed” more nuclear fuel than it consumes. In the process it transforms significant quantities of uranium into plutonium, which can then be processed for use in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Iraq’s interest in fast-breeder reactors was simple: to obtain plutonium to build bombs.
As with their attempts to acquire chemical and biological weapons, the Iraqis claimed that they wanted the nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Despite having the world’s second largest oil reserves, the Iraqis claimed they were interested in developing an indigenous nuclear power industry. The French officials basically accepted Saddam’s explanation, and offered to sell him an Osiris research reactor and a scale model called Isis, both of which could breed small quantities of bomb-grade plutonium. Saddam agreed to buy them on one condition—that France agreed to deliver an extra one-year supply of reactor fuel at start-up. If the fuel was processed correctly it would produce enough material for several bombs the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima.
The reactor was similar to the one the French had sold to the Israelis in 1956. As the French Socialists had been responsible for providing Israel with its Dimona nuclear research reactor, Chirac calculated that his Guallist Party was quite within its rights to provide the Arabs with similar technology. While the rest of the world was desperately trying to keep the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, the French, in their own inimitable fashion, were blithely negotiating deals to provide mutually hostile countries with the capacity to bomb themselves into oblivion. With characteristic Gallic cynicism Chirac’s sole interest in selling a sophisticated reactor to Saddam “for peaceful applications” was commercial; the reactor was a quid pro quo for the French receiving favorable trading terms in Baghdad, including oil concessions, imports of French cars, and the understanding that Iraq would conclude the deal for the new generation of Mirage fighter planes. No one in the French government seemed at all bothered by the inherent contradiction of an oil-rich country like Iraq seeking to turn itself into a nuclear power. And Saddam left no one in any doubt as to his real intentions. Interviewed in the Lebanese weekly magazine Al Usbu al-Arabi in September 1975 shortly after the reactor deal had been concluded, Saddam proudly declared, “The agreement with France is the first concrete step toward production of the Arab atomic bomb.”
At first the Iraqis called the reactor Osirak but later changed the name to Tammuz I and Tammuz II, the month that Saddam’s Baath Party seized power. It is said that the Iraqis changed the name from Osirak at the request of the French government after the satirical French press had made it rhyme with the prime minister’s name (“O’Chirac”). Once the party had returned to Paris, Saddam insisted on celebrating the deal by laying on a special feast for his special French ally. When Chirac had visited Baghdad the previous year he had shown a liking for the local Iraqi river fish called masgouf. Saddam ordered his cook to fly back to Baghdad on the presidential plane and return with one and a half tons of fish. When the cook returned, Saddam persuaded the maître d’hôtel at the Marigny Palace, where the Iraqi party was staying, to prepare a special barbecue for Chirac, and while Saddam’s security guards patrolled the kitchens with their loaded machine guns, the cooks set to work roasting the huge, greasy carp over open fires. Chirac, who had to suffer the indignity of French television cameras filming him gamely swallowing the fish as it was served Baghdad-style on aluminium foil, later confided to an aide that the Iraqi delegation had caused quite a stir at the Marigny Palace. “The whole place smelled of charred flesh. It was amusing, but a mess.”10
Saddam’s visit resulted in a bonanza for French business that was potentially worth billions of dollars. The deal for the nuclear reactor, which was signed in Baghdad in November 1975, was alone worth about $3 billion. In addition there were to be contracts for petrochemical plants, desalinization plants, a new airport, and even a subway system for Baghdad. This was in addition to the massive arms deals that had already been negotiated. The French business community was so overwhelmed by the largesse delivered by Chirac’s dealings with Saddam that they named him “Mr. Iraq.” As Saddam prepared to leave, Chirac made an eloquent speech. French policy, he declared, “is dictated not merely by interest, but also by the heart. France deems it necessary to establish relationships between producers and consumers on terms that best conform to the interests of both parties.”11 The full text of the Franco-Iraqi Nuclear Cooperation Treaty was not made public until eight months later. One of the conditions set out in the treaty was the stipulation that “all persons of Jewish race or the Mosaic religion” be excluded from participating in the program, either in Iraq or France. The treaty also committed the French to training six hundred Iraqi nuclear technicians, more than enough for a bomb program.
Khidhir Hamza, one of the Iraqi scientis
ts who worked on Iraq’s nuclear project from its inception and who managed to defect to the West in 1994, has revealed how there was never any doubt about the Iraqis’ intentions. According to Hamza, Saddam took personal charge of Iraq’s Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from the mid-1970s, having first brought a team of scientists together to build the Iraqi bomb.12 Most of the Iraqi scientists assigned to the project had been educated in Britain, the United States, and Canada and were greatly assisted in their efforts by the generosity of the United States Atomic Energy Commission which, under the Atoms for Peace program it was running at the time, had in 1956 donated to the AEC a complete set of the reports of the Manhattan Project, which had produced the world’s first atom bomb in 1945. Hamza says the Iraqis decided to copy the Israelis, who had bought a small research reactor and then clandestinely changed its use.
Saddam was undoubtedly the driving force behind Iraq’s nuclear project. He chaired the meetings of the AEC with the same professionalism that he chaired all the other government committees dealing with Iraq’s modernization. He demanded detailed reports from the scientists on how they intended to go about developing the Iraqi bomb. He read the reports carefully and fully mastered the brief so that when he met the scientists he was able to ask pertinent and penetrating questions. It was through Saddam’s personal initiative that Iraq secured a position on the board of governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the international body responsible for policing the nuclear industry. Saddam calculated that the IAEA would be less suspicious of Iraq’s nuclear “research” activities if it played a constructive role within the organization. Saddam rejected a proposal put forward by his scientists to build an “Atomic City” on the grounds that concentrating all the nation’s nuclear research resources in one place would make it a soft target for anyone seeking to destroy it. As with the chemical weapons project, Saddam wanted to spread the resources around a number of secret locations throughout the country to protect them from attack.