Raid on the Sun

by Rodger W. Claire

  This was exactly what Israel was doing. Each weekly cycle in Dimona produced about nine “buttons” of pure plutonium, or 1.2 kilograms. It required roughly 11 kilograms of plutonium to produce one atomic bomb. Thus, approximately every ten weeks Israeli engineers had enough plutonium to create one more atomic bomb. For use in a bomb, the plutonium was shaped into a perfect sphere and surrounded by a high-explosive material. Triggered to explode inward in a precise sequence of nanoseconds, the blast would compress, or implode, the plutonium core into itself. The plutonium, like the U235 in the nuclear reactor, would begin discharging neutrons, but, unlike the controlled fissioning in the reactor, the neutrons in the bomb would discharge at an immensely faster rate—faster than they could escape from the core. Ultimately the pent-up energy would go “supercritical,” bursting outward and producing the immense explosion and familiar mushroom cloud of the classic atomic blast.

  A process of “boosting,” that is, of inserting tritium extracted from heavy water into the warhead at the moment of fission, would flood the core with yet more neutrons and add an extra nuclear kick, dramatically increasing the bomb’s explosive “yield.” By the early fifties, physicists were already developing the so-called hydrogen bomb, a two-stage device that used the fission from an atomic bomb to compress and trigger the fusion of a second compartment of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope that burns as the primary fuel of the sun.

  Israel’s atomic bomb–making facilities were far too expansive to hide on the ground at Dimona, even with the fake control rooms. So the Israelis went underground. Near the Dimona reactor was a nondescript, two-story, windowless administration building sheltering an employee canteen, a shower room, an air filtration system, and a storage area. On the second floor was a secret bank of elevators, bricked over and hidden from view of the inspectors. The elevator shaft sank eighty feet beneath the floor to a secret, six-story underground laboratory known to the Israeli workers as “the Tunnel.” A labyrinth of underground rooms and units, the Tunnel contained a chemical reprocessing plant and bomb factory where, beginning in 1965, the weapons-grade plutonium extracted from the Dimona reactor was fashioned into atomic warheads. Tritium extraction was done in Unit 92. Overlooking four floors where the plutonium was chemically extracted from the spent uranium rods, which cooled for weeks in water tanks, was a huge glass-enclosed control room, nicknamed Golda’s Balcony in honor of the famed Israeli prime minister who frequently visited Dimona after taking office in 1969.

  The bomb factory’s existence would not be corroborated for another twenty years. But by the mid-sixties, reports of the reactor on the surface had made U.S. intelligence agencies suspicious. Early in 1965 the AEC and the CIA began rethinking the conventional wisdom concerning Dimona. After a decade of turning a blind eye on the somewhat troubling question of Israel’s real intentions regarding the ultimate use of its nuclear reactor, the Defense Information Agency (DIA), AEC, and CIA began anxiously speculating on the primary source of Israel’s U235 fuel—especially after two hundred pounds of enriched uranium shipped by Westinghouse Company and the U.S. Navy to a small Pennsylvania nuclear processing and fabrication firm called Nuclear Materials & Equipment Corporation turned up missing.

  What flagged the attention of the AEC and CIA was the fact the firm’s founder and director, Zalman Shapiro, the American son of a rabbi and Holocaust survivor, was a well-known, outspoken supporter of the Jewish state as well as an active member in the Zionist Organization of America. Even more intriguing, Shapiro counted among his closest friends Ernst Bergmann, the nation’s leading nuclear scientist. After an investigation but without a lot of hard proof, the AEC charged that Shapiro’s company, NUMEC, had diverted the missing uranium to Israel and then attempted to bury the missing inventory in its convoluted bookkeeping procedures. Shapiro vehemently denied all the charges, as did Israel. The AEC, FBI, CIA, even Congress conducted a panoply of audits, reviews, and criminal investigations for ten years. But in the end the case came down to supposition and some suspicious transactions. No hard evidence was ever uncovered that NUMEC had diverted anything to Israel, much less U235. The lack of proof, however, did little to save Shapiro’s reputation. He lived out his life marked as a suspected agent for Israel.

  The matter was soon officially forgotten. Whatever the truth, by the end of the decade, how Israel had attained enriched uranium was no longer of interest to anyone—except Saddam Hussein.

  By 1971, Khidhir Hamza had been assigned to review and evaluate the history and operations of the Nuclear Research Center at al-Tuwaitha and to produce a definitive Atomic Energy Progress Report. Before long, Hamza found himself involved in every aspect of Atomic Energy’s business. What he discovered surprised him: for all Hussein’s obsession with control, it was clear that Iraq had been taken for a ride by the superpowers. In the early sixties, Iraq’s Atomic Energy (AE), under directions from Hussein, had purchased a small five-megawatt nuclear reactor from the Soviet Union. The sale was of little concern to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) because the reactor was too small to produce weapons-grade uranium, which could then be used to create an atomic bomb. In fact, the Soviets had refused to sell Hussein anything larger than the five-megawatt reactor. Ironically, the Russians, unlike many of the West’s democracies, especially the aggressively competitive French, Germans, and Italians, turned out to be strict enforcers of the international nuclear nonproliferation treaties. However, seeing the perfect opportunity to make a good profit off of what they considered an unsophisticated and technologically impoverished Arab satellite state, the Soviets, in Hamza’s estimation, had put together a package of mostly outdated nuclear and power-generating equipment, including, of all things, a boiler dating back to the 1930s. Bizarrely, instead of fixing an exact price tag on the reactor and for all of its various facilities and equipment, the Soviet nuclear agency charged Iraq by the ton. Accordingly, the Russians heaped as much equipment onto the deal as they could, padding the service contract with scores of redundant engineers, technicians, and untrained hacks who collected large paychecks for doing virtually nothing.

  Padding the payroll and shipping ancillary machinery was easy, since it was never clear even to Iraqi administrators what exactly the Nuclear Research Center was supposed to be doing. Sitting atop the second largest oil deposit in the world, Iraq was hardly in need of nuclear power to run its electrical plants. In recent years, in fact, Atomic Energy had been used mostly to screen Saddam’s dinner. Hussein demanded only the best of everything when it came to his personal comforts. The Iraqi leader had his food flown in fresh daily from Paris. On its sojourn to his state-of-the-art kitchens, the finest French beef, lamb, lobster, and shrimp were routed first to technicians at Atomic Energy, where the institute’s multimillion-dollar X-ray and chemical-processing machines were used to check the victuals for poisons or dangerous metals that could harm the Great Uncle, as Saddam had taken to being called by loyal party minions. At the slightest doubt, the suspect delicacy would be sloughed off to local markets or restaurants. One well-known story recounted by Hamza recalled a day when Saddam came down with diarrhea. A squad of security guards stormed into the palace kitchen and held the cooks for hours kneeling on the floor with gun barrels pressed to their heads until a doctor examined the leader and declared it a common virus.

  Hamza found that within a year of its purchase, the Russian reactor had begun to leak radioactive contaminated water. It seemed that when it came time to clean the reactor core, a normal process of maintenance, the Soviet technicians and sales personnel claimed that maintenance was not covered in the original contract. “This is your responsibility, not ours,” the on-site engineers informed the Iraqis. The Iraqi technicians at Atomic Energy had no experience in maintaining nuclear reactors. Not one of its members had the vaguest idea of how to clean the inside of a nuclear reactor. Certainly there were no tools or provisions for such an undertaking at al-Tuwaitha.

  Atomic Energy administrators elected to contract
the work out to a private industrial cleaning service in Baghdad. The workers at the company were experienced in cleaning and scrubbing industrial warehouses and fabrication plants, even chemical laboratories and production facilities. But not one of them had ever seen a reactor before, much less cleaned one. In the end the maintenance workers relied on what they had always done. They entered the mathematically smooth, precisely engineered seamless environment of the reactor core and began scouring the pristine walls with wire brushes and industrial cleaning fluids, as though the reactor were just another dirty factory floor in need of a good scrubbing. Unbeknownst to the maintenance crew, or to the Iraqi engineers and nuclear techs who ran the reactor, the wire brushes scratched and grooved the pristine surfaces of the core’s containment vessel. These minute divots and engraved lines created weak spots on the surface. When the reactor was activated again, the superheated steam and extreme temperatures soon corroded the breaches in the surface, eating away at the material until the core began leaking the moderating water around the fuel rods. When Atomic Energy complained to the Soviet techs that the core was leaking, the Russian liaison officers countered that they had had nothing to do with maintaining the reactor core and that the decision to hire an outside, incompetent firm to undertake such a delicate process was solely the responsibility of the Iraqis. Iraq was left with an undersized and now unusable reactor.

  Khidhir Hamza put all the details of the ten-year Soviet administration and shepherding of Iraq’s nuclear energy programs in his report. He handed the finished document to AE at the end of 1971. The reaction to the report was not long in coming. Saddam Hussein may have been a bit of a rube when it came to nuclear technology dealmaking, but he was a fast learner. Just months after receiving Hamza’s paper, Hussein in early 1972 ordered all Soviet personnel out of the country. Simultaneously he froze the balance of the remaining payments due the Soviet Union and directed that it be held in escrow according to international procedure. He also informed Moscow that he would pay only five hundred thousand dollars—and he would pay that balance in Russia’s own rapidly falling rubles. The deal was “take it or leave it.”

  His part in the humiliation of the Soviets made Hamza something of a local hero at Atomic Energy. The engineer was given a raise and increased responsibilities. The Research Center’s new director, Husham Sharif, a small, cultured man who had replaced the lower-bred Attia, began currying favor with his new star scientist. Even Dr. Moyesser al-Mallah, the secretary general of Atomic Energy, began dropping by Khidhir Hamza’s small office for an occasional cup of tea. One evening, curiously, al-Mallah requested that Hamza and Sharif come home with him after work so they could talk in “private.” Hamza drove to the man’s house, located in an upscale suburb of Baghdad reserved for officials of the Ba’th Party. He felt anxious, wondering what al-Mallah could want that was so important they needed to meet in secret. Hamza and Sharif settled into al-Mallah’s comfortable den and began the usual office chitchat when Sharif suddenly changed the subject.

  “What did you think of Jabir’s book?” Sharif asked, referring to the Palestinian’s much talked about study of Israel’s atomic bombs. The question, apropos of nothing, alerted Hamza that this meeting was a setup.

  “I think it’s ridiculous,” Hamza replied. In truth, Hamza did not believe that Israel had the capacity to produce enough plutonium to make atomic bombs. And how could they have tested their designs to make sure their bomb worked? Certainly Israel had no Nevada test ranges. He looked at the disappointed faces of his bosses. He had given the wrong answer. He was, he realized, being arrogantly dismissive.

  Al-Mallah, with some satisfaction, informed Hamza that, in fact, Saddam believed every word of the book. Not only that, but the Great Uncle had ordered the Nuclear Research Center to create an atomic bomb for Iraq. Al-Mallah then explained that if the scientists at al-Tuwaitha could not show any progress, the Great Uncle was liable to grow impatient, and that would be a danger to all of them. On the other hand, if the the three of them could come up with a viable plan, then funds, resources, and prestige would flow to them all. But, for security reasons, they would have to keep this a secret between them. Hamza felt his chest tightening. Good God, he thought, how could they possibly build a nuclear bomb? What would the West do if they found out?

  On the other hand, the idea of creating an atomic bomb from scratch took his breath away. It was truly Faustian: to be given every resource, the latest technology, the country’s finest minds to compete against the West’s best and brightest to build what was truly the ultimate prize in nuclear physics. And yet, what would he sacrifice—his morals, his professional ethics . . . his soul? Years later, Hamza would feel pangs of regret about his part in enabling Saddam’s ambitious plans to become a nuclear state, but as a young scientist eager to prove himself, trapped inside Hussein’s crazy world of intimidation and dreams of world power, he could not resist. Over al-Mallah’s dining room table that night, Hamza, al-Mallah, and Sharif began planning the creation of the first Arab bomb. And, they agreed at once, they would follow the lead of the Israelis.

  Once he had dispensed with the Soviets, Hussein began searching for a new partner and, like the Israelis before, he quickly discovered the French. For all their cultured sophistication, in truth, the French loved nothing more than a good bargain. And no one knew how to bargain better than Saddam Hussein.

  Early on, Hussein had learned that people were motivated by two things: fear and greed, or at least the prospect of easy money. For the first, Hussein turned to his stick, the Mukhabarat, Iraq’s sadistic secret police; for the latter, he relied on an oil-reserve carrot of $45 billion. He had the power and the wealth. What he didn’t have was time. The ticking clock, as with all dictators, was his enemy—the one thing he could not control.

  Indeed, Saddam’s obsession with speed was a constant torture to Baghdad’s construction industry. Neophytes to government service quickly discovered the dangers inherent in working for Hussein. Entifadh Qanbar—who years later would flee Iraq through the dangerous no-man’s-land of the northern Kurdish border and ultimately return with the exile group headed by Ahman Chalabi in 2003—was a young, bright engineer working in Baghdad in the seventies. Short, dark, full of nervous energy, Qanbar looked like an Iraqi Joe Pesci. He had been hired to refurbish Baghdad’s historical palaces as part of Hussein’s vision to restore the city to its Mesopotamian glory. At the time, a friend from engineering school was bidding on his first government contract: a three-story government chemical plant in south Baghdad. Among many stipulations, the bidding specs for the plant called for a one-year construction schedule. Qanbar’s friend had always been a bit of a character—roguish, a gambler who was not averse to cutting corners. In the army he would routinely forge weekend passes for himself at a time when the brutal officers of the Iraqi military were shooting soldiers for far lesser transgressions. Determined to win the bid, the engineer slashed his construction time to six months and submitted his estimate to Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law and the minister overseeing all military procurements. Following standard procedure, Kamel read the proposal, accepted it, and automatically cut the engineer’s deadline in half, to three months, before sending it on to Hussein, who had to approve all government contracts. Hussein read the proposal, okayed it, then slashed the schedule in half once again, this time to forty-five days.

  “You have forty-five days,” Kamel informed the shocked engineer. “I’ll give you all the help you need. You can change what you want, requisition whatever you need, charge whatever you decide. But you have to have this done in forty-five days!”

  To his horror, the next morning a detail of Hussein’s security men arrived and surrounded the engineer’s work crew and the construction site. No one was allowed to leave until the job was finished. For the next two weeks the engineer and his crew—carpenters, masons, bricklayers, painters, laborers—worked day and night, eating and sleeping in shifts on the construction site. Dispensing with normal construct
ion processes of erecting a building floor by floor, from foundation to roof, the crew poured the foundation, and while it dried, threw up all three floors at once—plus exterior brick walls and roofing, all braced by scaffolding and girders—and then allowed it to dry as one piece in place. Two weeks later they tore down all the scaffolding and retaining braces and there it was, a brand-new building.

  The contract also called for a five-hundred-space parking lot. Normally such a lot would be graded out and then refilled gradually with dirt while being compacted every two feet by tamping machinery to ensure a stable foundation. Once solid and leveled, the asphalt would be laid and rolled flat. It’s a time-consuming process. But with two days to complete the entire job, the engineer simply dug out a three-acre rectangular pit and then filled the hole in with thousands of cubic yards of concrete. Scores of cement trucks lined up for miles, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars of concrete for twenty-four hours straight. When the concrete dried, it was asphalted over. Instant parking lot—and one of the most expensive pieces of land in Baghdad.

  In fourteen days Saddam Hussein’s military, biological, and chemical weapons division had a new research building. Qanbar’s friend charged the government one dinar a brick—a rate that would translate in American dollars to charging three dollars apiece for twenty-five-cent bricks. Kamel and military procurement did not raise an eyebrow at the exorbitant fee.

  With outsiders, Saddam’s business strategy was less Draconian but just as direct: You give me what I want—hard-to-get items like tanks and uranium and nuclear reactors—and I will give you rich contracts—obscenely rich contracts. This was in essence what he told Jacques Chirac during the French prime minister’s groundbreaking visit to Baghdad in early 1974. It turned out to be an offer the French P.M. could not refuse.