War of Nerves

by Jonathan Tucker

  In August 2002, the Cable News Network (CNN) broadcast a series of Al-Qaeda training videotapes obtained in Afghanistan, including disturbing images of crude experiments in which dogs were killed by exposure to a lethal gas of unknown composition. Although the CNN tapes indicated that Al-Qaeda was interested in acquiring chemical weapons, they also suggested that the group’s level of technical sophistication was rudimentary. The Bush administration, however, continued to promote the unlikely scenario that a country hostile to the United States would arm terrorists with sophisticated chemical or biological weapons for use against American targets, despite the clear risks of retaliation and loss of control. To counter this hypothetical threat, the administration developed a doctrine of “preemptive” war that called for toppling regimes that sponsored terrorism and possessed unconventional weapons before they could stage an attack. In September 2002, the White House released a new edition of the U.S. National Security Strategy stating that the United States would “act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed” and would “not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively.”

  As the Bush administration began to prepare for war with Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell persuaded the president to seek greater international legitimacy for military action by obtaining the political endorsement of the United Nations Security Council. On September 12, 2002, President Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly and laid out a bill of indictment against Iraq for retaining prohibited weapons and defying the will of the international community. Almost as an afterthought, Bush said that the U.S. government was prepared to work with the Security Council to address the “common challenge in Iraq,” but he stressed that U.S. military action would be “unavoidable” if Saddam Hussein did not cooperate fully. Four days later, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that he had received a letter from the Iraqi government stating that it would permit the return of U.N. weapons inspectors “without conditions.”

  In October, the U.S. intelligence community hastily prepared a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). One of the key findings was that Iraq had rebuilt its chemical weapons program after the departure of U.N. weapons inspectors in December 1998 and currently possessed large quantities of Sarin, Cyclosarin, and VX, as well as chemical bombs, artillery shells, and rockets. The NIE stated, “Although we have little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile, Saddam has probably stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents—much of it added in the last year.” A supplementary CIA memo warned that Iraq might possess “dusty” agents: mustard or Sarin that had been adsorbed onto a fine, talcum-like powder to facilitate aerosolization, creating an extreme respiratory threat.

  On November 8, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1441, which provided for unfettered weapons inspections in Iraq by international experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), a new weapons inspectorate that had been established in December 1999 as a successor to UNSCOM. The resolution stated that any building in Iraq was potentially subject to inspection, including Saddam’s presidential palaces, and authorized serious consequences if Iraq failed to cooperate. Even when confronted by a united Security Council, Baghdad’s compliance appeared to be grudging. In early December, Iraq submitted a new declaration of its prohibited WMD programs that appeared to be a compilation of earlier versions and contained no new information. The Iraqi declaration denied the existence of any current stocks of chemical or biological weapons and failed to answer questions about unaccounted-for stockpiles and materials.

  In late November 2002, teams of UNMOVIC inspectors began searching hundreds of suspect sites throughout Iraq. Over the next three and a half months, Iraq made no attempt to impede the inspections, even at presidential palaces, and the U.N. experts found no hidden caches of chemical or biological weapons. Much of the specific intelligence information supplied by the United States turned out to be inaccurate, resulting in numerous “wild WMD chases.” Yet Bush administration officials repeatedly criticized the competence of the U.N. inspectors and insisted that Iraq was continuing to hide large stocks of chemical and biological arms.

  On February 5, 2003, Secretary Powell gave a dramatic speech to the U.N. Security Council in which he described the various elements of Iraq’s illicit arsenal and laid out declassified intelligence data, including satellite imagery and communications intercepts, suggesting that the Iraqi government was actively deceiving the U.N. inspectors. With respect to the Iraqi chemical weapons program, Powell declared, “Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.” Although Secretary Powell enjoyed the most international respect and credibility of any U.S. government official, his speech failed to sway the votes of nine of the fifteen countries on the Security Council. The dissenting states believed that the U.N. weapons inspectors should be given more time to finish their work and that the United States was moving recklessly toward war without having exhausted the diplomatic options.

  President Bush was not to be dissuaded, however. After failing to obtain a second Security Council resolution authorizing military action, he ordered the invasion of Iraq on March 17, 2003, without the imprimatur of the international community. As American and British units fought their way toward Baghdad, they discovered several caches of Iraqi chemical protective suits and syringes containing nerve agent antidotes. Pentagon officials warned that Saddam might unleash his chemical weapons as soon as the invading forces crossed a “red line” surrounding the capital. Although the coalition troops braced themselves for chemical attacks, they never encountered as much as a whiff of mustard or nerve agent. On April 9, 2003, U.S. soldiers took control of central Baghdad and toppled the famous statue of Saddam in Firdos Square.

  Immediately after the invasion, a U.S. military intelligence team called the 75th Exploitation Task Force claimed to have discovered several suspect caches of chemical weapons, but all of them turned out to be false alarms. Indeed, much to the embarrassment of the CIA, no trace of Iraq’s supposedly large chemical stockpile was found. As for the chemical suits and antidote stocks that coalition forces had encountered on the road to Baghdad, Iraqi sources explained that these defensive preparations had been inspired by fears that Israeli troops would join the U.S.-British invasion and use nerve agents against the Iraqi army.

  United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (bottom center) and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin (bottom left) listen as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix is second from right in the second row. Secretary Powell described intelligence evidence—later shown to be incorrect—that Iraq possessed stocks of chemical arms.

  During the summer and fall of 2003, investigations by members of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), a U.S.-led fact-finding mission reporting to the Pentagon and the CIA and numbering some 1,200 personnel, concluded that the Iraqi chemical weapons production complex had not been rebuilt after 1998. In an interim report issued in October 2003, ISG director David Kay wrote, “Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW [chemical weapons] program after 1991. . . . Iraq’s large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced—if not entirely destroyed—during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, thirteen years of UN sanctions and UN inspections.” These preliminary findings raised serious doubts about the prewar intelligence assessment, which had apparently been based on outdated or false information.

  On October 6, 2004, Charles A. Duelfer, who had r
eplaced David Kay as the head of the ISG, released a 918-page final report summarizing the results of the eighteen-month investigation into Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs prior to the March 2003 war. The Duelfer report concluded that Iraq had destroyed its undeclared chemical stockpile in 1991 and had not resumed production thereafter. Although a network of clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Service had conducted research and testing on various toxic chemicals and poisons for assassination purposes, this effort did not meet the definition of a militarily significant capability. Moreover, the ISG concluded that the 1998 U.S. finding of VX degradation products on Iraqi missile warheads had been a false-positive, possibly caused by the cross-contamination of samples.

  At the same time, the Duelfer report judged that Saddam had planned to relaunch chemical weapons production after the U.N. sanctions were lifted. In the late 1990s, Iraq had reorganized its chemical industry “to conserve the knowledge base needed to restart a CW program, conduct a modest amount of dual-use research, and partially recover from the decline of its production capability caused by the effects of the Gulf war and UN-sponsored destruction and sanctions.” By employing existing chemical plants and importing key precursor chemicals, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent within a period of months and nerve agent within two years. Nevertheless, the ISG did not find any chemical production units that had been configured to produce key precursors or warfare agents, nor was there evidence of “explicit guidance from Saddam” on how to reconstitute the program. The ISG report also noted that, ironically, the war’s chaotic aftermath may have contributed to the proliferation of chemical weapons. Not only were many Iraqi weapons scientists unaccounted for, but dual-use chemical plants had been “systematically” looted.

  In response to the ISG report, former U.N. weapons inspectors argued that international sanctions and inspections had successfully kept Iraq’s illicit arms programs in check from 1991 until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and that ongoing monitoring and verification would have contained the Iraqi threat indefinitely without the need for war. Supporters of the invasion countered that international sanctions had been crumbling, Saddam’s motivations had remained unchanged, and Iraq’s embryonic unconventional weapons programs had posed a significant long-term threat.

  With respect to Iraqi intentions, Duelfer concluded that Saddam Hussein had an almost mystical faith in the power of chemical weapons, which he believed had preserved his rule through repeated military crises. The former Iraqi leader was convinced that Iraq had been “saved” by the use of mustard and nerve agents to neutralize Iranian human-wave offensives during the Iran-Iraq War, and that chemical weapons had also been effective in suppressing the Kurdish uprising in 1988. For this reason, Saddam had deliberately created ambiguity about whether he possessed chemical weapons so as to deter Iran from attacking and to intimidate his domestic enemies. UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix likened Saddam’s behavior to that of someone who does not own a dog but tries to discourage thieves by posting a BEWARE THE DOG sign on his door.

  At the same time that Saddam bluffed possessing chemical weapons as a deterrent, he sought to persuade the U.N. Security Council that he had disarmed so that the crippling economic sanctions would be lifted. The Duelfer report found that Iraqi regime was unable to resolve the contradiction inherent in its pursuit of these competing objectives, and that the resulting mixed messages had confused the U.S. and British intelligence services. “Ultimately,” the Duelfer report concluded dryly, “foreign perceptions of these tensions contributed to the destruction of the regime.”

  IN LATE 2004, the veil of secrecy that had surrounded the tragic case of Ronald Maddison for more than fifty years was finally lifted. Ronald’s sister, Lillias Craig, had been determined to discover the truth about her brother’s untimely death at Porton Down in May 1953 and had fought a stubborn battle with the British authorities to reopen the investigation. In 2003, Chief Justice Lord Woolf had finally quashed the original verdict and ordered a new hearing.

  On November 15, 2004, the inquest jury made headlines in the British newspapers with its finding that Maddison had been “unlawfully killed” and that the cause of death had been “the application of a nerve agent in a non-therapeutic experiment.” The reopened inquest also provided new information about the circumstances of Ronald’s death. After 1953 it had been learned that fat content is a critical factor influencing the ability of Sarin to penetrate the skin. According to the postmortem report, Maddison had been quite thin and his skin fat had been “practically absent,” an unusual characteristic that had probably contributed to the fatal outcome of the experiment.

  After the second inquest, Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, a leading expert in medical ethics, argued that the human trials with Sarin at Porton Down had been “beyond the bounds of what was ethically permissible, despite the imperative of the Cold War.” The Wiltshire police made clear that no criminal charges would be brought against the Porton scientists implicated in Maddison’s death. Nevertheless, the jury decision was considered likely to result in compensation claims in the millions of pounds from 550 former British servicemen who had undergone nerve agent experiments at Porton Down and had since developed chronic health problems.

  EPILOGUE

  TOWARD ABOLITION

  ON THE MORNING of January 5, 2005, a small group of people stood in the rain at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, watching as bulldozers pulled down two scrubber towers that had been part of the pollution control system for the difluor (DF) production plant. The towers were among the last structures remaining from the former Integrated Binary Production Facility, which had manufactured chemical components for the M687 Sarin projectile and the Bigeye VX bomb.

  Its engine straining, one bulldozer tugged on a cable attached to the top of the metal tower, while a second bulldozer pushed at its base. After about fifteen minutes, the tower toppled and crashed to the ground, and the bulldozers repeated the same operation for the second tower. The demolition process was carefully recorded on videotape for later review by verification officials at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.

  Construction of the binary manufacturing complex at Pine Bluff Arsenal had begun in 1982 but had stopped abruptly eight years later, after the United States and the former Soviet Union signed the 1990 Bilateral Destruction Agreement ending all further production of chemical arms. Work at the Pine Bluff complex never resumed. With the entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in April 1997, the United States was required to destroy all of its former chemical weapons production facilities or to request permission from the OPCW to convert them to peaceful purposes. For example, the Marquardt Company plant in Van Nuys, California, which had produced canisters and OPA for the M687 projectile, was converted into a sound stage.

  Dismantling of the binary production complex at Pine Bluff Arsenal had started in October 2003. Most of the old equipment was sold off as scrap metal, but “specialized” items that had been tagged by the OPCW, such as corrosion-resistant pipes and reactors, had to remain on site until the inspectors could verify their destruction. The only building left standing, the Fill and Close Facility for the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) warhead, was converted into a neutralization plant to dispose of the remaining stocks of binary precursors stored at Pine Bluff. These stocks included some 56,000 DF-filled canisters for the M687 projectile, six 55-gallon drums of DF, and 291 drums of QL for the Bigeye bomb. It would take about six months to neutralize these chemicals in the former Fill and Close Facility, which would operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until the job was done. In addition, Pine Bluff housed 3,850 tons of unitary nerve and blister agents, which would be burned in a special incinerator over a five-year period.

  WITH THE DESTRUCTION of chemical weapons stockpiles and former production facilities in the United States, Russia, and other countries, the world is making slow but steady progress toward chemical dis
armament. Nevertheless, the implementation of the CWC is at a crossroads that could lead either to the ultimate abolition of chemical weapons or to a weakening of the disarmament regime and further proliferation.

  On the positive side of the ledger, the great majority of the world’s nations have signed and ratified the CWC, and six countries (Albania, India, Libya, South Korea, Russia, and the United States) have declared stockpiles of chemical weapons and begun to destroy them. Libya’s decision in December 2003 to renounce its chemical warfare capability was a major breakthrough. After becoming a member of the CWC on February 5, 2004, the Libyan government declared 23 metric tons of mustard agent and 1,300 tons of nerve agent precursors, which would subsequently be destroyed under the watchful eyes of international inspectors. Libya also obtained permission from the OPCW to convert its former chemical weapons production facility at Rabta into a pharmaceutical plant to produce AIDS drugs and other urgently needed medications.

  Despite these successes, however, several countries in conflict-plagued regions such as the Middle East and northeast Asia continue to remain outside the CWC and to possess chemical arms. In January 2004, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hinted in a newspaper interview that his country’s chemical arsenal provided an affordable way to counterbalance Israel’s nuclear capability. “It is natural for us to look for means to defend ourselves,” he said. “It is not difficult to get most of these weapons anywhere in the world and they can be obtained at any time.” Iran, a party to the CWC, denies possessing any chemical weapons, but the U.S. government alleges that Tehran retains clandestine stocks and production facilities. North Korea began developing chemical weapons in the 1960s, initially with technical assistance from the Soviet Union and then from China. According to U.S. intelligence estimates, North Korea has roughly 5,000 tons of blister and nerve agents, most of which have been loaded into artillery shells and missile warheads deployed near the Demilitarized Zone. In the event of another war on the Korean Peninsula, these weapons would pose a grave threat to the population of nearby Seoul.