Frontline:
Frontline: Chasing Saddam's Weapons
Fri Jan 23 01:45:20 2004
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Frontline: Chasing Saddam's Weapons
Uncover new findings in the ongoing search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
http://www.pbs.org/

As the U.S. government was making its case for war with Iraq back in December 2002, former U.N. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay came down squarely on the side of the Bush administration.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wmd/etc/synopsis.html

"Essentially, everyone who runs an active intelligence service knows this regime has been seeking weapons of mass destruction," Kay said at the time.

What a difference a year makes.

After spending seven months scouring Iraq for some trace of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, Kay -- who now leads the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) searching for Saddam's weapons -- has yet to find the critical evidence to back up his earlier conviction.

"We have found no actual weapons of mass destruction that exist at this point," he concedes. "But having said that ... you know how large this country is."

In "Chasing Saddam's Weapons," BBC reporter Jane Corbin -- who was given exclusive access inside the secretive Iraq Survey Group -- takes viewers inside the frustrating hunt for Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. This FRONTLINE report reveals new details about what the ISG's search has -- and has not -- uncovered and questions whether the investigation's final results will justify the Bush administration's call for war.

Viewers follow Corbin and ISG officials as they conduct surprise raids and inspections throughout Iraq. She also gains access to the heavily fortified "Camp Slayer," where ISG intelligence analysts sift through mountains of Iraqi paperwork, hoping to find a trail that will lead them to some evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

David Kay admits the stakes are high. "The entire credibility of both the U.S. and ... British foreign policy and intelligence has been called into question by our inability to find the weapons immediately," he tells FRONTLINE, referring to the failure of American soldiers to find weapons of mass destruction in the weeks following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. "I think we all realize after Iraq we really do have to readjust our intelligence services for the new demands posed by countries like Iraq."

However, some former U.S. officials claim that it was not faulty intelligence, but the faulty interpretation of that intelligence that set America on the path to war with Iraq.

"There was obviously a faction in the U.S. government and in the U.S. intelligence community that never met a report that it considered unreliable," says former State Department intelligence analyst Greg Thielmann. "It already knew what the answer [it wanted] was."

Since the search for weapons began last spring, there have been several intelligence embarrassments -- most notably, Kay's assertion in May 2003, before joining the ISG, that two Iraqi trailers were in fact mobile production facilities for biological weapons. Despite exhaustive testing of the trailers -- which the Iraqis claimed produced hydrogen to fill weather balloons on artillery ranges -- no trace of any biological agents was found.

So, what has the Iraq Survey Group uncovered? According to its October 2003 interim report, the group has evidence that Iraq was working on long-range missiles -- a violation of U.N. resolutions. Corbin speaks with an unidentified Iraqi engineer who not only confirms that he worked on the project to build a missile with a range of 500 kilometers -- far enough to reach Israel -- but also that all evidence of the project was removed and hidden during visits by U.N. weapons inspectors.

But some Iraqi military leaders and scientists continue to strongly deny that Iraq was working on weapons of mass destruction. Corbin speaks with the wife of Iraqi scientist and presidential adviser Amer Al Sa'adi, who says that her husband repeatedly denied the existence of any such weapons. General Sa'adi is currently in U.S. custody.

"He was so convinced about what he had always said, and up to half an hour before he left and went to the Americans, he said that, 'I know there is nothing to be found, and I've always said that, and I'm repeating it again and time will bear me out,'" Helma Al Sa'adi says. "Those were his last words."

So, why didn't Saddam cooperate more fully with weapons inspectors if his country had no weapons of mass destruction? It's become one of the most frequently asked questions. Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix suspects it was merely a miscalculated bluff.

"It's like putting up the sign on the door, 'Beware of the Dog,'" Blix says. "And you don't have a dog."
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Dr. Kay is the head of the Iraq Survey Group, a U.S.-led coalition team of military and intelligence personnel that has been hunting for WMD in Iraq since July 2003. A former U.N. weapons inspector, Kay had led a team after the first Gulf War which hunted down and destroyed Iraq's nuclear weapons. But by 1998, having been denied further access, all the U.N. teams were forced to leave Iraq. At that time, Kay was convinced that Saddam was still hiding WMD
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wmd/interviews/

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With regard to the question of weapons of mass destruction, you yourself created the impression, a lot of people would have said, before the war, that there were these weapons. You were suspicious of Iraq; you hadn't been given the right answers. You helped to create this impression they were there.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wmd/interviews/blix.html

… It's true that we did say that this [material] is unaccounted for. I also warned the Security Council that you cannot jump from that to saying that they have it. The only area in which I think we came close to saying that we think they have it was anthrax, because they were saying there was strong indications. … But I've gone through that very carefully with one of our inspectors, and I've concluded that it was not watertight. There was not compelling evidence of that, we didn't go that far.

Dr. Blix headed U.N. teams that searched hundreds of sites in Iraq for WMD in the months prior to the March 2003 invasion. They found no active programs and no stockpile of weapons. Blix, though he personally suspected that Saddam might possess banned weapons, came under fire from the U.S. for failing to find stockpiles of anthrax and other weapons right away. Here, he offers his thoughts on the lack of evidence so far of active WMD capability, on what might have been going through Saddam's mind, and on the lessons he's drawn from what we now know. This interview was conducted in November 2003 by BBC reporter Jane Corbin.

There is a lot of discussion now about the quality of intelligence, now that people are in the field and they can test it. How did you feel the intelligence was that you were given?

I had excellent relations with some of the intelligence people on the British side and German side, [and] others, as well. I have a great respect for them, and they have a difficult job. At the same time, I think there are some built-in problems for them. If they do not warn enough and something happens, then they get blamed for it. I'm sure they got blamed in 1991, when they discovered all the weapons of mass destruction that neither we at the IEA nor they had found. So they had a built-in inclination, I think, to be a little more alarmist than us, because if they are too alarmist and they don't find anything, they're not going to be criticized for that.

Then of course they had the difficulties of interpretation. The satellite images are very objective. But the satellite team don't tell you what is under the roofs. President Bush was able to say in the autumn of 2002 that they had seen how some nuclear installations had been recently extended, and he said, "I don't know what more evidence is needed." Well, sorry, they didn't see what was underneath. The Iraqis were sensible and clever enough to invite journalists and say, "Come on, come on, you can see what there is," and there weren't any centrifuges even. So satellites have their beauty, and they were clearly very helpful in 1991. But they are also difficult to interpret. I think some of the evidence Colin Powell had from satellites was not all that compelling, and I did say so in the Security Council.

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Jane Corbin has been reporting on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction for 14 years. In 1990, in FRONTLINE's "The Arming of Iraq," she broke the story of how western companies and governments had armed Saddam throughout the 1980s. In 2003, Corbin was granted exclusive access to follow the Iraq Survey Group -- a U.S.-led coalition group numbering more than 1,000 military and intelligence specialists -- as it scoured post-war Iraq for WMD. In this interview, conducted on Jan. 14, 2004, Corbin talks about the ISG's frustrating and difficult work, how long it will take, what's been found to date, and what's at stake in getting to the bottom of what Saddam had -- or didn't have.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wmd/etc/corbin.html

President Bush gave a television interview about a month ago in which he seemed to say that, with Saddam Hussein now captured, actually finding his weapons no longer mattered. And polls in the U.S. indicate that most Americans also don't seem to care whether the weapons are discovered or not. In your interviews with the weapons hunters now in Iraq, what is their opinion on the issue of getting to the bottom of whether there were WMD or not?

I think as the months have gone on, they have noticed that the politicians don't talk so much about it anymore, and that perhaps their task is not a top priority. But for the weapons hunters themselves, I think they still do believe it's important to get to the bottom of it.

First, there is the whole issue of proliferation, the spread of these weapons across the world -- nuclear, biological and chemical. If there are other proliferators out there -- and we know, for example, that North Korea has plans in this direction, [as well as] Iran, Syria and Libya -- then what sort of message does it send to those regimes if the West declares war because of the weapons of mass destruction, and then never finds them? Or never makes a concerted effort to back up their words with the proof? So, it's about the message you send to other would-be proliferators -- that's what the weapons hunters would say is one of the important reasons you get to the bottom of it.

And secondly, if you don't get to the bottom of it, and if perhaps he did have weapons of mass destruction, and you don't know where their parts went, or the know-how, or the scientists, or the seed stocks of biological agents -- they could be anywhere. They could be in the hands of terrorists, they could be in the hands of would-be proliferators.

And, of course, there's the important political reason that even if President Bush seems to indicate it no longer matters, it certainly matters for a lot of people in the Arab world. They feel very strongly that the West declared war on another Arab state for reasons of weapons of mass destruction, and they're rather angry that these haven't been found so far.

So, to satisfy public opinion in those countries, and perhaps the way that politics work out in the future, it is important to come up with some answers.

How long do the weapons hunters expect it will take to get to the bottom of it?

I think it's a moving target. At the end of the war, they thought it would just be a couple of weeks. They then began to massage expectations and talk about six months. And now David Kay is talking about needing another nine months -- that's from October 2003 -- which would take us to next summer, more than a year after the end of the war.

But around a year was [the answer] most people gave on the ground, and what the politicians, I think, had in the back of their minds. But, of course, we haven't gotten to the end of it, and we're now eight months in. I think it will take years if they really want to find out what happened to them, whether they existed. And if they didn't exist, why Saddam Hussein and his regime didn't come clean with the inspectors.

David Kay, who heads up the ISG, describes the search as being a "tough puzzle." Can you give an example of what he means by this, what their investigation involves?

I can give you two examples: one serious and one rather amusing. The ISG team was on a mission to raid an Arab scientific bureau in Baghdad, where they were looking at records of procurement of what this company -- which on the front of it was a pharmaceutical company buying baby products and medicines --what this company was really up to. And they found that beneath all the veneer, they were buying into Iraq 500 tons of nitric acid, a highly volatile chemical.

Now, nitric acid is the basic ingredient in rocket fuel for long-range missiles, which is one of the things that the ISG is looking for, because long range missiles can carry biological, chemical and nuclear warheads. So, they found this order for 500 tons, but that's just one tiny piece of the puzzle. They have to know: What was it used for? Did it actually ever come into the country through this front firm? Where did it go then? Did it go to a factory, to a military base? Finding a clue is not the end of the road. It's just one piece in a much, much bigger puzzle.

Now, on the amusing side, I think one of the real difficulties that they had in putting together this puzzle is the conflicting evidence they've been given by Iraqis on the ground. The weapons inspectors told me [about] a very frustrating day when they went out to the desert. They'd been absolutely assured by the local sheik of the area that there was a huge cache of chemical weapons hidden in his backyard. He knew exactly where they were. He led this huge team to them. They all got to work with the bulldozers. And the sheik stood there and said, "If you don't find these weapons in the hole when you dig it, I will sell my own mother."

They dug a huge hole. There were no weapons. Meanwhile, the sheik had quietly disappeared. They just don't know. Why did he swear on his honor that he knew those weapons were there? Was it a deliberate attempt at disinformation? Was he telling them what they wanted to hear? One of the very frustrated hunters who had been searching for these things in temperatures of 110 degrees said to me, "You know, maybe he just wanted a big fish pond in his backyard, and it was a good way of getting the Americans to come around and dig a hole for him."

That's an amusing story. But they are encountering these kind of very bizarre situations every day, where Iraqis come to them with so-called good information: they "saw an officer of Saddam personally burying these weapons." They look; they don't find.

What's been the ISG's biggest coup to date?

I think the biggest success is chasing down the long-range missile program. These are not weapons of mass destruction in and of themselves, but they are delivery systems for such weapons. And they have discovered that Saddam Hussein was building them against U.N. resolutions which only allow the development of missiles up to 150 kilometer range. Saddam had plans, designs and big teams working on missiles that would have gone 1,000 kilometers, which is truly breaking the limits imposed.

And the ISG has discovered not only that Saddam Hussein had a family of missiles on the drawing boards, but also that he had paid ten million pounds for forbidden missile technology from North Korea. So, obviously, he was committed to recreating his missiles, which were being destroyed after the first Gulf War.

What did it take for you to obtain the exclusive access to follow and film the ISG's search for WMD programs and capability?

I've been covering the story of Saddam's non-conventional weapons since 1989, when I made my first film about his roc

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