B. The Lead-up to Renewed Inspections
( ) The United States Government's relationship with UN inspectors in Iraq goes back to 1991, when the Arms Control Intelligence Staff (ACIS) created an office called the Iraq Sanctions Monitoring Task Force. The task force included representation across the IC but was largely staffed from the CIA. The task force supported the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors through a routine exchange of information on suspected WMD sites until UN inspections in Iraq ended in 1998. Quarterly briefings between the IC and the UN continued, however, from 1998 to 2001.
(U) In September/October 2002, the DCI's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) created a United States Government inspections support staff, numbering between 12-18 persons drawn from the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), DIA and National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)67, to support the reconstituted UN inspections efforts in Iraq under UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). UNMOVIC inherited the 1998 UNSCOM files on Iraqi suspect sites.
( ) According to CIA's officials, UNMOVIC's hiring was more diversified among member countries and, as a result, new inspectors faced a significant learning curve vice the corporate knowledge attained by UNSCOM inspectors in the late-1990s. The hiring of the new UNMOVIC inspectors also meant that it took time for the United States Government to establish security procedures and a level of trust with the officials.
( ) In late October 2002, the United States Government brought security and communications network officials to its initial meeting with UN officials in New York City to advise UNMOVIC on security considerations and to get the measure of the organization as a whole. A procedure was established to use State Department officials at the UN to facilitate the passing of information from the United States Government to UNMOVIC. Also at this initial meeting, there was an exchange of programmatic information on what the UN was hoping to accomplish once the inspections in Iraq began.
footnotes
67 NIMA has recently been renamed the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA)
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