Newsday (New York, NY) February 23, 2003
Witness to the Weapons; Ex-Iraqi officer upholds claims of chemical weapons
By Matthew McAllester. STAFF CORRESPONDENT; staff reporting
Amman, Jordan - As recently as last year, the Iraqi government continued to develop chemical and biological weapons and the means to effectively deploy them, according to a former Iraqi air force officer who has recently defected to an Arab country.
The determination of the regime of Saddam Hussein to acquire these weapons, despite official denials, also was corroborated by a businessman from a country in the former Yugoslavia who was involved in smuggling banned biological agents from Europe to Iraq.
The two men, who are not connected, described in detail the technology of chemical weapons delivery systems developed recently by the Iraqis, and how the Hussein regime has continued to smuggle hardware and growth cultures from other countries that were intended for use in biological weapons programs.
"Saddam Hussein has not delivered all his weapons [to UN weapons inspectors]," said the Iraqi officer. "If he delivers up anything he will keep some back. ... It's something he has to have around him, like eating and drinking."
The Iraqi technician said he worked at the massive Habbaniyah military base, which sits off the highway between Baghdad and Amman about 50 miles to the west of Baghdad. He said he last saw the aerial delivery systems for the banned weapons in 2000. And it was in November 1998 that he last saw the actual chemicals. But he said that his former colleagues and a relative who worked more recently on the program have told him that Hussein continues to develop the weapons: "It still exists today."
The legitimacy of an impending U.S.-led war to disarm and remove the Iraqi regime is riding on whether Iraq continues to produce and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Iraq denies that it has any left, and UN weapons inspectors, who have been in Iraq since December, have so far found no substantial evidence of ongoing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons development programs - though they say Iraq has been stingy with information and does not actively cooperate.
The United States and Britain have produced photographs, recordings of intercepted conversations and other information that they say proves Hussein is hiding such weapons. They insist that only by force can Iraq be verifiably disarmed, as demanded by UN Security Council resolutions. Most countries, worried that the Bush administration appears all too eager to wage war, have expressed doubts as to the reliability of the information, saying the inspectors should be given more time to search for the illegal arms.
Bush administration officials, most notably Secretary of State Colin Powell, have said their evidence of Iraqi duplicity rests in large part on information provided by Iraqi defectors. The Iraqi officer, who agreed to be interviewed by Newsday on condition that he not be identified, said he has not spoken publicly before about his knowledge. He said he would be willing to share the information with UN weapons inspectors if he could be assured of his safety. He also said he would be willing to talk to U.S. and allied intelligence agencies but was suspicious of their ability to keep him safe from Iraqi agents.
The Iraqi air force officer, who has lived clandestinely in an Arab capital since fleeing Iraq seven months ago, said he wanted to expose the weapons program because he detests the Hussein regime, which has killed two of his family members, including a brother.
"When I tell you this it's not because I want you to take over my country," he said at the end of two long interviews in a coffee shop last week. "But I need to tell you to help get rid of the regime. ... The situation is either now or never. I'm doing it to free my country. My brother's dead - that's finished. But he [Saddam Hussein] could kill 100,000 more. I don't want that to happen to anyone else."
He was initially interviewed on the subject of what preparations the Hussein regime is making in Iraq for a coming war. Only when it emerged that he was a former air force technician did he begin to describe the weapons program. Often, he said he did not know the answer to a question because he could only describe what he had witnessed. He also acknowledged that he had only worked on testing the distribution systems and bombs for chemical weapons, but not on fully weaponized bombs. The chemical and biological weapons program was highly compartmentalized, he said, and he could speak with authority only on delivery systems design.
The Iraqi provided many details about his background and identity, but requested they not be published for fear that he could be identified by Iraqi authorities.
The Yugoslav businessman who has been involved in smuggling biological agents for Iraq's secret weapons program had a different motivation. He agreed to share the information, also on condition of anonymity, partially because he said he was cheated out of a payment in the Iraq deal and now has a grudge against someone else involved in the transaction. A Newsday reporter has met the man twice over the past few years on matters relating to war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and other criminal activity and his information has always proved reliable. He has in the past described his own criminal activities while expressing a degree of contrition. He has said that speaking about his activities makes him feel more at ease with himself, albeit at no personal cost.
After hearing an account of the two men's stories, a former senior UN weapons inspector said the information sounded credible. "It is logical and consistent," he said, when told of the delivery system that the Iraqi said had been developed since inspectors for the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, left Iraq in late 1998. "It fits in with what we knew and what was described by the Iraqis."
UNSCOM also used to make frequent visits to a bureau in the headquarters of Iraq's intelligence agency - the Mukhabarat - whose main role was to procure illegal weapons components from other countries. "We saw things like what you're describing," the former inspector said, referring to orders for the biological weapons components that the businessman helped ship to Iraq from the former Yugoslavia.
During the interviews, the former Iraqi air force technician described several different methods for distributing chemical agents that he said the Iraqi military still possessed. In a notebook, he drew diagrams, maps of bases and test sites and at one point used an empty mineral water bottle as a stand-in for a particular type of distribution system.
That weapon is shaped like a regular bomb or missile, he said. Inside are two chemicals - known simply to technicians as the yellow and black liquids - that are the key components of the deadly liquid. The man said that he was not a chemist and was never told exactly what the chemicals were other than that they were weapons.
Inside the cylindrical device are metal flaps that keep the chemicals separated until an electronic signal prompts open the barrier and the chemicals mix. Seconds later, he said, small flaps open in the bottom of the cylinder and the deadly concoction passes through a mesh, creating a misty spray like a miniature crop-duster.
The two-sided nature of this system is what marks it out as technology that has improved since UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, the former UNSCOM official said. The technological term for such a device is a "binary system" and its purpose is two-fold, both the former UN inspector and the Iraqi said. Keeping the constituent chemicals apart until the point of deployment makes the weapon safer to handle. In addition, it makes the bomb more deadly. The fresher the newly mixed chemical, the more potent, the former inspector said.
"This would be a step forward," the official said. "They were working towards binary approaches. They acknowledged that in their declaration to us but they said it all ended at the beginning of the Gulf War. We continued to have our doubts. That was one of the issues we were contending with."
While the Iraqi said he did not know which specific chemicals were involved, the former inspector said that, among other substances, the highly toxic VX gas tends to lose its potency during storage and would therefore be a likely candidate for use in a binary weapon.
A single drop of VX can prove fatal.
"They were working on stabilized VX," he said. "That [binary system] would allow it to be in a more storable form." If the chemical components were not kept separate, "it loses its effectiveness, its lethality. [It's like] if you open a bottle of wine it starts going bad."
The Iraqi defector also described slower aircraft and helicopters being equipped with extra tanks to deliver chemical and biological weapons. The system in these aircraft was simpler: "Outside the plane is a pipe like the ones used by crop sprayers," the Iraqi said. "There will be a technician in the plane who will open it by hand."
And with detailed drawings, he described a third kind of weapon: A more traditional bomb that has a fuse timed to detonate at a certain altitude, blanketing the ground below with highly toxic substances. That too is a binary weapon, he said. Inside the bomb is a glass wall that is shattered at the last minute by explosive charges, mixing the precursor chemicals together.
He described the bombs as being light green in color - "lighter than this," he said, pointing to the stem of a flower on the table in the coffee shop - and as being carefully packed in nylon, cork and then custom-made boxes. Each bomb has four stabilizing tail wings.
The Iraqi said his job was to test the missiles. Each military base where chemical weapons were developed, such as Habbaniyah, he said, had a test site about 30 miles away where the air force would practice dropping the bombs, although in tests they used oil and water rather than the yellow and black liquids.
During his work there, he said, UNSCOM inspectors came to visit "all the time." Habbaniyah covers an enormous area. It has numerous buildings, roads and entrances and it was easy for the military to hide the weapons, he said. From what he has heard recently from colleagues and relatives still in the Iraqi military, the current UN inspectors are suffering the same fate at Habbaniyah as their predecessors. President George W. Bush and his senior aides have insisted all along that inspections per se are futile, and have all but concluded that war is unavoidable. More than 180,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors are now deployed around Iraq, awaiting orders.
"It's entirely possible, if not likely, that they [weapons inspectors] would miss something like that," said the former UN inspector. "It's a huge place with lots and lots of buildings. They tend to either fly out or drive out. In the inspection debates there was always talk about access. That's only half the problem. To get in without warning time is part of the problem. You can do a lot [of concealing] in 15 or 20 minutes."
The Iraqi air force officer said he also worked at the Qa'qa base, south of Baghdad. There, he said, was a practice wing of an aircraft that stuck out of the wall in a large, open building. He and his colleagues used the wing to practice and test the attachment of non-weaponized chemical distribution systems such as the bombs he described.
He also spoke of how he and his colleagues were trained to use gas masks imported from Yugoslavia and carried atropine shots with them at all times. Atropine is used to counter the effects of nerve agents.
It was during a spell of retraining, in November 1998, that he last saw the actual chemicals. An instructor held up sealed glass beakers of the yellow and black liquids so that the technicians could recognize them if necessary. The Iraqi spoke for several hours during the course of the two interviews and was patient when explaining technical matters in lay terms. But he seemed to yearn to share his knowledge with a technical expert, albeit under conditions of guaranteed security.
The Yugoslav businessman described his own dealings with Iraq and those of colleagues in the smuggling world.
This information is less detailed than the Iraqi's but his central contention - that he was involved in helping Iraq obtain German- and Yugoslav-made components for biological weapons in the years after the UNSCOM inspectors left in 1998 - appears credible. When first interviewed in 1999, the man had never been to Iraq, but now he accurately describes places in and around Baghdad. He also has intimate knowledge of biological weapons and smuggling routes.
As Yugoslavia fell apart in the wars of the 1990s, the country's biological and chemical weapons programs were largely shifted to Serbia by the Serbian-dominated federal authorities, the businessman said. One biological facility was in Hadzici, in Bosnia. The country's biological weapons program had the code name of Divlji Sokoor, or Wild Hawk.
It was some of the growth cultures and hardware from this program that the businessman was involved in shipping to Iraq with his Russian, German and Belgian associates.
In one shipment, which took place in the spring of 2000, components manufactured in Germany were shipped from Hamburg, then on to Rotterdam and from there to Syria. The consignment was then taken over the border into Iraq. At each stop, front companies would take control of the shipments.
Another consignment, this one of Yugoslav hardware related to biological weapons, took place in May 2001 and passed through Thessalonika in Greece, before going to Syria, the businessman said.
The planning for the smuggling often took place in European cities with Iraqi government representatives present, he said.
The former member of the UN team of inspectors, then known as UNSCOM, said the information from the Balkan businessman also sounded credible.
"It fits in with what UNSCOM had heard about other front companies and where these people do their shopping," said the former inspector.
The former inspector said also that one of the components that would be most needed by the Iraqis to develop biological weapons was growth media, or cultures - otherwise harmless substances that deadly biological agents are grown in. Although these substances can be legitimately used in hospitals for diagnostic purposes or for growing animal feed, their import to Iraq has for years been illegal under the sanctions regime imposed after the 1991 Gulf War because of their "dual-use" role - which means they can be used for benign purposes, such as pharmaceuticals, or just as easily in the production of biological weapons.
The businessman, who said he was in Iraq in the spring of last year, said that Iraq unquestionably still has both chemical and biological weapons. The Iraqi says the same.
"Don't believe for one second that Saddam Hussein has given up his weapons 100 percent," the Iraqi said. "Even if he's not going to use them against the Americans he is always afraid that his own army might rise against him, or that Iran or the Iraqi opposition could attack."
The Iraqi defector said he has one further reason to speak up about the weapons programs that he hopes will be ended by an American-led attack on his country: He has seen the effects of chemical weapons on his family.
During Iraq's eight-year-long war with Iran, one of the Iraqi's cousins was gassed by his own army, in a case of friendly fire. Hussein had ordered his air force to drop chemicals on Iranian troops even if it meant killing some of his own soldiers.
"His skin was this color," the former technician said, putting his forefinger on a nearby black leather jacket. "I helped bury him myself."
The U.S. Case Against IRAQ
Despite United Nations sanctions, the United States believes Iraq has continued to develop a weapons of mass of destruction (WMD) program. How Saddam Hussein has attempted to cultivate a nuclear, biological and chemical arsenal, according to U.S. intelligence:
- Iraq's ability to sell oil illicitly has enabled it to finance a WMD program.
- Under cover of civilian production, Iraq has rebuilt missile and biological weapons and expanded its chemical and biological infrastructure.
- Iraq is working with unmanned aerial vehicles, allowing for a more lethal means of delivering biological and chemical agents.
- While he probably does not possess them yet, Saddam remains intent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
SOURCES: www.globalsecurity.org, www.cia.gov, staff reporting
Saddam's Deceptions?
In developing a WMD arsenal, the White House maintains Saddam Hussein has repeatedly deceived the world community. Highlights of the U.S. case:
- As many as 15,000 artillery rockets that have been used to deliver nerve agents and 550 artillery shells filled with the chemical agent mustard remain unaccounted for.
- An Iraqi military document says that it overstated by 6,000 the number of chemical bombs it used during the Iran-Iraq war. They remain unaccounted for.
- Iraq has declared 8,500 liters of the biological agent anthrax; UN inspectors believe it could be as high as 25,000 liters.
- Iraq has failed to account for between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons, including four tons of the lethal nerve agent VX.
- Saddam has made covert attempts to acquire highspecification aluminum tubes in an effort to develop fissile material for a nuclear program.
- In a speech before the UN, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iraq has had high-level, long-standing contacts with al- Qaida operatives.
A Deadly Distribution System
One method Iraq might use for distribution of chemical agents and how such a system might work, according to a former Iraqi air force technician:
1. Inside a weapon shaped like a regular bomb or missile are two chemicals, known to technicians only as the yellow and black liquids.
2. Inside the cylindrical device are metal flaps that keep the chemicals separate until an electronic prompt opens the barrier and the chemicals mix.
3. Seconds later, small flaps open in the bottom of the cylinder and the deadly concoction passes through a mesh, creating a misty spray like a miniature crop-duster.
*Advantage to so-called binary delivery system is that it keeps chemicals apart until the point of deployment, making the weapon safer to handle. Fresher components also make the bomb more potent. A likely candidate for such a distribution system is highly lethal VX gas since it tends to lose its potency during storage.
SOURCE: staff reporting
GRAPHIC: 1) Getty Images Photo - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives U.S. take on Iraq's weapons program at the United Nations Feb. 14. 2) Saddam Hussein; 3) CNES/SPOT Photo 1995 - Satellite image of the Habbaniyah military base and airstrip, one alleged site of Iraq illegal weapons development. 4) COVER PHOTO - Saddam Hussein; Newsday Map / Charts / Rod Eyer - Map - Area of detail - Al Habbaniyah, Iraq (not in text database); Charts - 1) The U.S. Case Against IRAQ (see end of text); 2) A Deadly Distribution System (not in text database).
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