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Testimony to the
US Congress
by Mr. Charles Duelfer,
Director of Central Intelligence Special Advisor for Strategy regarding
Iraqi Weapons
of Mass Destruction (WMD) Programs
30 March 2004
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members, thank you for the opportunity
to address you today on the Iraq Survey Group and the investigation
of Iraq’s WMD capabilities.
Initial Impressions
First, a disclaimer. This report is very limited in scope. It is
intended to provide a status report of my efforts at steering the ISG.
It is not a preliminary assessment of findings. I inherited
the expectation of appearing before Congress from the previous Special
Advisor, and I am using this opportunity to describe my overall approach.
It has now been six weeks since I arrived in Baghdad as the DCI’s
Special Advisor for WMD in Iraq. In that time I have begun my examination
of the efforts of the Group, its accomplishments, and capabilities.
Certainly, General Dayton and the ISG operation he has run for the past
year have achieved many major accomplishments in difficult circumstances.
Much data related to Iraq’s WMD programs has been gathered. It
is clear that Iraq was in violation of UN Resolutions, including UNSCR
1441.
I am now making some adjustments to strategy and focus, which I will
discuss. Largely they are intended to derive the meaning of the assortment
of facts we have accumulated and continue to accumulate.
While I am new to the ISG and the process, which has been underway
for the past year, this is not my first time in Baghdad. I have been
directly involved in the disarmament of Iraq since 1993. I served as
the Deputy Director of UNSCOM from 1993 until 2000. I have spent long
hours over the years with many of the key figures—many now in jail—and
know them well. It is with this experience in mind that I speak to
you today about Iraq and the search for WMD.
Reviewing the Work
I have begun to review all the work of the Iraq Survey Group. It is
my task to investigate Iraq’s WMD programs and to determine the
truth about their existence, their extent, their capabilities, and where
the regime was headed. Let me state at the outset that I do not believe
we have sufficient information and insight to make final judgments with
confidence at this time. Interim assessments could turn out to be misleading
or wrong. I believe there is more work to be done to gather critical
information about the regime, its intentions, and its capabilities,
and to assess that information for its meaning.
The ISG continues to look for Weapons of Mass Destruction. Many sites
have been visited where intelligence reports before the war indicated
there could be weapons. The ISG has investigated hundreds of sites
to date. Moreover, we regularly receive reports, some quite intriguing
and credible, about concealed caches. We continue to investigate these
reports about WMD materials and weapons being buried or hidden across
Iraq.
We do not just look for stockpiles of weapons that could be hidden
in the country. It is the mission of the ISG to determine all that
was potentially being done related to WMD and the delivery systems for
WMD. In addition to site exploitations for weapons, ISG has conducted
debriefings of former Iraqi regime officials, examined research and
production facilities, and evaluated documents recovered from the regime.
Special focus has been given to the senior leadership figures captured
after the war.
The investigative work being done by ISG is time consuming and difficult.
I commend the women and men of the ISG for their dedication and professionalism.
The have sacrificed their time, and their families have sacrificed as
well, so that this mission can move forward. Traveling around Iraq
is dangerous, and several of our teams have been attacked—to date,
there have been no fatalities. They are all a credit to their nations,
the United States, Great Britain, and Australia.
Challenges
One of the circumstances that struck me the most is the extreme reluctance
of Iraqi managers, scientists, and engineers to speak freely. Before
arriving in Iraq, I thought they would be more cooperative. Many perceive
a grave risk in speaking with us. On one hand, there is a fear of prosecution
or arrest. On the other, there is a fear former regime supporters will
exact retribution. This is, in part, why we do not yet fully understand
the central issue of regime intentions. We do not know whether Saddam
was concealing WMD in the final years or planning to resume production
once sanctions were lifted. We do not know what he ordered his senior
ministers to undertake. We do not know how the disparate activities
we have identified link together.
In short, obtaining clear, truthful information from the senior Iraqi
leadership has been problematic even at this point in time.
While ISG has met with hundreds of scientists, we have yet to identify
the most critical people in any programmatic effort. Many people have
yet to be found or questioned, and many of those we have found are not
giving us complete answers.
Documents are another important source of information, but one that
is more difficult to use than might be expected. We have recovered
millions of documents, but there are millions more that were destroyed.
The collected documents are often mixed up in such a way as to make
research in an organized manner extremely difficult. Our linguistic
capabilities limit full translations to a tiny fraction of the whole.
Imagine yourself being asked to determine the secret, behind the scenes
intentions of our own government with respect to its most secret weapons
programs after talking to a few hundred folks who may or may not have
been intimately involved, with only a small fraction of documents available,
and with a leadership that is not broken and willing to discuss its
inner secrets. How much would you really understand? The people we
need to speak to have spent their entire professional lives being trained
not to speak about WMD.
Most of those in the ISG are not experts on Iraq, and most do not have
extensive experience in the kinds of investigative operations and analysis
they are asked to undertake. In fact, I am not sure anyone has ever
undertaken this kind of operational, analytical, investigative mission
before.
Phases of Work
Before I provide some specifics on what the ISG has learned, let me
discuss the evolution of ISG’s efforts. The ISG can be seen as
having evolved through phases since OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM ended.
The 75th Exploitation Task Force immediately began looking
for WMD deployed on the battlefield or in forward stockpiles during
and immediately after the war. The military was prepared for the potential
that Iraq might use CW or BW. Our troops moved through Iraq in chemical
protective gear because of the threat of chemical attack. When such
attacks did not materialize, the Iraq Survey Group was established in
June of 2003 to investigate in a non-tactical environment.
ISG’s initial strategy was to examine sites associated with the
former WMD programs or sites suspected of involvement. Some regime
figures were captured and interrogated. Some documents were recovered.
During this phase, the first DCI Special Advisor was appointed. He
arrived in Baghdad in June 2003.
As site exploitations revealed WMD was not stored or produced at the
primary known or suspect sites, the ISG moved to a strategy of finding
and debriefing higher-level and mid-level scientists and engineers and
military officers. Senior regime officials were debriefed. Site exploitations
continued, and an interim report was provided last fall.
The first Special Advisor departed ISG on the 7th of December
2003. After that, the ISG continued to follow its previous strategy,
but the effort shifted towards fewer site visits, more debriefings,
and greater use of document sorting and review. A system was created
for managing the cataloguing of the huge volume of documents, which
continued to be received.
I arrived on the 12th of February 2004. I have endeavored
to refine the strategy for ISG in the weeks since. In its simplest
terms, my strategy is to determine the regime’s intentions for
all the activities ISG has uncovered. That is not simple to do, but
I will tell you more of that later. At this point, let me provide you
with an overview of some of the developments in the last few months.
Procurement
Let me begin by discussing procurement and financing, two critical
areas that cut across all potential WMD efforts. The ISG has been investigating
Iraq’s procurement process, sources of finance, the involvement
of foreign firms, and the specific types of goods that were sought.
Iraq utilized a complex and well developed procurement system hidden
by an effective denial and deception strategy. By the late 1990s, Iraq,
in contravention of UN sanctions, pursued the procurement of military
goods and technical expertise for military capabilities.
The primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling
conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated by Iraq
with neighboring countries. Money also was obtained from kickback payments
made on contracts set up through the UN’s Oil for Food program.
Iraq derived several billion dollars between 1999 and 2003 from oil
smuggling and kickbacks. One senior regime official estimated Iraq
earned $4 billion from illicit oil sales from 1999 to March 2003. By
levying a surcharge on Oil for Food contracts, Iraq earned billions
more during the same period.
This was revenue outside UN control and provided resources the regime
could spend without restriction. It channeled much of the illicitly
gathered funds to rebuild Iraq’s military capabilities through
the Military Industrialization Commission, the MIC. MIC worked with
the Iraqi Intelligence Service to establish front companies in Iraq
and other countries to facilitate procurement.
The budget of MIC increased nearly 100 fold from 1996 to 2003, with
the budget totaling $500 million in 2003. Most of this money came from
illicit oil contracts. Iraq imported banned military weapons and technology
and dual-use goods through Oil for Food contracts. Companies in several
countries were involved in these efforts. Direct roles by government
officials are also clearly established.
Denial and Deception
Even as procurement and finance cut across all of Iraq’s technical
development efforts, denial and deception were infused in these efforts
as well.
Much is known about Iraq’s various efforts to conceal WMD from
UNSCOM after the Gulf War in 1991. The ISG, however, has uncovered
more details about the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq against
UNSCOM and later UNMOVIC. Moreover, these efforts at deception did
not end with the departure of inspectors in 1998, and indeed deception
continued right up until war in 2003.
The Iraqi Intelligence Service was tasked with monitoring and infiltrating
UNSCOM and UNMOVIC. Iraqi officials tell us hundreds of officers from
multiple directorates were tasked to monitor the UN officials, employing
a spectrum of capabilities from human to electronic surveillance. Elaborate
plans were developed and rehearsed to enable sensitive sites to be able
to hide sensitive documents and equipment on as little as 15 minutes
notice. Iraqi intelligence engaged in a worldwide effort to collect
intelligence on the UN, including efforts to recruit sources inside
the UN, UNSCOM and UNMOVIC.
Biological and Chemical Weapons
The ISG has developed new information regarding Iraq’s dual-use
facilities and ongoing research suitable for a capability to produce
biological or chemical agents on short notice. Iraq did have facilities
suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed
for weapons. It had plans to improve and expand and even build new
facilities.
For example, the Tuwaitha Agricultural and Biological Research Center
has equipment suitable for the production of biological agents. While
it conducts civilian research, ISG has also determined that it was conducting
research that would be important for a biological weapons program.
For example, we are continuing to examine research on Bacillus thuringiensis
that was conducted until March 2003. This material is a commercial
biopesticide, but it also can be used as a surrogate for the anthrax
bacterium for production and weapons development purposes. Work continued
on single cell proteins at Tuwaitha as well. Single cell protein research
previously had been used as the cover activity for BW production at
al-Hakam. We are now focusing on what such activities meant.
With respect to chemical production, Iraq was working up to March 2003
to construct new facilities for the production of chemicals. There
were plans under the direction of a leading nuclear scientist/WMD program
manager to construct plants capable of making a variety of chemicals
and producing a year’s supply of any chemical in a month. This
was a crash program. Most of the chemicals specified in this program
were conventional commercial chemicals, but a few are considered “dual
use.” One we are examining, commonly called DCC (N,N-Dicyclohexyl
carbodiimide), was used by Iraq before 1991 as a stabilizing agent for
the nerve agent VX. Iraq had plans before OIF for large-scale production
of this chemical. Again, what do these activities mean?
Nuclear Weapons
Likewise, in the nuclear arena, the ISG has developed information that
suggests Iraqi interest in preserving and expanding the knowledge needed
to design and develop nuclear weapons.
One significant effort illustrating this was a high-speed rail gun
program under the direction of two senior scientists associated with
Iraq’s pre-1991 nuclear weapons program. Documents from this project
show that the scientists were developing a rail gun designed to achieve
speeds of 2-10 kilometers per second. The ostensible purpose for this
research was development of an air defense gun, but these speeds are
what are necessary to conduct experiments of metals compressing together
at high speed as they do in a nuclear detonation. Scientists refer
to these experiments as “equation of state” measurements.
Not only were these scientists developing a rail gun, but their laboratory
also contained documents describing diagnostic techniques that are important
for nuclear weapons experiments, such as flash x-ray radiography, laser
velocimetry, and high-speed photography. Other documents found outside
the laboratory described a high-voltage switch that can be used to detonate
a nuclear weapon, laser detonation, nuclear fusion, radiation measurement,
and radiation safety. These fields are certainly not related to air
defense.
It is this combination of topics that makes us suspect this lab was
intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development.
We continued our efforts to determine if Iraq was seeking to develop
technologies for a uranium enrichment capability. Iraq’s efforts
to procure high tolerance aluminum tubes were examined. Ostensibly
these tubes were for small rockets, but the manufacturing tolerances
specified were much higher than would normally be required for this
purpose. Technical reasons for the high tolerances were explained by
a number of Iraqis associated with their acquisition, but there are
still a number of discrepancies to examine with regard to these tubes.
Again, we need to determine what these activities mean.
Delivery Systems
In addition to WMD technologies, the ISG has continued to uncover a
very robust program for delivery systems that were not reported to the
UN. New information has been discovered relating to long-range ballistic
missile development and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Missiles and
UAVs were flight tested that easily exceeded the UN limit of 150 kilometers.
More than that, the Iraqi regime was developing technology to extend
one of their ballistic missile’s range beyond 150 kilometers with
changes to airframes and fuels. Discussions were underway with North
Korea regarding technology associated with a 1,300 km system—presumably
the No Dong. Other foreign support was being used or solicited.
Iraq was developing a variety of UAVs using inertial navigation systems
and navigation using GPS. New information on the L-29 based UAV has
also been developed.
Foreign technology and technical assistance were critical to the progress
made by Iraqi engineers and designers. Foreign missile experts worked
in Iraq in violation of UN sanctions from 1998 until just before the
start of OIF. They undertook a complete review of the al-Samoud surface-to-surface
missile system, which exceeded UN range limits. Based on this technical
assistance, Iraq determined the original al-Samoud concept was not optimal
and changed the production process to incorporate the new design information.
Contracts were concluded calling for foreign firms to produce several
major al-Samoud subsystems.
A variety of foreign companies with high-level political connections
acted as middlemen to import technology into Iraq for missile and UAV
development. These actions clearly violated UN sanctions.
Regime Intent
The new area of focus I have initiated for ISG is that of regime intent.
It is critically important for us to understand the intentions of the
regime as we seek to put the various research, development, and production
activities into context. Information on regime intent can come from
many sources, including public statements by regime leaders, documents
signed by senior leaders, debriefings, and other records.
We must determine what Saddam ordered, what his ministers ordered,
and how the plans fit together. Were weapons hidden that were not readily
available? Was there a plan for a break out production capacity? Were
WMD technologies being developed for the missile and UAV programs?
When did the leadership want to see results? How would technologies
be integrated?
Some of these decisions may not have been recorded in traditional ways,
such as documents. They may never have been broadly disseminated.
They may have been orally transmitted or conveyed to only a select group,
a trusted inner circle. We know from high-level debriefings that Saddam
conveyed his most sensitive messages to particular individuals orally.
Moreover, there were explicit instructions not to repeat such conversations.
Over the past ten months, we have learned that his most senior and
trusted officials can hold their tongues as well. Some are willing
to talk, but they oftentimes are the ones we know were not in the inner
circle.
Future Investigations
Let me end my remarks with some comments about the future work of the
ISG.
I come back to the overarching questions: Did the former regime in
Iraq have WMD at the end of OIF? What were its WMD capabilities and
intentions?
At this stage, ISG is focusing on developing an integrated picture
of regime programs and intentions. We are putting data together in a
comprehensive way that, hopefully, will allow us to describe the overall
WMD program of the regime.
My goal is to be able to effectively address the major technical and
policy questions in the months ahead. At this point in time, I cannot
say how long this investigation should take. I will strive, as will
the ISG, to develop the critical information and insight we require.
The difficult environment we work in, and the complexity of the issue,
make certainty in our advancement impossible to predict.
However, my goal is to have a comprehensive product, which will describe
what we have found and, as fully as possible, the WMD efforts and plans
of the leadership of this defunct regime.
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