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The expulsion of Americans last November on the United Nations weapons inspection teams in Iraq may have occurred because inspectors were getting close to concealed chemical or biological weapons sites.
That's the view of Maj. Eric Holwitt, an Air Force Materiel Command biochemist who was one of the inspectors kicked out of Iraq.
Under U.N. resolutions, the Iraqis are required to declare (disclose) sites that were used to produce war materials, such as munitions plants and chemical reactors. At hundreds of these declared sites, inspectors have discovered materials that are classified as "dual use," meaning they could be used for both military and civilian purposes.
Malathion, a pesticide, is a dual-use chemical compound the inspectors found. Its chemical composition can be altered to make nerve gas, Holwitt said. Inspectors tag all dual-use material.
"The Iraqis can't move (relocate) tagged equipment or material without permission from the resident teams," says Holwitt.
The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) employs two types of inspection teams. The resident teams work full-time, seven days a week, in two- to three-member groups. Averaging 10 inspections per week on a rotating basis, inspectors can spend all day at each of hundreds of declared sites. These teams can go to any declared site without prior notice. They also can search for undeclared sites, but that job is the primary focus of visiting teams.
"Visiting teams can look for concealed sites. The Iraqis had never harassed the resident teams, but complained about the visiting teams," Holwitt said. "Saddam Hussein built 19 'palaces' after the Persian Gulf War. We suspect these palaces may be sites where unauthorized material is hidden."
The task of keeping track of dual-use material at declared sites is monumental, Holwitt says, adding, "The Iraqis just dumped stuff at these sites." He characterized the Iraqis as masters of "organized disorder."
"At some sites, we found a tremendous amount of glassware used for synthesizing material," he says. Even thousands of glass-lined pipes are considered dual-use. Inspectors had to sift through stacks of hundreds of thousands of pipes of varying lengths and diameters to ensure none of this tagged material was missing.
"An Austrian inspector became completely exhausted and mentally drained by the scope of the work. The inspectors have a very tedious job accounting for all the material," Holwitt says.
Besides dual-use material, inspectors have to identify and tag spare parts. They also supervise Iraqi disposal of war materiel, including many barrels of isopropanol, a chemical used to make Sarin nerve gas.
Never unaccompanied
Accompanying inspectors on all site visits are "minders," Iraqi liaison personnel from the government's National Monitoring Directorate (NMD). Says Holwitt, "They are chemists, physicists and technical personnel who speak English. They facilitated our entry into sites." In principle, inspectors can enter any site without minders, Holwitt said. Nonetheless, minders were ever-present.
Inspection teams never forecast what sites they planned to visit. "An hour before we would leave for a site visit, we'd call the minders and tell them to meet us in front of our hotel," Holwitt noted.
Despite these precautions, Holwitt suspected the minders had advance knowledge of U.N. missions.
As lab chief for the Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Center (BMVC), Holwitt was responsible for his own inspection team, which was tasked with monitoring air sampling machines situated throughout Iraq. These air samplers are designed to detect mustard or nerve gas in the air, and are set up at various locations, such as munitions plants and factories. His team traveled to sites in ground convoys or by helicopter.
Four specialty areas
Resident and visiting teams specialize in four areas to monitor Iraq's weapons arsenal. "They are still an armed camp," Holwitt notes. Inspectors monitor nuclear (for warheads), chemical, biological and missile weapons systems.
"The Iraqis are allowed to have missiles, but missile team inspectors must verify that no SCUD missile has a range greater than 150 kilometers," Holwitt said.
Holwitt traces the beginning of the U.N.'s trouble to September 17 when U.N. Special Commission executive chairman Richard Butler distributed a press release stating that some progress had been made on inspections.
Iraqi hopes of having U.N. sanctions eased hinged on a review of the inspections' progress. "The general attitude among Iraqis was the sanctions would be eased. They based this on the progress made during inspections of nuclear, chemical and missile sites," Holwitt says. "But no progress had been made in the area of biological weapons."
January '98 Issue -- Leading
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