Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=12/02/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=COREY HINDERSTEIN

NUMBER=3-444

BYLINE=REBECCA WARD

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

/// EDITORS: THIS INTERVIEW IS AVAILABLE IN DALET UNDER SOD/ENGLISH NEWS NOW INTERVIEWS IN THE FOLDER FOR TODAY OR YESTERDAY ///

HOST: Weapons inspections continue in Iraq Monday with inspectors visiting a military complex in Baghdad, and an alcohol factory outside the capital. So far, the inspectors have visited sites in and around Baghdad, but soon they will be capable of unannounced inspections virtually anywhere in Iraq. Corey Hinderstein (pron: steen) is the assistant director and senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D. C. She tells News Now's Rebecca Ward why inspectors are looking at some of the same sites that were inspected four years ago.

MS. HINDERSTEIN: We do need to go back and reestablish a baseline. And that baseline must include any sites that were previously used for weapons activities, to confirm that there are no covert activities going on at those sites, and also probably to check on the status of equipment that may have been logged and cataloged at those sites and make sure that they are still present.

MS. WARD: Are they going to spread out soon, to start going to areas that have not been inspected previously?

MS. HINDERSTEIN: I think that after the Iraqis present their declaration we will see an expansion of the inspection effort. And that would include going to sites that are named in the declaration and confirming the story that Iraq has presented. But it will also involve going to sites where perhaps intelligence agencies have information about activities that have not been declared and seeing if we can track down any activities that are being denied by the Iraqis, which would also constitute a violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution.

MS. WARD: I'm just a little bit confused about what it is that Iraq is supposed to declare. I mean, he's not going to say, "I'm developing nuclear weapons."

MS. HINDERSTEIN: But what he can say is we pursued research on a particular type of technology or a particular type of research over the last four years. And he could say, theoretically, now that I'm faced with this new resolution, I will give up all of my programs, and I'll declare where things were done and what was done.

The important thing to remember is Iraq cannot destroy equipment or technology without verification. So, it certainly is concerning if he says, I had a particular lab or a particular piece of technology we were pursuing, but I destroyed it. He knows that, under the standing U.N. Security Council resolutions and the new one, he cannot destroy equipment without verification. And I think that he knows that the intelligence agencies in the U.S. and other countries do have information about his activities, both in the last four years and prior to the removal of the inspectors the last time.

MS. WARD: What he may or may not know, I suppose, is that there is a lot more sophisticated equipment that he may not be aware of, that they can detect things that they couldn't previously.

MS. HINDERSTEIN: Absolutely. And a lot of that equipment, it doesn't necessarily relate to the kinds of things that can be detected overall, but it certainly relates to the speed of that sort of test and measurement and to the amount of material that would be needed to get a positive result on a test. So, instead of needing a large sample and sending it away and getting the results back from a laboratory weeks later, some of the new equipment may be able to take smaller samples, detect smaller amounts of material, and be able to do it right on site and immediately where the inspectors are.

Another new kind of technology is satellite imagery, which certainly has always been available to nation-states, but since the inspectors were last in Iraq there have been at least two high-resolution commercial satellite systems launched, where the inspection agencies can actually purchase their own images directly without having to be given an image from a national intelligence system.

MS. WARD: How difficult or easy would it be to hide nuclear components?

MS. HINDERSTEIN: Unfortunately, it is not as difficult as some would think to hide indications of a nuclear weapons program. Especially at the research and development phase, there is equipment that is not particularly electricity intensive, for example, that is small enough to be housed in facilities the size of small warehouses. They basically just need a little bit of open space that could be found in almost any industrial area.

If they were pursuing a more production-scale facility for uranium enrichment, for example, they would need a slightly more advanced facility. But, even then, their main research and development facility for centrifuges before the Gulf War was never found until 1995. And a facility similar to that could certainly stay hidden for quite a while.

(End of interview.)

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