U.S. Watched Syrian Site Long Before Israeli Bombing

U.S. intelligence services had watched a possible nuclear reactor construction site in Syria for years before Israel bombed it last month, the New York Times reported Saturday (see GSN, Oct. 26).

A satellite image taken in 2003 shows the main building to be in roughly the same condition as photographs taken earlier this year before the Israeli strike.  Other buildings, including a possible pumping station, were not yet built, according to the Times.

Site construction might have begun in 2001, the Times reported, and the activity at the remote desert site drew U.S. attention.  Private experts have suggested that the facility resembles a North Korean nuclear reactor used to produce plutonium.

“It was noticed, without knowing what it was,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official.  “You revisit every so often, but it was not a high priority.  You see things that raise the flag and you know you have to keep looking.  It was a case of watching it evolve.”

The question of Syria’s nuclear ambitions was debated within the Bush administration at the time, said former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

“There was disagreement about what Syria was interested in and how much we should be monitoring it,” he said.  “There was activity in Syria that I felt was evidence that they were trying to develop a nuclear program.”

Other officials disagreed, however, and a dispute arose in 2003 over testimony Bolton, then at the State Department, planned to give that included a hard-line assessment of Syrian aims (see GSN, July 16, 2003).

Today, State Department leaders seeking a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis might prefer a tougher assessment of Syria’s past nuclear activity to demonstrate that Pyongyang was proliferating nuclear technology before the latest diplomatic successes, according to the Times (see related GSN story, today; Broad/Mazzetti, New York Times, Oct. 27).

The evidence of activity from at least four years ago could suggest that the Syrian project began under the direction of former President Hafez Assad, who died in 2000.  The program might then have been withheld for some time from Assad’s son and successor Bashar al-Assad, Newsweek reported (Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, Oct. 27).

Meanwhile, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday criticized the United States and Israel for withholding information about potential nuclear activity in Syria.

“We have a system:  If countries have information that the country is working on a nuclear-related program, they should come to us.  We have the authority to go out and investigate,” he said in a CNN interview.  “But to bomb first and then ask questions later, I think it undermines the system and it doesn't lead to any solution to any suspicion, because we are the eyes and ears of the international community.”

“I would hope if anybody has information, before they take the law into their own hands, to come and pass the information on,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 28).

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