Iraq:  Scientist Claims Baghdad Destroyed WMD Programs Shortly Before War

Iraq destroyed most of its biological and chemical weapons equipment shortly before the war began, according to an Iraqi scientist cooperating with a U.S. military team searching for banned Iraqi weapons, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, April 18). 

Members of Mobile Exploration Team Alpha (MET Alpha), who located the scientist last week, would not identify him, fearing that he might be subject to reprisals.  Military officials said the scientist told them that four days before U.S. President George W. Bush gave ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a 48-hour deadline to go into exile or face war, Iraqi officials destroyed a warehouse being used for biological weapons research. 

The scientist also said he had observed Iraqi officials burying chemical weapons precursors and other materials to preserve them for later use, the officials said.  Over the past three days, the scientist has led MET Alpha to several sites where chemical precursors were buried, according to the Times.

Military officials said the Iraqi scientist has told them that Iraq had begun destroying its biological and chemical stockpiles in the mid-1990s, had transported some materials to Syria, and had recently begun working on research and development programs that would have been difficult for U.N. inspectors to detect. 

The potential of MET Alpha’s work is “enormous,” said Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Army’s 101st Division.

“What they’ve discovered could prove to be of incalculable value,” Petraeus said.  “Though much work must still be done to validate the information MET Alpha has uncovered, if it proves out it will clearly be one of the major discoveries of this operation, and it may be the major discovery,” he added (Judith Miller, New York Times, April 21).

Meanwhile, two Iraqi scientific experts have either recently surrendered or have been captured by coalition forces, according to reports.

Coalition troops have arrested former Iraqi Higher Education and Scientific Research Minister Abd al-Khaliq Abd al-Ghafar, the U.S. Central Command said yesterday.  A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group, said al-Ghafar probably knows about Iraq’s nuclear weapons efforts.

“We know about his background, and he is certainly involved with those banned programs,” INC spokesman Haider Ahmed said (Price/Knickmeyer, Associated Press, April 21).

In addition, suspected VX expert Emad Husayn Abdullah al-Ani surrendered Friday (Andrew Gumbel, London Independent, April 20).

Although U.S. officials have hoped that Iraqi scientists would provide assistance to U.S. personnel searching for banned weapons, many scientists and officials have refused to cooperate for fear of being prosecuted for war crimes, according to Time.

One U.S. official described the responses of al-Ani and Iraqi Lt. Gen. Amir Saadi, formerly involved in Iraq’s chemical weapons program, during interrogations as:  “Weapons of mass destruction?  What weapons of mass destruction?  We have no stinking weapons for you” (Nancy Gibbs, Time, April 20).

U.N. Role

Meanwhile, Russia plans to insist that U.N. inspectors make the final determination of Iraq’s disarmament before Moscow agrees to lift sanctions on Iraq, said a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official. 

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei should be allowed to quickly resume their work in Iraq, the official said.

“This could be done within a couple of weeks as it is obvious that there are no such weapons there,” ITAR-Tass quoted the official as saying (Reuters, April 21).

A British Foreign Office official said today that any find of Iraqi WMD would need to be independently verified, which could possibly be done by U.N. inspectors.

“We need to have some element of independent verification,” said British Foreign Office minister Mike O’Brien.  “The U.N. inspectors are clearly a possibility for doing that,” he said (Jane Merrick, Press Association, April 21).

Blair Rejects Parliamentary Inquiry Into Iraqi WMD

Also in London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has rejected calls for an investigation into whether the British public was misled about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the London Independent.  Members of the British Parliament have begun calling for an investigation into whether British intelligence misled officials.

“We don’t believe any inquiry is needed, as we stand by our assessment that Saddam harbored an active WMD program,” a British spokesman said.  “We have had a conflict to fight as well as getting humanitarian aid to the people, but we are confident of finding weapons of mass destruction in the longer term,” the spokesman said (Jo Dillon, London Independent, April 20).

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North Korea I:  Talks Set for This Week

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly leaves for Beijing today to engage North Korea and China in discussions starting Wednesday on the Korean nuclear standoff (see GSN, April 18; Barbara Slavin, USA Today, April 21).

U.S. President George W. Bush has said the discussions, and diplomatic efforts from China, Japan and South Korea, could help resolve the nuclear crisis.

“I believe that all four of us, working together, have a good chance of convincing North Korea to abandon her ambitions to develop a nuclear arsenal,” Bush said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, April 21).

The talks nearly fell through Friday when North Korea announced it had begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods but Pyongyang rephrased the statement today saying only that it is “successfully going forward to reprocess” the spent fuel rods (Reuters/MSNBC.com, April 21).

The talks were also endangered by a memorandum, circulated by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which suggested a diplomatic effort to oust North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.  The memorandum proposed a collaborative effort with China, but some officials called the idea fanciful.

“The last thing the Chinese want,” said a senior Bush administration official, “is a collapse of North Korea that will create a flood of refugees into China and put Western allies on the Chinese border.”

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is instead pushing to resolve the North Korean situation diplomatically, offering aid and investment to North Korea in return for dismantling nuclear programs.

“There’s a sense in the Pentagon that Powell got this arranged while everyone was distracted with Iraq,” one intelligence official said of the talks.  “And now there is a race over who will control the next steps,” the official added (David Sanger, New York Times, April 21).

Conflicting agendas in the United States have also created international tension over the talks.

“There are two schools in the U.S., and we have to deal with both of them,” a Japanese official said Saturday.  “It’s very difficult.  We are seriously wondering if there will be a second round of talks,” the official added (Struck/Kessler, Washington Post, April 20).

North-South Talks Possible

North Korea has proposed Cabinet-level talks with South Korea in Pyongyang April 27-29, according to South Korean officials (Korea Herald, April 20), and Seoul agreed today to take part in the bilateral discussions (Associated Press/USA Today, April 21).

Kim Ryong Song, North Korea’s chief negotiator, proposed the talks, the Korea Herald reported.

“We will urge the North to resolve the nuclear issue through dialogue, and explain the new government’s North Korea policy,” said an official from Seoul’s Unification Ministry (Korea Herald).

U.S. Military Option

U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said yesterday that while dealing with North Korea, a military option “always has to be there as a very strong possibility.”

“I say that fully cognizant of all the testimony we have heard of the potential ramifications for South Korea, for Japan, for our own American forces, for innocent American civilians who are in the Seoul area.  But the proliferation of materials to make weapons as well as the weapons themselves and North Korea’s reputation for producing them simply to obtain revenues for a failed state — this is intolerable, and the North Koreans have to understand that,” Lugar said (Joyce Price, Washington Times, April 21).

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North Korea II:  “Operation Weasel” Aids North Korean Defections

The United States and its allies have helped up to 20 senior North Korean military and scientific officials defect to Western countries in the past six months, including a key figure in Pyongyang’s nuclear efforts, The Weekend Australian reported (see GSN, April 18).

Among the defectors was Kyong Won Ha, the father of the North Korean nuclear effort.

U.S. officials had helped organize and finance the effort — dubbed Operation Weasel — to move the North Koreans through China and into Western countries.  Embassies in Beijing were reportedly used to hold defectors and smuggle them out of China.  Intelligence officials have interrogated Kyong and are gaining valuable insight into North Korea’s nuclear operations, especially those at Yongbyon, according to The Weekend Australian.

Spanish officials helped smuggle Kyong out of North Korea, the paper reported.  The other countries involved in the now-completed effort were New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines and the Pacific island nations of Vanuatu and Nauru (Chulov/Stewart, The Weekend Australian, April 20).

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark denied her government was involved in the operation (Chulov/Harvey, The Australian, April 21).

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South Asia:  India Offers Talks to Resolve Kashmir Issue

Speaking Friday from the contested Kashmir region, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee proposed Indian-Pakistani talks to resolve the long-standing dispute over Kashmir — a potential flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed rivals, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, April 18).

Vajpayee made the offer during a public address in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar — the first public address by an Indian prime minister in the disputed region since 1986.

“Problems can be resolved by talks,” he said.  “We are ready.”

Noting the failure of past peace efforts, Vajpayee said the Indian offer had to be reciprocated by Pakistan, which India has accused of supporting cross-border terrorism.

“We again extend the hand of friendship, but the hands should be extended from both sides,” Vajpayee said.  “The decision to live together should be made from both sides” (John Lancaster, Washington Post, April 19).

Pakistan today welcomed the offer, saying it was ready to hold talks on Kashmir at any time and without preconditions.

“We hope that immediate steps will be taken so that the dialogue process can start,” said Pakistani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan.  “Dialogue can start only when there are no preconditions attached to it,” he added (Reuters/Washington Post, April 21).

One of the largest Islamic militant groups fighting in Kashmir, however, has rejected India’s peace talks offer, according to the Associated Press.

“We believe that Vajpayee’s offer is a deception to gain time to crush the freedom movement in Indian-occupied Kashmir,” Salim Hashmi, a spokesman for the guerrilla group Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, said Saturday in Islamabad.  “We will not silence our guns just because of this offer,” he said.

Any talks over Kashmir will not succeed without the participation of guerilla groups, Hashmi said.

“If they exclude us from the talks, they will not achieve anything,” Hashmi said, adding, “If Indians are sincere, they should also invite representatives of Kashmir” (Munir Ahmed, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, April 20).

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South Africa:  Former Weapons Scientist Offered to Sell Materials to FBI

A South African scientist last year attempted to sell the FBI samples of his country’s former biological weapons program, but the bureau ultimately turned down the offer, the Washington Post reported Sunday (see GSN, May 21, 2002).

After the fall 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, Daan Goosen, a South African scientist who had worked in the apartheid-era Project Coast chemical and biological weapons program, contacted the U.S. Defense Department with an offer of “open cooperation” to share the project’s research on anthrax vaccines and treatments (see GSN, Oct. 23, 2002).  The Pentagon then arranged a meeting in January 2002 between Goosen and Bioport Corp., the sole U.S. producer of anthrax vaccine, the Post reported.  Bioport, however, quickly lost interest in Goosen’s offer.

After Bioport rejected Goosen’s offer, he was contacted by retired South African Maj. Gen. Tai Minnaar, who worked for the CIA during the 1970s, according to the Post.  Minnaar offered to connect Goosen with U.S. officials who would be interested in his research and who might be willing to pay for it, according to Goosen.  Minnaar then contacted Don Mayes, a former CIA operative with prior experience in purchasing foreign weapons systems for the agency.  Minnaar told Mayes in a March 2002 letter that biological materials from Project Coast, which was terminated in 1993, still existed and posed a proliferation risk, according to the Post.

“With the current situation here at present, we need to ensure that the technology as well as ‘stock in hand’ (at present stored safely in a private facility) are safeguarded from finding its way to the people on the wrong side of the fence,” Minnaar wrote in an e-mail to Mayes.  “This is a very real danger, as some of the other technology we fear has already been sold,” Minnaar added.

Within three weeks, Mayes arranged a series of meetings with CIA and FBI officials to discuss the possibility of bringing Goosen and his samples to the United States, the Post reported.  In exchange for his research, Goosen asked for $5 million and immigration permits for himself and as many as 19 associates and family members to come to the United States. 

Before the samples would be handed over to U.S. officials, however, Goosen first sent one to the FBI to verify his credibility, according to the Post.  He chose a sample of Escherichia coli, a common intestinal bacterium, that had been combined with a toxin-producing gene from Clostriduim perfringens, which can cause gas gangrene.  An associate of Mayes, former CIA official Robert Zlockie, transported the sample to the United States in May 2002 and gave it to the FBI, the Post reported.

The FBI decided to reject Goosen’s offer, however, after U.S. Army scientists analyzed the sample, the Post reported. 

“The material was just as advertised, but the hands-down reaction was, ‘So what?’” said one law enforcement official familiar with the assessment. 

The FBI was not convinced that the purchase of Goosen’s research would be useful, the law enforcement official said, noting that any of the bacteria included in the samples could easily be found in nature.  In addition, Project Coast’s genetic engineering experiments, while advanced at the time, had been outpaced by technological advancements, the official said.

“If they thought we were going to put out good money for that kind of stuff, they came to the wrong group,” said a U.S. law enforcement official who reviewed Goosen’s proposal.  “Thanks for being good citizens, but no thanks,” the official added.

U.S. officials involved in the decision to reject Goosen’s offer said there was no reason to pay him or for excluding the South African government in a plan involving biological materials in that country.  Even though Mayes warned the FBI in a note against alerting South African officials to the plan, the bureau did so in an official letter soon after Mayes’s warning, the Post reported.

“From that point on, it became a police matter for South Africa,” the law enforcement official familiar with the assessment said.

Ultimately, South African authorities twice investigated Goosen, but chose not to charge him with a crime, according to the Post.  In the past nine months, however, Goosen has been offered money by a German national and a man claiming to be an Arab sheik, but he has said he has rejected the offers.

Some disarmament experts have criticized the FBI’s decision to reject Goosen’s offer.

“Here was a guy who had worked in a former chemical and biological program and was willing to provide information and assistance to the United States,” said Jeffrey Bale of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies.  “That’s worth following up on.  If a person like Goosen decides to collaborate with a foreign party, it’s far better that he collaborates with us and not with rogue elements in other parts of the world,” he said (Warrick/Mintz, Washington Post, April 20).

There are also concerns that Project Coast materials or expertise could be transferred to rogue states or terrorist organizations, according to experts.  Almost a decade later, South Africa is still attempting to learn what kinds of weapons were developed in the clandestine program and what became of them, officials said.

“So many of the past problems occurred because there weren’t enough checks and balances in the system,” said Torie Pretorius, one of two lead prosecutors in South Africa’s case against Wouter Basson, former head of Project Coast, on murder and fraud charges, of which he was acquitted (see GSN, April 12, 2002).  “Are those checks and balances any better today?  I don’t think so,” he said.

Project Coast’s “Stealth” Anthrax

Daan Goosen’s offer was not the only experience the United States had with former South African biological weapons scientists in the last year, according to the Post, which noted that U.S. officials interviewed Basson for three days at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria last July.

During the interviews, Basson discussed Project Coast’s creation of a “stealth” anthrax strain, which was a native South African strain of anthrax modified to be able to evade the field tests used in South Africa and neighboring countries, according to officials knowledgeable of the meeting. 

“They ended up with an organism that would confound conventional detection,” said a U.S. law enforcement official who reviewed Basson’s claim.  “That way, the spread of the disease is not stopped, and more people would become ill,” the official said, adding that U.S. tests would have been able to detect the strain.

Anthrax experts said the modified strain was possible, but probably not very effective as a weapon.  The modifications described by Basson would have reduced the strain’s virulence, said Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University.

“It might make a few goats sick but it wouldn’t do very well at killing people,” Hugh-Jones said.  “It appears he turned a pathogenic organism into a nonpathogenic one,” he added.

Basson said he had learned the techniques to create the stealth anthrax strain from Israeli government scientists, according to the Post.  While Israel has denied having biological and chemical weapons programs, many U.S. experts believe such programs do exist.  Israel is also believed to have aided apartheid-era South Africa in its nuclear weapons efforts.

“The two countries at the time shared a similar mind-set:  Both saw groups inside their own borders that threatened the country’s survival,” said a U.S. government weapons analyst with first-hand knowledge of Project Coast.  “The enemy wasn’t another nation-state but pockets of individuals within their own population,” the analyst said (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, April 21).

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Syria:  Bush Says Syria Will Cooperate

After issuing stern warnings to Syria in recent weeks, U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that he believes Damascus is cooperating with Washington’s efforts in the Middle East (see GSN, April 18).

“I’m confident the Syrian government has heard us,” Bush said.  “And I believe it when they say they want to cooperate with us,” he added.

Although Bush was referring directly to the issue of Syria harboring members of the deposed Iraqi regime, it appears he was also making reference to U.S. allegations of chemical weapons development, according to the New York Times.

“It seems like they’re beginning to get the message,” Bush said (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, April 21).

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North Korea:  United States Detected Explosion at Missile Testing Site Last Year

The United States detected an explosion in November at a North Korean missile test site that appears to have set back Pyongyang’s efforts to develop the Taepodong 2 long-range ballistic missile, the Korea Herald reported today (see GSN, March 12).

The U.S. military informed the South Korean Defense Ministry of the explosion, which occurred at the site’s engine combustion chamber, a South Korean Defense Ministry source said.  The explosion caused “serious” amounts of damage to the site’s facilities, making it impossible for North Korea to conduct an engine combustion test for the Taepodong 2 missile, the source said.

The South Korean Defense Ministry would neither confirm nor deny the explosion.

“The ministry’s official position is NCND (neither confirm nor deny),” ministry spokesman Hwang Young-soo said (Kim Hyung-jin, Korea Herald, April 22).

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U.S. Plans:  MDA Awards Airship Demonstration Contracts

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has awarded contracts to three U.S. defense contractors to develop concepts for an airship that would be used in a U.S. missile defense system, Space & Missile reported today (see GSN, Nov. 11, 2002).

The defense contractors — Aeros Aeronautical Systems Corp., Boeing, and Lockheed Martin — will take part in an initiative called the High Altitude Airship Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration.  For the next four months, the companies will work to define concepts for a solar-powered airship that can fly at 65,000 feet and track ballistic missiles, an agency spokesman said.  The prototype airship, which is scheduled to be tested in 2006, must be able to provide 10 kilowatts of power to a 4,000-pound payload, as well as stay on station and control flight on its own.

By September, the agency will choose two of the three companies to further define their concepts, the spokesman said.  The Pentagon will then choose one contractor by summer 2004 to build a prototype airship for the demonstration initiative (Ann Roosevelt, Space & Missile, April 21).

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