Russia:  Gorny Disposal Plant Operation in Doubt

The Russian Natural Resources Ministry yesterday ordered Russia’s only chemical weapons disposal plant, located in Gorny, to halt operations because of environmental concerns (see GSN, Feb. 27). 

The ministry ordered the Gorny plant to cease operations until violations discovered during an inspection last month were corrected, according to the Associated Press.  Those violations included the lack of a license to work with chemical waste, poor control over waste emissions into the environment and improper storage of the waste resulting from the destruction of mustard agent, said Denis Kiselyov, head of the ministry’s department of state control for nature management and resource protection (Steve Gutterman, Associated Press/Moscow Times, March 4).

A Russian chemical disarmament official said today, however, that the facility would not cease its current operations.  The ministry’s order applies to work the plant was scheduled to conduct in May, which would have expanded its operations, said Alexander Kharichev of the Russian state commission on chemical disarmament.

“It is not about neglect in any current operations,” Kharichev was quoted as saying by ITAR-Tass.  “There were no sanctions in the investigating commission’s report,” he added (Mara Bellaby, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 4).

During a visit to Russia last month, Rogelio Pfirter, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, praised the Gorny disposal plant for using the most up-to-date technologies.

“Russia is strictly observing the ecological norms,” Pfirter said.

“We are satisfied with the condition of the Gorny complex and we have no doubts concerning its technology.  Russia is doing a concrete job and it will get additional backing,” he said (ITAR-Tass, March 4).

Back to top

United States:  Arkansas Man Charged in Ricin Hoax

An Arkansas man was arrested yesterday after the FBI’s Little Rock office received an envelope labeled: “Caution: contents contain ricin” (see GSN, Feb. 6).

Bertier Ray Riddle was charged with threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction within the United States and affecting interstate commerce.

“The attorney general has made it clear that threats regarding the use of weapons of mass destruction, particularly during this time of heightened tension and vigilance, will not be tolerated,” said U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.

After receiving the letter in February, investigators narrowed their list of suspects by examining the envelope which contained Riddle’s return address and was signed, “Sincerely not Bertie Ray Riddle” (Kelly Kissel, Associated Press/Baxter Bulletin, March 4).

During a court appearance this morning U.S. attorneys said they intend to file a motion seeking to determine Riddle’s mental competency, according to Sandra Cherry, an assistant to Cummins.

That motion will most likely be filed today, Cherry said.

Back to top

U.S. Response:  Marines to Use Chickens to Detect Attacks

U.S. Marines stationed in the Persian Gulf region plan to use live chickens to help detect a chemical weapons attack, Knight-Ridder News Service reported today (see GSN, Feb. 7).

“They will be like the proverbial canary in the coal mine,” said Lt. Col. Rob Abbott, commander of the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi troops set oil wells on fire, which resulted in the release of hydrogen sulfide — a mustard gas component.  This led to U.S. troops mistakenly thinking they had been attacked with chemical weapons, a mistake the chickens are meant to prevent, Abbott said.

The chicken plan has hit an early problem, however, according to Knight-Ridder.  Out of the first shipment, all but one of the chickens died within the first week, but more on their way.

Soldiers offered no remorse for sacrificing the chickens.  “It’s the chickens or me,” said Joe Santos, chief warrant officer of the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion (Patrick Peterson, Knight-Ridder/San Jose Mercury News, March 3).

Back to top

United States:  Anniston CW Destruction Will Wait for Local Readiness

The U.S. Army will not begin destroying chemical weapons agents at the Anniston Army Depot incinerator in Alabama until local officials are more prepared to respond in the event of an emergency, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 6, 2002).

The depot stores 2,254 tons of chemical agents, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

While no startup date has been scheduled yet, it is hoped that local officials can quickly resolve any remaining emergency preparedness issues, said Michael Parker, interim director of the Chemical Materials Agency, responsible for the chemical weapons disposal effort.  Mike Burney, director of the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency, said he hoped all response measures would be in place by October.

The Army is also working to meet a series of benchmarks included in a letter sent by Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to the secretary of the Army in January, Parker said.  Those benchmarks include increased funding for additional protective measures for vulnerable groups of people and responsibility for activating a siren system in the event of an incident at the depot (Associated Press/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 2).

Back to top

Iraq: Top Iraqi Weapons Official Studied WMD Warfare in the United States

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON ð— An Iraqi officer described as the “father” of Iraq’s chemical weapon development program received offensive and defensive chemical, biological and radiological warfare tactics instruction from the U.S. Army in the early 1960s, according to U.S. sources (see GSN, Jan. 28).

Gen. Nizar Attar — who as late as the mid-1990s served as a key, senior Iraqi chemical and biological weapons official and was also a reputed adviser to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — received the instruction as a junior officer in 1961 through the U.S. military assistance program at the Army Chemical School in Fort McClellan, Ala., according to former senior U.N. weapons inspector Richard Spertzel.  Such training was then considered legal under international law, as there were no treaties banning the possession of such weapons.

Spertzel met with Attar in the mid-1990s, while conducting missions in Iraq as head of the U.N. inspectors’ biological weapons team from 1994 to 1998.

Another U.S. source knowledgeable about Attar’s history, also said the Iraqi officer attended the Army school.  Army and Pentagon spokespeople said they had no information available on the activities from that period.

Attar probably received more extensive instruction from the Soviet Union, as he later attended the Timoshenko Military Academy of Chemical Defense in Moscow in 1964, and apparently spent another 18 months in the Soviet Union in 1975 and 1976, according to Spertzel.

Former U.N. weapons inspectors believe Attar went on to direct Iraq’s chemical weapons development program and head its main research and production facility, the Muthanna State Establishment, from around 1979 until 1987, overlapping with the period when Iraq was aggressively producing and using chemicals against Iranian forces during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.

As late as the mid-1990s, Attar was believed to be heading Iraq’s principal agency suspected of acquiring materials for biological weapons.  His current circumstances could not be ascertained.

Offensive and Defensive Tactics

Attar was one of as many as 19 Iraqi officers to receive the U.S. Army training from 1957 to 1967, and among hundreds of other non-U.S. military officials from around the globe.

The courses included defensive subjects described by the Army as “defense against biological attack” and “CBR [chemical, biological and radiological weapons] protective devices and equipment.”

They also included apparently offensive subjects as “unconventional warfare,” “principles of CBR employment” and “calculation of chemical munitions requirements.”

Indicating the courses were intended to provide information for dissemination back in the homeland, they also included instruction in “conducting CBR training.”

The United States and the Soviet Union at the time, each with significant offensive chemical and biological weapons programs, were competing for influence in the Middle East and elsewhere, and officials viewed military assistance as an important tool in that competition.

Still, experts question the wisdom of providing instruction in offensive tactics.

“In no way, anyway, would we [the British military], under a foreign training program, have offered any information like that, for obvious reasons,” said John Eldridge, editor of Jane’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense.

He said the United Kingdom also trained Iraqi, Iranian and other foreign militaries in chemical and biological warfare during the 1960s, but only taught defensive tactics, reflecting the fact that the United Kingdom had renounced possessing such weapons in the 1950s. 

The U.S. Army viewed those weapons differently.  In 1958, it quietly reversed its policy to not use chemical or biological weapons first in a conflict, in existence since 1943.  The United States did not sign the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the first use of such weapons until 1975.

Beginning particularly in the late 1950s, the Army also funded a public campaign to promote chemical and biological weapons as humane, useful and necessary weapons for deterrence.

Tactical Training

Because the U.S. training provided Attar was described as tactical, experts said it probably would not have aided him greatly in his roles running chemical and biological development programs.

The instruction was provided at a time, however, when Middle Eastern and other countries around the globe were beginning to develop an interest in chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and there was a concern at the time that U.S. technical assistance might encourage proliferation.

“You could argue that you were laying the seeds for interest in senior military officers in some particular weapons,” said Leitenberg.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to happen from the top down, it can happen from the bottom up,” said Harvard professor Matthew Meselson, who co-directs the Harvard-Sussex Program on chemical and biological arms control.

“If you send them to chemical defense school, these guys might see their careers in chemical weapons.  And, then it just depends on how good they might be in building a little bureaucracy, convincing their leadership,” he said.

Key Positions

Attar is not well known by many Western experts on Iraq, perhaps because of his government’s notorious efforts to conceal suspected illicit activities.  A number of former U.N. inspectors, however, say Attar was a key figure in the chemical weapons development program, some calling him the “father” of that program.

A 1999 U.N. inspectors report also attributed to Attar the resurgence of Iraq’s biological weapons program in the mid-1980s.

A February 1991 U.S. intelligence bulletin further identified Attar as a senior adviser to Hussein.  The declassified bulletin, produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency and containing “not finally evaluated” information, said Attar “had studied in both the United States and in the Soviet Union and had served as a chief adviser to the chief of staff and to Saddam Hussein.”

Attar was jailed sometime prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, but was released six months later, according to bulletin.

When Spertzel met with Attar between 1994 and 1998, the Iraqi official was believed to have headed the Iraq’s Technical and Scientific Materials Import Division, according to a 1999-published book by former weapons inspector Tim Trevan called Saddam’s Secrets, The Hunt for Iraq’s Hidden Weapons.  The division was suspected to have been the main procurement agency for Iraq’s biological weapons program.

Back to top

United States:  Army Creates New Demilitarization Agency

The U.S. Army announced last week the creation of the Chemical Materials Agency, which will take control of the formerly separate tasks of storing chemical weapons and destroying them, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Jan. 3). 

The Army is expected to take control of the new agency by October and Michael Parker, deputy commander of the Solider Biological and Chemical Command, which currently oversees chemical weapons storage, has been selected as the new agency’s acting director, AP reported.

“The CMA brings all the parties under one roof necessary to carry out the mission of the safe storage and elimination of obsolete and aging chemical weapons,” Parker said in a press statement.

The Chemical Weapons Working Group, a watchdog organization that has criticized the Army’s chemical weapons destruction efforts, praised the creation of the CMA and Parker’s appointment as its head.

“If it’s salvageable, this is the best shot we’ve had in 20 years to get it right,” said Craig Williams, director of the group.  “Mr. Parker’s record reflects a real sensitivity to shooting straight, meaningful community involvement, straight-forwardness with the Congress and all the attributes necessary,” he added (Jeffrey McMurray, Associated Press/Tuscaloosa News, Feb. 21).

Back to top

About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines

HOME  |  CONTACT US  |  GET INVOLVED  |  SITE MAP