INSPECTIONS IN IRAQ: A PRIMER
Since the first Gulf crisis in 1991, the Bulletin has closely followed the efforts of arms inspectors to uncover Iraq's illicit weapons programs.
Masters of Deception By David Albright, May/June 1998
By 1998, many believed that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled and most if not all of the program's materials and equipment destroyed. But in a seven-year-plus effort, inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency Action Team had to work through so many layers of deception, and received so many different "full, final, and complete declarations" from the Iraqis, that they had no doubt Iraq was still hiding important information.
The Hijacking of UNSCOM By Susan Wright, July/August 1999
The work of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with disarming Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs came to an untimely end in December 1998. According to Wright, "UNSCOM's downfall resulted not only from the use of its work to justify . . . the bombing of Iraq by the United States and Britain, but also because of the gradual blurring of organizational and operational boundaries that needed to be kept pristinely clear."
Inside Saddam's Secret Nuclear Program By Khidir Hamza, September/October 1998
Has Iraq Come Clean at Last? By David Albright & Robert Kelley, November/December 1995
Iraqi defectors, including weapons scientists and military officials, have been a key source of information for weapons inspectors over the years. In 1994, the nuclear scientist Khidir Hamza escaped, eventually revealing to the world how Saddam Hussein had systematically hoodwinked the International Atomic Energy Agency. A year later, Gen. Hussein Kamel, the former head of the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, fled to Jordan. He revealed that in the spring of 1991, Iraq had decided to embark on a crash program to build a single nuclear weapon. Kamel's defection prompted Iraq to release a massive cache of documents, which according to Albright and Kelley ("Has Iraq Come Clean at Last?") showed that if Iraq had not invaded Kuwait, "thus touching off retaliatory measures, Iraq's long-range nuclear weapons program might have produced enough highly enriched uranium by 1996 for a small nuclear arsenal."
Iraq's Shop-Till-You-Drop Nuclear Program By David Albright & Mark Hibbs, April 1992
Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, announced on December 10, 2002, that he would not reveal the names of foreign arms suppliers listed by Iraq on its weapons declaration because it might cause the suppliers to clam up when interrogated. Blix told the U.N. Security Council that if the inspectors "were given the names publicly, then they would never get another supplier to give them information." In this 1992 article, Albright and Hibbs discuss what was learned about Iraq's foreign suppliers during inspections that followed the Gulf War. "Western companies and governments, particularly Germany, do not want to be embarrassed by public revelations about their involvement with Iraq's nuclear program," the authors wrote. "Firms fear that commercial secrets will leak out. But exposing the way Iraq tried to buy itself a nuclear weapons program is critical to determining where export controls failed-or worked-and what improvements are needed if the Iraqi experience is not to be repeated."
Iraq and the Bomb: Were They Even Close? By David Albright & Mark Hibbs, March 1991
The current U.S. administration claims that it has evidence that Iraq is close to building a nuclear bomb. But the evidence revealed to the public so far-like Iraq's attempts to purchase specially designed aluminum tubes-seems to point in the opposite direction: that the country is still years away from having a nuclear capability. This wouldn't be the first time that the United States has made exaggerated claims regarding Iraq's weapons capabilities: In the months leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, then-President George H. W. Bush argued that military force was necessary because of "Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb potential." But according to Albright and Hibbs, at the time of the U.S. attack in January 1991, Iraq was still "many years away from developing usable nuclear weapons."
© 2002 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists