Op-Ed
You Call That Evidence? http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2002/wo/0909rothstein.html
The Bush administration has begun to produce what it calls evidence to support its claim that Iraq is moving very near a nuclear weapon capability. But a story in Sunday's New York Times (September 8, 2002), especially as elaborated by administration officials on Sunday talk shows, actually suggests just the opposite-that Iraq is not as close as it was before the Gulf War.
In a front-page story, Times reporters Michael Gordon and Judith Miller write that they were told by administration officials that Iraq has been trying to buy specially designed aluminum tubes to be used to fabricate gas centrifuges in which to produce weapon-grade uranium.
How does that compare to what we know about the state of Iraq's nuclear program in 1991?
After the Gulf War, U.N. Special Commission inspectors discovered that although Iraq had spent billions of dollars over nearly two decades, its efforts to produce weapon-grade uranium had basically come up empty.
Iraq had been using two methods: One program involved building giant "calutrons," a clumsy technology the United States had abandoned in the 1940s. For decades that technology had been considered so primitive and inefficient that it was unlikely ever to be copied; everything anyone could want to know about it was available in the open literature. It's hard to say what an Iraqi success with this method would have meant, but in any case, the calutrons were destroyed.
The second method-and certainly the modern method of choice-was to build a "cascade" of centrifuges to separate the fissile constituents of uranium from the non-fissile. A cascade consists of thousands of centrifuges, all of which must be able to withstand spinning at extraordinarily high speed.
Inspectors discovered that although the Iraqis had brought in centrifuge experts from Germany and purchased specialty steel from German and Swiss companies, they had spoiled most of the material-failing to shape it properly or otherwise maltreating it. Essentially, the Iraqi centrifuge program was a failure. And if the Iraqis were to depend on producing weapon material through the centrifuge process-rather than trying to obtain it on the black market-experts say it would probably take five or six years.
Now we are expected to believe that Iraq is closer to a nuclear weapon capability because it is starting all over again! Admittedly, this time Iraq is trying to get different materials with which to construct the centrifuges-and perhaps they hope to save time by getting it preformed as tubes.
Mysteriously, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Meet the Press that he could not comment on what the administration knows, only on what had appeared in the Times-in other words, he would discuss only a selective, agreed-upon leak. He then asserted that the administration knew of only one attempted purchase of aluminum tubes because, he said, "we intercepted" that shipment. And if, he said, one shipment had been intercepted, how many others might have gotten through?
These comments, of course, raise more questions than they answer. First, just who is the "we" Cheney refers to? The U.S. government? An ally? In any case, it is someone who has no name. This story certainly leaves the rest of us wondering if anyone has made an effort to find out anything about the possible supplier or suppliers, because of their potential violation of treaties forbidding the export of weapons-usable industrial items.
Things got murkier after Condoleezza Rice's appearance on CNN's Late Edition. Although her discussion of the issue was more general, her remarks were more in line with the Times story; she said "we" knew about a series of shipments of tubes.
How strange is a story in which one official argues the case of a single shipment while others say there have been a number of shipments, yet no one expresses any interest in the source? Are the same unnamed but all-knowing "we" not at all interested in asking alleged suppliers what they think they' re doing, or bringing any pressure on them to cut it out? And why hasn't anyone in the media been able to tease out a single bit of independent, corroborating information?
(And just a little tip for those assigned to leak additional new "evidence" of a stepped-up Iraqi nuclear threat: The tubing in centrifuges is not nearly as hard to acquire or assemble as the mechanisms that allow them to spin at rapid speeds; getting that stuff right, and getting thousands of centrifuges working in concert, is really hard. Also, leakers, please note: Should you want to claim that an Iraqi cascade is already in operation, such a facility uses as much energy as a fairly large city; it could be detected by its heat signature alone. [The previous sentence is incorrect, and should not have been included. Separating uranium by a gaseous diffusion method, not the centrifuge enrichment process, uses large quantities of electricity. I apologize for the error. -L.R.])
The aluminum tubing story-and others to come-may be taken at face value by an insufficiently skeptical press, but the decision to go to war is simply too important to let the administration "wing it" in presenting its rationale. As Jon Stewart of the Daily Show asked recently about the administration's attitude toward the American public, "Do they think we're retarded?"
Linda Rothstein, Editor
"Iraq and the Bomb: Were They Even Close?" (March 1991)
© 2002 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists