The Guardian
October 3, 2003The long-awaited report by the Iraq Survey Group headed by David Kay suggests Saddam Hussein had the know-how to produce chemical and biological weapons, and the intention to pursue a nuclear weapons programme.
But it found no evidence of weapons themselves.
"It found everything but those weapons," a Ministry of Defence official said yesterday. The group of 1,200 scientists and technicians found a network of clandestine laboratories run by Saddam's intelligence and security services. They found evidence of secret procurement programmes involving foreign companies.
But virtually every part of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programme could be explained by reference to other benign uses, they said last night. They found large amounts of documentary evidence, but, MoD officials admitted, "no shining weapons".
The conclusion is in marked contrast to the claim in last year's British government dossier on Iraq's weapons programme which implied that it was continuing to produce such weapons and could deploy some of them within 45 minutes. Sources close to the survey group said last night that to visit every possible banned weapons site in Iraq was impossible. Its mission, they said, would "only succeed if we are led to the truth by the Iraqis themselves".
They admitted, too, that most of the information it received was "single-sourced". It had interviewed 500 Iraqis potentially implicated in the country's WMD programme but suffered from a residual fear of Saddam's security apparatus, the sources said. "It is impossible to predict what will or won't be found," a defence source said.
Andy Oppenheimer, a weapons expert with Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor, said: "We have known for some time that the expertise was there for all three kinds of WMDs. Saddam tried - and succeeded - in getting equipment after 1998 but there hasn't been anything that could be said to be a culmination of that. A lot of hope was being put into the interviews with Iraqi scientists. But there still hasn't been anything tangible. Iraq had a very substantial body of expertise but the problem is finding anything that could have been an immediate threat, such as battlefield weapons. Iraq was trying to develop WMDs - trying, but there is nothing that represents an immediate threat."
Daniel Neep, head of the Middle East programme at the Royal United Services Institute, said: "It does underline the fact that there was a fundamental failure of intelligence, not just in what was presented to the public. The ramifications of that are going to take some time to unfold. A lot of credibility was placed on defectors without necessarily corroborating the information from other sources. Questions have to be raised about why we didn't have better information about what was going on in Iraq."
Nuclear
The Iraq Survey Group found no evidence of nuclear weapons under construction but said it had found evidence of Saddam gearing up to build one once international sanctions had been lifted.Before the war, the consensus among specialists on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as within MI6 and the CIA, was that Saddam had no nuclear weapons and that it would take years to build them - yet the British and US governments insisted that Saddam had a covert programme. Two stories were circulated before the war that have since been largely discredited. The US said Iraq was illegally importing aluminium tubes for an alleged nuclear weapons programme and both the US and British governments claimed that Iraq had secretly tried to secure uranium from Niger.
The British government last night hailed the Iraq Survey Group as vindication of its concerns about Saddam: basically, that he was intent on securing nuclear weapons. An MoD official concluded: "No existing weapons but continuing intention [to develop] when the time was right and once sanctions were finished."
Support for this viewpoint came from Tim Trevan, a former British weapons inspector in Iraq and the author of Saddam's Secrets: The Hunt for Iraq's Hidden Weapons. He said last night: "I think it is reasonable to assume there was no active construction of any nuclear weapons. There was a longer-term desire for a nuclear programme that would be consistent with the psychology of Saddam." He added: "If [material] was hidden or destroyed, very few people would have been involved. It would not have been scientists but intelligence people. It is quite possible we might not ever find it."
Toby Dodge, an Iraq specialist at Warwick University, took a more sceptical view: "The whole case for war was based on allegations of active procurement. The Kay report kills the argument for nuclear procurement which by implication kills the whole case for WMD." John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, agreed with the Kay assessment that there was intent, though not much was happening on the nuclear front. He added that nuclear material was easy to conceal: "The material to make one bomb a year would fit inside a grocery store."
Ewen MacAskill and Brian WhitakerBiological
The Kay report describes a "clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses" run by Iraqi intelligence service. It said one had been housed in a prison lab complex. The report refers to "strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons". MoD sources said the seed stock of this unidentified organism could be turned into a "weaponisable biological weapon" within 48 hours. In one of the few specific examples, the report also refers to a single vial of "C.botulinum Okra B", which British sources claimed could be used in weapons within 48 hours.Professor Harry Smith, emeritus professor of microbiology at Birmingham University and chairman of the Royal Society's working group on biological weapons, said: "What were these secret labs like? Did they have containment units? It looks as though the Iraqis were still thinking of these weapons but nothing concrete had been done. You need more detail to really know and the survey group won't get it, I think."
Dr Glen Rangwala, of Cambridge University, said the discovery of a vial of C Botulinum in the home of an Iraqi scientist, which the report says could have been used to produce a biological agent, was not conclusive. "It's not a strain which is most toxic. It can be used for the vaccination of cattle. The types which Iraq developed before 1991 were A and B Botulinum."
Jonathan SteeleDelivery systems
The report refers to hitherto unknown Iraqi plans to procure or develop long-range missiles and warheads to put on them. But, in common with its references to chemical and biological weapons, the message is that while the intention was there, the capability was not."There was warhead design but no evidence of actual warheads," a British defence source said last night. He was referring to the report's description of a claim by "one cooperative source" who said he suspected that a new missile system "was intended to have a CW[chemical]-filled warhead". The report adds: "But no detainee has admitted any actual knowledge of plans for unconventional warheads for any current or planned ballistic missile".
This contrasts with the claims and impression of the government's dossier published last September, which implied Saddam had chemical and biological warheads which could be fired at western targets within 45 minutes. That the reference was only to short-range battlefield weapons only became clear after evidence to the Hutton inquiry. Yesterday the survey group said it had found no evidence even of those.
The government's September dossier spoke of the deployment of Samoud missiles with a range of at least 125 miles, the retention of Hussein missiles with a range of 400 miles, and the production of Ababil missiles with a range of at least 125 miles. Dr Trevor Findlay, director of Vertic, an independent verification and inspection research body, said: "It's one thing to order the development of missiles. You have to test them in the open and we would have known from satellites if he had tried."
Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University's school of peace studies said: "No Scuds have been found. This runs counter to what the US and the British said before the war. They gave figures that they thought Iraq had between 12 and 20. As for orders to develop ballistic missiles with a range of up to 600 miles, this is not much more than what they did 12 years ago with the modified Scuds which were to go 400 miles. The new information is only significant in a minor way."
Richard Norton-TaylorWMD aspirations
The report argues that "judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programmes, Saddam had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire WMD".Prof Rogers said last night: "You could hardly expect anything else, given that he had them in 1991. But it's a long way from saying they were close to getting anything again. If the Unmovic inspection process had not been called off on the eve of the war, the Iraqis wouldn't have been able to develop anything."
Prof Rogers said he was surprised by two main aspects of the Kay report. First, its candour. "Given that Dr Kay said two months ago that he expected to find major stuff and he was pretty convinced the Iraqis had it, the report is really very candid. They don't seem to be egging the pudding." Second was the conclusion that no weapons had been found, not even Scud missiles. "In all honesty, I did think before the war that Iraq had some residual biological and chemical weapons capability for use in extremis as a deterrent. The fact that it doesn't exist demonstrates an incredible intelligence failure before the war. It's on a par with the failure to predict the Iranian revolution in 1979."
Jonathan SteeleChemical
The report admits it has "not yet found evidence to confirm prewar reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against coalition forces". (This was the notorious 45-minute claim in the British government's September dossier).Dr Findlay said: "In the absence of any weapons, the inspectors would have had to find military operational manuals about plans for use. No one before the war wanted to say there were no stored stocks of agents and precursors. They were always possible. It's a surprise the survey group hasn't found them. This confirms the good work which Unscom and Unmovic did, even though they were quite conservative in their conclusions." Commenting on the survey group's report that no detained Iraqi scientist or official admitted any knowledge of plans for unconventional warheads for any current or planned ballistic missile, Prof Rogers said: "It now seems pretty conclusive that the Iraqis took a decision to dismantle."
Jonathan SteeleGuardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003