Saddam Tapes

I thought I would share my condensed interpretation of one of the so-called "Saddam Tapes", since the far right clearly got here early in anticipation of some almighty explosive revelations and must now be disappointed.

Bill Tierney, former United Nations weapons inspector, was handed digital copies of the tape recordings some time ago. He says he was asked to translate them for the FBI. Experts from both CIA and DIA have already analysed copies of the tapes.

Tierney alleges that one particular recording (circa 1995) captures Saddam Hussein and Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, discussing ways to attack America using weapons of mass destruction. On February 15, ABC News Nightline got an exclusive look at the material in advance of a longer, more personal presentation by Tierney at a non-governmental intelligence summit. Interestingly and perhaps tellingly, after Nightline checked with their own transcribers, it emerged that their interpretation, though highly interesting, differs with Tierney's.

Saddam recalls that he warned at least two western governments of the growing threat of WMD terrorism a long time before August 2 (a probable reference to his invasion of Kuwait) while Aziz is keen to refute the argument leveled against Iraq that it would be inclined to carry out such an attack on the United States, as opposed to, say, a deranged American citizen doing the same. "I mean, they don't have a logical argument", he can be heard saying. Many other governments shared a similar assessment. I am surmising that, if the general date of the recording is correct, then news of the March 1995 Tokyo underground gas attack and/or April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing may have been the precursor to the debate.

The transcript I have chosen to discuss in a little more detail is the second of the two made publicly available on the ABC News Nightline website. Perhaps because of the complexity of this issue, it has, in my view, been widely misreported. What Hussein Kamel can be heard discussing (abridged version here) is the wisdom of the decision by Iraq to withhold crucial quantitative data — not weapons as some media outlets are falsely reporting — from the UN inspection teams.

Following the cessation of hostilities in 1991, Saddam terminated Iraq's shattered and broken unconventional weapons programmes. According to Frank Cleminson, himself a former UNSCOM inspector and UNMOVIC commissioner, Iraq proceeded not only to hand over "militarily significant holdings of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations as instructed," it also "participated effectively in a follow-on destruction process." Foolishly, Iraq simultaneously retained and destroyed large quantities of weaponry unilaterally, beyond UN supervision, all of the time downplaying the size and scope of what it had previously managed to accumulate. To make matters worse, Saddam decided not to disclose Iraq's defunct biological weapons programme in the hope that disarmament experts would miss all trace of it, pack-up their belongings, and not come back. It had worked once before when he was a strategic ally, and when inspectors weren't being pressured to turn over every stone and look under every rock. As Hans Blix recalls:

...before the [1991] Gulf War, the IAEA had a safeguard system that was constructed by august member states, and which we operated to the full satisfaction of the said august member states. (laughter)

Unfortunately for Saddam, on this occasion, visiting teams had been thoroughly briefed and they quickly ascertained that Iraq was holding back many important aspects of its inoperative programmes.

What Hussein Kamel says on the tape fits in with this analysis. They did not tell the entire truth and submitted deflated numbers to UNSCOM. The arms control specialists went about their business in a studious and legalistic way. They had identified a number of discrepancies and were not going to go away until they received a satisfactory explanation. Kamel's voice is that of a man straining to explain this to Saddam, probably in the hope he will assist more fully in accounting for every last nut and bolt — anything less would be of further hindrance and lead only to deeper suspicion.

Here is another as-yet unidentified Iraqi scientist attempting to simplify the same problem:

Right now Sir, this is a meeting of the highest leadership in our country, we did actually produce biological weapons. It's not a lie to say that we worked in this field. And the materials that came here came for this purpose, not for the medical use like we told the Special Committee. So when there's proof, you are a man of law, when there's a case in a court, and there's proof, it leads to the conclusion. So the conclusion that the Special Committee came to is correct, it's not a lie.

The conclusion said that you imported a large quantity of materials that are used for medical purposes, and at the same time they are raw materials to produce biological weapons. You said it's for medical purposes, using it for medical purposes only requires kilograms not tons. Meaning that the Ministry of Health can use 200 kilograms the entire year for examinations, but it doesn't use 37 tons.

They see two issues sir, they see some very efficient and accurate actions from us, and they see some mistakes. But when we exaggerate the mistake, they'll say: you guys are efficient and accurate, know exactly how to work a machine, you were able to establish this big military program with little resources, nobody helped you, but you want us to believe that buying 37 tons was by mistake?

[...]

How could they not know, if they wanted? There are means for knowing that. We have materials that we imported from the United States and they know their quantity. We also have materials imported from Europe and they know their quantity also.

In 2002, US Vice President Dick Cheney incorrectly alleged that Iraq only admitted to running such a bio-weapon programme after Kamel's defection. In fact, Iraq conceded once having an offensive programme shortly before he fled the country. Kamel was valuable in that he provided the location of a large stash of undeclared technical documentation.

And there is another important document, previously kept from public view, that points directly at the truth. After escaping from Iraq, Kamel informed his debriefers that, yes, the programmes had indeed been more advanced than the regime was willing to admit, but much more significantly: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed. ... You have important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq." Kamel's raw declaration was known to the Americans and British a long time before 2003.

Iraq would have been better off admitting to the true scale of its military programmes at the outset, since the inspectors ended up exposing a whole series of lies relating directly to them. The job of disarming Iraq was unnecessarily difficult, both because of Saddam's initial dishonesty and later, with the realisation that the United States had infiltrated the UNSCOM apparatus in a bid to assassinate him, his contemptuous distrust. For this second reason the Clinton administration, CIA, people like Charles Duelfer (and, yes, Bill Tierney) must all share a portion of the blame.

The executive chairman of UNSCOM, Rolf Ekeus, reported to the Security Council in 1997 that "the accumulated effect of the work that has been accomplished over six years since the ceasefire went into effect, between Iraq and the Coalition, is such that not much is unknown about Iraq's retained proscribed weapons capabilities." By the time of UNSCOM's withdrawal in 1998, all direct infrastructure was either destroyed or rendered useless by the inspectors. In a presentation at Harvard University on May 23, 2000, Ekeus said, "in all areas we have eliminated Iraq's capabilities fundamentally."

Iraq was comprehensively disarmed, which is one of the reasons we attacked it, and experts with a slightly fanatical respect for the truth knew this to be the case.

Update #1: I am affixing a link to Scott Ritter's 2002 Caltech University address here. Ritter was chief UNSCOM weapons inspector before he resigned his post. He explains the twists and turns of the disarmament process far better than I ever can. It's a passionate and compelling speech, and one I have not forgotten.

Update #2: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has issued an Action Alert on this topic.

Update #3: This is getting bizarre. It's now clear that Bill Tierney is a fan of Laurie Mylroie. I believe he has allowed her nonsensical writing to unduly influence his presentation. Byron York (spit) has more. Tierney's response is published here.

Pajamas Media has some unintentionally hilarious video here, here and here.

Apart from appearing emotionally unstable, his chief sin in the eyes of some neocons may have been his poor choice of platform: The Intelligence Summit. Only a few degrees separate, they have a major problem with a number of its backers - specifically those honest enough to call attention to the Bush family history of profiteering and fraternisation.

Leading neoconservative intellectuals are pushing hard for the release of captured Iraq material directly into the blogosphere, thereby allowing other associated individuals to quote by selection. FBI interest in the tapes (rumoured Iraqi terrorism) may have been stimulated by exactly the kind of rubbish Tierney is propagating. Should they have known better?

Update #4: Sherrie Gossett, a conservative oriented investigative reporter, has more information on Bill Tierney's Intelligence Summit presentation. Evidently, his interpretation of the tapes cannot be relied upon.