I had said no such thing. The Iraqis had already begun to admit to their work with calutrons, and we had just been returning from seeing what they claimed were buried calutron components. Evidence of Iraq’s enrichment-related components and facilities was beginning to show up from multiple angles. I would have to have been rather thickheaded to insist that these programs did not exist. But this did not affect what was published or the spin-off stories that alleged IAEA incompetence.
Some UNSCOM inspectors would continue to use their authority excessively, without regard for religious and cultural sensitivities. They barged into mosques and churches, without evidence, to inspect for concealed WMDs. They inspected on local religious holidays, when there was no urgency to do so. They later insisted on inspecting Saddam Hussein’s palaces, not because of solid intelligence leads, but apparently just to show that they could. I sometimes wondered how they would have felt if the tables had been turned.
Although the majority of Iraqis loathed Saddam Hussein for his ruthless governing style, they saw these actions—as did much of the Arab world—as an affront to Iraqi dignity and a humiliation. Far from encouraging cooperation in Iraq, the inspectors’ invasive “cowboy” behavior naturally caused a buildup of resentment on the part of the Iraqis, particularly since these arbitrary intrusions never yielded any results.
As the summer of 1991 wore on, we still had no hard evidence of Iraqi nuclear weapons intentions. That Iraq had concealed their uranium enrichment and plutonium separation activities was clear. But they continued to claim that their program was peaceful.
The turning point came in late September, during the IAEA’s sixth inspection. Once again, useful intelligence information had been passed along, this time pinpointing two buildings in the center of Baghdad, offices of the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization. A security lapse on the part of the Iraqis had left a sizable cache of records in these buildings. When the inspectors showed up unannounced, they were able to view, and take possession of, many of these documents.
The Iraqis refused to let the team leave the site with the papers, however. The inspectors, led by David Kay of the IAEA and Robert Gallucci of UNSCOM, refused to give in, camping out in the parking lot. The standoff lasted three days and nights and was broadcast on live television. The scene became famous as the “parking lot” confrontation.
In the end, the Iraqis yielded. The seized documentation included a progress report that outlined the Iraqi efforts in weapons development. While it showed them to be still a year or two away from constructing a nuclear weapon, it demonstrated clearly the intent of the Iraqi government and proved that this aspect of their nuclear program was extensive, well organized, and well funded.
Later in the year, when Kay received an Agency award, the Iraqi ambassador to the IAEA, Dr. Rahim al-Kital, submitted a formal complaint to Blix. The complaint alleged a range of specific actions—for example, throwing official documents on the floor and treading on them, or threatening to call in U.S. warplanes. According to al-Kital’s memo, members of the inspection team were said to have broken down fences, cut telephone lines, and “appeared nude in the yard of the building in full view of the surrounding residential apartments.”[16]
These accusations were never corroborated. But it was clear that Kay and others on the team believed they needed to be aggressive to get the Iraqis to cooperate. While in the case of the parking lot confrontation, it could be argued that a certain degree of intimidation was warranted, and effective, in general I believe that the use of such tactics is ultimately counterproductive. An aggressive, overbearing approach destroys cooperation in the long run. Irrespective of its motive, the team’s behavior left an enduring impression, particularly in Iraq and in the Muslim world. The Iraqis, having just lost a war, had no choice but to accept these behaviors.
However, the most damaging action was the decision of Kay and Gallucci to send the critical papers to the U.S. State Department before either the IAEA or UNSCOM had received them. Gallucci insisted that they did so because that line of communication was “more reliable.”[17] But the result hurt the reputation of both the IAEA and UNSCOM, not only in the eyes of the Iraqis, who accused the Agency of turning into “an intelligence body in a scientific guise under the tutelage of the United States and its allies,” but also throughout the international community. Despite broad international support for the inspections, Member States were paying close attention to how the inspections were being conducted, and many were very sensitive to any implication that the international inspectors were in cahoots with U.S. or other national intelligence agencies. This perception would continue to plague UNSCOM, in particular, and eventually would lead to its downfall.
The ensuing series of Iraq nuclear inspections ran along three parallel tracks. One sought to flesh out our understanding of the weapons aspects of Iraq’s nuclear program, including identification of intended high-explosive test sites. A second track began preparing for the removal of high-enriched uranium from Iraq.[18] A third track focused on the destruction of the accumulated enrichment equipment. Centrifuge rotors were crushed. Magnets were cut into pieces using specialized plasma cutting tools. Devices used to handle nuclear material, such as hot cells and glove boxes, were rendered useless with the severing of control cables and the filling of the containers with cement.
After less than a year on the ground, the fulfillment of the IAEA mandate in Iraq under Resolution 687 was well under way. The origins of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program had become clear—as had, in large part, the motivations. The clandestine aspects of the program had begun in 1982, shortly after Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s research reactor at Osirak, which was under IAEA safeguards before it started operation. Whatever prior inclination Hussein and his colleagues might have had to pursue WMD had only been intensified by the humiliation of that experience. The perceived security imbalance in the region, with Israel as the only possessor of nuclear weapons, was starkly highlighted. The Security Council’s condemnation of Israel’s action as a clear violation of international law had resulted in no follow-up whatsoever. Israel merely ignored the council’s demands that it provide Iraq with compensation and that Israel place its own nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards. So Saddam Hussein had taken it upon himself to address the problem. We were witnessing the result.[19]
In the aftermath of the discovery of Iraq’s clandestine nuclear program, I made a couple of visits to Washington, meeting with many people from Congress and the executive branch. The question on everyone’s mind was why, over the years, had the IAEA missed the buildup of Iraq’s undeclared nuclear program. I was candid about the flaws in the system. I emphasized the Agency’s need for additional legal authority. The time was ripe. Nobody could argue that the NPT safeguards system was working properly. Iraq’s program had been uncovered only after a military defeat.
Back in Vienna, at the IAEA Secretariat, we had begun work on the concept of a Model Additional Protocol to make the Agency’s in-country verification authority more robust and explicit. As conceived, the Additional Protocol would be an add-on to the safeguards agreement each NPT member country was required to make with the IAEA.
It was a complex endeavor: a mix of technical, legal, and policy considerations. A frequent focus of discussion was how much inspection Member States would tolerate. This was not a new question. At the time of negotiating the NPT, a key sticking point had been the unwillingness of countries to give the IAEA too much oversight authority.[20] The deliberate deception carried out by Iraq had made clear that conducting international safeguards by “honor code” was no longer adequate; nor was it enough to inspect only what a country declared; nor was the IAEA authority sufficient. But these realities, while widely recognized, gave us no guarantee that Member States would subject themselves to more intrusive oversight.
16
Robert Gallucci’s description of this particular inspection makes it clear that, while it had to be an IAEA-led inspection, only three of the forty-two team members were IAEA inspectors. The others included individuals with “special skills,” whose expertise was not in nuclear science or WMD at all; the implication is that they were assigned to the team to ensure the documents would be retrieved by whatever means needed. As Gallucci said, “The team was very, very special.” See Gallucci, “Reflections” address.
17
According to Gallucci, “I was not confident about my interlocutor in New York, so I decided to go through the State Department.” Gallucci, “Reflections” address.
18
The removal from Iraq of the clandestinely produced six grams of plutonium had already been arranged as part of the fifth IAEA inspection, in mid-September.
19
Saddam Hussein had long been viewed as an asset by the United States, Europe, and the Arab States, who had encouraged, supported, and financed his 1980–1988 war with Iran, as a way to “contain the Iranian revolution.” This of course had added to Iran’s distrust and resentment of the West, and is viewed by many as having been the genesis of the Iranian nuclear program, following Iraq’s use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War.
20
The focus of IAEA verification at the time was large industrial countries, such as Japan, Germany, Italy, and Canada, since most developing countries did not have significant nuclear infrastructure.