[Peace-discuss] NPR Interview w/ Scott Ritter (part 1 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

	National Public Radio (NPR) SHOW:
	Talk of the Nation (3:00 PM ET)
	August 28, 2002 Wednesday
	HEADLINE: Threat that Iraq poses to the United States
	ANCHORS: NEAL CONAN

NEAL CONAN, host:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

Earlier this week, Vice President Dick Cheney argued the case against
Saddam Hussein to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, a speech
that's been described as the administration's most forceful presentation
of the case to date. While the vice president reiterated that President
Bush has not yet decided how to proceed against Iraq, he said that doing
nothing was not an option. The focus of the speech was on weapons of mass
destruction. The vice president said that failure to act would give Saddam
Hussein more time to develop chemical and biological weapons and he warned
that Iraq would construct nuclear weapons soon. Vice President Cheney
dismissed the idea of a new round of UN weapons inspections, noting Iraq's
extensive efforts to hide its nuclear weapons programs in the past.
(Soundbite of speech)

Vice President DICK CHENEY: Saddam also devised an elaborate program to
conceal his active efforts to build chemical and biological weapons. And
one must keep in mind the history of UN inspection teams in Iraq. Even as
they were conducting the most intrusive system of arms control in history,
the inspectors missed a great deal. Before being barred from the country,
the inspectors found and destroyed thousands of chemical weapons and
hundreds of tons of mustard gas and other nerve agents. Yet Saddam Hussein
had sought to frustrate and deceive them at every turn and was often
successful in doing so.

I'll cite just one instance: During the spring of 1995, the inspectors
were actually on the verge of declaring that Saddam's programs to develop
chemical weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles had been fully
accounted for and shut down. Then Saddam's son-in-law suddenly defected
and began sharing information. Within days, the inspectors were led to an
Iraqi chicken farm. Hidden there were boxes of documents and lots of
evidence regarding Iraq's most secret weapons programs.

CONAN: In a moment, we'll hear from two former weapons inspectors about
what they found, how they found it and what they think Iraq may have now.
What can we know about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its
capability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons? How big a
threat is Iraq? Later in the program, we'll ask why the administration
believes that the policies that contained the Soviet threat wouldn't work
against Iraq.

If you have questions about Iraqi weapons and how dangerous they might or
might not be, give us a phone call. Our number is (800) 989-8255. That's
(800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is <totn at npr.org>.

Joining us now is Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq from
1991 through 1998. He was the chief of the Concealment Investigations
Unit, and he joins us from his home in Albany, New York.

And good to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.

Mr. SCOTT RITTER (Former UN Weapons Inspector): Well, thank you. It's a
pleasure to be here.

CONAN: So you were listening as we played that clip of tape from Vice
President Cheney's speech. Did you guys, the inspectors, miss a lot?

Mr. RITTER: That's a deeply disturbing comment that the vice president
made because it reflects either the fact that he's totally ignorant of the
reality of what was transpiring, or if he is truly cognizant of what
happened, he lied to the American public. And I'd hate to think the vice
president is lying. But the fact of the matter is, we were never close to
giving Iraq a clean bill of health on ballistic missile and chemical
weapons in 1995. We had concerns. We were prepared to say that we had
fundamentally disarmed Iraq and that if we had a monitoring regime in
place we were confident that we could prevent Iraq from reconstituting its
capabilities. But, you know, we weren't sitting there being dupes for
anybody.

And it's also misleading to talk about Saddam's son-in-law the way he did.
The fact of the matter is, if one reviews the transcripts of the
debriefings that the CIA, British intelligence and UNSCOM, the weapons
inspectors, had with Hussein Kamel, and I have these transcripts, it's
amazing that--you know, what Hussein Kamel says is that he ordered all the
weapons destroyed, that there were no weapons left. Hussein Kamel's
revelations never led us to a chicken farm. The Iraqi government led us to
the chicken farm as part of their damage control. And after years of
evaluating the documents in the chicken farm, it did not further our
understanding fundamentally of what we had accomplished in terms of
disarming Iraq.

So not only does it prove that the inspectors weren't dupes, it also
proves we did a pretty darn good job. And I think the vice president and
other Bush administration officials better be careful before they start
misrepresenting the work of myself and other weapons inspectors in such an
egregious manner.

CONAN: Well, why don't we go through the categories of weapons of mass
destruction in order. Chemical weapons: What did Iraq have? How much did
you find and how easy was it to find it?

Mr. RITTER: Well, Iraq had a massive chemical weapons program. They
produced mustard agent. They produced nerve agent, sarin and tabun, and
they produced a particularly lethal form of nerve agent known as VX. We
destroyed the factories that produced mustard, sarin and tabun. We
eliminated the production equipment associated with these agents. We
destroyed the vast majority of the weapons produced by these factories. VX
is a different category altogether. Iraq at first denied having a VX nerve
agent program and after the inspectors didn't accept that answer and
pursued this through forensic investigation, we uncovered a research and
development laboratory. The inspectors uncovered it. It was destroyed. We
uncovered the fact that Iraq had procured production equipment for a
future VX factory. We destroyed this equipment. We uncovered the fact that
Iraq lied about having stabilized the VX; that means allowing the VX, once
it's manufactured, to have a long shelf life.

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RITTER: In the end, we still have some outstanding questions about VX,
but there is no production capability for VX in Iraq today. And if weapons
inspectors were in Iraq doing the kind of monitoring that we successfully
carried out from 1994 to 1998, Iraq would have no chance of producing VX.
Now that the inspectors are gone, there is a possibility that Iraq could
reconfigure its domestic civilian chemical industry to produce VX. But
again, this is something that would be detectable if inspectors returned.

CONAN: So you think there is a possibility that they do have it, though?

Mr. RITTER: No. I said there's a possibility that Iraq could have
reconstituted a manufacturing base. But this is something that's eminently
detectable by the intelligence services of the United States, Great
Britain, Israel and other nations. It's not something that's done in a
basement or a cave. And if Iraq had done this, I believe there's enough
information that would be able to be collected that we would know this for
a fact and not have to rely upon rhetorically laid speculation. We should
have hard facts to back this up, and void of any hard facts, my bet is
that Iraq hasn't done this.

CONAN: All right. Biological weapons?

Mr. RITTER: Biological weapons: Iraq had a massive infrastructure to
produce anthrax and botulinum toxin, which are the two main agents that
they had weaponized. They did research and development on other agents
such as clostridium perfringens. They produced something called aflatoxin,
which is a wheat smut, and actually put it in a weapon. No one can figure
out why they did this because aflatoxin is not immediately lethal. It has
long-term possible carcinogenic effects that give you liver cancer 30
years down the road. But it makes no sense as a weapon. But the main
weapons were anthrax and botulinum toxin. Iraq produced these in liquid
bulk agent. They had not perfected the means of aerosolizing this or
turning it into a dry, powdered form, which means they didn't have a
biological weapon. They had sludge that they put in a bomb or they put in
a warhead, but the fact is, when this bomb or warhead hit the ground, it
buried itself in the ground and all you had was a hole full of useless
sludge. The only way an Iraqi biological weapon would ever kill you, we
used to joke, is if it hit you on the head.

But even saying that, science takes over. Let's say one of the big
concerns is Iraq's biological program, particularly anthrax, is that they
procured enough growth media, that is the food used to grow biological
agent, the bacterium, to produce a huge quantity of this. And their
factory was massive. So there is a possibility they could have run off a
considerable production run and Iraq didn't have documentation to support,
you know, how much was produced so we assume the worst. We assumed they
produced a tremendous amount and that they were lying about the minimal
amount. But science and technology takes over. After three years, liquid
bulk anthrax germinates. It becomes useless sludge. It has a three-year
storage life under ideal circumstances. So even if Iraq lied to us,
retained anthrax, it's no longer viable.

And again I come back to the reality: We destroyed the production
facility. There is no way Iraq could have anthrax or botulinum toxin today
unless they reconstitute a manufacturing base, and in order to do that
they would have to procure large-scale fermentation units, which again is
a controlled item carefully watched by a number of intelligence services,
and nobody has provided information that Iraq has done this.

CONAN: Nuclear capabilities?

Mr. RITTER: Nuclear: Of the four categories, nuclear is the one that was
most thoroughly eradicated; two aspects of the program, weaponization and
enrichment. Enrichment is 100 percent eradicated. We destroyed the
facilities. We destroyed the means of production. And of all the aspects
of weapons of mass destruction, this is the one that's most difficult to
reconstitute. It would require a major reacquisition of technology, almost
all of which is controlled technology, very difficult to obtain even under
the most favorable of circumstances, especially not easy when you have
economic sanctions and the entire world's collective intelligence
apparatus looking at you. And then you'd have to rebuild the facilities,
which again is eminently detectable, not something that's done underground
or in a basement or in a cave. And again, void of any data or facts that
show Iraq has done this, don't need to worry about enrichment.

Which means if Iraq is to have a weapon, they need to acquire the fissile
material, the highly enriched uranium or plutonium, from an outside
source. And contrary to popular belief, there just is not a viable market
out there for highly enriched uranium. It's not on the market. There isn't
sellers out there. It's not something that's readily available. Iraq does
have a weapons design. They have solved the problem of designing and
building a device and I believe it's possible for Iraq to construct this
device in Iraq today using indigenous capabilities. But that device minus
highly enriched uranium or plutonium is just a very expensive
high-explosive bomb. It's not a nuclear weapon. So again, I'm not too
worried about Iraq's nuclear program.

CONAN: In an op-ed piece published earlier this summer in Newsday, you
wrote, 'If a substantiated case can be made that Iraq possesses actual
weapons of mass destruction, then the debate is over. The justification
for war is clear. But to date,' you add, 'the Bush administration has been
unwilling or unable to back up its rhetoric concerning the Iraqi threat
with any substantive fact.' Has that changed?

Mr. RITTER: No. I agree with this 100 percent. If Iraq possesses weapons
of mass destruction or is seeking to reacquire weapons of mass
destruction, more than a decade after the international community through
the form of the Security Council has banned these weapons, then clearly we
have a problem. Saddam Hussein would be a pariah leader at the head of a
rogue nation that means ill will to the world, and the United States would
have a case for war. And I'll tell you this, if we can substantiate that
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capacity, we would not be standing
alone. We would be able to get Security Council acquiescence on military
action and we would be able to build a viable coalition with, you know,
depth throughout the international community to confront Saddam Hussein.

So that's why, again, I'm puzzled by the fact that if we have a case
against Saddam, why aren't we making it? Why are we committing diplomatic
suicide by standing alone in this fashion, having the entire world desert
us if, in fact, this is, you know, the threat that we say it is?

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RITTER: The Israeli chief of staff came out just yesterday and said
he's not losing any sleep over Iraq. And, you know, this is Israel we're
talking about, the nation that would bear the brunt of any Iraqi weapon of
mass destruction. And Israeli intelligence...

CONAN: Scott...

Mr. RITTER: ...doesn't see that Iraq is a threat along the level that Dick
Cheney and others in the Bush administration have said. So what's going on
here?

CONAN: We just have less than a minute left here. Baghdad blows hot and
cold on the idea of new inspections. Is there anything that you can think
of that might convince them to give UN inspectors unfettered access?

Mr. RITTER: We have to remember why there aren't inspectors in Iraq today,
and it's not because Iraq kicked them out, it's because the United States
ordered them out before they began bombing Iraq in 1998, using
intelligence information gathered by inspectors to target Saddam. So for
inspectors to return with unfettered access, there would have to be some
sort of honest broker mechanism, a confidence-building mechanism in place
to ensure that when the inspectors went in, they would not be used or
susceptible for the kind of manipulation that occurred in the past. If we
can get that, and Canada has offered their services to do this, I believe
we can get inspectors in and they would succeed in doing their job.

CONAN: Scott Ritter, thanks very much.

Mr. RITTER: Thank you.

CONAN: Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, the author of
"Endgame." He was with us from Albany, New York.

What questions do you have about Iraq? We'll have more after a short
break. I'm Neal Conan. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

We're talking about Iraq and its potential as a threat to the United
States and its allies. How big is the threat and what do we really know?
You're invited to join the discussion about Iraq's weapons. Our number is
(800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is <totn at npr.org>.

And joining us now is Charles Duelfer, former deputy chairman of the UN
weapons inspection team in Iraq, now a guest scholar at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies here in Washington, DC. And he joins
us on the line from his office.

And welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.

Mr. CHARLES DUELFER (Guest Scholar, Center for Strategic and International
Studies): Thank you for inviting me, Neal.

CONAN: Earlier this summer you testified before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee about Iraq and you clearly see a threat there. What is
the threat and how do we know about it?

Mr. DUELFER: Well, you know, my take on Iraq is from looking at two
alternative futures. One is an Iraq carried forward under this regime with
the potential of weapons of mass destruction, with the leverage of four or
five million barrels a day of oil production, with its track record, with
its pattern of aggression, with its pattern of dominating not just its own
people but its neighbors. The alternative is a positive Iraq, an Iraq
under a government that behaves more by international norms. It really
ought to be the engine of development in the Middle East. The Iraqi
people, whom I spent a lot of time with, and they're very energetic, very
bright--they are an enormous resource that's being wasted.

And the difference between those two futures is at the regime. And I
think, you know, therein lies the problem and I think it is a risk. I
think there is clearly work going on in weapons of mass destruction. The
evidence points in that direction.

CONAN: How do we know that?

Mr. DUELFER: Well, you know, my conclusion is based on really five points.
One, when UNSCOM finished its work, there were some very important
remaining uncertainties and those uncertainties were much more logically
explained by a decision to retain weapons than the explanations that we
got from Iraq, which was, in essence, you know, 'The dog ate my homework.'

Secondly, there are Iraqis who have left Iraq in the past two or three
years and some of them I've met personally. And they have reported that
this work continues, and some of them are very, very credible. I mean, you
can ask them, 'Well, where was their office? Which way was it facing? Who
were their colleagues?' You know, things which people who have been on the
ground there can test. And they are credible.

A third point is just what you see via, you know, in the terms of art as a
national technical means, satellites and so forth. And while you can't
tell a lot--I mean, you can't see into buildings--you can see, for
example, missile testing and there is a lot of missile testing which is
reported to be going on.

CONAN: Well, one thing about that is Iraq under the cease-fire agreement
signed after the Gulf War is allowed to have some missiles that have a
range of about 90 miles or less.

Mr. DUELFER: That's correct. The question is: Are they abiding by that?
And are they not using the ability to produce those kinds of weapons to
mask other things? I mean, one of the effects of the very intrusive and
energetic inspections that we had was that we gave them really 10 years of
training on how to hide things. Ten years of experience on how to move
things around and how to disaggregate projects in ways which are hard to
see via, you know, national technical means, satellites and so forth.

But the final point I guess I would make is that, you know, the regime has
every incentive in the world to continue these programs. I mean, their
argument with us was that the possession of chemical weapons and ballistic
missiles saved them in the war. They're wrong. They argue that the reason
that the first Bush administration did not go to Baghdad in 1991 was
because they possess these weapons. So, you know, one has to ask yourself:
Why would Saddam give this stuff up? He knows that if he had a nuclear
weapon now, there would be no talk of invasion.

CONAN: Our caller is Tom, who joins us on the line from Tallahassee in
Florida.

TOM (Caller): Hey. How are you doing?

CONAN: Very well. Thanks.

TOM: Just a quick comment and then a question. The comment is I don't
really think that we're serious about invading Iraq, because he's had
these weapons. He's demonstrated the use of these weapons before on his
own people but he's never used them on any country that was capable of
retaliating, even when those countries were attacking him in a war
situation. So it's pretty obvious that he's not absolutely insane and that
his own preservation is paramount and he's not going to unleash weapons
that's going to result in the obliteration of him and his country.

But what my question is, is how come no one's considered the very obvious
likelihood that all this war talk is disinformation, and an effective
disinformation at that? Here we are coming up on the anniversary of
September 11th. There's been rumors in the past that Iraq has supported
terrorism, at least financially. Wouldn't this be an excellent way of
letting Saddam know that if anything happens, we're going to hold Iraq
accountable? And, you know, if a bakery truck blows up, Iraq's going to be
toast. And it's very likely that this is going to be an effective
deterrent. I know it would be if I were the ruler of Iraq. I'd be calling
the dogs off.

CONAN: Well, Charles Duelfer, what about the first part of that--Tom's
comment about, you know, if he does have these weapons, why would he use
them?

Mr. DUELFER: Well, Tom's right in the sense that in 1991, Saddam was
deterred from using weapons of mass destruction. I mean, I had this
conversation with him and he--you know, the Iraqis, the ministers that I
met with, said, 'Yes, in essence, you know, Saddam did not use these
weapons at that time because he figured he would be toast if he did.' By
the same token, they argued that the possession of these weapons and the
fact that they had dispersed them and predelegated the authority to use
them if the United States moved to Baghdad, kept the United States from
doing exactly that.

I mean, the ability of this regime to deter the United States--and if it
ultimately gets a nuclear weapon, you know, it will be able to exercise
leverage over the regional states or they will have to come to
accommodations, and I'm not sure we'll be able to protect our interests
under those circumstances.

TOM: Well, Israel has nukes and they aren't using their weapons against
anyone else and yet they haven't dominated the region and intimidated all
the other countries in that regard.

Mr. DUELFER: Well...

TOM: Why would Iraq be different?

Mr. DUELFER: Well, that's right. You're raising the argument of: Does the
United States have a double standard? And I think, you know, to be honest,
we do exercise a double standard. But I think, you know, Saddam Hussein
and Iraq under Saddam Hussein is a very different case than Israel under
any government. I mean, the people in Iraq, you know, don't look up to
Saddam Hussein. Most of his security services and all his elaborate system
is to control his own people. He has a track record of using force against
his own people. He has a track record of using it against his neighbors.
So to apply, you know, precisely the same standards that you would with
Israel as with Iraq, I think, is a mistake.

TOM: Well, I don't think the Palestinians would agree with you. They
probably would rather be Iraqians in Iraq under Saddam than Palestinians
in Israel. Thank you for your comment.

CONAN: Well, Tom, thanks for the call.

Charles Duelfer, a couple of areas we did not get into with Scott Ritter
and one of them involves ballistic missiles, and that goes to this e-mail
question that we got from Michael Moore(ph), 'In the event Iraq is capable
of producing weapons of mass destruction,' he writes, 'what is the
likelihood that these weapons can pass into the United States and how?'

Mr. DUELFER: Well, that's a good question. You know, in a military sense,
frankly these days Iraq has limited capacity because most of these weapons
are meant to be deployed either on missiles or aircraft, and the aircraft
of the Iraqi air force are in bad shape. The United States patrols the
no-fly zones. The opportunity for Iraqi aircraft to fly is pretty limited.
Ballistic missiles--the long-range ones, the modified Scuds that they had,
you know, if they still exist, and I suspect there are a few left, but
there are only a few left.

CONAN: A few is how many?

Mr. DUELFER: Oh, I would say 12 to 18. The real question here with respect
to a direct threat against the United States is, you know, can these
weapons be surreptitiously delivered to American forces overseas or
smuggled into the United States in some kind of a terrorist attack? I
mean, that's where I see the biggest risk, and particularly at a point in
time where, if we do proceed down this path towards a military
intervention in support of a regime change, there will be a point where
Saddam is convinced that this is going to happen. And he's a proactive
guy. He doesn't just sit back and wait for things to happen to him. He may
do something to just upset the apple cart.

[continued in part 2]