[Peace-discuss] Top Iraqi Weapons Official Studied CBR WMD Warfare in the United States

[Margaret E. Kosal]

 From the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) - a non-proliferation NGO.
More reporting on the tangled history of the US, Iraq and proliferation of 
chem & bio weapons.
If you go to the NTI website link (directly below), the hyperlinks take one 
to declassified DoD reports and the text of the UN reports (oooooh, primary 
data!!! <bg>).
mek

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2003_2_25.html#7

Iraq: Top Iraqi Weapons Official Studied CBR WMD Warfare in the United States
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — An Iraqi officer described as the “father” of Iraq’s chemical 
weapon development program received offensive and defensive chemical, 
biological and radiological warfare tactics instruction from the U.S. Army 
in the early 1960s, according to U.S. sources (see GSN, Jan. 28).
Gen. Nizar Attar — who as late as the mid-1990s served as a key, senior 
Iraqi chemical and biological weapons official and was also a reputed 
adviser to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — received the instruction as a 
junior officer in 1961 through the U.S. military assistance program at the 
Army Chemical School in Fort McClellan, Ala., according to former senior 
U.N. weapons inspector Richard Spertzel. Such training was then considered 
legal under international law, as there were no treaties banning the 
possession of such weapons.
Spertzel met with Attar in the mid-1990s, while conducting missions in Iraq 
as head of the U.N. inspectors’ biological weapons team from 1994 to 1998.
Another U.S. source knowledgeable about Attar’s history, also said the 
Iraqi officer attended the Army school. Army and Pentagon spokespeople said 
they had no information available on the activities from that period.
Attar probably received more extensive instruction from the Soviet Union, 
as he later attended the Timoshenko Military Academy of Chemical Defense in 
Moscow in 1964, and apparently spent another 18 months in the Soviet Union 
in 1975 and 1976, according to Spertzel.
Former U.N. weapons inspectors believe Attar went on to direct Iraq’s 
chemical weapons development program and head its main research and 
production facility, the Muthanna State Establishment, from around 1979 
until 1987, overlapping with the period when Iraq was aggressively 
producing and using chemicals against Iranian forces during the 1980s 
Iran-Iraq war.
As late as the mid-1990s, Attar was believed to be heading Iraq’s principal 
agency suspected of acquiring materials for biological weapons. His current 
circumstances could not be ascertained.
Offensive and Defensive Tactics
Attar was one of as many as 19 Iraqi officers to receive the U.S. Army 
training from 1957 to 1967, and among hundreds of other non-U.S. military 
officials from around the globe.
The courses included defensive subjects described by the Army as “defense 
against biological attack” and “CBR [chemical, biological and radiological 
weapons] protective devices and equipment.”
They also included apparently offensive subjects as “unconventional 
warfare,” “principles of CBR employment” and “calculation of chemical 
munitions requirements.”
Indicating the courses were intended to provide information for 
dissemination back in the homeland, they also included instruction in 
“conducting CBR training.”
The United States and the Soviet Union at the time, each with significant 
offensive chemical and biological weapons programs, were competing for 
influence in the Middle East and elsewhere, and officials viewed military 
assistance as an important tool in that competition.
Still, experts question the wisdom of providing instruction in offensive 
tactics.
“In no way, anyway, would we [the British military], under a foreign 
training program, have offered any information like that, for obvious 
reasons,” said John Eldridge, editor of Jane’s Nuclear, Biological and 
Chemical Defense.
He said the United Kingdom also trained Iraqi, Iranian and other foreign 
militaries in chemical and biological warfare during the 1960s, but only 
taught defensive tactics, reflecting the fact that the United Kingdom had 
renounced possessing such weapons in the 1950s.
The U.S. Army viewed those weapons differently. In 1958, it quietly 
reversed its policy to not use chemical or biological weapons first in a 
conflict, in existence since 1943. The United States did not sign the 1925 
Geneva Protocol banning the first use of such weapons until 1975.
Beginning particularly in the late 1950s, the Army also funded a public 
campaign to promote chemical and biological weapons as humane, useful and 
necessary weapons for deterrence.
Tactical Training
Because the U.S. training provided Attar was described as tactical, experts 
said it probably would not have aided him greatly in his roles running 
chemical and biological development programs.
The instruction was provided at a time, however, when Middle Eastern and 
other countries around the globe were beginning to develop an interest in 
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and there was a concern at the 
time that U.S. technical assistance might encourage proliferation.
“You could argue that you were laying the seeds for interest in senior 
military officers in some particular weapons,” said Leitenberg.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to happen from the top down, it can happen 
from the bottom up,” said Harvard professor Matthew Meselson, who 
co-directs the Harvard-Sussex Program on chemical and biological arms control.
“If you send them to chemical defense school, these guys might see their 
careers in chemical weapons. And, then it just depends on how good they 
might be in building a little bureaucracy, convincing their leadership,” he 
said.
Key Positions
Attar is not well known by many Western experts on Iraq, perhaps because of 
his government’s notorious efforts to conceal suspected illicit activities. 
A number of former U.N. inspectors, however, say Attar was a key figure in 
the chemical weapons development program, some calling him the “father” of 
that program.
A 1999 U.N. inspectors report also attributed to Attar the resurgence of 
Iraq’s biological weapons program in the mid-1980s.
A February 1991 U.S. intelligence bulletin further identified Attar as a 
senior adviser to Hussein. The declassified bulletin, produced by the 
Defense Intelligence Agency and containing “not finally evaluated” 
information, said Attar “had studied in both the United States and in the 
Soviet Union and had served as a chief adviser to the chief of staff and to 
Saddam Hussein.”
Attar was jailed sometime prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, but 
was released six months later, according to bulletin.
When Spertzel met with Attar between 1994 and 1998, the Iraqi official was 
believed to have headed the Iraq’s Technical and Scientific Materials 
Import Division, according to a 1999-published book by former weapons 
inspector Tim Trevan called Saddam’s Secrets, The Hunt for Iraq’s Hidden 
Weapons. The division was suspected to have been the main procurement 
agency for Iraq’s biological weapons program.