WASHINGTON — More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has intensified its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said Saturday.
Over the past 14 months, Iraq has tried to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said that several efforts to arrange the shipment of the high-strength tubes were blocked or intercepted, but they declined to say, citing the extreme sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.
The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had convinced American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program, officials said, and that the most recent attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.
The attempted purchases are not the only signs of a renewed Iraqi interest in acquiring nuclear arms. Saddam has met several times in recent months with Iraq's top nuclear scientists and, according to American intelligence, praised their efforts as part of his campaign against the West.
Iraqi defectors who once worked for the nuclear weapons establishment there have told American officials that acquiring nuclear arms is again a top Iraqi priority. American intelligence agencies are also monitoring new construction at potential nuclear sites.
While there is no indication that Iraq is on the verge of deploying a nuclear bomb, Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons has been cited by hard-liners in the Bush administration to make the argument that the United States must act now, before Saddam acquires nuclear capability and thus alters the strategic balance in the Persian Gulf.
The possession of nuclear weapons would enhance Iraq's sway in the region, and could also embolden it to the point of using its biological and chemical weapons, Bush administration officials argue.
An Iraqi defector and Iraqi opposition movements say that Saddam has also heightened his efforts to develop newer and more chemical weapons of late. Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq had one of the largest stocks of chemical weapons in the developing world. In addition, some administration experts argue that Iraq has biological weapons and even stocks of smallpox that it could use to devastating effect.
The Bush administration officials contend that Saddam refrained from using such chemical and biological weapons during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 because he feared a devastating retaliatory blow from the United States. These officials argue that Saddam might conclude that America would not dare strike him if he had nuclear weapons.
"The jewel in the crown is nuclear," said a senior Bush administration official. "The closer he gets to a nuclear capability the more credible is his threat to use chemical or biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are his hole card."
"The question is not 'why now?"' the official said, referring to a possible campaign to remove Saddam. "The question is 'why is waiting better?' The closer Saddam Hussein gets to a nuclear weapon the harder he will be to deal with."
The administration briefed members of Congress on Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction this week, but it is not known to what extent officials talked about the blocked shipments. Congressional leaders said they will hold hearings on Iraq policy soon.
Given the special intelligence-sharing relationship with Britain, the information on the attempted purchases — and other information — may be included in a dossier Prime Minister Tony Blair plans to release in a few weeks on Iraq's weapons programs.
The CIA still says it would take Iraq five to seven years to make a nuclear weapon if it must produce its own supply of highly enriched uranium for a bomb, a Bush administration official said.
American intelligence officials believe that Iraq could assemble a nuclear device in a year or somewhat less if it obtained the nuclear material for a bomb on the black market. But they say that there are no signs that Iraq has acquired such a supply.
Still, Saddam's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions as well as what defectors said in recent interviews about Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.
In drawing up plans for military action, the Bush administration is preparing to act while Iraq's conventional forces are still reeling from the effects of U.N. sanctions and the Persian Gulf War, Iraq's nuclear arsenal is nonexistent and the shock of the last year's terrorist attacks have made many Americans receptive to the idea of pre-emptive military action.
Critics say that the last decade has shown that Saddam can be contained through a combination of U.N. sanctions and carefully targeted airstrikes. Washington should enlist U.N. backing to force Saddam to accept inspectors back, and the assessments issued by the CIA, they insist, show that Washington has time to try its hand at diplomacy and that there is no urgent need to invade Iraq.
But hard-liners at the White House and Pentagon are alarmed by the failure of American intelligence to detect prior to Iraq's defeat in the Persian Gulf War that it had a well-developed and carefully hidden nuclear weapons program.
Conscious of this lapse in the past, the hard-liners argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found firm evidence that Saddam has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a "smoking gun," they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.
President Bush seems to share the hard-liners' concerns and, officials say, is determined to resolve the Iraqi issue during his presidency.
Painting an up-to-date picture of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is not easy. U.N. weapons inspectors have not visited Iraq for almost four years, leaving large gaps in their knowledge about Saddam's weapons programs.
Consequently, Bush administration officials are hoping to use what one official called a "mosaic" of disturbing new reports, like intelligence that Iraq has attempted to purchase the special tubing to make centrifuges, to underscore their warnings about Iraq's military ambitions.
These reports go beyond Iraq's nuclear program. American officials say that an Iraqi opposition leader recently gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Saddam has already authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Iraqi resistance that might be stirred up if United States attacks.
The paper was provided by Abdalaziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iranian-based exile group, during his recent visit with other Iraqi opposition leaders in Washington. It is being analyzed by American officials.
A 20-YEAR EFFORT TO BUILD A BOMB
Iraq's nuclear ambitions have a long history. Iraq first sought to obtain the plutonium for a nuclear bomb by purchasing a nuclear reactor from France, among other steps. That effort was stymied when Israel bombed the plant in 1981.
Iraq's next step was to mount a secret program to develop highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. American officials discovered after the Gulf War that Iraq had carefully hidden programs for almost every kind of unconventional weapon, and that it had been pursuing at least two methods of trying to produce fissile material.
Baghdad, they concluded then, was only several years away from making a nuclear bomb. Although analysts concluded that the weapon would have been too large to put on Iraq's missiles, it would have dramatically altered the strategic military balance in the Middle East.
Under the cease-fire arrangements made after the Persian Gulf War, Iraq promised to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and to admit U.N. weapons inspectors. American and U.N. officials believe, however, that Iraq sought to keep its nuclear program alive by, for example, keeping its teams of nuclear scientists together.
Frustrated by Iraq's repeated refusal to cooperate fully with U.N. inspectors, the Clinton administration — joined by Britain, also Bush's most likely partner if he decides to attack Iraq — ordered a series of airstrikes in late 1998.
The U.N. inspectors were withdrawn shortly before attacks, and Saddam has not allowed them to return. The absence of the inspections has deprived American intelligence of useful information about the status of Iraq's program.
Former American government experts say that Iraq is not on the verge of fielding a nuclear weapon, but has the expertise in nuclear weapon designs and engineering to develop nuclear arms over time.
"If he has revived his program, it would probably take Iraq a number of years to complete a production scale facility for producing fissile material and they would probably require a considerable amount of foreign equipment and expertise," said Gary Samore, a staff member on President Clinton's National Security Council who has overseen a new study of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"But if they keep working at it, it is likely that they will eventually get there," Samore added. "The fact that they were able to successfully conceal a mammoth project prior to the Gulf War has to give you some concern that they are pretty good in the art of deception."
Bush administration officials say the quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes is one of several signs that Saddam is seeking to revamp and accelerate Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
Officials say the aluminum was intended as casing for rotors in centrifuges, which are one means of producing highly enriched uranium.
Centrifuge technology takes uranium in a gas form and then spins it to separate the lighter and heavy isotopes. Rotors are the spinning part of the centrifuge machine. In 1991, Iraq planned to build a centrifuge plant of 1,000 machines designed to produce 10 kilograms, or more than 22 pounds, of highly enriched uranium a year. That was enough for half a bomb's worth given the Iraqi design for a nuclear weapon.
In addition to the special aluminum tubes, one senior administration official said that Iraq had mounted other equipment, epoxy resins that could be used for centrifuges. A key issue is whether the items Iraq has tried to buy are designed solely for centrifuge use or could have other applications.
Experts say the dimensions and precise specification of the aluminum tubes would provide a clear indication of its intended use. Iraq used European designs for centrifuges in its earlier efforts and American experts know what type of tubes are needed to make such centrifuges. Senior Bush administration officials insist the dimensions, specifications and numbers of the aluminum tubes Iraq tried to buy show that they were intended for Saddam's nuclear program.
Those skeptical about the urgency of the threat say Iraq's procurement efforts illustrate how dependent it is on foreign assistance and the difficulties it is encountering in trying to develop nuclear weapons. But administration hard-liners say the attempted purchases confirm Saddam's persistent determination to acquire nuclear weapons and that export controls can slow but not stop this effort.
CHEMICAL WEAPON WARHEADS
Chemical weapons could be a major worry on the battlefield if the United States to mounts an invasion. According to the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, the now defunct group charged with inspecting and disarming Iraq after the Gulf War, industrial-scale chemical weapons production began in 1982. Iraq acknowledged having produced sufficient quantities of chemical precursors for almost 500 metric tons of VX, a deadly nerve agent, as well as hundreds of tons of mustard gas, tabun and sarin.
In its war with Iran, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, Iraq used artillery shells, aerial bombs and rockets to deliver deadly chemicals. Iraq disclosed after the war that it had also deployed some 50 missiles equipped with chemical warheads.
The U.N. inspectors were able to verify Iraq's claims to have destroyed 34,000 special munitions and 823 tons of key chemical precursors. But they were unable to account for 2,000 supposedly unfilled munitions, and 25 "special warheads" intended to hold chemicals or germs. The inspectors were also unable to verify Iraq's claims to have destroyed 500 mustard-gas shells and 150 aerial bombs.
One central mystery concerns VX, a nerve agent so potent that a drop on the skin or inhaled can kill an adult within minutes. Although Iraq claimed to have destroyed at least 3.9 tons of the nerve agent and hundreds of tons of precursor chemicals needed to produce it, the inspectors concluded that Iraq might have retained enough precursor chemical to make about 200 tons of VX. After inspectors found VX traces on Iraqi warheads in the summer of 1998, they challenged Baghdad's assertions that Iraq had never loaded its warheads with VX.
In interviews in a European capital late last month, an Iraqi who said he was involved in the chemical weapons program before he defected two years ago said that Saddam had never stopped producing VX and other chemical agents, even when U.N. inspectors were in Iraq.
Speaking on the condition that neither he nor the country in which he was interviewed be identified, Ahmed al-Shemri, his pseudonym, said that Iraq had continued developing, producing and storing chemical agents at many mobile and fixed secret plants throughout the country, many of them underground.
"All of Iraq is one large storage facility," said Shemri, who claimed to have worked for many years at the Muthanna State Enterprise, once Iraq's chemical weapons plant. Since leaving Iraq, he has joined the Iraqi Officers Movement, an opposition group.
Shemri said that Iraq produced five tons of stable VX in liquid form between 1994 and 1998, before the U.N. inspectors left the country. Some of this chemical agent, he said, was made in secret labs in the northern city of Mosul and in the southern city of Basra. U.N. inspectors confirmed they had rarely visited either plant because of their long distances from Baghdad.
He said Iraq had the capacity to make at least 50 tons of liquid nerve agent, which he said was to be loaded into two kinds of bombs and dropped from planes.
Of even greater concern is Shemri's contention that as early as 1994 Iraq had invented and is now producing a new, solid VX agent that clings to a soldier's protective clothing and makes decontamination difficult.
An intelligence report dating to October 1990, two months after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, reflected American concern that Iraq might have mastered the production of "dusty VX," despite the fact that there was no evidence it had done so. "Dusty agents can penetrate US CBW overgarments under certain conditions," the report warned. It recommended that soldiers throw ponchos over their protective gear if such an agent were used.
Shemri said that Iraq had received assistance in its chemical, germ and nuclear programs from Russian scientists, many of whom are still working in Iraq. At least two Iraqi scientists also traveled to North Korea in early 2002 to study missile technology, he said.
Asked about Sehmri's assertions, American officials said they believed these reports were accurate, although they noted that North Korea and Iraq had regular technical exchanges, and that Russian scientists appeared to be freelancers and not part of a Russian government effort.
An former U.N. inspector called at least some of Shemri's information "plausible." While he said it was impossible to determine the accuracy of all his claims, he believed that Shemri "is who he claims to be, and worked where he claimed to work."
ARSENAL OF DEADLY GERMS
On the spectrum of weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons are somewhere between nuclear and chemical weapons. They have the potential to kill not only troops on the battlefield but also can used to strike at and terrorize an adversary's civilian population.
Iraq denied the existence of a germ warfare program entirely until 1995, when U.N. inspectors forced Baghdad to acknowledge it had such an effort. Then, after insisting that it had never weaponized bacteria or filled warheads, it again belatedly acknowledged having done so after Hussein Kamel, Saddam's brother-in-law, defected to Jordan with evidence about the scale of the germ warfare program.
U.N. and American records show that Iraq made over 22,000 gallons of anthrax and over 100,000 gallons of botulinum toxin, one of the world's most lethal poisons. The fate of those stocks remains uncertain. Any botulinum toxin produced before 1991 would no longer be active, but prewar stocks of anthrax spores could still be deadly if they had been stored properly.
In its final report to the U.N. Security Council in 1999, the inspectors said Iraq had concealed almost 160 bombs and more than two dozen Scud missile warheads filled with anthrax.
The warheads that Iraq had at the time of the Persian Gulf War were extremely inefficient. They detonated on impact and did not disperse their chemical or germ agents in an airburst. It is not known if Iraq has devised an improved warhead. Iraq could also try to disperse the germ agents by using aircraft or unmanned drones. The germs could be dropped in a bomb or sprayed into the air.
Shemri said he was told that Iraq was still storing some 12,500 gallons of anthrax, 2,500 gallons of gas gangrene, 1,250 gallons of aflotoxin and 2,000 gallons of botulinum throughout the country.
American officials have also expressed intense concern about smallpox, one of history's greatest scourges, which was declared eradicated from human populations in 1980. Today, only the United States and Russia have publicly declared stocks of the virus. But terrorism experts say clandestine supplies probably exist in several countries, including Iraq.
Although Bush administration officials say they have no proof that Baghdad has the smallpox virus, intelligence sources say they cannot rule out that possibility.
"There's a number of sensitive things," said a senior government official who has studied the evidence for more than a decade. "On a scale of one to ten, I'd say it's probably a six" that Iraq has the virus.
Experts say Baghdad could easily have obtained the starter germs from a natural outbreak of the disease that swept Iraq in 1971 and 1972.
The virus infected at least 800 people, according to "Smallpox and its Eradication," a World Health Organization book.
During the Gulf War, evidence of Baghdad's interest in smallpox came to light as allied forces discovered that a number of Iraqi soldiers had been vaccinated against the disease. The clue was ambiguous, however, since some allied troops had also had immunizations.
In 1994, U.N. inspectors examining Iraqi plants found a freeze drier at the repair shop of the State Establishment for Marketing Drugs and Medial Appliances that was industrial-sized and marked "smallpox machine" in Arabic.
Iraqi officials insisted the machine was not for drying the smallpox virus, but for drying the vaccinia virus, at the heart of the smallpox vaccine. This is a common practice, and the answer was judged plausible by the U.N. inspectors. If it was a lie, however, the machine had sinister implications — as did further clues contained in three papers on smallpox that were in documents on weapons programs turned over to the United Nations by Iraq.
It is Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons, however, that is at the top of the Bush administration's list of worries and which forms a key part of its case for a potential military campaign to overthrow Saddam. In their effort to make their case, Bush administration officials are even using Saddam's own words.
They cite a speech Saddam gave after meeting with the head of Iraq's Atomic Energy Organization. In the speech Saddam stressed "the importance of collective work in enabling the individual to overcome any trouble and achieve what is beyond his capabilities and energy."