The inspections maze
In February 1995, a team of United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors left Baghdad on a bus headed for Al Hakam, an hour southwest of the Iraqi capital.
For years, UNSCOM suspected that the remote, 10-square-mile facility was producing more than just pesticide and chicken-feed supplement, as the Iraqi government claimed. Some inspectors were certain it was a biological-weapons factory.
But this visit, like those before, failed to resolve the question.
"The Iraqis became very skilled over the years at deception and denial techniques," says Jonathan Tucker, a member of a UN inspection team that visited Al Hakam in 1995. "At the time of our visit, there was still some uncertainty about whether Al Hakam was, in fact, a bioweapons production facility."
It took a several teams of weapons inspectors from the US, France, Sweden, Britain, Russia, and other nations a year of digging before Iraq admitted that Al Hakam was producing biological weapons.
With a new UN resolution expected to pass this week, inspectors will be back in Iraq later this month armed with new technology and the lessons learned at Al Hakam. The UN estimates that there are some 700 sites to examine. But if Al Hakam is any indication, the Iraqi inspection games are just beginning.
Al Hakam was supposedly for civilian purposes only. But its remote location, guard towers, and high barbed-wire fence seemed strange to inspectors. The unusual distance between buildings appeared to be an attempt to provide containment for potential toxic leaks. And for an alleged chicken-feed factory, only three scrawny chickens were seen strutting around.
Inside, the equipment appeared legitimate at first glance. There were fermentation tanks and controllers connected by snaking pipes. But a closer look revealed an unusual degree of jury-rigging.
"The fermenters had been cannibalized from different plants, the piping was of different sizes, and it had all been welded together," says Mr. Tucker. "The equipment was clearly not state of the art, but it was good enough to produce anthrax and other bugs."
This was precisely the dilemma facing inspectors. While the ragtag gear could be used for legitimate purposes, these same components could also produce deadly weapons. Inspectors say that biological-weapons are among the hardest to detect because of the "dual-use" nature of the equipment.
To Richard Spertzel, head of UNSCOM's bioweapons team, the fermentation tanks suggested something sinister. They were quite small, more in line with the production of bioweapons than single-cell proteins, an additive to chicken feed.
"Single-cell protein [producers] don't mess around with a 2,000- or 5,000-liter fermenter," he says. "Most of them scoff at anything under 100,000."
As part of its monitoring mandate, the UN required that Iraq provide monthly records for Al Hakam, such as raw-materials orders, water-consumption data, and quality-control measures. The Al Hakam scientists obliged, but their accounting didn't add up.
"It was so embarrassing how they presented their science, because even mathematically it wasn't correct," says one UN inspector.
To try to get to the truth, inspectors conducted grueling interviews with Iraqi scientists in Baghdad hotels. Tucker says that this was an arduous process because the scientists were unable speak freely.
"Iraqi officials insisted on having a minder sitting in on all the interviews," he says. "People knew that they could be signing their death warrant if they said too much."
