The Inspections Maze | csmonitor.com

For six weeks in 1996, under a hot summer sun, the UN oversaw the destruction of Al Hakam. Structural engineers set explosives to fell dozens of buildings. Chemists neutralized biological cultures. Oxyacetalyne torches were used to cut through double-jacketed steel fermenters. Some equipment was spared and tagged for monitoring purposes.

Part of the inspectors' job was to confirm that Iraq hadn't removed anything for illegal future use. "From the year before, pictures had been taken of equipment on that site, so when we went a year later, we had these pictures to make sure that things hadn't been moved," says Olivia Bosch, a UN inspector in Iraq in 1996 and currently at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Though UNSCOM was successful in uncovering Al Hakam, Tucker says that ferreting out bioweapons will still pose a big problem for future inspectors. "Bio facilities can be considerably smaller than chemical facilities, because a militarily significant quantity of chemical weapons is on the order of several tons, whereas with a biological agent, it's in the range of kilograms," he says.

Tucker says that good intelligence is crucial, but that countries such as the US often fail to provide it for fear of compromising sensitive sources and collection methods. "If we want the inspections to work, [the US] will have to be willing to put some intelligence-collection assets at risk by sharing timely information with the UN," he says.

Future inspectors won't be able to rely heavily on export documents, because Iraq can now make critical equipment and growth media, say inspectors.

And while there are some new technologies to test for anthrax, there is no scientific silver bullet for the next generation of inspectors, says Spertzel. Ultimately, they will need to work through similar puzzles with the same mix of white-coat and trench-coat savvy. But, says Spertzel, "A good scientist has a good analytical mind."

Setting explosives and blowing up Al Hakam. UN

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Returning what they stole
To prepare Al Hakam for destruction, in May of 1996, inspectors began verifying that all the equipment scheduled to be destroyed was still on site. While going down their list, Iraqi officials drove up with truckloads of missing equipment. The Iraqis claimed that thieves had pilfered the equipment in January of 1995 from a nearby bunker, and even showed inspectors a bunker door that had been destroyed in what they claimed was a theft. The Iraqi officials said they had retrieved the material and, in a show of good faith, had brought it back for UNSCOM to destroy.

However, UNSCOM wasn't fooled. As part of their monitoring mission earlier that month, inspectors had placed a seal over the bunker door and taken a photo of it. In the photo, the door that allegedly had been destroyed months earlier was in fine shape.

Another story falls flat
After a series of revisions to their story, the Iraqis finally admitted they had made biological weapons. So where were the weapons? Iraq claimed to have destroyed them in 1991 – with no independent witnesses for verification. UNSCOM skepticism only increased after talking with a man who supposedly cleaned up the remains of the scrapped warheads. Inspectors asked if he had any trouble with flat tires. No, he said. Then they asked what kind of tires he used. Regular tires, he said. According to an inspector, the task would have required special tires to prevent punctures from the warhead's shrapnel.