by emptywheel
Summary: The story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi scientist who turned over nuclear parts and blueprints that had been buried under his rose bush, includes a number of suspicious details. In the first post in this series, I examine the multiple versions that have been told and try to put together a clear timeline of his experience. In this post, I'll first make two points about Obeidi's experience: we know his treatment was virtually unique among Iraqi scientists, and we know the CIA misrepresented his story. Then I look at a number of curious details that raise doubts about the materials Obeidi turned over to the Americans. In future post(s), I will pose questions about about the credibility of the Obeidi reporting.
Before looking at what Obeidi turned over to the Americans though, I'd like to pose a few overarching questions about Obeidi's experience that, I believe, temper all the following questions I'll raise.
How Did Obeidi Manage to Arrange Asylum?
First, as far as we know, Obeidi is the only Iraqi scientist who received American asylum after undergoing questioning. Several scientists died, either in apparent accidents (like Khalid Ibrahim Said, who died in a checkpoint shooting) or as a result of what appears to be torture (like Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly, who was delivered to a Baghdad hospital in a body bag, having died as a result of a blow to the head). Others escaped Iraq before the Americans arrived, and live under the protection of these other governments (like Jaffar Dhai Jaffar, who exiled to the UAE). The vast majority--again, as far as we know--remained in American custody for the entire time of the occupation, at least until last week when a number of key scientists were released; and unlike Obeidi, these scientists did not receive asylum in the US.
Obeidi's (apparently) unique experience raises the question--how was he able to persuade the Americans to give his family protection? I'm confident the involvement of David Albright was an important part. Albright, by his own accounting, alerted CNN to Obeidi's story, in response to poor treatment from the Americans. And throughout the time Obeidi stayed in the safe house in Kuwait, he had access to a satellite phone.
But the publicity Obeidi was able to mobilize to ensure his safety only begins to explain his treatment. We know, for example, that the CIA analyst "Joe" accused Obeidi of lying throughout the summer. What convinced the Americans to back off of these accusations and let Obeidi go?
How Has the Government Lied about Obeidi's Story?
The CIA appears to have willfully misrepresented Obeidi's story. For example, the original CIA announcement regarding Obeidi claimed that Obeidi had saved his nuclear materials as "part of a secret, high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program." But the Duelfer Report later admitted that Obeidi only got permission to hide these materials after the fact (if he did that at all). David Albright also maintains that the original CNN interview--which relied on interviews with "Joe" and David Kay--misrepresented Obeidi's role in the centrifuge development program, presumably in order to sustain the claims the CIA had made about aluminum tubes. Of course, it's possible some of what "Joe" and Kay reported in the interview accurately reflected what Obeidi said while in Army captivity, before he reached the safe house in Kuwait. But some of the details in the CNN interview conflict with known aspects of Iraq's earlier nuclear program.
All of which raises the question--are these the only lies the US government told about Obeidi? Or are there other details that have been misrepresented?
Obeidi's Stash of Nuclear Materials
In light of these background questions, some details of Obeidi's stash appear suspicious. I'm not prepared to say they're fakes. But I do think they merit close attention.
As with the rest of Obeidi's story, there is some variation in the story of what--and how--he hid away. The CIA provides a very vague description:
a volume of centrifuge documents and components he had hidden in his garden from inspectors since 1991
[snip]
Dr. Ubaydi told us that these items, blue prints and key centrifuge pieces, represented a complete template for what would be needed to rebuild a centrifuge uranium enrichment program. He also claimed this concealment was part of a secret, high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program once sanctions ended.
The Duelfer Report is equally vague (but note the repeated qualification--"reportedly"--of the story that Obeidi hid these materials in his garden):
In mid-2003, Dr. Mahdi Shakar Ghali Al Ubaydi provided Coalition forces with centrifuge components and a complete set of workable centrifuge blueprints, which he, reportedly, had hidden at his home for the purpose of reconstituting the centrifuge enrichment program after sanctions were lifted.
Al Ubaydi reportedly hid these items in 1991, a move approved later that year by Husayn Kamil--Saddam's son-in-law and former head of Iraq's WMD programs. Qusay [Hussein] reportedly confirmed the order in 1992, but al Al Ubaydi had not been contacted since.
David Albright provides the most detailed description of the materials:
Obeidi took these items from the Engineering Design Center near Rashdiya, Iraq's centrifuge research and development facility on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, on the night that the Allied bombings started in January 1991. He worried that Rashdiya could be targets and these items destroyed. In the end, it was not, but he was told by his superiors to continue to hide these items. He said that he did not believe anyone else had such a complete set of documents.
His collection included about 200 design drawings of centrifuge components, 180 reports on manufacturing and operating centrifuges, and about a half dozen key centrifuge components.
Barton Gellman's version closely maps Albright's (which might be because Gellman used Albright as a source for his story):
On June 2, Obeidi led investigators to his rose garden. There they dug up a cache he had buried 12 years before and kept from U.N. inspectors: about 200 blueprints of gas centrifuge components, 180 documents describing their use and samples of a few sensitive parts. The parts amounted to far less than one complete centrifuge, and nothing like the thousands required for a cascade of the spinning devices to enrich uranium, but the material showed what nearly all outside experts believed -- that Iraq had preserved its nuclear knowledge base
Pitzer's version is more fantastic--and also includes the claim that Qusay, not Kamel, ordered Obeidi to keep the documents.
Buried under the lotus tree next to his rosebushes a few feet from where we sat, he said, was the core of Saddam's nuclear quest: blueprints and prototype pieces for building centrifuges to enrich uranium to bomb grade. Twelve years earlier, he had buried them on orders from Saddam's son Qusay -- presumably, he said, to use them to restart a bomb program someday.
Obeidi dug up the cache a few days later. When he showed me the four prototypes, his hands shook. The machine parts looked alien, like pieces of a futuristic motorcycle, most of them small enough to fit inside a briefcase. He explained that these components and the three-foot-high stack of diagrams were still immensely valuable -- and immensely dangerous. They represented the core knowledge it would take to jump-start a covert bomb program, anywhere in the world.
The key issues of variation are:
- Did Obeidi do this on his own or on the order of Hussein Kamel and/or Qusay Hussein?
- How many centrifuge pieces were turned over--half a dozen or four?
- Did Obeidi first dig up the items to show to Kurt Pitzer or--as Gellman maintains--in front of the CIA investigators?
And then there's one whopping question I've been pondering: How is it that a stack of paper and sensitive equipment buried underground for 12 years didn't disintegrate? No variation of this story, as far as I know, describes any kind of protective container. They describe "stacks" of documents. But we can see from the pictures CNN published (left) that none of the materials--not even the paper blueprints--show signs of decay beyond the tape holding the pieces together yellowing. I mean, Iraq's a relatively dry country, sure, but I assume it has its share of insects and worms. (Note, this picture also suggests Pitzer's claim that there were four pieces is false, as the CNN picture on the left clearly shows more than four pieces--and the supposed CIA-released image below appears to show more distinct pieces.)
Expectations of a Nuclear Archive
To assess the authenticity of Obeidi's documents, we should review how these materials may have played into expectations that inspectors would find a nuclear archive. Scott Ritter provides some helpful background on this. Apparently, in 1991, an Iraqi defector told the CIA about an "archive of hidden documents related to the Iraqi nuclear weapons program" (11). The revelation led the UNSCOM inspectors to search actively for the archive. In September 1991, inspectors found the archive at Baghdad's Nuclear Design Center (it is unclear whether Ritter is referring to the Rashdiya site called the Engineering and Design Center, which is where Obeidi said he removed his documents, or the Tuwaitha site called the Nuclear Design Center; this Hussein Kamel transcript makes clear that the Rashdiya site used to belong to the Ministry of Agriculture, which is another detail Ritter provides about the location of the archive.) One UNSCOM inspector snuck out the "smoking gun" document from this stash. But UNSCOM was unable to use this nuclear archive as proof that Iraq was cheating because it had been gotten illicitly.
UNSCOM inspectors did not stop searching for documents after this find, though. After they learned the Iraqis had destroyed their weapons, they kept looking for an archive that documented the Iraqi programs (and, hopefully, their destruction). When Hussein Kamel defected in 1995 and started revealing details about Saddam's WMD program, the Iraqis used that as a chance to reveal the extent of their programs without taking responsibility for them. They moved their entire WMD archive to Hussein Kamel's chicken farm (yeah, I know, first the rose bush and now a chicken farm) and said Kamel had developed the programs on his own.
The farm was stuffed with crates and boxed containing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, on paper and stored as microfiche, dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. It was the elusive Military Industrial Committee archive, the very same one that UNSCOM had been searching for since 1992. (110)
Meanwhile, in his interview with UNSCOM and IAEA, Kamel admitted some pieces of the nuclear program--from the EMIS (Electromagnetic Isotope Separation) program--had been retained and hidden.
A few months ago they had a project “Sodash”. This was a new one. Some equipment was buried there but it was recovered recently. Part of this buried equipment was at the Sodash site. Other parts were “made to disappear”
Prof. Zifferero – what was the purpose of Sodash?
General Hussein Kamal – that was a new project. They were doing some digging activities for it and found this equipment. I was not aware that this equipment existed. The project was close to the “Iraqi factory” which is also a new project to produce machines.
Prof. Zifferero – so there was our Sodash project, they started digging and discovered equipment. What was this equipment for?
General Hussein Kamal – It was from Jaffar’s project located on the river. This site was destroyed (He accepted Zifferero’s prompt that the site was called Tarmya.)
Prof. Zifferero – This was the EMIS project.
To the question whether anything was retained, Kamel admitted some blueprints had been retained--on microfiche.
Prof. Zifferero – were there any continuation of , or present nuclear activities, for example, EMIS, centrifuge?
General Hussein Kamal – no, but blueprints are still there on microfiches.
Kamel also admits the Iraqis retained blueprints for Al Hussein missiles.
General Hussein Kamal – it is the first step to return to production. All blueprints for missiles are in a safe place. Those for Al Hussein or longer range.
And two missile launchers, stored at the same place as the missile blueprints.
General Hussein Kamal – the only thing I know is that they have them. The two launchers are at the same location as computer disks. Both Mudif Ubeidi and Modhber have a lot of information on microfiches. People who work in MIC were asked to take documents to their houses. I think you will have a new war of searches.
Now, there are a couple of important details about this Kamel testimony. First, Kamel is not yet aware of what the "Chicken Farm" documents contain; he knows the Iraqis have turned over the documents, but he doesn't know what is in them, so Kamel would have no way of saying whether the "Chicken Farm" documents include these hidden blueprints. Second, there is nothing to suggest Kamel was dishonest about Iraq's capabilities (although he was uncomfortable with the technical details). So it is unlikely that he is hiding details here--particularly since he doesn't, at this point, appear to want to go back to Iraq (although after relations with the US and UK soured, he did go back, at which point he was killed immediately). Why protect an ongoing program or capability of a country you have abandoned? Finally, I'm not sure whether the Mudif Ubeidi is our Obeidi (contextually, this statement is about Al Hussein missiles, not cetrifuges). No matter. Hussein is clear. Archives of critical information exist, even hidden at people's houses, but the hidden archives are not stored on paper. They are stored on computer disks and microfiche. Kamel--who by many accounts knew of and approved Obeidi's stash--said any hidden stash would be stored on storage media, not paper.
Over and over (with the mobile weapons labs and BW/CW programs, for example), we have seen how details like this grew into full-blown expectations before and after the Iraq war. So it is understandable how the Americans, having learned that some archives of nuclear capabilities had been hidden, would expect to find such archives when they arrived in Baghdad. But Kamel clearly indicated that these hidden archives were on microfiche and computer disks.
There is at least one more reason to doubt that Obeidi hid his archive for 12 years. In hopes of finally coming clean after Kamel's defection, Saddam's government issued a law decreeing that any remaining documentation had to be turned over. From the Duelfer report:
The release of long-concealed WMD documentation planted at Husayn Kamil’s farm in August 1995, and Iraq’s declarations in February 1996 revealing new aspects of the WMD programs were major turning points in the Regime’s denial and deception efforts following the Desert Storm. Iraq considered the declaration to be a measure of goodwill and cooperation with the UN; however, the release of these documents validated UNSCOM concerns about ongoing concealment and created additional questions from the international community. In an attempt to comply with UN requirements:
- The Iraqi leadership required WMD scientists to sign an agreement in 1996 indicating that they would turn over any WMD documents in their houses and that failure to do so could lead to execution, according to reporting.
- Huwaysh, in 1997 ordered his employees to sign statements certifying they did not have any WMD-related documents or equipment. The penalty for non-compliance was death. His scientists relinquished rooms full of documents, which MIC turned over to the National Monitoring Directorate. Huwaysh was unsure what the NMD ultimately did with them.
So in 1996, Saddam ostensibly demanded all documentation be turned over. Which might lead you to assume that, even if Obeidi had been ordered to keep his documents in 1991 and 1992, he might turn them over out of fear for his life in 1996. It also raises questions about why the same report that says Obeidi hadn't been contacted about his secret archive after 1992 also says all WMD scientists were contacted and told to hand over any secret archives. Either they included Obeidi in this order, or they told him he was an exception, which would itself count as new contact about the archive.
The Photographic Evidence
There's another reason to doubt the authenticiy of Obeidi's stash--the photographic evidence.
When the CIA first posted its announcement of the Obeidi find, it included six pictures of his nuclear materials. Not long after, it removed the pictures, but not before a number of websites copied the material. Now, I can't vouch that the website copies are reliable (although Cryptome usually is). But one of the images is exactly the same as one of the images given to CNN. Now, the CNN image (displayed on the left), credits the CIA for this image; the remainder of CNN's images (like the one displayed top left) credit CNN. So it is possible that the CIA just gave CNN this image, rather than letting them see the blueprint (CNN says they were allowed to view the materials at Langley). There is another image (below left) of the full blueprint that resembles the one lying underneath the components in the CNN image above. But given the angle I can't tell if they're the same. The rest of the images--like the one top right--show parts that may or may not be the same as those portrayed in the CNN picture.
Now if these pictures are authentic, it raises the question of why they were withdrawn from the CIA site.
I've seen two explanations. The CIA says they withdrew the documents because they revealed too much. They claimed terrorists could use the images to construct their own centrifuge program. Perhaps. That doesn't explain why they would post them in the first place, for long enough that they would circulate anyway. And it doesn't explain why they would include images of the materials purportedly found from an EMIS scientist in the Duelfer Report, but not the images from Obeidi.
Others have speculated that the images were removed from the CIA site because they revealed too obviously the close connection between the Iraqi centrifuge and the UK manufacturer, Urenco, the design was passed on from. Now, there is an explanation--the Iraqis got the centrifuge design from a German who stole the blueprints from the German subsidiary of Urenco and sold them to the Iraqis. But I can imagine how Tony Blair might want to protect his country's nuclear suppliers.
I would submit another possibility: that the CIA removed the images because someone with extensive knowledge of Iraq's program might detect inconsistencies. I kind of doubt this--after all, they're right there, accessible for anyone to debunk anyway, and I haven't heard of anyone debunking them.
There is, however, one document that--even to my untrained eye--appears suspicious. Remember, these are supposed to be copies of a blueprint from designs the Iraqis developed with help from a German. Yes, the design comes from a British company. Yes, Obeidi is almost certainly fluent in English from having attended school in the US. Yes, most of Saddam's nuclear engineers probably knew some English. Yes, they may have used English as their technical language. But why would a blueprint made in Iraq get stamped with two rubber stamps, in English, one noting "For Information" and another identifying this copy as "Copy 4"? The calculations on the blueprints, sure. But why would you have rubber stamps made up in English? It seems awfully convenient, particularly as you have a hack CIA analyst named "Joe" who is erroneously using these documents to insist this is one of four copies of the nuclear plans that were deliberately disseminated.
Frankly, I do find the CIA explanation somewhat believeable, that they posted these images but then realized they had given terrorist nuclear scientists too much help. It's the kind of hamhanded Pandora's box security awareness typical of this Administration. So for the moment, I'll just submit these suspicions about Obeidi's material as a few suspicions among others.
Like the archive stash in the basement of the mukh. building, this document dump raises a lot of questions about forgeries and planted evidence. I can't remember if it was Obeidi and Pitzer's book or that of another Iraqi scientist which has a very strange legal disclaimer in the front matter.
Posted by: peanutgallery | December 31, 2005 at 17:40
Geez, I'll have to look at that book. I've been trying to avoid it.
I doubt these are forgeries. My theory? The documents are part of the "Chicken Farm" archive. Those documents were on paper. And UNSCOM/US would almost certainly have received a copy of these in the archive. So you just stamp it (in VA) with a "Copy 4" stamp and start telling stories about buried treasures.
I'm somewhat agnostic about the centrifuges. But I think it quite possible that the CNN picture is full of stuff that is originally Iraqi (but not necessarily a centrifuge). And the CIA pictures--which seem to be two different pieces--are a centrifuge bought new from Urenco.
That's my tinfoil hat theory. Not worthy of the post, but definitely possible.
Posted by: emptywheel | December 31, 2005 at 17:49
pgallery
Is This what you're talking about?
Is this something Wiley always does, or only something they do for a book they know to be made up?
Posted by: emptywheel | December 31, 2005 at 17:58
How is it that a stack of paper and sensitive equipment buried underground for 12 years didn't disintegrate?
Perhaps he stored it all in a pumpkin, which supposedly has incredible preservative properties...
Posted by: jonnybutter | January 01, 2006 at 12:33
LOL jonnybutter. I'm gonna turn this into a children's story: The Chicken Farm, the Rose Bush, and the Pumpkin
Posted by: emptywheel | January 01, 2006 at 13:49
HA!
Posted by: jonnybutter | January 01, 2006 at 16:42
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