Saddam versus the inspectors: the impact of regime security on the verification of Iraq’s WMD disarmament

ABSTRACT

The discovery that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003 raised the question of why Saddam had prevented UN weapons inspectors from fully accounting for his disarmament. The leading explanation for Saddam’s behavior is that he valued ambiguity as part of a strategy of ‘deterrence by doubt’. This article argues that Iraq’s obstruction of inspectors in the late 1990s was motivated by his desire to shield Iraq’s regime security apparatus from UNSCOM’s intrusive counter-concealment inspections. The failure to understand how strongly Saddam’s concerns about his personal safety drove Iraq’s contentious relationship with UNSCOM set the stage for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

KEYWORDS:

• Iraq
• weapons of mass destruction
• regime security
• UNSCOM
• intelligence

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the valuable research assistance provided by Benjamin Ash and Yong-Bee Lim and the staff at the Conflict Records Research Center at National Defense University. I would like to thank David Palkki, Samuel Helfont, Joseph Sassoon, Keith Shimko, Kevin Woods, Jeremey Pressman, and Colin Duek for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this article was presented at the International Studies Association’s ISSS-ISAC Joint Annual Conference 2013 in Washington, DC.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Charles Duelfer, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, 3 vols. (Langley, VA: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 2004) [hereafter Duelfer Report].

² George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), 269.

³ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent 1, 29–32, 47.

⁴ Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon 2006), 65; and Michael R. Gordon and Bernard W. Trainor, ‘Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat’, New York Times, 12 March 2006, A1.

⁵ Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, 2005), 153 [hereafter Silberman-Robb Commission Report].

⁶ Paul R. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 94; Richard K. Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 122; and Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons From the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 128, 146–148.

⁷ J. Dana Stuster, ‘Ends and Means’, Foreign Policy, 15 March 2013, <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/15/ends_and_means?page=full>.

⁸ Yale-UN Oral History Project, Interview with Scott Ritter, 16.

⁹ Kevin M. Woods, David D. Palkki, and Mark E. Stout, eds., The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime, 1978-2001 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 256–257; and Kenneth Pollack, ‘Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong’, The Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2004), 83, 85.

¹⁰ David D. Palkki and Shane Smith, ‘Contrasting Causal Mechanisms: Iraq and Libya’, in Etel Solingen, ed., Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 291.

¹¹ CIA, Misreading Intentions: Iraq’s Reaction to Inspections Created Picture of Deception (Langley, VA: CIA, January 2006), 7.

¹² John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4–5.

¹³ Federal Bureau of Investigation, ‘Casual Conversation’, 11 June 2004, in Joyce Battle, ed., Saddam Hussein Talks to the FBI, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 (Washington, DC: National Security Archives 1 July 2009), <http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/24.pdf> and Duelfer Report, 34.

¹⁴ Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 20, 46–47.

¹⁵ Duelfer Report: Transmittal Message, 3.

¹⁶ Woods, Palkki, and Stout, The Saddam Tapes, 329–330.

¹⁷ Ibid., 331.

¹⁸ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 34.

¹⁹ Ibid., 35.

²⁰ Palkki and Smith, ‘Contrasting Causal Mechanisms’, 291.

²¹ Ibid., 290–291; and Woods, Palkki, and Stout, The Saddam Tapes, 256, 293.

²² David D. Palkki, ‘Correspondence: Searching for Evidence’, Nonproliferation Review, 21/1 (2014), 8.

²³ For a description of the process used to collect and process these documents by Coalition forces, see Department of Defense, Combined Media Processing Center-Qatar Standard Operating Procedures, (4 February 2005), <http://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FOIA-Reading-Room-Other-Available-Records/FileId/39958/>. For a description of the process to establish the provenance and authenticity of the captured records, see House of Commons, Committee on Standards and Privileges, Annex of the Sixth Report, ‘Combined Media Processing Centre-Qatar/UK CI Report: Authenticity of Harmony File ISGP-2003-00014623’, (17 July 2007), <http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmstnprv/909/90911.htm>.

²⁴ Duelfer Report: Scope Note, 1; and Charles Duelfer, Note for the Comprehensive Report With Addendums (Langely, VA: Central Intelligence Agency, September 2005), 2–3.

²⁵ Lawrence Rubin, ‘Research Note: Documenting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq’, Contemporary Security Policy, 32/2 (2011), 458; and Institute for Defense Analysis, Projected Growth and Current Collection Breakdown, 30 April 2015.

²⁶ On the value and limitations of these recordings, see Woods, Palkki, and Stout, The Saddam Tapes, 1–14.

²⁷ Lawrence Rubin, ‘Research Note: Documenting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq’, Contemporary Security Policy, 32/2 (2011), 460.

²⁸ These records are designated SH-SHTP by CRRC.

²⁹ SH-SHTP-D-000-797, ‘Saddam Hussein and Iraqi Commanders Discussing Weapons Inspections and how the United States Intends to Continue the Sanctions on Iraq’, undated but most likely 13 June 1996, SH-SHTP-D-000-797, 9, obtained from the Conflict Records Research Center, National Defense University, Washington, DC [hereafter CRRC].

³⁰ Translation of file ISGQ-2003-M0005967, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, undated but circa 1 September 1996, <http://www.docexdocs.com/internetarchive/ISGQ-2003-M0005967_TRANS.pdf>.

³¹ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 28–29.

³² Woods, Palkki, and Stout, The Saddam Tapes, 330.

³³ Amatzia Baram, Building Toward Crisis: Saddam’s Strategy for Survival (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1998), 27, 57–58; Kevin M. Woods, Michael R. Pease, Mark E. Stout, Williamson Murray, and James G. Lacey, Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom From Saddam’s Senior Leadership (Washington, DC: Joint Center for Operational Analyses 2006), 25; and Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 55, 122.

³⁴ Woods, Pease, Stout, Murray, and Lacey, Iraqi Perspectives Project, 25–27.

³⁵ Elizabeth A. Nathan, Saddam and the Tribes: How Captured Documents Explain Regime Adaptation to Internal Challenges (1979–2003), (Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analysis, August 2007), 19.

³⁶ Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Sammy Salama, Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (London: Routledge, 2008), 188; and National Intelligence Council (NIC), Iraq: Regime Under Great Stress, NICM 95-10, (Washington, DC: NIC 17 March 1995), 3, obtained from the CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room [hereafter CIA FOIA].

³⁷ Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York: Harper, 1999), 223–230, 251–262; and Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 12, 21.

³⁸ Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, ‘Saddam’s Delusions: The View from the Inside’, Foreign Affairs 85/3 (May/June 2006), 3–4.

³⁹ These were United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1060 (12 June 1996), 1115 (21 June 1997), 1134 (23 October 1997), 1194 (9 September 1998), and 1205 (5 November 1998).

⁴⁰ UNSCOM, ‘Briefing to the Security Council’, 19 November 1997.

⁴¹ UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General on the Activities of the Special Commission, S/1997/774, 32

⁴² UNSC, Letter dated 7 April 1999 from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency addressed to the Secretary-General, S/1999/393, 17 April 1999, 3.

⁴³ Gudrun Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme: The Inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1991-1998 (London: Routledge, 2014), 232. The IAEA also voluntarily suspended its operations within Iraq in October–November 1997 and August–November 1998 in response to Iraq’s refusal to admit American UNSCOM inspectors. Blix, Disarming Iraq, 31–34; and Richard Butler, The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Growing Crisis of Global Security (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 91–95, 187.

⁴⁴ Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme, 201.

⁴⁵ Trevor Findlay and Ben Mines, ‘UNMOVIC in Iraq: An Opportunity Lost’, in Trevor Findlay and Kenneth Boutin, eds., Verification Yearbook 2003 (London: VERTIC, 2004), 54.

⁴⁶ United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), Compendium of Iraq’s Proscribed Weapons Programmes in the Chemical, Biological, and Missile Areas (New York: United Nations 2007), 46–47.

⁴⁷ VERTIC, UNMOVIC/IAEA Weapons Inspection Database, <http://www.vertic.org/media/assets/VERTIC_UNMOVIC.pdf>.

⁴⁸ Richard Jackson, ‘Regime Security’, in Alan Collins, ed., Contemporary Security Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 148.

⁴⁹ Brian L. Job, ‘The Insecurity Dilemma: National, Regime and State Securities in the Third World’, in Brian L. Job, ed., The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1992), 17–19; Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict and the International System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1995), 28; Edward E. Azar and Chung-in Moon, ‘Legitimacy, Integration, and Policy Capacity: The ‘Software’ Side of Third World National Security’, in Edward E. Azar and Chung-in Moon, National Security in the Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats (College Park: University of Maryland, 1988), 77–101; and Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 11–13.

⁵⁰ Baram, Building Toward Crisis, 2.

⁵¹ Steven R. David, Choosing Sides: Alignment and Realignment in the Third World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

⁵² James T. Quinlivan, ‘Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequence in the Middle East’, International Security 24/2 (1999), 131–165; and Stephen Biddle and Robert Zirkle, ‘Technology, Civil-Military Relations, and Warfare in the Developing World’, Journal of Strategic Studies 19/2 (1996), 171–212.

⁵³ Caitlin Talmadge, The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).

⁵⁴ Barry Rubin, ‘The Military in Contemporary Middle East Politics’, Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal 5/1 (March 2001), 59.

⁵⁵ Risa Brooks, ‘Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East’, in Nora Bensahel and Daniel Byman, eds., The Future Security Environment in the Middle East: Conflict, Stability, and Political Change (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2004), 152–153.

⁵⁶ Gregory D. Koblentz, ‘Regime Security: A New Theory for Understanding the Proliferation of Chemical and Biological Weapons’, Contemporary Security Policy 34/3 (2013), 501–525.

⁵⁷ Solingen, Nuclear Logics.

⁵⁸ Christopher Way and Jessica L.P. Weeks, ‘Making it Personal: Regime Type and Nuclear Proliferation’, American Journal of Political Science 58/3 (July 2014), 705–719.

⁵⁹ Jacques E.C. Hymans, Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians and Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 29–31, 157–165; and Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘Stop Helping Me: When Nuclear Assistance Impedes Nuclear Programs’, in Adam Stulberg and Matt Fuhrmann, eds., The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 177–202.

⁶⁰ Peter Feaver, Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

⁶¹ Koblentz, ‘Regime Security’, 501–525.

⁶² Solingen, Nuclear Logics, 161–162.

⁶³ Way and Weeks, ‘Making it Personal’, 717.

⁶⁴ Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (New York: Free Press, 1991), 2.

⁶⁵ The rest of this section is based on Amatzia Baram, ‘The Iraqi Armed Forces and Security Apparatus’, Journal of Conflict, Security and Development 1/2 (2001), 113–123; Amatzia Baram, ‘Saddam’s Power Structure: The Tikritis Before, During and After the War’, in Toby Dodge and Steven Simon, eds., Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change, Adelphi Paper 354 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2003), 93–113; Joseph Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Sammy Salama, Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (London: Routledge, 2008); Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 53, 73–95; and Ibrahim al-Marashi, ‘Iraq’s Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis’, Middle East Review of International Affairs 6/3 (September 2002), 1–13.

⁶⁶ Kenneth M. Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002), 121–122.

⁶⁷ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 45, 50–51, 85, 93; UNSCOM Report on Status of Disarmament and Monitoring, 201; Ambassador Richard Butler, ‘Presentation to the UN Security Council’, June 3, 1998; and Scott Ritter, Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 49–51, 105–111.

⁶⁸ United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Letter dated 25 January 1999 from the Executive Chairman of the Special Commission, S/1999/94, January 29, 1999, 194–195 [hereafter UNSCOM Report on Status of Disarmament and Monitoring].

⁶⁹ Interview with former UNSCOM and ISG inspector, Maryland, July 25, 2013.

⁷⁰ Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 111.

⁷¹ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 50–51; UNSC, Letter dated 24 November 1995 from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, S/1995/1003, 1 December 1995; UNSC, Letter dated 10 January 1996 from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, S/1996/14, 10 January 1996; and UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General on the status of the implementation of the Special Commission’s plan for the ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq’s compliance, S/1995/864, 11 October 1995.

⁷² Duelfer Report: Nuclear Weapons, 5; Duelfer Report: Delivery Systems, 1; Duelfer Report: Chemical Weapons, 11; Duelfer Report: Biological Weapons, 1–2, 15.

⁷³ Duelfer Report: Biological Weapons, 58; Mahdi Obeidi and Kurt Pitzer, The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam’s Nuclear Mastermind (Hoboken, NJ: John Wily & Sons, 2004), 6–8; and ‘Residual Pre-1991 CBW Stocks in Iraq’, in Duelfer Report: Addendums. Between 2004 and 2011, the United States recovered almost 5000 more 1980s-era chemical munitions. C.J. Chivers, ‘Thousands of Iraq Chemical Weapons Destroyed in Open Air, Watchdog Says’, New York Times, 22 November 2014.

⁷⁴ SH-INMD-D-000-657, ‘Report from Husam Mohammad Amin, Director of the National Monitoring Directorate about Hussein Kamel’, 14 August 1995, CRRC.

⁷⁵ ‘Report from Husam Mohammad Amin’; and Obeidi and Pitzer, The Bomb in My Garden, 162–164.

⁷⁶ ‘Report from Husam Mohammad Amin’.

⁷⁷ Duelfer Report: Biological Weapons, 53; and Barton Gellman, ‘Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only on Paper’, Washington Post, 7 January 2004, A1.

⁷⁸ CIA, Misreading Intentions, 5.

⁷⁹ UNSCOM/IAEA, ‘Note For the File’, (22 August 1995), <http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/hk.pdf>, accessed June 13, 2012.

⁸⁰ Gellman, ‘Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only on Paper’.

⁸¹ In addition, Iraq did not declare to the IAEA that it possessed kilograms of enriched uranium and not grams as it had previously declared. This information in the Amin memo appears to be erroneous. Iraq declared that it had produced approximately 1.2 kilograms of enriched uranium using electromagnetic isotope separation. These figures have been confirmed by the IAEA, nongovernment experts, the ISG, and former members of Iraq’s nuclear weapon program. Mahdi Obeidi attributes the error to Amin’s lack of familiarity with nuclear issues and his possible confusion between the kilograms of imported enriched uranium fuel that Iraq possessed and the product of its indigenous enrichment program. UNSC, Letter Dated 6 October 1997 from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, 36; Duelfer Report: Nuclear Weapons, 4; David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilitie,s and Policies (Stockholm: SIPRI, 1997), 321–322; Dhafir Selbi, Zuhair Al-Chalabi, and Imad Khadduri, Unrevealed Milestones in the Iraqi National Nuclear Program 1981-1991 (Lexington, KY: CreateSpace 2011), 93–94; Imad Khadduri, Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions (Toronto: Springhead Publishers, 2003), 122; and interview with Mahdi Obeidi, Virginia, 30 May 2012.

⁸² Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 168.

⁸³ Duelfer Report: Regime Finance and Procurement, 21.

⁸⁴ UNSC, Letter Dated 6 October 1997 from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Secretary General, 92.

⁸⁵ Interview with Charles Duelfer, McLean, VA, 25 April 2013.

⁸⁶ This figure is adapted from Ritter, Endgame, 123.

⁸⁷ UNSCOM Report on Status of Disarmament and Monitoring, 206–207; Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 213–214; Ritter, Endgame, 126; Sean Boyne, ‘Iraqis Perfect the Art of Evading UNSCOM’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, February 1998, 27–29; and Barton Gellman, ‘U.S. Tried to Halt Several Searches’, Washington Post, 27 August 1998, A1.

⁸⁸ Charles Duelfer, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq (New York: PublicAffairs 2009) 117–118; and Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 152–153.

⁸⁹ UNSCOM/IAEA, ‘Note For the File’.

⁹⁰ Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 140–141; and UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the Special Commission, S/1996/258, April 11, 1996, 6–8.

⁹¹ Ritter, Endgame; Ritter, Iraq Confidential; Duelfer, Hide and Seek, 91–161; and UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General on the Activities of the Special Commission, S/1997/774, 6 October 1997, 24–26, 31–35.

⁹² Jafar Dhia Jafar and Numan Saadaldin, Al-I’tiraf al-akhir: haqiqat al-barnamaj alnawawi al-iraqi [The last confession: The truth about the Iraqi Nuclear Program] (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat Al-Wahdah Al-Arabiya, 2005), 151 cited in Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme, 72

⁹³ Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 37–41.

⁹⁴ SH-SSOX-D-000-869, ‘Correspondence Within the Special Security Organization (SSO): A Study on “How the Enemy Thinks”’, February 1993, CRRC; SH-RPGD-D-000-506, ‘Saddam Security Lecture to the Republican Guard’, April 2000, CRRC; and SH-IISX-D-000-360, ‘A Study on How to Defeat the Iraqi Opposition Inside and Outside Iraq’, 2001, 13, CRRC.

⁹⁵ SH-SHTP-A-001-991, ‘Saddam Presided Over a Cabinet Meeting’, undated but circa July 1992, 11, CRRC.

⁹⁶ CIA, Misreading Intentions, 7.

⁹⁷ SH-SHTP-D-000-797, ‘Saddam Hussein and Iraqi Commanders Discussing Weapons Inspections and how the United States Intends to Continue the Sanctions on Iraq’, 9, CRRC.

⁹⁸ Ibid., 10.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 29.

¹⁰⁰ Patrick Tyler, ‘Plan On Iraq Coup Told To Congress’, New York Times, 9 February 1992; and R. Jeffrey Smith and David B. Ottaway, ‘Anti-Saddam Operation Cost CIA $100 Million’, Washington Post, 15 September 1996, A1.

¹⁰¹ David Ignatius, ‘The CIA And the Coup That Wasn’t’, Washington Post, 16 May 2003; David Ignatius, ‘A Sectarian Spy Duel In Baghdad’, Washington Post, 14 June 2007; Joel Brinkley, ‘Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90’s Attacks’, New York Times, 9 June 2004; and Cockburn and Cockburn, Out of the Ashes, 223–230.

¹⁰² Ritter, Endgame, 116; and interview with Duelfer, 25 April 2013.

¹⁰³ Fax from Chief Inspector of UNSCOM 150 to UNSCOM Executive Chairman, Subject: UNSCOM 150 Sitrep, 10 June 1996.

¹⁰⁴ Barton Gellman, ‘Arms Inspectors ‘Shake the Tree’’, Washington Post, 12 October 1998, A1; Tim Weiner, ‘US Used UN Team to Place Spy Devices in Iraq, Aides Say’, New York Times, 8 January 1999, A1; and Thomas W. Lippman and Barton Gellman, ‘U.S. Says It Collected Iraq Intelligence Via UNSCOM’, Washington Post, 8 January 1999, A1.

¹⁰⁵ Iraq was able to listen in on ‘secure’ phone calls and obtain copies of supposedly secure faxes sent by UN inspectors between Baghdad, New York, and Vienna. As a result, Iraq was aware of the intelligence cooperation between UNSCOM and Israel by early 1998 at the latest. Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 242; Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme, 119; and Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 265, 276.

¹⁰⁶ Duelfer, Hide and Seek, 92–93.

¹⁰⁷ Woods, Palkki, and Stout, The Saddam Tapes, 12n36.

¹⁰⁸ Michael Andrew Knights, Cradle of Conflict: Iraq and the Birth of Modern U.S. Military Power (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 185–190; Dana Priest and Bradley Graham, ‘Airstrikes Took a Toll on Saddam, U.S. Says’, Washington Post, 9 January 1999, A14; and William M. Arkin, ‘The Difference Was in the Details’, Washington Post, 17 January 1999, B1.

¹⁰⁹ Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 101–102, 154–157.

¹¹⁰ Duelfer, Hide and Seek, 380.

¹¹¹ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 51; UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the Special Commission, S/1996/848, 11 October 1996, 15–17; UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the Special Commission, 25; and UNSCOM Report on Status of Disarmament and Monitoring, 201–202.

¹¹² Interview with Duelfer, McLean, VA, 19 July 2013.

¹¹³ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 53, 64.

¹¹⁴ ISGQ-2003-M0005967,1.

¹¹⁵ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 53, 64.

¹¹⁶ Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 441 cited in Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, 103.

¹¹⁷ Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, 104.

¹¹⁸ Telephone interview with David Kay, 14 January 2014.

¹¹⁹ Duelfer Report: Regime Strategic Intent, 54; and ‘Iraqi Minister of Defense Calls for an Investigation into Why Documents of a WMD Nature were Found by a UN Inspection Team’, 19 July 1988, SH-GMID-D-000-890, CRRC.

¹²⁰ Duelfer Report: Transmittal Message, 6.

¹²¹ UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the Special Commission, S/1996/848, 10–11, 16.

¹²² UNSCOM, ‘Modalities for Inspections of Sensitive Sites’, 22 June 1996.

¹²³ UNSC, Letter Dated 17 December 1997 From the Executive Chairman of the Special Commission, S/1997/987, 17 December 1997.

¹²⁴ Yale-UN Oral History Project, Interview with Charles Duelfer, 29–30. Duelfer confirmed this in an interview on 25 April 2013.

¹²⁵ Kenneth A. Oye, ‘Explaining Cooperation Under Anarchy: Hypotheses and Strategies’, World Politics 38/1 (1985), 14.

¹²⁶ Interview with former UNSCOM inspector, 11 September 2014.

¹²⁷ Interview with former UNSCOM inspector, 17 July 2013.

¹²⁸ Fax from Chief Inspector of UNSCOM 150 to UNSCOM Executive Chairman, Subject: UNSCOM 150 Sitrep, 10 June 1996.

¹²⁹ Yale-UN Oral History Project, Interview with Scott Ritter, 31.

¹³⁰ Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 184–185, 228; and Gellman, ‘Arms Inspectors “Shake the Tree”’.

¹³¹ Butler, The Greatest Threat, 113–116; Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2004), 264–266; interview with Duelfer; and interview with former UNSCOM and ISG inspector.

¹³² Interview with former UNSCOM and ISG inspector.

¹³³ Interview with Duelfer, 25 April 2013.

¹³⁴ Ritter, Iraq Confidential, 155.

¹³⁵ UNSCOM Report on Status of Disarmament and Monitoring, 205.

¹³⁶ CIA, Misreading Intentions, 16.

¹³⁷ Telephone interview with Wayne White, former Deputy Director for the Office of Near East and South Asia Analysis, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, 27 February 2014.

¹³⁸ CIA, Iraq-United States: Hardening Stance Toward UNSCOM, NESA IM 96-20005, 9 August 1996 cited in Silberman-Robb Commission Report, 150.

¹³⁹ Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs: Progress, Problems, and Potential Vulnerabilities, Defense Intelligence Assessment DI-1600-36-98, October 1997, 12, obtained via Freedom of Information Act [hereafter FOIA].

¹⁴⁰ George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 331.

¹⁴¹ United States Government, Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, (13 February 1998), <http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/whitepap.htm>.

¹⁴² Director of Central Intelligence, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs (Langley, VA: CIA, 2002), 3.

¹⁴³ Silberman-Robb Commission Report, 147.

¹⁴⁴ Ibid., 155.

¹⁴⁵ National Intelligence Council (NIC), Iraq: Regime Under Great Stress, NICM 95-10, 17 March 1995, CIA FOIA; NIC, Iraqi Military Capabilities Through 1999, NIE-94-19 July 1994, 3, 14, CIA FOIA; NIC, Iraqi Military Capabilities Through 2003, NIE-99-04, April 1999, 7, CIA FOIA; and DIA, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs: Progress, Problems, and Potential Vulnerabilities, Defense Intelligence Assessment DI-1569-27-00, May 2000, 1, FOIA.

¹⁴⁶ Silberman-Robb Commission Report, 147.

¹⁴⁷ Ibid.

¹⁴⁸ Gary King, Robert Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 168–173.

¹⁴⁹ Interview with Duelfer, 25 April 2013.

¹⁵⁰ CIA, Misreading Intentions, 16

¹⁵¹ Thomas C. Schelling, Foreword to Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1962), vii.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregory D. Koblentz

Gregory D. Koblentz is an associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government and director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University. He is also an associate faculty at the Center for Global Studies at George Mason and a member of the Scientist Working Group on Chemical and Biological Weapons at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. During 2012-2013, he was a Stanton Nuclear Security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations where he conducted research on nuclear proliferation.

Prior to arriving at George Mason, Dr. Koblentz was a visiting assistant professor in the School of Foreign Service and Department of Government at Georgetown University. He has also worked for the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Koblentz is the author of Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age (Council on Foreign Relations, 2014) and Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security (Cornell University Press, 2009) and coauthor of Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998). His research and teaching focus on international security and weapons of mass destruction. He received a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MPP from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.