Examination Witness (Questions 180-199)
DR GARY
SAMORE
17 JUNE 2003
Q180 Mr Chidgey: Could it not be
that we were putting Saddam in a position where he was being asked
to prove a negative; in other words, deliver up the chemical weapons
that he did not actually have?
Dr Samore: He did not even try
to prove a negative. I agree with your point that even if Iraq
was fully and actively and totally co-operating there probably
would always be some margin of doubt.
Q181 Mr Chidgey: Because you could
not be sure you would find them?
Dr Samore: Yes, and especially
given the previous decade of the Iraqi efforts to try to destroy
evidence and conceal their activities, of course there would always
be some uncertainty, especially given small amounts of material
and how easy it is to hide. Baghdad did not convince anybody on
the Security Council that they were making a serious effort to
resolve the unaccounted for issues. From that standpoint you really
do have to blame Baghdad as being the primary party responsible
for the war.
Q182 Chairman: That is contradicted
by one of our witnesses this morning who said that the Prime Minister
and the President had reached an agreement in the summer that
the war was going to come in any event. What comment do you make
on that?
Dr Samore: I just do not have
any information about conversations that took place between President
Bush and Prime Minister Blair. I am sure great books will be written
about this issue, but my reading of what I think was going on
in Washington is that the critical turning point came with the
early December Iraqi declaration which was seen in Washington
as a blatant failure by Iraq to co-operate and, by the way, was
seen by everybody I spoke to as being a clear indication of Iraq
not taking advantage of a final opportunity to make a declaration.
Q183 Chairman: You talked of a consensus
in Washington on chemical weapons, yet the Pentagon's Defence
Intelligence Agency believed that there was "no reliable
information" on whether Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons.
Can you comment on that?
Dr Samore: I have seen some of
those excerpts and as I recall what it said was that they believed
Iraq had chemical weapons but they did not know where they were
located. They have no reliable information about where they are
located.
Q184 Mr Illsley: Dr Samore, it is
a pleasure to see you again. Perhaps I could just read a couple
of quotes to you, and some of these might sound familiar: ".
. . his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready
within 45 minutes of an order to use them"; "the Iraqi
military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of
a decision to do so"; Iraq has "military plans for the
use of chemical and biological weapons . . . Some of these weapons
are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them",
the famous 45 minutes claim. First of all, what types of chemical
and biological agents and means of delivery do you think that
45-minute statement actually referred to?
Dr Samore: Of course I have not
seen that raw information and I do not know the source of the
information so I do not think I can extrapolate beyond what has
been made public.
Q185 Mr Illsley: You have no information
as to what it might hint at?
Dr Samore: No, I am sorry. I am
just not aware of anything. I would say that if you make the judgment
that Iraq has chemical and biological agents then it is very logical
that they would have plans to deploy and use the agent. It would
be strange to have weapons and not have plans to use them. As
to the detail of whether it is 45 minutes or two hours or whatever,
I think that is a particular detail that I cannot comment on but
the idea that Iraq would have in place military plans to use their
weapons seems to me to be the kind of obvious thing that you would
expect and certainly was the case in 1991 when they actually deployed
chemical and biological weapons in the field.
Q186 Mr Illsley: The 45 minutes would
assume therefore that some weapons would have been prepared, manufactured
or be held in readiness, maybe in dual use facilities? Would you
elaborate on that 1991 aspect as well?
Dr Samore: What we can say about
what we know about their deployment, which is not an awful lot,
is that they had the agents separated from the empty munitions,
from the artillery shells and rockets and bombs which were then
filled once the order was given to deploy, because you would not
normally store these things together, and then once they were
filled they would be transported to the units that had authority
to use them, and at least in the case of 1991 it is believed that
those were some very select Republican Guard units. As to the
current situation concerning the 45 minutes, I just do not have
any knowledge about what further details are available.
Q187 Mr Illsley: But, based on that
information from 1991 when perhaps the 45-minute claim was not
as out of the ball park as we have been led to believe, perhaps
it is a little bit more serious than some commentators have alleged?
Could that be true?
Dr Samore: Again, I cannot comment
on the 45 minutes per se because I do not know who the
source of the information was and what the details were, but the
fact that Iraq would want to strive to have some relatively short
term capability to use chemical and biological weapons once a
political decision had been made is very plausible to me. Whether
it is 45 minutes or two hours, I just cannot make that judgment.
Q188 Mr Illsley: Following on from
that, in your opinion would you say that the British Government
did exaggerate the capability by alleging this 45-minute capability
from the giving of an order? Assuming the weapons were in existence
it is perhaps not such a big exaggeration.
Dr Samore: I cannot make that
judgment. Perhaps you can. The only way to make the judgment is
to look at the source of the information and whether that individual—and
I am assuming it is an individual—had credible current access
to Iraqi military planning and whether the kinds of details that
that individual provided seemed to hang together and give his
story credibility. Without knowing who the person is and what
he said I cannot possibly make a judgment.
Q189 Mr Illsley: You just mentioned
that in 1991 the warheads and the material were stored separately.
How easy is it to do that and how easy is it to perhaps convert
from a dual use facility to disguise the use of it? Is that capability
available? Could Iraq have done that?
Dr Samore: Yes. Obviously the
ease with which you can move to deploy filled chemical or biological
munitions depends upon what steps you have taken beforehand, what
kind of practice you have, for example, and also what kind of
safety standards you are prepared to accept. Certainly in the
case of 1991 some of the filling practices that the Iraqis used
were not up to the kinds of standards that we would expect in
our armed forces, so it does depend in part on what kinds of shortcuts
you are prepared to take as well as how much practice you have
had. Again, that is another issue that I just cannot comment on,
the extent to which American and British Governments believed
they had information indicating that the Iraqis were keeping their
practice and exercises, for example, with the use of chemical
and biological weapons and whether that might have given governments
more confidence that such weapons existed.
Q190 Andrew Mackinlay: To some extent
this has been covered, but I looked at the dossier produced on
9 September and then we had the Government's assessment on 24
September, much of which it mirrored. They mentioned four references
to the 45 minutes. You made no reference to it at all because
you have repeatedly said you do not know. I was surprised, because
they seemed to be so much a match and there is obviously in the
community you circulate in a lot of sharing of information, that
the Government or people who you talk to had not flagged this
up with you because presumably a lot of this is nod and wink directions
and so on. It is just generally surprising. I wonder if you can
comment upon that, the fact that you guys professionally were
unaware of the 45 minutes, you do not mention it at all, and yet
it comes soon after the publication of your much heralded and
highly regarded document.
Dr Samore: I assume that the 45-minute
information was highly classified information and so it would
be a crime for someone to share that with a private institute
that is dealing just with public information. If someone had been
willing to share it with me I might have used it.
Q191 Andrew Mackinlay: Are you surprised
that you were unaware of it? Are you surprised that you folk have
not rumbled this or been aware of it?
Dr Samore: No. I think there is
a lot of very sensitive classified information that I would not
expect people to feel they were free to share because it would
violate their orders not to share classified information.
Q192 Mr Pope: In the foreword to
this document, the British Government's dossier of September of
last year, our Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that Saddam continued
in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons. In your assessment
do you think that was an accurate statement then?
Dr Samore: I would put it this
way. I deeply believe that Saddam Hussein retained an interest
in developing nuclear weapons and we talked abut the kind of research
work that Iraq could do in order to keep its nuclear scientist
cadre active, and in particular we talked about doing work on
nuclear weapons design and small scale experiments with various
kinds of nuclear technologies. Our dossier expresses scepticism
that Iraq could have made much in the way of significant advances,
especially in terms of building large-scale clandestine facilities
for the production of fissile material (which is very difficult
to disguise), which would have required that Iraq purchase from
overseas critical materials. Of course, as we now know from declassified
information, the British and American Governments believed they
had information of procurement activity, like the aluminium tubes
or the uranium from Niger, which helped to convince them that
Iraq's nuclear programme was very much active and alive and perhaps
had gone beyond simple research.
Q193 Mr Pope: Would it be fair to
say that Iraq were lacking that critical component of the fissile
material but they had managed to assemble all the other components
of nuclear weaponry?
Dr Samore: This is speculation
because nobody knows for sure. I think it is very plausible that
they did continue work on nuclear weapons design, which is the
kind of thing they had not quite mastered in 1991 but were probably
within a few years of achieving, and it is the kind of activity
that would be very difficult for inspectors to find. We speculate
in our dossier that Iraq has probably continued that kind of research
work clandestinely and therefore did have the ability to build
a nuclear weapon if they could somehow produce or otherwise obtain
the key fissile material.
Q194 Mr Pope: This key fissile material
is obtainable, is it not? Obviously, it is not easy to obtain
but it is obtainable and the worry is that it could come from
a former Soviet state or from a country like Niger which has exported
fissile material in the past and has a track record of doing so.
That is a plausible threat?
Dr Samore: I would say it is possible.
We make the point that there is no case we know of where a country
has obtained weapons-grade material in any large quantity from
the black market, so this would be the first time it ever happened
but it is certainly something one has to be worried about.
Q195 Mr Pope: On a more general issue,
the whole issue of whether or not the US and the UK can find weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq is a huge issue in the UK. Is it anywhere
near as big an issue for the Bush administration or for the American
public?
Dr Samore: Of course, I live here
now so I am not sure I am the best person to tell you what is
happening in the United States, but my impression is that it is
not as big an issue in the States as it is here, I think in part
because opposition to the war was much less in the US than it
was here. In the United States my impression is that the investigation,
the various measures that are under way by Congress, is focusing
more on the question of what the intelligence community got right
and what they got wrong and how to improve their performance in
the future rather than allegations that the policy community somehow
distorted or made use of the intelligence to pursue a particular
political objective.
Mr Pope: Thank you, that is very helpful.
Q196 Mr Hamilton: Dr Samore, are
you aware of any reliable evidence that supports the Government's
claim that Niger supplied uranium to Iraq?
Dr Samore: Only what I have read
in the papers, which is aside from what were obviously forged
documents I have read some newspaper articles claiming there is
other undisclosed information indicating that Iraq at some point
in the past made efforts to acquire natural uranium from Africa.
Since I have not seen that information I cannot tell you whether
those press reports were true or not. Certainly the documents
in question were, I think everyone agrees now, forgeries.
Q197 Mr Hamilton: There were reports
also of the Iraqis trying to procure different types of supplies—vacuum
pumps, magnet production lines, aluminium tubes, and so on. Do
you think those reports, if credible, show evidence that they
were trying to achieve a nuclear missile?
Dr Samore: Well, the tricky thing
about all of those items that were listed in the various documents,
which were based on classified information, is that they are all
dual-use and so it is very hard to give you a firm conclusion.
The only way we will ever really get the answer to that is by
interviews with mid-ranking Iraqi scientists and officials who
can explain to what extent Iraq had tried to retain a nuclear
weapons programme. The tubes are a very good case. If you look
at the tubes, the dimensions are too small to be very efficient
as centrifuges although they are the right dimension for the rockets
which the Iraqis claimed they were buying them for. At the same
time, some of the precision of the tubes and finish of the surfaces
is really inappropriate for rockets and much more useful for centrifuges,
so I think we are left with a real technical mystery about why
they were buying these tubes, was it for rockets, was it for centrifuges,
was it for both? I do not think we will get the answer to that
until the Iraq Survey Group has done a very thorough job of interviewing
the scientists who did the work.
Q198 Mr Illsley: Was the Iraq Survey
Group already in existence or has it been put together simply
because weapons have not been found?
Dr Samore: I think that, as I
said earlier, Washington and London genuinely expected that they
would find chemical and biological weapons in the course of the
war.
Q199 Mr Illsley: In the field.
Dr Samore: And in fact they had
set up special groups to search for and secure such weapons. In
the US case it was called the 75th Exploitation Team. They were
given a list of sites which the US government believed could be
storage sites for chemical and biological weapons. All of those
turned out to be inaccurate and all turned out not to have such
weapons. It was only then that Washington and London realised
they were going to have to put together a much more sophisticated
detective operation to look at documents, interview people, do
further forensic testing, and that has taken some time, it has
taken months to get that organisation up and running. Even now
I think they are just beginning the work. If I can just add, for
perfectly understandable reasons, Washington and London have been
focusing their efforts in Iraq not on hunting for weapons of mass
destruction or for associated equipment and materials but on trying
to secure stability and defeat the remnants of the previous regime.
It is perfectly understandable but unfortunately, as a consequence,
we have probably lost a couple of months and the looters have
probably cleaned out a lot of evidence. So it may be difficult
to come to final conclusions in a number of those areas.
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