Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 70)
TUESDAY 16 MARCH 2004
DR GARY
SAMORE AND
DR ZAFAR
CHEEMA
Q60 Sir John Stanley: You had no
knowledge of who Mr A was?
Dr Samore: There was just not
enough information there for me to know, and there were a number
of different people that I had interactions with. Remember, this
book was written in several different drafts, so I would send
a nuclear draft to some people, a chemical draft to other people,
a bio draft to some people and a missile draft to some people,
and I had lots of inputs from many different people. Mr A's description
is not enough for me to know what section he looked at and who
he is.
Q61 Sir John Stanley: Can I turn
to the helpful summary of your net assessment, which you published
on page 74 of your dossier? Would you say now with the benefit
of what we know with hindsight and so far what very little has
been turned up by the Iraq Survey Group that your net assessment
did prove to be pretty wide of the mark?
Dr Samore: No, I actually think
that in many respects it was exactly on mark. You will remember
that we argued that Iraq's ballistic missile programme and nuclear
weapons programme was years away from reaching fruition. That
proved to be accurate. We did argue that Iraq probably had reconstituted
some chemical and biological weapons capability. That has proved
to be inaccurate so far. I actually had occasion recently to look
through the final chapter of the conclusion, and I thought we
were pretty careful in caveating and qualifying what we said.
In fact, I remember at the time the dossier was criticised for
being to cautious, for not having anything new in it.
Q62 Sir John Stanley: You say you
still think your net assessment was accurate?
Dr Samore: In some respects.
Q63 Sir John Stanley: For example,
"could have a few thousand CW tactical munitions"?
Dr Samore: Yes, and we go on and
say that would be unlikely to make a significant difference on
the battlefield given the limits in Iraq's delivery capability.
As it turns out, they did not have that.
Q64 Sir John Stanley: Notwithstanding
these have not been found? A few thousand?
Dr Samore: I do not think they
exist. We say "could have." That is rather significant,
I think, because if you look at the British and American Government
documents, they say "Iraq has resumed production of chemical
and biological weapons." We did not say that in this dossier,
because I had no basis on which to say that. I said, "If
Iraq resumed production of chemical weapons after the departure
of inspectors in 1998, they could have produced in the ensuing
four years a few thousand." In other words, this is not a
statement of what Iraq has; it is a statement of what Iraq could
have if they resumed production. I think that is clear. We said
they probably did.
Q65 Sir John Stanley: One could say
that by inserting the word "could" it gave you almost
unlimited ability to say that you might have been right.
Dr Samore: But I think we explain
what we meant when we said "could have." This was an
evaluation of technical capability rather than an assertion of
what Iraq had, because we did not have any access to classified
information. I think in hindsight we were fortunate that we had
no access to classified information, because most of the classified
information now turns out to have been misleading and inaccurate.
Q66 Sir John Stanley: I accept entirely
that you wrote it on broadly public sources. Could I ask you one
further question in relation to the net assessment? Do you think,
with the benefit of hindsight, you should have given more attention
to what was highlighted in some considerable detail by UNMOVIC[5],
not least in their working documents which they published on 6
March 2003, about the extent to which holdings of chemicals and
biological agents would probably have substantially degraded by
the time of the pre-war period. I am looking particularly, for
example, at what they said about sarin on page 73 of their working
document, on botulinum toxin on page 101. Do you think that should
have had more attention?
Dr Samore: I think if you look
at the chemical and biological weapons chapters, you will see
that those issues are dealt with at length, and as I recall, we
argued that any nerve agent that was produced prior to 1991 would
no longer be effective at the time the dossier was written. The
focus was on mustard agent, which, according to the experts, could
have been preserved so that it could still be active, and on precursors,
which could be stored for long periods of time, and the Iraqis
could mix them at some point prior to war to be able to use them.
The same thing in biological; as I recall, we said that any botulinum
toxin that was produced prior to 1991 would no longer be active,
but that anthrax, according to the experts, could have been stored
during that decade and still be effective. So I think we tried
to deal with that issue.
Sir John Stanley: Can I ask you both
in relation to the wider war on terrorism what your view is now,
following the war in Iraq, as to whether the world is a safer
or more dangerous place in relation to the war against terrorism?
Q67 Chairman: Dr Cheema, you have
been patient, so perhaps you should start.
Dr Cheema: I think more dangers
have emerged since 9/11 than were known publicly at that time,
and those dangers have surfaced in Turkey; in Iraq, eventually,
following the occupation; they have surfaced in Pakistan, where
there have been many explosions, including attempts on President
Musharraf's life; they have surfaced in Indonesia; and they have
surfaced all round the world. One has to keep in mind that dealing
with terrorism purely by military means will not be entirely successful.
Dr Samore: I think it is too early
to make a judgment. I do not think we are in a position to weigh
up the benefits and disadvantages yet. We have to wait and see
what kind of Iraqi government emerges and whether that government
is successful or not.
Q68 Sir John Stanley: Would you agree
with the warning that was made by the British Intelligence Services
and was reflected in the report published by the Intelligence
and Security Committee of this Parliament that the war in Iraq
would be likely to enable Al Qaeda to get an entrée into
Iraq that it did not have prior to the war? That is an undoubtedly
clear result.
Dr Samore: I think there is no
question about that, but I think that al-Qaeda would be carrying
out operations around the world whether or not Iraq was invaded,
so it is difficult to run the experiment and ask whether we would
have had these attacks after the invasion. We very well might
have. But with respect to Iraq, there is no question that it has
allowed them an entrée.
Dr Cheema: I think the case of
Iraq has allowed al-Qaeda to cluster in one point where earlier
they were scattered around the world in various places when their
capability was destroyed in Afghanistan. They are still doing
that. They are trying to attract individual recruits and bring
them into Iraq and to concentrate on that point. That is what
appears to me to be more dangerous.
Q69 Chairman: May I welcome a distinguished
guest who has just arrived, the Speaker of the Parliament of Morocco
and the Moroccan Ambassador. Welcome, gentlemen. Can I say in
relation to the proliferation activities of Dr A Q Khan, Dr Samore,
you mentioned that a dirty bomb or a means of proliferation getting
into terrorist hands would depend on their access to highly enriched
uranium. We know that there are substantial stockpiles in the
former Soviet Union of highly enriched uranium which are no longer
guarded or concentrated in the way they were, therefore how serious
is the danger in your judgment of a leakage from that network,
from Dr A Q Khan, reaching terrorists and possibly being used
together with highly enriched uranium, which could have disastrous
consequences in our cities?
Dr Samore: I think that is a very
good question. The point of maximum danger in Russia was in the
very early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, where
there really was a general disappearance of the state security
apparatus. I think in the last five or six years the Russian Government
under President Putin have taken measures to strengthen their
controls over nuclear materials, and I think they are in significantly
better shape now than they were in the early part of the 1990s.
I think there is still work that needs to be done, and the various
programmes that are under way, the CTR[6],
non-Lugar programmes are all important to maintain, but my judgment
is that the threat of leakage of significant amounts of highly
enriched uranium from Russia is much lower now than it was a decade
ago.
Q70 Chairman: That is highly reassuring.
Would you like to add anything, Dr Cheema?
Dr Cheema: I would say that it
is very important for the entire international community to proceed
on the distinction between a dirty bomb and a bomb which is based
on enriched uranium and plutonium. A dirty bomb is quite possible,
because it can be created out of radio-isotopes and radio-isotopes
are widely available in hospitals, in agricultural facilities,
in industrial facilities, and that has to be given urgent, though
not immediate attention in order to control those kind of installations.
Enrichment of a plutonium-based bomb is in my opinion at this
stage beyond the reach of non-state actors. They do not have the
capability because it needs some kind of building, some kind of
infrastructure, where it has to be located, there have to be machines,
which have to be maintained, and eventually it has to be transported.
That cannot be done without the assistance of a state actor. I
am not saying it is not a significant question; it is a very significant
non-proliferation question which must be addressed, but this has
an immediate future implication, whereas a dirty bomb or a radio-isotope
bomb is an immediate possibility which in my opinion might happen
tomorrow and therefore needs to be addressed.
Chairman: That is very helpful. Gentlemen,
may I thank you both sincerely on behalf of the Committee.
5 The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission Back
6
Cooperative Threat Reduction Back
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