U.S. Wants Iraqi Scientists Questioned

WASHINGTON —  The United States, in a bid to keep Saddam Hussein guessing, has proposed that U.N. inspectors adopt a strategy of summoning key Iraqi scientists individually and in groups of as large as 50 to multiple interviews both in and outside Iraq, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.

The goal is to get to at least five or six key specialists in each of the four categories of Iraq’s alleged arms programs -- nuclear, chemical weapons, biological weapons and ballistic missiles -- to obtain detailed evidence to the United Nations about Baghdad’s arsenal.

Discussions between the U.S. and the U.N. about the plan are continuing, particularly about how to persuade the scientists to take the multiple risks involved in revealing military secrets. The U.S. is seeking to protect the scientists, engineers and technicians from retaliation by confusing Hussein’s regime about whom or what the United Nations is after, U.S. officials say.

The Bush administration hopes that the scientists will produce enough corroborating information to convince the international community that Iraq is still hiding weapons systems -- even if the U.N. team is unable to verify that in its site inspections, administration officials said. The White House insists that Iraq is still pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Iraq insists that it is not.

The United States has identified more than 500 specialists from an estimated 18,000 scientists, engineers and technicians who have worked on Iraq’s deadliest weapons during the last two decades, the sources said.

The strategy for interviewing them reflects concern among several senior U.S. officials that a major break appears unlikely within the next three to four months -- Washington’s preferred time frame for a denouement in the inspections.

“Now that the Iraqi declaration is in, the scientists will become a hugely important tool,” said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity.

The hardest part, officials say, will be getting the first scientist to agree to talk. “We’re looking for that one person who will deliver the chicken farm. We’re looking for one string to pull so we can begin to unravel the whole thing,” the State Department official said.

“Chicken farm” refers to the 1995 defection of Hussein’s son-in-law, an event that led to the discovery of a chicken farm with several containers full of hidden Iraqi arms documents -- the most important discovery in the U.N.’s disarmament effort. The son-in-law was later lured back to Iraq and killed.

The U.S.-generated plan underscores a growing awareness that getting Iraqi scientists to talk will be far more difficult than it appears, according to former U.N. inspectors, Iraqi defectors and U.S. officials.

The Iraqi regime has such a tight hold on its arms experts that there has not been a major defection by a top scientist since 1994 or by a top official involved in the weapons industry since 1995, according to other Iraqi defectors and former U.N. arms inspectors.

Many Iraqi specialists would be willing to talk, said Khaidar Hamza, who worked on Iraq’s nuclear program and defected in 1994. “The majority of scientists don’t like the government or the thuggish family running the country, confiscating property, enriching themselves, restricting movement, threatening their families,” Hamza said.

Yet waiting for scientists or engineers to approach the U.N. teams will be “waiting for the impossible,” said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector in Iraq who now is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

“No one will volunteer due to the fear of consequences,” added Martin Indyk, who dealt with Iraqi defectors while on the Clinton administration’s National Security Council.

In the early 1990s, two Iraqi arms specialists slipped notes to U.N. inspectors offering to talk, but nothing came of either case.

But any attempt by Baghdad to block access -- or to say arms specialists are not available, have retired, are dead or cannot be found -- will amount to a material breach of the U.N. resolution authorizing inspections, U.S. officials are already warning.

“If anyone should show up black or blue, that would also be seen as a sign of poor Iraqi cooperation,” the State Department official said.

An 11,807-page arms declaration that Iraq handed over to inspectors over the weekend is supposed to provide a full list of all personnel involved in the various programs.

Speed will be essential once scientists are interviewed because Hussein’s regime has long had a team in place, headed by Hussein’s son Qusai, to move research, clean up development facilities or eliminate evidence after past defections, according to former defectors, former inspectors and former U.S. officials.

“Getting a defector would be the best source of information, but you’d have to get a defector and act within 24 to 48 hours, go to that facility before it can be sanitized -- and that’s very hard,” said Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq specialist on the National Security Council during both the Clinton and current administrations.

The administration is particularly sensitive to fears among Iraqis that they might be seen as selling out their country, particularly if American intelligence runs the program, U.S. officials and former inspectors say. Working with the United Nations, on the other hand, would allow them to appear to be part of an international effort to save Iraq.

“Iraqi scientists are not going to go to the CIA. If they do, they’re done as Iraqis. They might as well just plan to move to Detroit and open a 7-Eleven. Those who believe in Iraq and want to help in a post-Saddam Iraq will want to go to the U.N. and be able to say they didn’t betray their country,” said one well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice heads a team working on a plan to expedite the process of “finding who knows where the skeletons are buried” while winning U.N. agreement to the plan, he added.

Last week, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix warned that he didn’t want to become a “defection agency,” although U.S. officials say that Blix generally agrees on the importance of questioning scientists and other potential human resources in Iraq.

To keep the plan from appearing to be a CIA-run operation, the Bush administration is urging the U.N. to organize a cadre of arms specialists from around the world to do the interviews. In the past, the CIA has debriefed most Iraqi defectors.

Countries mentioned by U.S. officials include Australia, which has many specialists on chemical weapons; Central European nations that developed major arms industries during the Cold War; and India, which has a nuclear program.