by admin » Thu Dec 17, 2015 5:43 pm
OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. GORDON C. OEHLER, DIRECTOR, NONPROLIFERATION CENTER, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. OEHLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'm pleased to appear before you this afternoon to address our concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I’m specifically going to address Iraq's efforts to obtain critical technologies for its' weapons program in the years preceding the Persian Gulf War. Finally, I’ll close with some observations regarding the Export Administration Act.
First let me tell you briefly what we knew about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs prior to Desert Storm.
As we reported extensively, Iraq bad aggressive CW and BW programs prior to Desert Storm. The Iraqis used nerve and blister agents during the war with Iran, and as you will recall, they also targeted their own Kurdish population with chemical weapons.
In mid-1990, Iraq had one primary site for chemical weapons production, Al Muthanna, located in Smarra, about 80 kilometers northwest of Baghdad.
By early 1990, we calculated that the Al Muthanna facility was capable of producing more than 2,000 tons annually of the blister agent mustard and the nerve agent Sarin. Iraq also had begun to build a complex of chemical production plants near Al Habbania, as well as additional CW storage sites.
U.N. inspectors have found more than 46,000 filled munitions, including 30 warheads for ballistic missiles, bombs filled with mustard s and nerve gas containers. Additional munitions remain buried today in bunkers attacked and damaged by coalition forces. The U.N. cannot remove them safely. The inspections have also revealed 5,000 tons of stockpiled chemical agents. The U.N. is only now completing the task of dismantling this massive program.
With regard to biological weapons, we estimated, prior to the start of the war, that Iraq had a stockpile of at least 1 metric ton of biological warfare agents, including anthrax and botulinum toxin.
Research reports released by the Iraqis to the first U.N. Biological Weapons Inspection Team showed highly focused research at Salman Pak on anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens. U.N. inspectors believe that there was an advanced military biological research program which concentrated on these agents.
The Department of Defense reports that no chemical or biological warfare munitions were found stored or used in the areas occupied by coalition forces during Desert Storm. We do not have any intelligence information that would lead us to conclude otherwise.
The CHAIRMAN. Now let me just stop you right there.
First of all, everything you’ve said so far has been very helpful to us, and much of this is new information on the record in a declassified form for the first time, and I'm grateful for that. I think it advances the level of knowledge, and in the end, it will help us get to the bottom of some of these sickness problems with our veterans.
In the paragraph you've just read, that no chemical or biological warfare munitions were found stored or used in areas occupied by coalition forces during Desert Storm. Now that's a very carefully worded sentence. As I read that sentence and heard you speak that sentence, that does not cover, as I read it and that's why I want the clarification, a situation where chemical or biological agents might have gotten loose in some way and gotten into these zones.
In other words, you're saying you found no evidence that they were stored or used. Used to me conveys some effort to aim at our people and trigger their use in some fashion, but that sentence, as it's written, would not, unless you specifically tell me otherwise, indicate that there were no occasions on which either chemical agents or biological agents, by one means or another, would have gotten into areas occupied by coalition forces.
Dr. OEHLER. What I'm saying very carefully here is that the Department of Defense reports that no chemical or biological warfare munitions were stored or used in areas occupied by coalition forces. This is a Department of Defense statement, because they had people on the ground and we didn't, for the most part.
The CHAIRMAN. Right.
Dr. OEHLER. What I'm trying to say is that we do not have any intelligence information that would lead us to conclude otherwise.
The CHAIRMAN. Yes. I understand the marriage of the two sentences and that we're working off a predicate of a Defense Department report. But I want to come back now to the chemical alarms that kept going off in various areas of the war zone, where we have all these firsthand accounts and we also have these descriptive accounts of people who were there who described symptoms, physical symptoms, blistering and other things that would correlate to an exposure to a chemical agent, say, at the very time the alarm was going off saying there was a chemical agent in the area.
The CIA is not saying here that there were not exposures of American service personnel. You're not making a categorical statement that there were not exposures of American service personnel to either chemical agents or biological agents? I take it you have no way of knowing on a firsthand fashion?
Dr. OEHLER. That's correct. The intelligence information we have does not suggest that they were exposed to chemical or biological agents.
The CHAIRMAN. But didn't I just hear you say that, for the most part, you didn't have your own people there?
Dr. OEHLER. That's right.
The CHAIRMAN. So you're relying on the Defense Department?
Dr. OEHLER. In terms of on-the-ground surveys.
We, of course, have intelligence sources that talked to people before and after the Gulf War about what they knew was happening, and we're basing our intelligence judgment on that plus technical, national technical means, et cetera.
The CHAIRMAN. Would the CIA have a theory on why these chemical alarms kept going off?
Dr. OEHLER. I'm certainly not an expert in these systems.
The CHAIRMAN. But don't you find it a little, I mean, we're all logical people and if these attacks were coming and explosions were taking place and the alarms were going off and people were told to put on their gear and so forth, and yet, after the fact, we say, well there were never any chemical agents in the area, how does one mesh these two things?
I understand you're saying you’re relying essentially on Defense Department reports, but I'm looking for something different here. I'm looking for a categorical denial that American forces were exposed to chemical agents or biological agents. As nearly as I read this, the CIA is not able to come in here and give that categorical denial as you sit here at this moment. Now am I wrong in that?
Dr. OEHLER. What we're saying is that we have no evidence that they were, and it cannot be any stronger than that.
The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a theory as to what was going on then?
Dr. OEHLER. I don't know if my theory counts much. As a scientist, I know that trying to design sensors to detect specific chemicals and not others is a rather difficult job and false alarms are a way of business.
I’ll also note that the battlefield is a pretty messy place with incoming rockets, which when they impact have unexpended rocket fuel that vaporizes, you have explosives that go off, you have solid fuel missiles going with pollutants in the air. There’s an awful lot of what would be hard-to-identify chemicals in the atmosphere at any time.
The CHAIRMAN. So much of the Department of Defense reports now rest on the fact that the chemical alarms that they put out there that kept going off did not work right. Maybe they are right that they did not work, and they bought a lot of equipment that did not work right. But I do not find your answer satisfactory, quite frankly, and let me just be blunt about it. If you have got some information, classified or other, that will bear out what you are saying, I would like to see it. I would like to see it all.
Dr. OEHLER. I have no information to suggest, that leads us to the conclusion that any BW or CW agents were used against coalition forces.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, you see, again, that is a very—that is what we call in the business the use of a very carefully structured phrase. Let me give you an example. Suppose a bombing run hits a munitions facility and blows up into the air some of these agents, either gas agents or biological agents, and they are carried by the windstream down over our troops, and they are impacted by it. Is that a use?
Dr. OEHLER. Let me address those two specifically.
The CHAIRMAN. First of all, I would like a yes or a no—in terms of the way you are using the word "use." Is that a use or not a use?
Dr. OEHLER. I would call that exposure, certainly.
The CHAIRMAN. But is that a use within the way you are using it here?
Dr. OEHLER. No, but I would not sit here and try to use some legal definition to get around problem like that. I do not have any intelligence information to suggest that coalition forces were exposed whether it be by intentional use or by accidental discharge to BW/CW agents.
Let me address these two separately, because I think this is significant. The coalition forces did not find any CW agents stored in the Kuwaiti theater of operations, with the exception of some the U.N. found near An Nasiriyah.
The CHAIRMAN. Right, We talked about that earlier.
Dr. OEHLER. And, if in fact a munition blows up a chemical warhead storage site and chemical agents are released into the atmosphere, the modeling that has been done on this suggests that nothing is going to go further than maybe 10 miles. So if your American troops, if the coalition troops are much farther than that, they are not going to be exposed to chemical warfare.
Biological is a very different situation, because particularly if it is dispersed at a high altitude the biological agents can go very long distances. But there is no evidence that any of that was ever released.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me just read you one item here, because there are obviously some strong differences of opinion on this.
U.S. military doctrine warns that, according to its calculations, the use of a nerve agent against a target area of no more than a dozen hectares can, under certain weather conditions, create a hazard zone downwind of up to 100 kilometers in length. Within this downwind area, friendly military units would have to take protective measures.
That is from the United States Department of the Army Field Manual, 100-5.
Dr. OEHLER. Yes. The difference here is, I was speaking of a munitions storage facility on the ground, and what that refers to is a chemical attack where the release is at an optimal height to burst.
The CHAIRMAN. We were asking about An Nasiriyah earlier today and how close these were. The description we were finally given was that it was the width of a narrow river. Does that ring a bell with you?
Dr. OEHLER. The distance between?
The CHAIRMAN. The distance between where our troops were and where these items were stored was the distance of a narrow river.
Dr. OEHLER. The troops came into the Tahji Airfield area, which is, to my recollection, 10 to 15 kilometers from An Nasiriyah. The storage site that was declared to the U.N., where the U.N. found chemical weapons stored, is just slightly south of the 31st Parallel, which is a little bit south of An Nasiriyah and a little bit north of Tahji Airfield.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, you have just given us a different description than we got this morning, in terms of what the proximity was here.
I guess then what you are saying here is—I want to understand this right, because you know, the CIA has a little bit of a credibility problem itself these days related to other matters. So I want to make sure that I understand precisely what it is you are saying and not saying.
According to Central Intelligence information, the detections these chemical monitors that kept going off, were not going off for reasons of the fact that they were detecting gas agents, chemical agents, during the war. It was something else.
Dr. OEHLER. I am not making any such statement. What I am saying is-
The CHAIRMAN. You are not saying that?
Dr. OEHLER. No. What I am saying is-
The CHAIRMAN. So it could have been? It could have been?
Dr. OEHLER. We were not on the ground. We are taking the Department of Defense's word for that. We have no reason not to.
The CHAIRMAN. So we are back to the Department of Defense.
Dr. OEHLER. On the operation of the ground sensors, absolutely. The only thing I am competent to talk about-
The CHAIRMAN. I think you have just given me my answer. You are not in a position to give us an independent answer one way or the other.
Dr. OEHLER. The only part I can give you an answer on is, what is there in intelligence information that might suggest an exposure to these agents by coalition forces? I am telling you, in our intelligence holdings, we do not see anything.
There is some evidence that some chemical weapons were moved into the Kuwaiti theater of operations, but then withdrawn prior to the beginning of the air attacks, with the exception of the ones that were found still in An Nasiriyah.
The CHAIRMAN. They were moved in and taken out?
Dr. OEHLER. That is what some intelligence suggests.
The CHAIRMAN. Just one instance? Several instances?
Dr. OEHLER. No. There were a couple of instances in intelligence that suggest that. We do not know moved where or what.
The CHAIRMAN. What would be the caliber of the intelligence source that would give you that information?
Dr. OEHLER. That was a generally reliable source.
The CHAIRMAN. More reliable than these sensors?
[Laughter.]
Dr. OEHLER. But according to this fragmentary reporting, these were withdrawn prior to the start of the air attack.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you a little different question. In terms of the qualitative ability of the CIA to do its own independent assessments, to really be cheek to jowl with this problem, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of a CIA presence in the area to really be able to monitor this and not have much of anything slip through, if a 10 were the complete ability to have that kind of a capability, and a 1 was the least that you could have, where would you say the CIA's capability was across this war theater at that time?
Dr. OEHLER. We were not in a position on the ground, nor tasked, to provide monitoring for BW/CW, because that was the responsibility of the Department of Defense. We had other things that we were trying to do at the time.
The CHAIRMAN. So it would have been where, at the level of maybe a 2?
Dr. OEHLER. We were not there basically at all. That was not our mission.
The CHAIRMAN. It was less than 2?
Dr. OEHLER. That is right.
The CHAIRMAN. Maybe 1 or between 0 and 1?
Dr. OEHLER. Now, I do not want to imply that the intelligence community does not have the capability to detect CW/BW agents.
The CHAIRMAN. But you were not tasked to do that in this situation?
Dr. OEHLER. That is correct. That is correct.
The CHAIRMAN. But that is what is so important, and it has taken us awhile to get to that, because in a sense you did not have your own ability to do that, you are relying in a sense on the Defense Department who did have that task of doing it.
Also, you are saying that, by the absence of any contradictory information to what they are saying, even though you had a very minor way of doing your own independent measurement, you are not in a position to, in effect, challenge their finding. That is what I hear you saying.
Dr. OEHLER. That is right. We have a lot of intelligence on the build-up of the chemical warfare capabilities, pipes, munitions, and so forth.
The CHAIRMAN. I can see that. I am impressed by what you have said up here in that area.
Dr. OEHLER. I am not trying to say that there was no information that the intelligence community was collecting at all. What I am trying to say is, out of all this stuff that we have gotten, there is not anything to suggest that coalition forces were exposed.
The CHAIRMAN. But, the big "but" that has to go with it was, the CIA was not in there doing the monitoring job on the ground.
Dr. OEHLER. Absolutely. That is correct.
The CHAIRMAN. If we were to try to measure that on a scale of 1to 10, it was less than a 1. So, I mean, that is an honest answer.
Dr. OEHLER. Yes. That is right.
The CHAIRMAN. But what it does is, it cuts the guts right out of that paragraph that you just read.
Dr. OEHLER. Oh, I think it is-
The CHAIRMAN. Well, I know. It is a matter of opinion. You have an opinion you are bringing. I am just telling you what my opinion is after getting to that bottom line in laying that fact against that paragraph.
Dr. OEHLER. Fine.
The CHAIRMAN. Let us agree to disagree on that, and go on to the next paragraph.
Dr. OEHLER. OK.
At the same time Iraq was developing CW and BW agents, it was also developing the missile delivery capabilities. By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam could field up to 450 SCUD type surface-to-surface missiles. The Soviet-origin SCUD's originally had a range of 300 kilometers, but Iraq reconfigured them into a series of other missiles with ranges of up to 750 kilometers. Prior to the war, Saddam claimed to have developed and tested a missile with a range of 950 kilometers, which he called the Al-Abbas, but discontinued the system because of in-flight stability problems. With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the bombing of those Iraq nuclear research reactors-
The CHAIRMAN. May I stop you one more time because you are going to go to another subject and it is almost better to take these as we go.
Dr. OEHLER. Sure. OK.
The CHAIRMAN. If you take the fact that he was lengthening the delivery capability of these SCUD's and had them apparently with some accuracy up to a range of 750 kilometers, I do not know if you have had a chance to review some of the first-person accounts that we have had of people, veterans out there who feel that they were in an area where a SCUD exploded where there were chemical agents in their opinion, as part of that SCUD attack. I do not know if you have had a chance to read those.
Dr. OEHLER. I saw the press reports of that, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. All right. Jim, I am just wondering if you can tell us where those locations were. Whether the SCUD's would have come, could have come, and likely did come from a launching site that would have been within that distance of 950 kilometers. I assume it would have.
Mr. TUITE. My understanding is that there were SCUD sites up in the area near the Euphrates north of Kuwait.
Dr. OEHLER. There were SCUD sites all the way into Baghdad.
Mr. TUITE. OK. But there were southerly deployed-
Dr. OEHLER. Southern launches as well, and western.
Mr. TUITE. -And those with 750-kilometers range would have reached well down into the Saudi peninsula, correct?
Dr. OEHLER. That is right. They had to launch them from fairly far south to reach down to coalition forces in Saudi Arabia. They had to launch them from pretty far west to reach Tel Aviv.
Mr. TUITE. To reach the border area where the disputed territories were, they could have actually been launched from quite a bit north?
Dr. OEHLER. From Baghdad.
Mr. TUITE. Yes.
The CHAIRMAN. Now, Jim, let me just ask here, with respect to the first-person accounts that we were discussing with Senator Bennett earlier today, with the belief on the part of some of the people in the area where the explosion happened, that a SCUD came in with this kind of a warhead, do you recall from memory where that location was where that SCUD attack occurred?
Mr. TUITE. There were a number of SCUD attacks in the report. But each and every attack, each and every event that is listed in the report is within SCUD range.
The CHAIRMAN. It is within the 750 in terms of the extended range.
Mr. TUITE. Yes.
The CHAIRMAN. Would it be within the 300 range which was the original range?
Dr. OEHLER. No. No, it would not.
The CHAIRMAN. OK. So the extended range that he was working on would have put him in a position, if somebody fired one of these, to at least get it to that site?
Dr. OEHLER. Yes.
The CHAIRMAN. All right. Why don't you go ahead then with the next part here?
Dr. OEHLER. OK.
With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the bombing of this Iraq nuclear research reactor by the Israelis in 1981 drove Saddam to extreme lengths to cover diversity, and disperse his nuclear activities. IAEA inspection of declared nuclear materials continued on a regular basis, but the IAEA did not inspect any of the undeclared facilities associated with a weapons program.
We reported extensively on the existence of the nuclear weapons program, but post-war inspections added quite a number of details to our knowledge on that program.
I would like to now give you a sense of Iraq's procurement efforts and patterns. The Iraqi program was developed gradually over the course of the 1980's. By the time of the invasion it had become deeply entrenched, flexible, and well orchestrated.
Project managers for the weapons of mass destruction programs went directly to vended European suppliers for the majority of their needs.
Throughout the 1980's, German companies headed the list of preferred suppliers for machinery, technology, and chemical precursors.
German construction companies usually won the contracts to build the CW facilities in Iraq, and Iraqi procurement agents were sophisticated in exploiting inconsistencies in local export laws by targeting countries for substances and technologies that were not locally controlled.
In the pre-war years, the dual-use nature of many of these facilities made it easier for Iraq to claim that the chemical precursors, for example, were intended for agricultural industries. European firms, arguing that the facilities in Iraq were for production of pesticides, built a Sumara chemical plant, including six separate chemical weapons manufacturing lines between 1983 and 1986.
European middlemen brokered-
The CHAIRMAN. Now, may I ask just a question here?
Dr. OEHLER. Sure.
The CHAIRMAN. This is all extraordinarily important and valuable information. Am I to understand that the CIA would have had the knowledge of this going on contemporaneous when it was actually happening? In other words, this was not learned later, and this is not a retrospective construction? We were tracking this, or we had knowledge of this, and knowledge of this would have been at the other high levels of Government at the time it was occurring?
Dr. OEHLER. That is right. What I am running through here is what we knew at the time, and what we had reported to our customers at the time. We bad been quite aware of Iraq's chemical weapons development program from its very early inception.
The CHAIRMAN. I take it the CIA must have had a concern about it to have kind of zeroed in on it to that degree?
Dr. OEHLER. Very much so. And that was reported to our customers, and our customers attempted to take actions.
The CHAIRMAN. It would have been reported also to the President, to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, I assume, as a matter of course?
Dr. OEHLER. Yes, sir. Those are our customers, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. All right.
Dr. OEHLER. Continuing on that: European middlemen brokered chemical precursor deals for Iraq under the pretext that the materials were intended for pesticide plants. A Dutch firm purchased supplies from major chemical firms around the world, supplying the Chemical Importation and Distribution State Enterprise in Baghdad in the 1970's, and in the 1980's supplying the Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production, both cover names for the CW program.
The middlemen supplied dual-use chemical precursors including monochlorobenzine, ethyl alcohol, and thiodiclocol. When the Iraqis requested phosphorous oxychloride, a nerve agent precursor banned for export under Dutch law without explicit permission, the supplier balked, and drew this request to the attention of Dutch authorities. Subsequent Dutch investigations found that two other Dutch firms were involved in brokering purchases of chemical precursors.
Iraq exploited businessmen and consortia willing to violate the export laws of their own countries. As has been indicated in the press and television reports, the Consen Group, a consortium of European missile designers, engineers, and businessmen, established a network of front companies to cover its role as project director of an Argentine, Egyptian, Iraqi sponsored Condor II ballistic missile program.
Iraqi procurement officers, knowing full well the licensing thresholds, requested items that fell just under the denial thresholds, but nevertheless would suffice. Prior to Desert Storm, U.S. regulations on the export of these technologies were drafted to meet U.S. technical specifications and standards. Technologies of a lower standard worked just as well, and permitted Iraq to obtain the goods and technology consistent with Commerce Department regulations.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me just stop you again. This is again very valuable, and I appreciate your presenting it for us so we can have it on the record. Before we get too far past it, you made a reference to phosphorous oxychloride. What agent is this a precursor for?
Dr. OEHLER. Sarin [GF].
The CHAIRMAN. Also, well I have interrupted you here. This backs up even further, but when you acknowledged that Saddam Hussein had SCUD chemical warheads, where did he get those?
Dr. OEHLER. They made them themselves.
The CHAIRMAN. They made their own.
Dr. OEHLER. They had quite a missile refurbishment extension plant where they took the SCUD's and added in extra lengths and the fuel tanks, changed the warheads, and had a capability to make their own warheads.
The CHAIRMAN. Were the Russians helping them with this?
Dr. OEHLER. No. There is no evidence of any Russian involvement at all in this.
The CHAIRMAN. You see, part of the picture that emerges here— this is really an extraordinary story that you are sharing with us, because, according to your testimony, the CIA was tracking this in real time as it was happening, and had a great concern about it, and had figured out that this robust program on chemical weapons and these other areas was going forward.
Yet, as we get down further in time, we are going to find out that, as Saddam Hussein needed other items to go into his war machine, that he actually came and got some from us, particularly in the biological warfare area, that required licensing.
So you wonder how anybody in the licensing regime who was reading the CIA reports at the time and who could see this buildup of this kind of weapons potential, you would think that people would have been very, very reluctant to approve anything that could go into a weapons production system of this kind. You would think that this would have had everybody on full alert to be extremely careful about what is or is not licensed for shipment into this kind of a regime. Is not that the logic of learning this?
Dr. OEHLER. Well, what I would like to point out in the next section of this is that there really was not much involvement of U.S. firms, as we have seen. If I could go through that a little bit, and then we can stop and talk about the whole thing.
The CHAIRMAN. Right, right, right.
Dr. OEHLER. Continuing on: Regarding the involvement of United States firms, we were watching Iraq's programs very carefully, and it was clear that the major players assisting Saddam were not American firms. They were principally Europeans. We saw little involvement of U.S. firms in Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program.
In discussing this issue, we should remember that by law the CIA as a foreign intelligence agency, does not focus on U.S. persons, to include U.S. companies. By this definition, companies founded by foreign nationals and incorporated in the United States are treated as U.S. companies.
This is not to say that we did not occasionally come across information on a U.S. person that was collected incidentally to our foreign intelligence target overseas; we did. But when we did, and when there was a possibility of a violation of U.S. law, we were obligated to turn our information over to the Justice Department,
The CHAIRMAN. Now, does that mean then, going back to the prior paragraph, that there would have been companies founded by foreign nationals incorporated in the U.S. supplying some of these materials, but they would be outside the scope of what you could properly zero in on?
Dr. OEHLER. We are not permitted by law to target the domestic activities of those companies or individuals in those companies.
The CHAIRMAN. Right. So if you stumbled upon it some other way, that did not mean you were not entitled to know that fact, but you could not as a matter of investigative focus go after these foreign firms incorporated in the United States to really find out the degree to which they might be doing business with Saddam Hussein?
Dr. OEHLER. That is right to the extent that we cannot engage in law enforcement or target their activities in the United States.
The CHAIRMAN. Do we have any reason to believe or know that there were such firms founded by foreign nationals incorporated in the United States that, in fact, did ship items like this to Saddam Hussein?
Dr. OEHLER. As I say here, we did provide what we call alert memos to Commerce, Justice, Treasury, and the FBI on a number of possible questionable instances. It is not up to us to make the legal judgment, but to point out that there is information that they need to look at.
The CHAIRMAN. I see.
Dr. OEHLER. These memos resulted whenever this incidentally collected information indicated that U.S. firms had been targeted by foreign governments of concern, or were involved in possible violations of U.S. law.
Between 1984 and 1990, CIA’s Office of Scientific and Weapons Research provided 5 memos covering Iraqis' dealings with United States firms on purchases, discussions, or visits that appear to be related to weapons of mass destruction programs.
The CHAIRMAN. Are those classified documents?
Dr. OEHLER, Yes, they are.
Can we go on to export controls?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes, please.
Dr. OEHLER. Continuing: Turning to export controls, the intelligence community was asked by the Department of Commerce during the 1980's to review export license applications primarily when the licenses had significance to intelligence collection equities.
Here the concern was not so much Iraq, but whether there was a possibility the equipment would be diverted to the Soviet Union or other communist countries, as you heard from Dr. Wallerstein a little earlier.
Prior to 1991, there were four instances in which the Department of Commerce sought information on Iraqi export license applications, all dated in 1986. These applications involved computer technologies and image processors.
For some of these, we reported no derogatory information on the end user. In one case, we referred the Department of Commerce to a classified intelligence report.
After evidence mounted in the mid-1980's about the use of chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq war, the United States began to put into effect unilateral controls on exports of chemical precursors to Iraq and other countries suspected of having chemical warfare programs.
The United States and several other industrialized nations joined what is called the Australia Group to establish more uniform licensing controls for the export of several chemical weapons precursors. Since then, more nations have been brought into the Australia Group, and recently controls have been added for chemical equipment, certain pathogens, and biological equipment.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me again just stop you here because you are about to go to the next paragraph. You go "since the war," and you go on with some observations there.
My sense for it at this point is that the CIA had a pretty good fix on the biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons capability of Saddam Hussein. You were tracking it. You were watching these international firms. You had seen Saddam Hussein in a sense go underground with some of his activities after the Israelis came over and bombed some of his facilities in the early 1980's. And you were paying serious attention to it. You obviously saw it as a real problem, and you were on top of it.
Would it be fair for me to say that, before the outbreak of the war, the CIA was convinced, and had well-documented the fact, that Saddam Hussein had an advanced and dangerous chemical warfare, biological warfare capability underway?
Dr. OEHLER. Yes, sir. I do not think anyone will doubt that.
The CHAIRMAN. I think the record is clear on that, I think it is to the credit of the CIA that it saw that and knew that and was reporting that in real time.
It is my understand-and you may or may not know the answer to this, but if you do, I would like you to give it—that the Defense Intelligence Agency did not have either that assessment or the same assessment in terms of the capabilities of the Iraqis in that area?
Dr. OEHLER. No. The Defense Intelligence Agency was part of the intelligence community. I, at the time of the beginning of the Gulf War, was the National Intelligence Officer for Science, Technology, and Proliferation. So my job there was to pull together common community positions on these matters. The Defense Intelligence Agency did not have any alternative views on this. Their estimate was that these programs were dangerous as well.
The CHAIRMAN. So from your knowledge, you are saying the DIA also felt this was a real threat. Was their level of knowledge up to yours, the CIA’s?
Dr. OEHLER. Yes, sir. We do not hold any information from each other.
The CHAIRMAN. Now, in terms of war planning, if somebody is anticipating going in and shutting down Iraq, moving them out of Kuwait after they had moved into Kuwait, and then backing them up and shutting down most of their military capability in Iraq, would the Defense planning of that come off this combined assessment, your assessment, the CIA's, and the DIA's assessment?
Where would the Defense planners go to get the picture of what the troops might face to the extent we had to go in and liberate first Kuwait and then go into Iraq, in the way of biological and chemical weapons risk?
Dr. OEHLER. Of course, the planning is done by the Military Operations Forces. What information do they have? They have all of this information. Now, whether they are obligated to weigh the Defense Intelligence Agency's estimates over someone else's, I do not know. You will have to ask them. But I did not see any significance difference it would have made, any kind of a difference in the campaign.
The CHAIRMAN, So I guess you are saying to us then that the Defense planners that would have had to put together a war strategy had quite complete knowledge as to the biological and chemical weapons capability that he had been working on over a period of time and refining?
Dr. OEHLER. I do not think any Defense planner or any policymaker will say they have complete enough knowledge.
The CHAIRMAN. I understand.
Dr. OEHLER. There are certainly pieces of our knowledge that were missing. What was clear was the existence of the program and the extent.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you this. Did the CIA for its part know ahead of the war that there were going to be the volume of these particular kinds of weapons systems that were found after the war that you cite in the early part of your testimony?
Was there a CIA estimate that would have said that, "Our expectation is that there would be at least 40,000 field munitions, including 30 warheads for ballistic missiles, bombs?" How discreet would your assessment of his capability have been before the war? Is there that kind of a document?
Dr. OEHLER. Our assessments were based primarily on the production capability, and on how much—as I mentioned, they could be producing 2,000 tons a year. And then, what would you do with that? We did not have it broken down by so many artillery shells and so forth.
The CHAIRMAN. Do you know if anybody would have had a mockup, if you will, of this kind of a deliverable weapons system capability that was found after the war, before the war?
Dr. OEHLER. A mockup?
The CHAIRMAN. In other words, some very smart person like yourself had been tracking this for a decade and looking at all the stuff that they were buying from the European suppliers, and with aerial photographs, surveillance, and onsite sources or whatever else we had, would have said, "They have been cranking out this kind of a warhead now over a period of time, and we think they do 3 a week, or 3 a month, and we now think they have in their stockpile the following."
So when a Defense planner turns to you and says, "Wait a minute. We are going to send all these troops in here. What are we likely to face in terms of their stockpile of chemical weapons and biological weapons?" How refined would the internal estimate have been based on all this other work, that would have said, "This is what we think be has got."
Dr. OEHLER. It was pretty good in terms of the capability. The reason was we watched Iraq use CW in its war with Iran. In the latter part of that war, in the Majnoon Islands at the very end of the campaign, they used a tremendous amount of agent. We could track that and we could see then how they could use that against coalition forces if they chose to do so.
The CHAIRMAN. Did they use biological weapons?
Dr. OEHLER. No, they did not. Let me put my same caveat on here. We have no evidence that they did. We have a lot of evidence on what they used, and we did not see any use of BW.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there any information to indicate that Iraq was coordinating research on genetically altered microorganisms? There is a concern because of the U.S. export of E-coli and other genetic materials.
Dr. OEHLER. We have not seen that as part of their BW research program. At least if they looked at it, it did not get very far along to our knowledge. They did those three agents that we talked about, and most of the production was—all the production we know of was in botulinum toxin and anthrax, which is bad enough, by the way.
The CHAIRMAN. No, I understand.
We are trying to push this envelope out as far as we can in terms of what was going on here, recognizing that our own Government is compartmentalized. You know a certain amount and you go up to a certain point. Then somebody else, in a sense, has a responsibility that bridges on from that point and goes on into another direction. For example, the CIA did not design the chemical sensors that did not work. Hopefully, the CIA, if it was designing a chemical sensor, would have designed one that, when it went off it was not a false alarm, but it was a real alarm.
Dr. OEHLER. I would just mention that we in the intelligence community have needs for CW and BW sensors as well, and have been a bit frustrated by our—I will include ourselves here—inability to develop the technology rapidly enough to satisfy our needs. That is the same as the Department of Defense has.
The CHAIRMAN. I think generally offensive weapons capability can move faster than defensive weapons capability, and especially if you have somebody that is diabolically minded enough, like Saddam Hussein, and who is organizing this very well-developed weapons development system.
You have described here already, in what you have said, a very sophisticated operation, where they knew what they were doing. They were working through these European suppliers. They were staying under the thresholds. They were figuring out how to put together what they wanted. They certainly were field-testing the weapons. They field-tested them on the Kurds, and apparently on some Iranians as well. They were lengthening their missile range.
This is a very sophisticated operation in this area. They had gone underground to do a certain amount of it through these front operations because they had gotten punished by the Israelis.
So if you again just apply the logic, you would imagine that any operation as sophisticated as this, doing this many things, probably mixing chemical and biological cocktails as well—this is my own theory—was probably out on the forefront of what they could develop with respect to their offensive capability.
I mean, I cannot imagine somebody this creative suddenly loses the creative spark when it comes to figuring out, how do we get more bang for the buck? Or how do we find a more powerful weapon, or a less expensive weapon, or one that is easier to deliver, or one that we can somehow disseminate in a way that maybe they will not even find out?
Dr. OEHLER. No. These are centrally-directed programs with the highest authority behind them.
The CHAIRMAN. But they seem to be very cleverly designed as well. I am not saying that they are as sophisticated as we might be, but I am struck by the sophistication of the system.
Dr. OEHLER. They learned this over a period of years in the 1980's, but they became masters at the procurement networks. Of course, there are companies that try to help them with that, too, because the profits were pretty large.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, you know I really get a bad case of heartburn when I find out that these export licenses, not long before we actually find ourselves in a war with these people, were being approved by our own Commerce Department.
We had a situation—I do not know if you are aware of this or not—but we had a hearing in the late fall of 1992. We were at that time looking at the shipment of devices that were incorporated into Iraq's nuclear weapons capability. We found that some licenses had been granted by our own Commerce Department to ship certain dual-use items over there. In fact, some of them had been shipped directly to Iraqi military installations, which should have been a warning sign that they were not designed for peaceful use by somebody who is a professor in agriculture over in a university somewhere.
When that document, because it is a written document, was sought by the Congress—the Senate, and the House—that particular document was altered. The exact text of the words on the document, which indicated that it was to be shipped to an Iraqi military unit, those words were deleted, and something else was put in its place to create a false picture. That document was sent up to the Congress as a deliberately misleading document.
Now, the person who was in charge of that area in the Commerce Department—this was late in 1992, there was a Presidential race going on, so that heightened the sensitivity of all of this—was conveniently out of the country.
We tried to get hold of this person to bring them in as a witness to explain how this document bad gotten altered to give a false appearance and impression. We could never get this person because the person was outside the country and hiding out somewhere. So the election came and went, and the Bush people departed town, so we never did talk to that particular witness.
I only cite that because we have had experiences, direct experiences, where official Government records were doctored and given to us to mislead us on shipments that were going into the center structure of Saddam Hussein's military operation.
I am not talking about distant history. I am talking about something that happened directly within the scope of what we are here talking about.
This was a pretty sophisticated operation. It seems to me that, if the CIA knew as much as it did, and everybody else did, it is bard for me to understand why we were aiding and abetting this guy and authorizing these shipments. Doesn't that seem a little strange?
Dr. OEHLER. Well, the only thing I can say is that, since the Gulf War there have been a lot of enhancements in the licensing process and in the export controls. I think everyone realizes the significance of the problem.
The CHAIRMAN. Why don't you go ahead? We are getting down near the end of your statement. Why don't I let you finish it?
Dr. OEHLER. All right. As I was saying: Since the Gulf War, U.S export controls on CW/BW have been considerably strengthened. Enforcement mechanisms involving several Federal agencies have been put into place. The scope of the regulations have been broadened considerably.
In 1991, export controls were tightened to require validated licenses for all dual-use equipment being exported to end users of proliferation concern. Intelligence information is often the basis for this determination. This catch-all provision has served as a model for other countries interested in joining the U.S. Government's nonproliferation efforts.
The intelligence community has an expanded role in this strength and export control regime. We work with the Department of State-led interagency forums to control sensitive technologies and equipment.
Our analysis of international trade mechanisms used to transfer technologies from suppliers to consumers is provided to the U.S. policy, enforcement, and intelligence communities.
The Department of Commerce now brings the intelligence community into a large percentage of its license reviews.
Let me say a brief word about the control of missile and nuclear technologies. The Missile Technology Control Regime, the MTCR, went into effect in April 1987, with the participation of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, France, Japan, and West Germany, all the leading suppliers of missile-related technologies.
Initially the MTCR controlled ballistic missiles and their components that are capable of delivering a 500-kilogram warhead to a range of 300 or more kilometers. In recent years, the scope of the MTCR has been expanded to include any unmanned system, with any range or payload, if it is believed to be intended for use with weapons of mass destruction.
As you know, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, most often known by its initials, the NPT, provides the global framework to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Nations that have joined the NPT pledge not to transfer, seek access to, or assist the spread of nuclear weapons. The transfer of nuclear materials is covered by safeguards enforced by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Over the years, members of the NPT have developed lists of restricted items and technologies.
The United States adheres to these controls, and has introduced its own restrictions on the spread of fissile materials necessary for nuclear weapons: plutonium and enriched uranium.
The final issue I would like to address is the legislation affecting the export controls and other nonproliferation measures, specifically the provisions the intelligence community needs in such legislation.
The first thing I would say, Mr. Chairman, is that the bill you introduced at the request of the Administration incorporates provisions which address the intelligence community's concerns in the area of chemical, biological, and missile nonproliferation measures. We worked closely with the other agencies that developed this bill, and have endorsed the final result.
Accordingly, I would strongly urge that these provisions be retained in the final bill passed by the Senate. To aid the Committee's deliberations, I would like to outline the community's equities in this area.
In disseminating our intelligence, one of our primary responsibilities and duties is to protect the sources of the intelligence, whether human or technical, and the methods by which it was collected. Sources and methods are most at risk when intelligence information is directly or indirectly made public. The compromise of sources and methods inevitably results in a diminished capacity to collect intelligence for the future.
The most dramatic consequences of a compromise of intelligence information is the threat of the life of an asset, but there are other significant consequences. For example, if we have intelligence indicating that a particular overseas company is actually, say a Libyan front company, we can often watch that company to learn more about Libya's programs and its acquisition network.
The U.S. Government action that publicly identifies the company will often result in the company shutting down and reopening elsewhere under a different name. Identifying this new company can be difficult. But meanwhile, we have lost a window into the broader proliferation activity.
This is not to say that intelligence should never form the basis for overt U.S. Government action. To the contrary, it quite often does, and I feel strongly that providing this actionable intelligence is of the highest priority for the intelligence community.
What is needed, however, is the flexibility to take the action that will best achieve our nonproliferation objectives, which in some cases may mean holding off on overt U.S. Government actions to protect the nonproliferation sources and methods.
The first goal is to ensure the sanctions, regimes established to punish proliferators, permit the President sufficient discretion in the imposition of sanctions to protect intelligence sources and methods. The second goal is to ensure that the Executive Branch not be statutorily limited or required to publish lists of end users to whom exports of technologies and commodities are controlled. The third goal is to ensure that the Government maintains export control sufficient to ensure that exports of critical technologies are compatible with U.S. interests.
The Administration's proposals achieve the first goal by explicitly permitting the President to delay the imposition of sanctions where it is necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods. Let me emphasize that the intelligence community views this as an exceptional remedy that would have limited but critical application, and is necessary for further nonproliferation goals in the long run.
The second goal is met by not requiring the intelligence community to create lists or databases of end users to which exports of goods or technologies are controlled, but still ensuring that intelligence is appropriately made available to other agencies for the purpose of analyzing export license applications.
Finally, the Administration's bill would not relax or eliminate controls on key technologies, particularly encryption devices, which could be damaging to U.S. intelligence interests.
This is the basic outline of the issues we face. I would offer my center, the Nonproliferation Center, any assistance to you if they are helpful in your deliberations on these important issues.
Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.
I want to say, as we have gone back and forth here, I trust it has been constructive. I have meant for it to be, and I appreciate the professionalism and the work.
I want to say to you and through you to the CIA that I appreciate the detail in this testimony today. You have declassified a lot of information today at our request, and made it a matter of public record. It is very helpful to us to do that, in terms of both reconstructing what happened and laying the right predicate for getting the Export Control Act reauthorization through here.
Your recommendation on this one item that you mentioned at the end was not lost on me in terms of what we may be able to do between now and the time we act on it in the Senate as a whole.
We have just, as you know, reported that bill out of the Committee by unanimous vote of 19 to 0. We have achieved a good strong bipartisan consensus, a regime that we think deals with some of these problems. So I appreciate the fact that you have validated these concerns and given us very important historical reconstruction here today that is useful.
I will say at the same time that I think that there is this problem of where is the health difficulty coming from and how do we track it to its source so we have got a better way of knowing how to treat the veterans and try to heal them and protect their families—that I still see in the various Executive Branch participants, a problem where information leaves off at 1 point, and then it picks up at the next point. Things do not ever quite fully tie together.
I do not just put that on you when I say that. I am just saying I see that problem. It is not the first time I have seen it. I have seen it other times in my 28 years here on other problems and I am seeing it again here on this problem.
I would give you this message to take back if you would. That we have got to do some more work to find out why these veterans are sick. If we had half of the top tier of the CIA professionals sick today themselves from the same problem, we would have a much more ambitious effort underway to get to the answer, just as we would if we had the high command of the military sick today from these problems. It is just the nature of what gets the priority and what does not.
We have got to find out what happened here. We have got to find out because we have got a lot of sick veterans, many of whom are getting sicker, and their family members are getting sick in increasing numbers. We were not prepared for that finding. That finding presented itself to us as we were tracking back through this problem.
I have talked to enough wives of returning male Gulf War veterans, who are now quite sick, that I am deeply concerned about what is going on here. Something happened out there, or some combination of things happened. The degree to which it comes out of this military or biological weapons capability, hopefully time will give us all those answers if we are aggressive about pursuing it.
What is beyond dispute is the fact that we have got a lot of sick people who put on the uniform of this country, and on the basis of our best intelligence assessments and the belief that somebody in the command position was making wise decisions with their safety and well-being in mind, that they could go into a battle situation with the confidence that they were not going to be subjected to something that we did not anticipate, were not protecting them adequately against, or were not prepared to get to the bottom of if they came back with a health problem.
Many of them are deeply discouraged right now, because they really feel like the Government has walked away from them, and despite all the talk, which is cheap and by itself does not mean anything, that not enough has been done to really ratchet their problems up on the priority scale and get at them.
I agree with them. I think they are exactly night. I think it is shameful the fact that we are in that situation. There is no excuse for it . I think every operational officer in the area of the Government that relates to these things, from the Director of the CIA to the Secretary of Defense, to the head of the DIA, to the President himself, to the head of the Veterans' Administration have an urgent task here to marshal the resources, marshal the knowledge, the professional focused effort, and figure out what happened here, and to try to get as much medical help to these veterans and their families as we can do, and not hold anything back.
And by the same token, learn from that before we suddenly find we have got a situation where the same thing happens again in some other theater of war. We have a terrible problem in this country—and I have seen it before—where, once somebody leaves active military service and becomes a veteran, they are in a different importance status as it relates to the Defense Department.
The Defense Department is looking ahead to the next war. The Veterans' Affairs Department is looking back at the veterans of the past wars, in effect. There is this dividing line.
Some of that may be necessary, but I think in this situation, the precautions taken were not adequate. I think there were some serious strategic errors made in putting people in harm's way. I think people are having a very hard time now who may have been part of that decision structure, facing it, acknowledging it, and dealing with it.
The body of information that we have, the number of veterans who keep coming forward, many still on active duty, many holding officer rank, who give us more and more information, tell me that we have got a problem here that the rest of the Government at the top is still reluctant, or unable, to fully see and deal with. That has got to change.
You have helped us today with respect to the report that you have given us from the CIA. We will give you some questions for the record and we will look forward to having you respond to those fully.
Thank you.
Dr. OEHLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. The Committee stands in recess.
[Whereupon, at 4:32 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair.]
[Prepared statements, response to written questions, and additional material supplied for the record follow:]