Pentagon to Investigate U.S. Ties to Iraqi Bomb

The Pentagon opened an investigation Friday into whether Iraq might have obtained U.S. technology in its development of fuel-air explosives for extremely powerful bombs.

A high-ranking official at the Pentagon, who asked that his name be withheld, confirmed that the investigation has begun in response to a letter to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney from five senators.

“It is vital that an immediate and full investigation be made of what technology was transferred to Iraq and by whom,” said the letter from Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), John Glenn (D-Ohio), Alan J. Dixon (D-Ill.), Connie Mack (R-Fla.) and John Heinz (R-Pa.).

The Pentagon issued a background paper Friday confirming that Iraq possesses the technology for the bombs, known as FAEs. But the Pentagon sought to play down the danger of the devices, saying that the weapons do not change the balance of power in the Persian Gulf.

Nonetheless, a Pentagon spokesman, Air Force Capt. Sam Grizzle, told United Press International: “The blast effect could be similar to that of a small nuclear weapon.”

The Pentagon paper said the major destructiveness of the bombs is a shock wave produced by the explosion, which is capable of knocking down oil rigs, damaging aircraft and killing troops in the open.

Although the weapons are not currently in the U.S. arsenal, a version was used in Vietnam, primarily to clear landing zones for helicopters, and early types were tested in the 1950s. Several countries possess the bombs, including the Soviet Union, Israel, China, France, Germany and Spain.

Robert G. Davis, a retired aerospace engineer from Laguna Beach, said in an interview Friday that he helped build FAE bombs at a plant in Utah in 1973 and 1974 for the U.S. Army. He described a film depicting the test of one of the bombs at an abandoned rubber plantation in Vietnam.

“There were giant rubber trees, 150 to 200 feet tall, that were uprooted and flew hundreds of feet,” Davis said. “For an area the size of a football field, there wasn’t a root left in the ground.”

Davis and others described the early U.S. versions of the bombs as containing three canisters of gas that could be fired in a series and disperse their contents over a wide area. Then devices, triggered by altitude, would detonate the gas in the air, creating a fireball and a huge shock wave.

A congressional source said the devices developed by Iraq are believed to be substantially more powerful and are thought to be particularly effective in open desert warfare, where the shock waves are uninterrupted.