Iraq’s Toxic Cache Sizable, U.S. Believes

While debate continues on the U.S. call for a new crusade against Saddam Hussein, there has been little argument with its dark premise: The Iraqi dictator has enough chemical and biological weapons to wipe out infantry divisions, if not whole cities.

Through a six-year cat-and-mouse game with United Nations weapons inspectors, Hussein has safeguarded the war-making capability his old adversaries feared most. He has found it only too easy to protect his weapons stores, moving them rapidly from place to place and burying gear and substances he doesn’t want to surrender, U.S. officials say.

Despite the presence of as many as 140 international inspectors since the Persian Gulf War ended, U.S. officials believe Iraq still has about 80 to 100 chemical weapons factories and about 100 germ warfare factories.

Although most of Iraq’s missiles have been destroyed, Hussein could still spread toxic agents on at least a limited scale, using low-tech devices such as agricultural sprayers, aerosol dispensers, fog generators or terrorist “suitcase bombs,” U.S. officials say.

And with U.N. weapons inspectors no longer in the country, U.S. officials and outside experts predict that Hussein will soon once again develop the ability to deliver the toxic agents over long distances and with even greater deadly power--on the tips of missiles.

“We’re talking about--and I use the term advisedly--a diabolical effort,” said a senior U.S. official.

U.S. officials are describing Hussein’s arsenal in the most grim terms possible, of course, as a means of building domestic and allied support for possible military action. But the U.N.’s fact-gathering suggests that Hussein’s inventory is, in fact, large, varied and frightening. The main ingredients:

* Anthrax, a hardy, spore-encased bacterium so deadly that about 2 pounds of it sprayed in the air under certain conditions could theoretically kill millions. The illness that results when it is breathed causes vomiting and fever and finally suffocates the victim after two to four days.

* Botulinum toxin, a bacteria-generated poison that brings on respiratory collapse and death within 12 hours. Inhaled or ingested, the toxin basically blocks nerve transmission and paralyzes the lungs within two to 12 hours.

* Sarin, a nerve gas that paralyzes the lungs and kills within minutes. The agent was used in 1995 when a Japanese cult struck the Tokyo subway.

* VX, an oily substance 100 times more deadly than sarin that can be fatal when a pinprick-size drop lands on the skin. This agent can be sprayed but will also kill or injure anyone who comes in contact with it as it lies on the ground.

Iraq is not alone in possessing these weapons. At least two dozen other countries have amassed chemical and germ warfare arsenals. But experts note that there is a difference between Hussein and other leaders: He has a record of using the toxic agents.

In the Iran-Iraq War, Hussein used mustard gas, killing and injuring 50,000 people between 1984 and 1988, according to Iranian officials. His 1988 sarin gas attacks on Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in northeastern Iraq left 5,000 dead and wounded.

After the Gulf War ended in 1991, Hussein agreed under U.N. pressure to destroy all of his inventory of chemical and biological weapons. At the time, the Iraqis acknowledged that before the war, they had amassed huge stockpiles of chemical and germ agents: 2,340 gallons of anthrax, 65 tons of liquid-form sarin and 4 tons of VX. To deliver those agents, Iraq also said it had an arsenal that included 800 aerial bombs, 6,200 artillery rockets and 28 warheads.

Iraq claimed to have destroyed the weapons after the war. But U.N. inspectors say they have been unable to obtain conclusive proof that many were eliminated.

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To make matters worse, records of Iraqi imports of chemicals and weapons-making equipment have raised suspicions that Hussein’s weapons program has been proceeding apace despite U.N. inspectors’ efforts to destroy the old stockpiles.

The worst suspicions were confirmed in July 1995, when Hussein Kamel Hassan, Hussein’s son-in-law, defected and declared that he had been running a germ-warfare development program, even as Iraq denied it had one.

Since then, the Iraqis have failed to explain what happened to tons of materiel--including, for instance, enough laboratory culture medium to generate three times as much anthrax as Iraq conceded it had before the war.

In September, Iraq made what was supposed to be a complete and final accounting of its weapons program. But after examining the formal declaration, U.N. inspectors concluded that it “fails to give a remotely credible account of Iraq’s biological warfare program.”

U.N. inspectors believe that the current crisis was set off Oct. 29, when the Iraqis refused to allow further inspections, because inspectors were getting too close to the biological weapons program.

Some aspects of the weapons program are neither particularly sophisticated nor expensive.

For a few thousand dollars, U.S. officials point out, Hussein can import small fermenting vats and the lab media in which to grow anthrax. His technicians have only to introduce the bacterial cultures, grow them in the vats, then separate the material out with a centrifuge. In this way, they can accumulate about 2.2 pounds of anthrax spores in a few months.

Developing chemical weapons is slightly more cumbersome, requiring the mixing of larger quantities of “precursor” chemicals.

Even so, most of these processes are within the grasp of “anybody with a good university education,” said Erik Leklem, a research analyst with the Arms Control Assn.

Turning these substances into weapons to be fired on missiles, however, is much more difficult. “It’s an order of magnitude tougher to put these things on a missile in a way that will work,” said Javed Ali, a researcher at the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute.

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For example, while anthrax spores can survive for years, they are highly sensitive to sunlight and heat. Weapons builders must figure out how to shield the spores from the heat of a missile, then disperse them in the tiny size--1 to 5 microns--that makes them most deadly when inhaled.

Chemical agents aren’t quite as tricky, although missile builders must ensure that the chemicals aren’t neutralized when a warhead explodes.

U.S. officials have suggested in recent days that Hussein could be trying to build the weapons to reach much farther than the Mideast.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said last weekend that coalition forces found in 1991 that Hussein was trying to acquire a missile to fly up to 2,000 miles, or about far enough to hit Paris. “I assume he was trying to extend the range even further and possibly hit parts of the United States,” Cohen said on ABC-TV’s “This Week.”

For now, Hussein can deliver the weapons through a variety of low-tech tools. The Iraqis are known to have tested an aircraft that could spray germs like a crop-duster. This technology would presumably not be a threat in a situation such as the Gulf War, when the U.S. dominated the air. But it could pose a real threat to civilians, or to troops with less substantial defenses than the coalition had in 1991.

The toxic agents could also be packed into small containers for release by terrorists in civilian settings, or by commandos behind enemy lines. President Clinton has warned of Hussein’s capacity to use a suitcase bomb, and some experts have warned of the vulnerability of U.S. soil to an Iraqi attack.

But other experts say that it isn’t by any means certain Hussein would want to play such a game. “We know he’s willing to use these weapons against civilians and defenseless troops, as he did with the Kurds and the Iranians,” said Jonathan B. Tucker, a former U.N. inspector. “We don’t know if he would use them against the Americans, where there might be a big price to pay.”

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The Deadly Stockpile

Iraq still has about 80 to 100 chemical weapons factories and about 100 germ warfare factories, U.S. officials say. The agents include:

ANTHRAX: Particularly deadly when spores containing it are spread in the air. Causes fever, vomiting and respiratory failure.

SARIN: Nerve gas used in Japanese cult attack in 1995. Paralyzes the respiratory tract.

VX: A nerve gas more toxic than sarin; its effects occur more rapidly. Particularly dangerous in contact with the skin.

BOTULINUM TOXIN: Considerably more poisonous than nerve gas. Causes lung failure within 12 hours.

Source: Arms Control Assn.