U.S. Soldiers Find Decontamination Bunker Complex

U.S. troops have discovered a vast bunker complex equipped with pressurized offices and bedrooms, gas masks and chemical protective gear, and enough sophisticated chemical and biological decontamination equipment to protect hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of senior Iraqi leaders and commanders.

The complex, discovered Friday by troops of the 3rd Infantry Division, was inspected Saturday by a military chemical team from division headquarters. The team said the complex, found beneath the sprawling grounds of the Presidential Palace, was designed to protect the Iraqi elite from toxic weapons.

“It’s basically a command and control center designed to keep chemical or biological agents out,” said Maj. Keith Reed, the division’s deputy chemical officer. “This is a very, very interesting facility.”

The complex, which stretches underground for several hundred feet in all directions, sits beneath a multistory, pale yellow stone building that looks similar to other grand structures on the two-mile-long palace grounds on the west bank of the Tigris River. Compartments within the bunkers are separated by 3-inch-thick steel doors that were left open when Iraqis fled, apparently in recent days or weeks.

It is believed to be the first discovery of an Iraqi bunker equipped with decontamination facilities.

“It’s a very well-built, top-of-the-line system -- overpressurized, double-sealed, with full filtration,” said Lt. Col. David Velazquez, the division’s chemical officer. “I’ve seen other pressure systems, and this one is first-rate.”

The chemical officers said the overpressurization would seal off the complex from contaminated outside air, while the ventilation system would ensure a supply of clean air.

Velazquez and Reed said they could not determine from a preliminary inspection whether the complex was intended to withstand a chemical or biological attack by Iran during Iraq’s war with its neighbor in the 1980s; a feared attack by the U.S.-led forces; or a release of chemical or biological agents by Saddam Hussein’s regime against U.S. troops or Iraqi civilians -- or all three.

A Los Angeles Times reporter who toured the darkened bunkers two hours before the chemical team arrived found a decontamination center just below the entrance to the complex, which is reached through a narrow stairway off the building’s main lobby. A wide passageway leads to a small reception room posted with decontamination instructions in Arabic and an arrow pointing to “Decontamination Showers.”

The center is equipped with showers sealed off on two sides by steel doors. On one side are syringes containing nerve gas antidotes, eyewash, kits with decontamination swabs and chemicals, and sealed bins for contaminated clothing.

Beyond the showers are lockers that apparently had contained fresh clothing. Through another steel door is a small medical facility, apparently designed for doctors to examine people emerging from the showers.

Beyond the medical facility is a series of hallways leading to bunk rooms, apparently for soldiers or security officers.

Farther down are carpeted private bedroom suites with bathrooms featuring marble floors. Other hallways contain offices, meeting rooms and two large conference rooms equipped with microphones, video-conferencing equipment and maps with military grids.

The chemical team inspected the complex for nearly two hours, discovering an entrance to an upper central area of the building that was blocked by a sealed submarine-type air-lock door. A U.S. Special Forces team arrived to secure the building.

“There are at least one or two floors accessible only through that air lock,” Reed told the Special Forces team. “Everything is designed to support something inside. There is definitely something of great interest in those mid-level areas.”

The chemical officers said a military team would blow open the doors later to allow further inspections.

The inspection was conducted with flashlights because the complex is without electricity or water. Although the entrance and lobby of the building above the complex was heavily damaged by U.S. attacks, the bunkers were untouched.

“You could stay in here and easily survive a chemical attack outside,” Reed said, shining his flashlight on a room equipped with a bank of security cameras.

Inside the main control room, Maj. Mark Rasins, operations officer for the 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, whose Assassin Company discovered the complex, bent down in the dark and pulled out a ledger wedged beneath a cabinet. It contained detailed schematics of the complex, along with a guide to each section or compartment.

“Jackpot,” Rasins said after an Arabic interpreter, Hakim Kawy Ashalan, read a summary on the ledger’s cover.

The ledger mentioned a subterranean area one level below the bunker complex that contains a “special room,” No. 309.

The ledger was handed to Sgt. Spencer Willardson of the 141st Military Intelligence Battalion, who was searching the complex for Iraqi documents. Willardson then assisted Rasins, Ashalan and another interpreter, who gave his name as Abdul, as they shone their lights on a pegboard where scores of keys hung.

On their knees in the dark, the interpreters inspected the keys, each attached to a heavy metal tag stamped with room numbers. They did not find one for No. 309, but they found keys to a “translation room” that possibly contained translated documents, to an information desk, to “gas storage” and to “special latrine No. 1.”

Rasins pried open a locked desk drawer, revealing a tangled pile of more marked keys. “Oh, my!” Abdul said, and began rifling through them.

Ashalan read a note on one paper key tag, apparently written by one officer to another: “In front of the glass door, there’s another key hidden there.”

Down a corridor, outside room No. 319, a warning light above a door is painted with a skull and crossbones and with “CO2,” carbon dioxide. On a steel door nearby is written, in Arabic, “Do NOT open this door until green light appears. Area could be contaminated.”

Beside a steel door down another corridor, a pressure gauge had been installed with a green light to show when the pressure had been equalized on both sides of the door seal.

A blue steel door numbered 24 and sealed with a massive yellow padlock contained a warning: “It is absolutely prohibited to open this door.” U.S. forces planned to force open the door later.

In the decontamination room, a series of Arabic signs provides detailed commands:

“Put your contaminated clothes inside this bag and then put it securely in the container provided.”

“Put on new boots.”

“Wash your hands in the liquid provided in the bowl.”

“You must have a gas mask. Take it off here and deposit in container.”

Stacked on shelves are military decontamination kits dated May 1988. They are similar to kits carried by U.S. troops during much of the Iraqi campaign. They contain syringes of atropine for nerve agents, blotting paper for cleaning exposed skin, cleansing powder and sterile eyewash.

The venting, electrical and security systems, along with the decontamination equipment, are stamped with the names of companies based in Germany, Serbia and Russia. Most of the equipment and internal systems are dated 1987, four years before U.N. sanctions were imposed in Iraq.

A surveillance camera is stamped “Helsinki.” An electrical and air filtration panel is marked with the name of a firm called Energoinvest. Electric power equipment, dated 1987, is stamped with the name Flakt. “Piller” is stamped on valves and pipes, and the German company Drager manufactured the gas masks.

A U.S. company, Insta-Foam Products of Joliet, Ill., manufactured expanding polyurethane foam sealant in cans found inside the complex.