NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ....................................................... PANORAMA THE CASE AGAINST SADDAM RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 23:09:02 ....................................................... JANE CORBIN: The talk is of war. BUSH: Saddam Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger, to suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. BLAIR: Doing nothing in those circumstances is not an option. CORBIN: The regime of Saddam Hussein is in the firing line and Britain waits to hear the evidence to be put before Parliament tomorrow. Will it make the case for confronting a man who has menaced his people and his region for a quarter of a century? Over nearly two decades Panorama has revealed how Saddam Hussein caught, stole, smuggled and copied western technology in a bid to develop weapons of mass destruction. JANE CORBIN We’ve put together the hard evidence of what he’s actually got today and what he stands a good chance of getting in the not too distant future. Tonight we ask what is the real case against Saddam Hussein and is it strong enough to justify going to war? Paris, 1975, a visitor with a secret ambition arrived on a costly shopping spree. He was welcomed by the then Prime Minister of France, Jacques Chirac, eager to secure a multi billion dollar contract. The VIP was none other than Saddam Hussein. He’d come to buy a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes he said, to develop a nuclear power plant. But back in Baghdad Saddam was soon summoning his top atomic energy officials. He left them in no doubt of what he really wanted. Dr Hussain Shahristani, then the head of Iraq’s civilian atomic programme and a man opposed to nuclear weapons was at the meeting with Saddam. DR SHAHRISTANI: It was clear to me and to everybody else at the meeting that he meant that he wanted the scientists at the Atomic Energy to devote all their time to develop a nuclear bomb for him. I chose at that time basically to remind him very innocently if you like, that Iraq had signed the non-proliferation treaty with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and then he just looked at me and he said Dr Hussain, you are a good scientist, mind your scientific work and leave politics to us, we know what to do. CORBIN: Dr Shahristani refused to participate in Saddam Hussein’s new venture. The President tried brutal persuasion. DR SHAHRISTANI: In the torture chambers they start by hanging a person till their arms are usually paralysed and then they give them electric shocks on their sensitive parts of their body, their private parts and so on. They will keep on at it, day in, day out, not allowing a person to sleep. That went on for 22 days in my case. CORBIN: For 11 years Saddam Hussein kept Dr Shahristani in prison. The dictator still needed a more compliant scientist to develop his bomb programme. Dr Jaffar Jaffa, a brilliant London University trained physicist was the man for the job. He too needed some persuading at first. Dr HUSSAIN AL- SHAHRISTANI Former Senior Scientific Advisor Atomic Energy Organisation of Iraq Dr Jaffa himself for example was the key figure, the single person that was really responsible for all the technology and development. I know that he has been brought to prison and they brought other people and tortured them to death in front of him. Till he cracked down and he just couldn't take it anymore and he said you know.. I’m not going to be a cause for all these people to be tortured like this till they die, and he decided to go back to work. CORBIN: By 1981 the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak was about to go on line. But spies were watching closely and in July Israel sent warplanes to scupper Saddam’s plans. They took out Osirak before Iraq could divert the plutonium it would produce to build the bomb. Saddam Hussein was undeterred. In 1990 Panorama revealed how a British company sold machine tools to Iraq. They helped create a new clandestine nuclear programme to replace what Israel had destroyed. Saddam still harboured nuclear ambitions. Using Iraq’s huge oil revenues he scoured the world for nuclear technology. He couldn't resist gloating publicly but despite western embargoes he could still smuggle forbidden parts into Iraq to build atomic weapons. He looks pretty determined in those pictures. What do you think, seeing him there holding that piece of nuclear technology? SHAHRISTANI: Absolutely, I mean he has been very determined to get this programme going. He sent his stepbrother who was in charge of the Iraqi intelligence at that time, Barazan al Tikriti, and he told me: “We need the atomic bomb because that will give us a long arm to reshape the map of the Middle East.” CORBIN: A hawkish member of the American administration in the 80s, Richard Perle, is again a key advisor in the Pentagon today. He’s speaking in his personal capacity he says, on the subject of Saddam Hussein. RICHARD PERLE: He believes that nuclear weapons will transform Iraq and Saddam Hussein into a world power of such a character that we will be unable to oppose his ambitions whatever they may turn out to be. CORBIN: Saddam Hussein’s ambition was made clear in August 1990. He invaded his neighbour Kuwait to grab it’s enormous oil well. Iraq had already developed chemical and biological weapons as the coalition ranged against him new full well. Interviewed 1996 General Sir PETER DE LA BILLIERE Commander, UK Forces, Gulf War The Iraqis had chemical weapons, we knew that. They had biological weapons, we knew that. They had used them, we knew that. And they were going to be fighting what Saddam Hussein called: “The mother of all battles”. Interviewed 1996 Brig. General JOHN LEIDE Director of Coalition Intelligence, Gulf War I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat just thinking about would they use them. CORBIN: But Saddam’s hands were tied. He’d invaded Kuwait before he developed his atomic warheads. He was afraid to use his chemical weapons for fear of what that might bring. General COLIN POWELL Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1990 And of course there was always the implicit threat of nuclear weapons. I don’t think we ever would have used them, but nevertheless the Iraqis didn’t know that and we could have if provocation was serious enough. Interviewed 1996 TARIQ AZIZ Iraqi Foreign Minister, 1991 We didn’t think that it was wise to use them. That’s all what I can say, that it was not wise to use such kind of weapons in such kind of a war with such an enemy. CORBIN: Panorama was there when the superior military might of the west forced Saddam out of Kuwait. His retreating army was devastated along the road of death that led back towards Iraq. Kuwait was liberated but Saddam did not withdraw gracefully. His parting vindictive order was to fire the Kuwaiti oil wells. It was a defiant sign he would not easily abandon his quest to control the region. The world decided it must contain the dangerous ambitions of the Iraqi dictator. And so the United Nations sent weapons inspectors to route out and destroy forever Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. They discovered that the scope of his ambition was greater and better hidden than they had thought. The leader of the team of UN nuclear inspectors in Iraq was David Kay. He discovered four extensive separate programmes to develop nuclear weapons alone. DAVID KAY: You have to remember that we ultimately found over 24 large facilities that employed somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand Iraqis and cost 10 billion dollars. The extent of that programme was not known. CORBIN: For 7 years Saddam Hussein and the UN inspectors played an elaborate game of cat and mouse. The inspectors chased and Iraqi officials tried to hide forbidden technology before they pounced. Dr DAVID KAY Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector, 1991-92 They managed to conceal physical facilities from some of the best technical intelligence in the world and they managed even while we carried out the inspections to learn how to conceal things to defeat ways we were actively using against us and in fact to carry their own programme on while we continued inspections. CORBIN: The difficulties were evident, when David Kaye arrived unexpectedly at (Faluja?). Forbidden to enter a secure industrial area he persuaded military guards to let him climb a watchtower to get a better view. The inspectors saw massive metal disks being driven hurriedly away, calutrons machines used to process nuclear material. UN INSPECTOR: ?? movement on this site at this point puts you in clear violation of the Security Council Resolution, the Commander is in serious violation of an agreement that your own government has signed. CORBIN: It was a lucky break for the UN inspectors but not for the unfortunate Iraqi guards. They paid the price for not protecting Saddam’s most valuable asset. KAY: We do know that several Iraqis that we came across, I’m thinking particularly at Faluja of the base commander who made the mistake of allowing me to place men on a water tower overseeing the facility while he waited for permission to let us in, and consequently we observed them moving around the calutrons. We know fairly certainly that he was executed the next week by a firing squad for his mistake. CORBIN: The calutrons were disabled and left in the desert where they could be monitored. The UN couldn't trust the Iraqis not to salvage material and start up their nuclear quest again. There was continual confrontation with the Iraqi officials. The Deputy Head of the UN Mission, Bob Galucci, recalls one of the occasions when he caught out an Iraqi official. Galucci revealed he had a list of nuclear equipment imported from abroad. Despite official denials that Iraq had any of it. BOB GALUCCI: The Iraqi who led his side consulted with his colleagues and said he would take us the next day to show us these components and that they were destroying them. I noted that he had a moment ago said there were none, and that now he was telling me something entirely different. He said yes. There was nothing about this that embarrassed him, nothing about having lied that seemed to trouble him. When I indicated that we could save a lot of time if they gave us truthful responses to our questions, he told me that this was really not a cooperative endeavour. CORBIN: When the United Nations inspectors uncovered Iraq’s extensive nuclear programme it was being led by the London educated Dr Jaffa. Dr Jaffa tried to stop the weapons inspectors from getting their hands on lists of those who worked in the nuclear programme and details of their technical expertise. Dr ROBERT GALLUCCI Deputy Executive Chairman UNSCOM. 1991-92 That large establishment was manned by nuclear physicists and engineers, experts of all kinds. To the best of our knowledge, most of these, if not virtually all of these people are still in Iraq, so the significance of that kind of expertise ready to be engaged cannot be overstated. It is extremely important if one is trying to assess how far away Iraq is from acquiring nuclear weapons. KAY: We got the documents but even we knew we didn’t get the original and only copy of any of those documents. In this digital age and Xerox age that’s not possible. So the Iraqis actually were left with copies of those documents that we removed. I did not know, nor did any of us know, how you remove technology knowledge from the minds of people who have already learned the secrets of weapons of mass destruction. CORBIN: So what do we now know about where Saddam has got to in his ambition to acquire atomic weapons? His scientists ran an extensive network of research facilities and they still have the design for the device to trigger a nuclear weapon. Saddam has the raw material for the bomb. Natural uranium mined and processed inside Iraq. But it needs to be enriched to reach weapons grade. Now there’s new information that Saddam is seeking centrifuges, machines to enrich uranium, just as he did before. In the last 14 months several shipments, a total of 1000 aluminium centrifuge tubes have been intercepted by intelligence agencies before they actually reached Iraq. KAY: I’ve seen one of them. The centrifuge tubes look like they’re of the design which is German derived, that the Iraqis acquired some time in the 1980s and developed therefore enriched uranium, that is taking natural uranium up to the level that makes it useful for a weapon. CORBIN: What does it tell you, the fact that they’re trying to get several of these? There have been several shipments. KAY: Well it tells me that they’re going for a large scale programme over a thousand centrifuges which in fact is what they were going for before the Gulf War intervened. CORBIN: But there’s another, quicker way Iraq could get the essential fissile material, enriched uranium or plutonium on the black market. As Panorama reported in 1993, the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan was just one place where poorly guarded enriched uranium was secretly sought by Middle Eastern countries. If he could buy such material, Saddam would be much closer to acquiring nuclear weapons than if he had to laboriously enrich uranium in his own centrifuges. The British government’s dossier will reveal tomorrow that Saddam has tried several times to smuggle fissile material from countries in the former Soviet Union and Africa. Criminal elements are helping the Iraqis but so far the dossier says they have not succeeded. KAY: They could be as close as right now if Saddam manages to obtain fissile material from example the former Soviet Union where corruption and insecurity unfortunately still reigns. If he in fact has to produce his own material himself the best guess is somewhere in the three to six year period but that’s a soft number. I don’t know exactly when that period began. It could have begun a year ago or two years ago even. CORBIN: But the real answer is we just don’t know. It is not necessarily imminent. KAY: It’s not necessarily imminent but it’s not necessarily far off. Just don’t know means just don’t know. RICHARD PERLE Chairman, Defense Policy Board Department of Defence It’s a race against time, it’s a race against his crossing that threshold before you have restrained him. So I don’t know what sort of evidence a mushroom cloud would be a powerful statement but do you want to wait for that? CORBIN: The Chief Civil Servant at the MoD during the Gulf War was Sir Michael Quinlan, the man who developed Britain’s nuclear deterrence policy. But he’s sceptical about the urgency of dealing with Saddam. SIR MICHAL QUINLAN: I find the desire to push this forward in great haste disquieting. No one claims that Saddam has nuclear weapons now. I’ve seen no compelling evidence that he is very close to getting nuclear weapons and that stands quite aside from the question of even if he has them. Even if one day he gets them, why will not deterrence work as it has in so many other contexts and as it did with Saddam. CORBIN: But things have changed. Doomsday scenarios have haunted the Bush administration ever since the day a year ago when the President learnt America was under direct attack. The nations greatest city devastated by a small group of terrorists. A threat which few in America had taken seriously until the unthinkable happened. Dr DAVID KAY Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector, 1991-92 9/11 is a prism through which American political leaders are examining everything that occurred since 9/11 and every threat. PERLE: What September 11 did was bring home in a way that no amount of abstract debate could have, the dangers of waiting until it’s too late. KAY: They’ve realised they can’t.. cannot count on intelligence to provide them with the warning of when he truly becomes dangerous and consequently they have to deal with him in the hear and now as opposed to try to interrupt him after an attack has begun. CORBIN: After September 11th hawks in the American administration, who’d long been pressing for Saddam’s removal, suddenly had the ear of the President and the American people. Sir MICHAEL QUINLAN Permanent Under-Secretary Ministry of Defence, 1988-92 I understand very well that the appalling thing that was done to America on 9/11 has changed psychology. I don’t myself believe, though, that it directly affects the Saddam situation. Saddam was not behind it. We still have to assess the Iraq problem in terms which are directly relevant to Iraq. It doesn’t create some special new legitimacy that didn’t exist before. CORBIN: It’s not just Iraq’s nuclear threat that’s being viewed differently through the prism of 9/11. In 1986 Panorama revealed the pesticide plant at Samara. Saddam was developing chemical weapons. He used them first against Iranian soldiers in the long and bitter war with his neighbours in which a million men were sacrificed. And then in 1988 he turned them against his own people. A cloud of poison gasses enveloped the town of Halabja. Five thousand people died, most of them women and children. Chemical weapons were outlawed by every international convention, but Saddam was then the ally of the west against the mullahs in Iran. Nothing was done. Dr HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Former Senior Scientific Advisor Atomic Energy Organisation of Iraq The west even allowed him to use his weapons of mass destruction against his own people and they covered it up for him, so they’ve not only allowed him and helped him to produce weapons of mass destruction, they even allowed him to use them against his own people during the Iran Iraq war. I mean this is well known and this is something that they don’t even deny, but as one of them have said, you know.. we have always known that Saddam was son of a bitch but he was our son of a bitch. Now he’s different. So when Saddam was basically serving their purposes, they were very happy to let him do whatever he wanted to do. PERLE: We were wrong in 1988 not to take him on then. We mustn’t repeat that mistake. And the fact that we failed in 1988 is hardly an argument for failing in 2002. CORBIN: Halabja was just one example of Saddam’s willingness to slaughter and torture his own people. As Panorama found out 20 years ago in the first ever western interview with the Iraqi President, he makes no apology for using violence to crush his opponents at home and abroad. SADDAM HUSSEIN: (translator) The opposition in our country, it was no longer a local opposition, but an international opposition. Q: Should it be subject to torture and executions? HUSSEIN: Yes. It calls for it to be subject to execution and to torture. CORBIN: Yet despite all this the west went on selling Saddam technology. There were fat contracts to be had for ailing defence industries at home. Interviewed 1992 ALAN CLARK MP Minister of State Ministry of Defence, 1989-92 I think our attitude on this is very much coloured now by the fact that we did actually subsequently go to war with Iraq and it is a risk that is always present when you're selling to dictatorships. You just have to weigh up the probabilities and weigh that probability against the economic advantages of the trade. CORBIN: When the inspectors uncovered Saddam’s chemical weapons programme after the Gulf War they found nearly half a million litres of chemical warfare agents and the precursors, the material to make them. Iraq finally admitted they had made nearly 4 tons of the nerve agent VX, one microscopic droplet can kill. The inspectors also found and destroyed 38,000 munitions. They were filled with mustard gas and deadly sarin. Colonel Terry Taylor worked for the UN in Iraq for 4 years, using his expertise in chemical and biological weapons. TAYLOR: They finally admitted to production of VX but we don’t know how much there is. We know they had problems in its manufacture and particularly the stability of this particular agent, but they had continued to work on this and this would probably be the most valuable weapon in their chemical arsenal which we’re convinced is still progressing. CORBIN: So where has Saddam got to in rebuilding his chemical weapons capability today? He still has enough material to manufacture 200 tons of VX gas in just a few weeks. And he’s got several hundred tons of mustard gas, the choking agent he’s used before, plus several thousand munitions to deliver it on the battlefield. This summer a chemical plant at Faluja showed signs of being rebuilt after an earlier pounding from British and US warplanes. Satellite pictures revealed new chemical storage tanks, buildings and piping systems. The CIA believes Saddam is up to his old tricks, producing chlorine here, but far more than Iraq actually needs. Chlorine is an ingredient in some chemical weapons. It is, however, impossible to tell from the air just what’s in these tanks and pipes, even harder to detect and contain is Iraq’s other existing weapons of mass destruction programme, its biological or germ warfare plan. It took the UN years to begin to uncover it. The Iraqis blocked them at every turn. But the inspectors unpicked a trail of documents showing Iraq had imported 40 tons of growth medium on which to culture bacteria. It was 20 times what the country’s hospitals actually needed. Colonel TERRY TAYLOR Chief Inspector, UNSCOM, 1993-97 It was the quantities that made us suspicious. They had all sorts of extraordinary stories about where this material might have been used and so on, and eventually they were forced to admit that they were lying and the documents were forged. CORBIN: The Iraqis did their best to keep their key bio weapons researches hidden. At a laboratory supposedly for civilian purposes, a scientist tried to slip past Terry Taylor. TAYLOR: I said I’m Terry Taylor and he immediately introduced himself, so I knew he was the right man, and asked him if he would give me the documents which he did. CORBIN: And what did they reveal? TAYLOR: Well after getting past his wife’s driving license application which was on the top and at the back, they revealed.. there was a report on his work with a team on research and development to see if ricin would be a viable biological warfare agent. He was looking at delivering it in aerosol form, a very fine powder or dust or this dry aerosol form, and a very, very tiny quantity of that, if inhaled, would kill a human being quite quickly. CORBIN: It was only when this man, a son-in-law of Saddam’s fled Baghdad 4 years after the Gulf War that the inspectors gained a real insight into Iraq’s bio- weapons programme. Hussein Kamal was the head of Saddam’s special weapons projects. He brought with him Iraq’s most closely guarded germ warfare secrets. A homesick Kamal was however persuaded by the President to return, assured of a warm welcome. Instead he was executed on Saddam’s orders with 40 members of his family. Armed with Kamal’s information the UN inspectors set off for Al- Hakam, an agricultural complex. They found thousands of litres of anthrax, botulinium, an aflatoxin which causes liver cancer. Iraqi officials insisted they never planned to actually deploy the killer spores and toxins in weapons. But when the river next to the factory was dredged, warhead were found, weapons modified to take biological agents. The inspectors were convinced that Iraq kept thousands of litres of other biological stocks and substantial amounts of the growth medium on which to culture germs. Al-Hakam had been unmasked but not Iraq’s entire bio- weapons programme. Despite destroying 14 major weapons facilities the UN believed that others are still undiscovered. With no independent observers on the ground in Iraq since 1998 it’s almost impossible to tell how true the rumours are. Which are emerging from intelligence agencies around the world. This summer German intelligence hinted that the biological toxin ricin was again being produced at Faluja, the huge Iraqi chemical complex. New warehouses had appeared in one part of the site amongst the bomb destruction. One man decided to investigate. Hans von Sponeck was a former under secretary who had supervised the UN’s humanitarian projects in Baghdad. He’d resigned in protest of the UN’s sanctions policy against Iraq. In mid July this year Mr von Sponeck returned to Baghdad with the blessing of the regime, a film crew in tow. He wanted to investigate his tip off that ricin was being extracted from the waste at a castor oil plant at Faluja. The Iraqis had notice that he was coming. There were only derelict or abandoned buildings in the one area he had asked to see. HANS VON SPONECK UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq 1998-2000 There was nothing. There were empty halls but the key of this facility that I was interested in was the castor oil facility that was specifically singled out by intelligence organs to argue that it was functioning and producing chemical agents. And that facility again I could verify as a non-specialist that it was disabled, that there was nothing and there hadn’t been anything. It was rusting away with pipe connections being severed and absolutely in a state where it could do.. could produce nothing. CORBIN: A month later western reporters were taken to Faluja. The Iraqis insisted that barrels stored in the new warehouses were pesticides for agricultural use. IRAQI SPOKESPERSON: As you see, those barrels are not sealed. If they were chemical or biological weapon protection unit, the windows are sealed. CORBIN: The reporters only saw one small part of the vast complex and not being experts could only report what they Iraqis told them. But he’s known to have hidden his chemical weapons production facilities all over the place. There are many sites duel use, it’s hard to really know what’s going on in Iraq. SPONTECK: I would agree that it is not easy to know what’s happening in Iraq but the important point to remember is that we have in different areas, in the humanitarian field as well as in the disarmament field, we have examples where information is given to the public, information is given to political decision makers which is wrong. That was what worries me because you don’t want to end up involving Europe and the US in a war based on conjecture and disinformation. CORBIN: With all the uncertainty what do we actually know about the state of Saddam’s biological programme today. The exact locations are still shrouded in secrecy. But Iraq is known to have retained several tons of growth medium to culture bacteria and the UN and most experts believe there are still stocks of anthrax viable today, and most importantly Iraq still possesses the industrial capability and the know-how to produce new bio-weapons quickly and in quantity. Have you any doubt that Iraq continues to stockpile some biological agents and to have the ability to produce more in fairly short order. TAYLOR: I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever. Some of these stocks will obviously become less effective over time, but they have the capability to carry out production at times when and where they wish to do so. CORBIN: There are no inspectors now inside Iraq to verify what Saddam is up to. But there is the testimony of recent defectors who brought out new information about his weapons programme. Some are unreliable but we’ve spoken to two who we understand are believed to be credible in what they say about the Iraqi regime. Abandoning his prosperous engineering company Adnan Saeed Al-Haideri fled Iraq 9 months ago before disappearing into protective custody he gave this exclusive television interview. HAIDERI: I am engineer.. civil engineer but I am advised in clinical construction. CORBIN: Haideri has details of 20 secret facilities where he went to fit out specialised buildings. He believes they were sites for developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Defected 2001 ADNAN SAEED AL-HAIDERI Iraq civil engineer This is a mixture of.. ammonia mixture, as I said. Inside of these buildings, I did the finishing that they needed for clean area antibacterial, resistance to bacteria and this just for four chemicals. This place is not normal place, not for normal chemicals. The exhausting is not normal. CORBIN: So the new weapons and technology have been hidden away in heavily populated areas, even under a hospital in Baghdad according to Haideri. Beneath Saddam’s many presidential palaces too, and weapons are constantly on the move to outwit the vigilant spy planes. HAIDERI: The important thing is.. the important, very secretive thing, this didn’t fixed in one place, always it’s mobile, movable in any place. He produced here and after a month or 20 days go to other place, and change of place again. CORBIN: Haideri’s most harrowing account comes from people forced to work inside the secret weapons programme. They’ve told him Saddam’s ordered the testing of chemical weapons on prisoners. HAIDERI: He said they test chemicals on them. They take ten people, they put masks on five of them and five without mask, and testing chemical weapons on them, and they waiting when this with masks died and without masks when he died. So there is very.. for them is very cheap to kill these people. CORBIN: Another defector has described how Saddam has siphoned off billions through illegal oil exports. Shadowy front companies fund the smuggling of forbidden technology from the black market in Russia and other countries. Once a top aid to Saddam’s son, Abbas Al Janabi was imprisoned but managed to flee Baghdad four years ago. AL JANABI: I worked now 15 years, I am very close to all the inner circle, anybody in this circle we know each other. CORBIN: Al Janabi reveals how Saddam has constructed a web of deceit and corruption in which the President himself sits and at the very centre. ABBAS AL JANABI Personal Assistant to Uday Hussein 1983-98 People inside this inner circle, even those people divided into this group responsible for the smuggling, this group responsible for hiding the weapons or hiding.. you know.. the machines, the equipment and a group hiding all the documents. So each one doesn’t know, but those who control the operation – maybe 5 or 6. CORBIN: And they know everything. AL JANABI: They know everything, they have.. you know.. each line comes to a point and this point is controlled by Saddam Hussein. CORBIN: So could the man at the centre of the secrets weapons programme threaten the west directly? As Panorama reported in 1989 Saddam was already seeking long range missiles. They would be the most essential element in his weapons of mass destruction arsenal enabling him to hit his neighbours in the region. Saddam had used his scuds, conventional warheads, to strike at Israel and the inspectors destroyed almost all the hundreds of missiles which remained. The UN found Iraq had secret ambitions to build intercontinental rockets which would go even further. They were confident they had stopped Saddam. But there will be new evidence tomorrow in the British government’s dossier, evidence that Saddam is rebuilding mobile platforms to launch his missiles from. AL-JANABI: They managed to rebuild them completely and these are five platforms, I know about them. CORBIN: Mr Al-Janabi says he saw the platforms during a Baghdad arms parade, not on public display but at a special showing for the inner circle. AL-JANABI: We filmed the people working on these platforms to repair with spare parts from outside Iraq, mainly from Russia. I am not saying that they bought it directly from Russia, you know.. the black market is very huge and I am quite sure the operation was done by the black market, and they managed to rebuild five platforms. CORBIN: So how far has Saddam got in developing his missiles today? Experts believe he has at most 24 scuds which could hit neighbouring countries. They can be fitted with biological or chemical warheads but they’re unreliable. And though Iraq still wants to develop rockets, with a range of 1500 kilometres, the country’s missile project is still best described as modest. Sir MICHAEL QUINLAN Permanent Under-Secretary Minister of Defence, 1988-92 It would take him years to get to the point where he could directly threaten the United States, and even if he did, there’s still the point about deterrence. Why would he dare, unless we ourselves force his back right against the wall. CORBIN: You mean unless we put him in a position where he has to lash out. QUINLAN: Where he has nothing left to lose. At the moment, what he has to lose is his survival in power which is I think what he prizes above everything else, and it would be strange to say the least if we now rush to take the one step that might provoke him into using these weapons. CORBIN: But Western intelligence has detected another system by which Saddam could deliver chemical and biological agents. US MILITARY OFICER: We attacked the L29 unmanned aerial vehicle programme which he developed for the delivery of biological and chemical weapons. CORBIN: Four years ago when British planes bombed an Iraqi airfield they exposed a hangar full of trainer aircraft which were being reconfigured as unmanned drones to carry Saddam’s weapons. Colonel TERRY TAYLOR Chief Inspector, UNSCOM, 1993-97 They’re continuing work on this and this remotely piloted vehicle can carry spray tanks which could deliver not just biological weapons but also chemical spray as well, and that could go out to about 600 kilometres, so about the same range as a missile could. So they will have a small number of those unmanned aerial vehicles as we call them. CORBIN: So what’s our final assessment of Saddam Hussein’s secret weapons programmes? What we know now isn’t radically different from what we’ve known for a number of years. He still has chemical and biological weapons or the means to make them quickly. And his nuclear ambition remains the same, although it’s clear he’s some years away from building the bomb. Unless he can save time by smuggling in the necessary enriched uranium, it’s clear that Saddam Hussein has no missiles with which to hit New York or London. But following September 11th a new method of delivering WMD, weapons of mass destruction has become President Bush’s nightmare. The suicide terrorist carries a biological or chemical weapon to an American city in a suitcase. There is no direct evidence to link Saddam to Al-Qaeda, although the Bush administration has tried hard to find some. But Saddam Hussein has had links to other terror groups in the past. RICHARD PERLE Chairman, Defense Policy Board Department of Defense The terrorist links add another dimension which is.. it raises the question of whether he might not choose to disseminate these terrible weapons through suicidal maniacs who are terrorists in other organisations. I mean we’ve seen people.. CORBIN: But he’s likely to do that if you push his back to the wall. He’ll give a weapon to a terrorist, you're creating the problem possibly by making this push against him. PERLE: Well the same logic would have said alright we throw up our hands and leave Hitler forever, he can do what he likes. We can’t oppose him because if we oppose him he will do the thing we’re trying to stop. It only gets worse with the passage of time. QUINLAN: Certainly like a number of other countries in the region he has been sympathetic to terrorists, he has given them a degree of support and succour but the idea that he has been the main driver of terrorism seems to me, to put it politely, to lack evidence. And the idea that he would put WMD in the hands of terrorists out of his own control and that he might be found out later and have to take the consequences seems to me deeply implausible. CORBIN: Four years ago the Secretary General tried in vain to persuade Saddam Hussein to keep the UN in Iraq to contain his weapons of mass destruction. But the inspectors were thrown out and a divided UN Security Council let Saddam get away with it. Now, his future hanging in the balance, Saddam has offered to have the inspectors back again. TAYLOR: In my view, and perhaps I’m an optimist, but it’s worth giving another chance the inspectors, unfettered, unconstrained, no links to any other issue, and perhaps say to Iraq by a certain date, take the inspectors back. We’re not negotiating over conditions that might surround it. The obligation is on you, Iraq, and I think that’s the way inspections should work, and it’s worth another shot. CORBIN: Shouldn't the weapons inspectors, though, be given a chance to find these things before we resort to war? PERLE: Well I can only give you a personal view which is if you know that the mission is going to fail, why bother? Why give Saddam the additional time that’s involved in demonstrating that the inspections will fail and how do you know what you're accomplishing with inspections? CORBIN: There will be no smoking gun to warrant immediate action when the British government lays out its evidence against Saddam tomorrow, just more details of his efforts to procure forbidden technology. But for those on both sides of the Atlantic who’ve made up their minds to get rid of him, the decision is based on the nature of Saddam’s regime. They want to act pre-emptively before he reaches his goal of nuclear weapons. If Mr Blair fails to convince the British public and Parliament that the case against Saddam has been made, will you deal with Saddam anyway, America? RICHARD PERLE Chairman, Defense Policy Board Department of Defense No President, no country, can allow it’s security to be dependent on the views of others. I don’t see how the President can do anything other than the best job he can arrange at protecting the American people and he is convinced that if Saddam is left in place he will ultimately do terrible damage to the United States. Sir MICHAEL QUINLAN Permanent Under-Secretary Minister of Defence, 1988-92 I think we have to think very carefully about war. It’s always a very grave thing to do and we can’t be sure how it will go. Do you remember what Churchill said? “Never, never, never assume that any war will be smooth and easy.” Even if it goes easily, this hypothetical invasion, a huge amount of damage will be done. It may go less than easily and whatever way the military operation goes, there is still the enormous problem, the enormous uncertainties about the future of Iraq and the future of the region. CORBIN: The dilemma is that if politicians do not act, Saddam will continue down the nuclear path. But if he’s attacked, then he may use his chemical or biological agents. The hawks are clear where America’s interests lie. Well if containment has failed with Saddam Hussein, what message does that send to other states seeking weapons of mass destruction about the attitude America will take towards them? PERLE: Well I hope it sends the message that if you pursue weapons of mass destruction and if you are a threat to the United States, we will not stand by and allow you to achieve your objectives. CORBIN: The Bush administration has put Saddam and the rest of the world on notice. This is a new era. Time for Saddam Hussein is running out. _________ This Sunday a unique Panorama, your chance to put your questions on the Iraq crisis direct to the BBC’s top correspondents around the world. Email us at: panorama@bbc.co.uk That’s Panorama Interactive, BBC1, Sunday at 10.15. CREDITS Reporter Jane Corbin Camera Alex Hansen Christian Koerner Tony Poole Sound Recordists Peter Sainsbury Tim Day Art Directo Bruce Hill Lighting Steve Smith VT Editors Boyd Nagle Rod Hutson Dubbing Mixer DamianReynolds Satellite Images Digitalglobe Globalsecurity.Org Spaceimaging Production Team Rosa Rudnicka Karen Sadler Wendy Poon Lucy Wallis Film Research Kate Redman Research Amanda Vaughan- Barratt Graphic Design Julie Tritton Key Yip Lam Production Manager Helen Cooper Unit Manager Laura Govett Film Editors Peter Potts Simon Thorne Roderick Longhurst Assistant Producers James Giles Shabnam Grewal Richard Grange Phillip Wearne Director Aidan Laverty Producer Thea Guest Editor Mike Robinson 17 _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________ Transcribed by 1-Stop Express Services, London W2 1JG Tel: 0207 724 7953 E-mail onestopexpress@hotmail.com