Peter Zimmerman Physicist, chief scientist of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and science adviser for Arms Control at the State Department during the Clinton administration Thursday, August 14, 2003; 4:00 p.m ET
Bush’s infamous "16 words" have sparked an uproar on the legitimacy of the war with Iraq. Moreover, they’ve opened criticism on President Bush’s use of national intelligence. Peter D. Zimmerman, physicist, chief scientist for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and science adviser for Arms Control at the State Department during the Clinton administration will be online Thursday, August 14 at 4:00 ET to discuss his column on the Bush administration's use of intelligence in making the case for war. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion. Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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washingtonpost.com: Welcome to Editorial's Live Online with Peter D. Zimmerman.
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Bronx, Ny.: Sir, Since the Bush Administration did (apparently knowingly) mislead our nation in its justification with war against Iraq, is this possible grounds for impeachment? Can a private citizen file a lawsuit against the President for misleading the country? And if not, is it at least possible to sue for the impeachment and/or firing of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rice, or any other person who was involved in this deception?
Peter Zimmerman: I'm not a Constitutional lawyer, so you're asking the wrong person about impeachment. Do I think that President Bush's actions were worse than President Clinton's with Monica Lewinsky, yes.
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Lafayette, La.: There is so much misleading information that has surfaced regarding the war in Iraq and yet we hear nothing from the Congressional leaders who allowed this to happen. Soldiers are dying every day as a result of Congress' inactions. Why are the Democrats so passe about pursuing a full scale Congressional hearing on this debacle?
Peter Zimmerman: Democrats don't control either house of Congress, and only the majority party can initiate a hearing of any sort. This Democrat hasn't hesitated to speak out, and many Democratic Senators are beginning to do so. But their ability to get action is limited because they will always be outvoted 51/49. You need to convince two moderate Republicans to change parties, or at least to back up the needed investigation.
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Amherst, Ma.: As a scientist, could you perhaps clarify, in lay terms, how investigators determine the purpose for which materials were used (or intended)? For instance, the aluminium tubes (uranian enrichment or rocket tubes?) or the mobile trailers (germ warfare units or hydrogen production units?).
Peter Zimmerman: Sure. Good question. But I have to be careful because some things aren't public and remain classified. So let's just be general.
1) Size: the tubes were too long to be centrifuge rotors, but too short if cut in half. They were just exactly the right length to be 81 mm rockets based on an Italian design. The walls of a centrifuge rotor are typically 1 mm thick; these tubes were much thicker.
2) Metal: some alloys of aluminum have the strength and corrosion resistant qualities to be used in centrifuges with the enormously corrosive gas, uranium hexafluoride -- but most Al alloys don't. Some alloys are strong enough to be whirled around at 100,000 rpm and have only a 1 millimeter wall thickness. Others rip apart.
3) Coatings: some tubes have coatings on them that make them difficult to use in a centrifuge for technical reasons. You could scrape the coatings off, but then Iraq would have spent money on something that it would quickly destroy.
In the interests of time I'll skip the trailers except to note that they lacked sterilizers which are essential to growing biological materials -- you need to clean things up before you introduce the bugs.
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New York, Ny.: Serious concerns certainly have been raised concerning the Bush Administration's rationale for initiating war with Iraq.
What would be the best way for this nation to start addressing those concerns?
Peter Zimmerman: I'm a physicist, not a political campaign operative. But the best way to deal with a president who betrays your trust is to remember that there's an election next year. In the meantime, I would urge people to persuade a few Republican Senators to push for a bipartisan fullscale interview into the very old question: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"
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Grand Rapids, Mi.: I agree with your op-ed piece. However, please talk about Colin Powell's role. He was going to be the credible adviser to offset the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld et al spinning. Yet, it was the Secretary of State's UN presentation in early February that provided the imprimatur of truthfulness that swayed many Americans and people around the world, including me. Was Sec. Powell duped, too? Or was he in on the spinning?
Peter Zimmerman: I, too, am disappointed in Secretary Powell. But I understand that he must stay on the job if he is to have any influence. Worth noting is that Secretary Powell gave an award to the INR (State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research) analyst who wrote State's dissent from the October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. And another INR analyst who testified honestly before the House Intelligence Committee that he had been pressured to change what he wrote on a related subject was called by Powell when the young man got back from the Hill. Secretary Powell told him he had nothing to worry about and that the Department was proud of him.
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Pittsburgh, Pa.: Was the cause for war in 1990 justified over the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq? Was this war justified by not just the nuclear aligations, but on the broader issues that, as you stated, Saddam should have been removed in 1990?
Peter Zimmerman: Desert Shield/Desert Storm was 100% justified because of Iraq's invasion of its neighbor, Kuwait. Some people date the first Gulf War from Jan, 1991. It really dates from August, 1990. But some of the intelligence produced to persuade Americans that the 1990 threat was very large was hyped and exaggerated -- but the war was still necessary.
I wish I could read George W. Bush's mind. Many have said that he started this war to finish off the 1990-91 conflict. Others have suggested that he was competing with his father. But I am a physicist and not a psychiatrist, so I have no way of knowing.
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East Lansing, Mi.: In all the hubbub about the missing WMDs, a a couple of points have occurred to me:
1. Most of the pre-war "intelligence" about Iraq's WMDs seemed to have dated back to 1998 or earlier. (The 1991 graduate student thesis; the 1995 Niger yellowcake forgery; UN inspectors' itemizations of specific quantities of chemical, biological and other weapons that were believed to have existed when inspectors left Iraq in 1998.)
2. In December 1998, the United States and the United Kingdom launched hundreds of missiles and warheads over a 70-hour period with the primary mission of destroying known and suspected sites where WMDs were manufactured and/or stored in Iraq.
My questions to you:
How effective was Operation Desert Fox (1998)?
Could we not find WMDs in Iraq in 2003 because we had already destroyed them 4.5 years earlier?
Peter Zimmerman: Super questions.
Desert Fox was spectacularly successful. While I don't think it destroyed the WMD, it did set back considerably Iraq's ability to make more. One thing that hasn't come out in all of this is the simple fact that Iraq's Sarin nerve gas was spectacularly poor agent. It was highly impure and had a shelf life of about 2 months (yes, months, not years).
Thus, anything made in 1991 is gone today, "dead" of natural causes. Since the Defense Intelligence Agency reported (this was declassified) that it had no credible info last fall that Iraq was either making or stockpiling chemical weapons, my guess is that they were all gone by spring of 2003.
I don't think Saddam had much in the way of CW or BW left by this year.
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Chino, Ca.: I would really like an explanation of what yellow cake is and what it takes in time, facilities, etc to produce bomb material. Is the radioactive material found and looted in Bagdad yellowcake? How is the sale of it from places like Niger controlled. Bush's claim that Saddam 'attempted to buy' yellow cake from Africa hardly seems like an imminent threat considering that it indicates the deal was never even consummated.
Peter Zimmerman: Yellowcake is a yellow uranium oxide compound that is the first stage of "milling" ore after it has been taken out of the ground. Yes, some of what was found in Iraq was yellowcake; other material was uranium chloride (UCl4). Very little, if any, material was looted. Most of it was just dumped so people could steal the storage barrels!
Those who got burned took the blue barrels with UCl4. When the residual dust was dissolved in water, it formed hydrochloric acid, and that was the cause of the burns. Not radiation.
Sales from Niger are tightly controlled by the French company that owns and runs the mine. Even if Iraq hadn't had yellowcake at home, and even if Iraq didn't, in fact, have indigenous uranium deposits, getting yellowcake was many very difficult steps from having a nuclear device.
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Wheaton, Md.:
Prior to the last Gulf war, didn't the UN and the entire international community agree that Iraq had a WMD program? Didn't our Israeli allies destroy a French-built nuclear reactor in 1981? Why is anyone questioning whether or not Iraq had a WMD program?
Peter Zimmerman: Nobody questions that Iraq had a WMD program in 1991. UNSCOM took down the missiles, CW and BW facilities and rendered them useless. The IAEA took down a massive hidden nuclear program. And yes, the Israelis were the "guardians of the NPT" when they bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981.
The question at issue is whether Iraq had WMD (not just programs that might flower in the future or nuclear ambitions) in 2002 and how much of a threat those programs posed, when, to the USA. My contention is that they were thinking about WMD, lusting in their hearts for WMD, and pretty well stymied by the UN and US sanctions.
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Fairfax Station, Va.: What actually goes on in the disarmament of a country? General knowledge seems to say that scientists are given a tour of the facilities by the country, but a cover up would be so easy. How do they tactfully go about it?
Peter Zimmerman: They do not go about the process tactfully, to put it mildly. The inspectors collect all the info they can, interview scientists, and then demand to be taken to places. Usually they specify the place to go after everybody is in the trucks or the helicopters and after they've feinted in one or another wrong direction.
When they get to a plant they are quite insistent, often almost rude, about getting in, stopping activities, etc. Yes, there can be coverups, but the more intrusive the inspection and aggressive the inspectors, the less chance a coverup will succeed.
It's also true that CW, BW and nuclear projects all leak just a little bit of product or byproduct into the air, soil and water. These can be found, analyzed and traced to their origin. I don't think I can say any more about this process in the open.
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Pittsburgh, Pa.: Based upon the recent news story out of China on the recently discovered barrels of chemical weapons left by the Japanese at the end of World War II, how long will it take the US investigators to discover any hidden chemical weapons in Iraq. It took an accidental discovery and release of these chemicals in China to reveal their existance. Will it take an accidental release in Iraq, before we have the final answer on these issues?
Peter Zimmerman: The only thing 'new' about the knowledge of the discarded CW in China is that now the Japanese people know as well as the rest of us that the Japanese army used plague and other BW agents as well as CW bombs against the Chinese during their invasion in the '30s.
This is all amply documented historical fact. It has nothing whatsoever to do with a timetable for discovery of CW (if there are any left) in Iraq. No, it won't take an accidental discovery to find what's in Iraq.
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Philadelphia, Pa.: President Clinton bombed Iraq and targeted as he put it "Iraq's nuclear bomb making facilities". Does this mean that Iraq was making nuclear weapons when Clinton was President but not in 2002-2003?
Peter Zimmerman: Emphatically not. Iraq was out of the nuclear bomb making business by 1996 at the latest according to two very good friends who served in extremely high positions in the IAEA and UNSCOM inspectorate, but who do not make public statements.
But... Iraq still had some dual use facilities that could have been used in a nuclear program. Desert Fox took those down to more finely divided gravel than before.
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Georgetown, Ky.:
It is fairly obvious to anyone who has paid any attention at all that the White House "cooked" the intelligence on Iraq to support their predetermined course of action. Despite the blatant dishonesty of the administration's argument for preemptive war against Iraq, the American public and press do not seem to be nearly as outraged as they were regarding the last president's sexual escapades. In your opinion, how have the values of the nation become so distorted?
Peter Zimmerman: I am as puzzled as you are on this one. I just don't see how extramarital sex between two consenting adults is more nearly a ground for anger than "cooked" (your word) intelligence. And it's not just that President Clinton answered questions legally accurately if misleadingly, or even fibbed when asked intimate questions. The present president seems not to have verified for himself that he told us the truth about why he wanted to go to war.
I'm not an expert on how we got into this fix. We can get out of it next November.
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Menlo Park, Ca.: Do you have any news about Iraqi nuclear scientist Obeidi? After contacting US people in Iraq regarding papers relating to Iraq's nuclear program (he had them buried in his garden) he was whisked away to a safe house in Kuwait. Since then we've heard very little other than speculations he's not saying what the administration wants to hear, so they're keeping him incommunicado and out of sight.
Peter Zimmerman: No, I don't know what happened to Dr. Obeidi. What I can tell you is that the centrifuge parts he dug up were vastly more advanced than anything Iraq could conceivably have done with the infamous tubes. If they could do that well 12 years ago, why were they fooling around with a third rate design now? It doesn't fit.
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Santa Fe, N.M.: David Kay has a crew of about 1400 scientists and engineers looking for evidence of WMD and their programs. Recently he said that they are finding much evidence and will have a convincing story. Would you care to speculate as to what that story will be?
Peter Zimmerman: I know David pretty well and trust him. What I think he will find is some documents related to a program that likely ended about 3-4 years ago, and just possibly some CW and BW samples. I doubt he will find significant stocks of WMD in usable form.
We know some things now: Iraq didn't fire any CW at us (none of our sensors went off). If Iraq had had CW close enough to use "45 minutes after the order" we would have overrun the depots and found the stuff during the major conflict. We didn't find it or you and I would have heard about it.
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San Francisco, Ca.: It seems like the Iraqi WMD discussion is focused on materials rather than scientists. Do you think it could be more effective to track the people who possess the knowledge to design these destructive systems rather than the hardware?
Peter Zimmerman: We need to do both in equal measure. The people should lead us to the materials... if there are any materials to be found or any hardware.
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Pittsburgh, Pa.: How did the quality of the Sarin gas that Iraq make compared to that used by the Japanese doomsday cult and release in the Toyko subway? How could the Sarin in Japan be made under the noses of the Japanese police? Could a similarly hidden program have escaped detection in Iraqi by the inspectors before this latest war in Iraq?
Peter Zimmerman: They were both pretty poor agents. I haven't seen a good assessment of the shelf life of the Aum Shinrikyo product.
Aum could make it under the noses, as you say, because they made only a few liters at a time and in a remote site.
Yes, an Iraqi program that tiny could have escaped detection. But what good would such a program have done Iraq? Aum didn't kill more than a handful of people and they had surprise, lack of preparation, and a confined space for the gas all on their side. You need literally tons of CW agent for it to have military utility! Not a few liters.
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Nederland, Co.: Supposing WMD are found at some point (maybe October 2004) and they were buried underground (as I hear was the case for some Iraqi MIG planes), and we're told it took so long to find the WMD because they were buried. Politics aside, what would be the scientific way to prove the buried WMD were buried -before- Op. Iraqi Freedom etc.? That is, how could credibility of such a find be established beyond reasonable doubt?
Peter Zimmerman: Buried CW will have degraded given Iraqi Sarin's shelf life.
Buried BW agent, except dry anthrax spores, will likely be dead from the desert heat.
There are enough technical tests that I won't go into that we could probably establish that the agents were buried more recently than April 2003. Anyway, the amount they could bury w/o rumors of it getting out is pretty small. Remember, you need many tons of CW to do any good.
Funny you hypothesize a surprise find of WMD in October of 2004. Why ever would you think of such a thing?
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Washington, D.C.: Can you shed any light on the fate of the chemical weapons Iraq was believed to poscess, but which were not accounted for?
Peter Zimmerman: Hard to answer this one for a lot of reasons. Yes, some of us did think that Iraq had held back CW from the UNSCOM process, but it wasn't because there were production records or anything. It was because the accounting didn't balance and precisely because records of the claimed destruction of the agent couldn't be produced.
The Iraqi answer was that they destroyed their VX and were so worried about getting caught with the stuff that they destroyed the records of both its production and destruction. Friends who worked with UNSCOM accept this as plausible if not entirely convincng.
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Washington, D.C.: In your op-ed piece, you accuse President Bush of using his State of the Union speech to mislead Congress into giving him a "blank check." But Congress gave him that check, blank or otherwise, months earlier. Maybe the President made other misleading statements, but you certainly haven't identified them. So isn't your piece somewhat, well, misleading?
Peter Zimmerman: You're quite right. The State of the Union was designed to get the people to endorse the blank check. But most of the intelligence we've talked about was used with Members of Congress and Senators in the weeks leading up to the vote to authorize force. They were mislead, I would argue.
And, of course, the same intelligence was in the October 2002 NIE which is really at the root of the whole controversy.
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Long Beach, Ca.: What leads to believe that Bush is competing with his father? Isn't this a "club" of sorts? There is an agreed upon agenda, and the road map of their plans has been published by PNAC and others. Controlling the Middle East is far from a family concern of Bush 41 and 43. Bringing in personal dimensions, especially inter-family dynamics is a smokescreen, really. Your Opinion?
Peter Zimmerman: I'm afraid I don't understand this question. Is GW Bush competing with GHW Bush? I think all high-achieving sons and daughters compete with their parents. I know I did. So I would not consider comparing the two Bushes to be a smokescreen at all, and exploring their personal relationship could be a good tool for estimating what Bush-2 will do.
Could you tell me who or what is PNAC? I don't recognize the term.
Is there an agenda within this Administration? Yes, I think there is and has been. But every Administration takes office with an agenda, roadmap, plan of what it wants to do with, for and to the country.
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Rockville, Md.: I believe you are correct that the President has lied to America. I think that American's support of him for these reason's 1 - Saddam Hussein failed to develop Iraq's oil output potential; bring stability and reliability to his nation and the area politcally and militarily. 2 - The Saudi's have done better but may soon be politically unstable. They could cause our recession to deepen into a depression (even a world depression?) A President must consider all of these factors. What do you believe would be America's best course of action considering these broader issues?
Peter Zimmerman:
I'm glad you agree that President GW Bush has lied to us. But you're wrong on some important parts. Hateful tho Saddam is/was, before 1990 he had brought stability and reasonable prosperity to his country. He had done a fair job of developing the oil resources as well.
The Saudis are a people I simply don't understand.
I see I'm within a few seconds of being out of time. I'm sorry I didn't get to all of your questions and had to be quick and brief on others. Thanks to all of you for participating.
--pz
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