Latest on Al-Tuwaitha from embed Carl Prine: >>Team inspects suspected plutonium site
By Carl Prine
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, April 11, 2003
SOUTH OF BAGHDAD: A scout team from the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency arrived in a convoy Thursday at the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex, beginning a probe that could take weeks to determine whether plutonium is present at the massive nuclear facility and extensive underground complex.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said initial reports from the field often are disproved after further testing and investigation.
After a quick inspection at what military authorities call the "Yellowcake Facility" a few hundred meters offsite, the Army specialists told the Marines they suspect Al-Tuwaitha harbors plutonium. Previously, it was believed by the International Atomic Energy Agency to hold uranium only for research purposes.
"We are here to see what's here," said U.S. Army Maj. Ken Deal of Manassas, Va. "We will determine when a larger team of scientists will show up. This could take days. We'll know later in the week."
At a Pentagon briefing Thursday, officials said they were investigating the site, but cautioned they were not yet aware of any weapons-grade materials at Al-Tuwaitha, located about 18 miles southeast of Baghdad and considered the crown jewel of the Iraqi nuclear program.
"The one common factor is these things take time, it's hard work, it is a long process," Clarke said, because "sometimes things test positive and then it turns out to be negative. We're taking our time."
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspected the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex at least two dozen times and maintains a thick dossier on the site, had no comment.
But an expert familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections told the Associated Press that it was implausible to belive that U.S. Forces had uncovered anything new at the site. Instead, the Marines apparently broke U.N. seals designed to ensure materials aren't diverted for weapons use or end up in the wrong hands.
Al-Tuwaitha was among the first sites that IAEA inspectors sought out after the resumption of inspections on Nov. 27 after a four-year break.
For almost a week, the Combat Engineer Battalion of the U.S. Marines has defended the mammoth nexus of laboratories, warehouses and offices from Iraqi counterattacks.
Marines now also must safeguard those apparent atomic stores. The Combat Engineers said looters or Iraqi officials broke seals placed on uranium stores at the Yellowcake site by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Pentagon team also began interviewing a former nuclear physicist and an engineer who recently worked at Al-Tuwaitha. The two men told the Marines they would show coalition investigators "everything we didn't show the inspectors" from the IAEA.
More former workers are expected to gravitate back to Al-Tuwaitha in the coming weeks, Marines believe. The reason: They're seeking back pay. It seems Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein never paid his nuclear researchers before evacuating the site.
The IAEA probed Al-Tuwaitha 12 times during the past four months looking for weapons of mass destruction once international inspections resumed. According to the IAEA, investigators found no evidence of illegal nuclear weapons production.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, IAEA investigators said they would be "surprised, but not necessarily shocked" if coalition scientists uncovered illegal atomic weapons production at Al-Tuwaitha.
IAEA officials had long voiced concern about the lack of inspections since 1998, when the Iraqi Baathist regime barred them. These IAEA authorities insisted they had extensively probed Al-Tuwaitha when they returned, and had begun to make significant progress before hostilities broke out between Iraq and the United States.
"To date we have found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq," wrote IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradeiin his final report on Iraqi inspections in March.
Tim Trevan, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and author of "Saddam's Secrets" said on Fox News Thursday that it is plausible that weapons inspectors could have missed parts of the facilities because the Iraqis had years to study the inspection process and develop ways to thwart inspectors.
However, he offered caution on the initial reports of possibly finding plutonium.
"But if it's weapons-grade plutonium, let's just remember, Tuwaitha was the center of the nuclear weapons program last time around," Trevan said. "This is a huge facility. It's hard for most Americans to comprehend the scale of the facilities in Iraq. It's surrounded by massive berms, 100-foot high berms, a great big tunnel entrance into the whole compound. It was an ultra-secret, ultra-high- class facility with many very good scientists there.
"And it was inspected by the IAEA both before the first Gulf War and afterwards. So the site is firmly linked to the nuclear weapons program."
The main difference between weapons-grade plutonium and reactor-grade plutonium is the percentage of different isotopes, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Weapons-grade contains more of the isotope plutonium-239 than reactor-grade plutonium.
Al-Tuwaitha has been targeted as a potential nuclear problem. Israel bombed one of its reactors in 1981 before it became operational out of fears that it could produce weapons-grade materials. U.S. forces bombed the facility again a decade later during the Persian Gulf War.
Marine intelligence and atomic weapons specialists took their last trip through Al-Tuwaitha on Thursday before turning it over to U.S. Army soldiers. Marine surveyors, using advanced radioactivity detectors, found extremely high readings in several abandoned buildings at the site — 14 buildings tested positive for significant radioactivity.
Between and below Al-Tuwaitha's rose gardens and palm groves, Marines have found stockpiles of artillery shells, chemical drums from Russia and locked bunkers and storage rooms.
"It's like walking through a diabolical Disneyland," said Marine Sgt. J. J. Turner of Charleston, S.C., as he peered into locked biological laboratories deserted nearly a month ago when the war began.
"See, the beakers are still setting there. There are cultures growing in them. I sure don't want to go in and see what's in them. Leave that to the Army."
The Marines want to leave to the Army the entire Al-Tuwaitha complex, sooner rather than later. The Combat Engineers want to join the other Marine and Army battalions turning north to chase down the last remnants of the splintered Iraqi military, Baath Party loyalists and Fedayeen militia.
But they can't go until relieved at Al-Tuwaitha.
"We will stay here until we're replaced by the Army," said Capt. John Seegar of Houston, Tex. "The big problem has been civilian looters trying to get in. We turn back their trucks. Then it's funny to watch them slowly driving around us, looking for breaks in the barbed wire.
"If we leave, they'll ransack the place. We can't let these people around the nuclear material. It'll kill them."<<
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