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Fate of Al-Tuwaitha nuclear material unclear
Carl Prine can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7826.
The worst fear is that knowledgeable thieves took fissionable material -- which can be spun into a range of weapons, from complex atomic missiles to crude radioactive "dirty bombs" -- and are speeding it into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. Another concern: Iraqi scientists and technicians returned to steal atomic bomb ingredients from under the noses of American soldiers, to conceal continuing banned weapons production.
U.S. arms control officials Monday rejected another request by the IAEA to give its inspectors access to Tuwaitha to determine what's been looted. The site, 18 miles south of Baghdad, was secured by Marines in early April. Their tests, and subsequent tests by Army weapons experts at the site, detected what could be plutonium. Further tests to determine the nature of the materials have not yet been conducted there.
A recent report in The Washington Post suggests Iraqis have repeatedly entered Tuwaitha and have stolen items from the plant.
"If this happened anywhere else in the world, we would demand an immediate inspection," said IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky, in Vienna. "We want an immediate inspection to determine what has been taken. We also must place new safeguards over the material still remaining.
"We are concerned about environmental contamination, people who could have been exposed to the radioactive material, and whether nuclear security has been compromised," he added. "We do not want this material to end up with terrorists."
If atomic material has reached the black market because of shoddy security, nuclear experts warn, one of the prime justifications for invading Iraq would have been nullified.
"This is cause for tremendous concern," said Michael Barletta, a weapons proliferation researcher from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "If you wanted to blow the entire operation in Iraq, a good way to do that would be to have haphazard security for known facilities where weapons of mass destruction were developed. It's one thing to see people looting antiquities from museums. It's another to learn that radiological sources may have been taken out of Tuwaitha, the best known atomic weapons site in the entire country.
"It's hard to say just how incredibly imprudent it would be to let radioactive materials end up in the wrong hands."
U.S. military officials in Kuwait, Qatar and the Pentagon declined to comment on the latest disclosures from Iraq, other than to insist that coalition forces never broke the IAEA seals securing the nuclear storehouses at Tuwaitha. They refused to say whether atomic materials disappeared during the past two weeks of reported looting.
While stressing they are concerned by reports of missing fissionable material at Tuwaitha and other sites, State Department officials referred all questions to military authorities, who remain silent on Tuwaitha.
"The Secretary (of State, Colin Powell) has said this is a matter for Central Command because it is part of ongoing military operations," said State Department spokeswoman Joanne Prokopowicz.
The Marine Corps' Combat Engineer Battalion secured the above- and below-ground laboratories, bunkers, artillery and small arms caches deserted by the Iraqi Special Republican Guard as coalition forces closed in on Baghdad.
At a warehouse about 400 yards outside Tuwaitha, the Marines secured what they called the "Yellow Cake" facility. Named "Location C" by international inspectors, the building had been placed under seal by investigators in 1991 to keep fissionable material from being reused in Iraq's atomic weapons program.
The Marines, who insist they never broke the IAEA's seals, discovered high levels of radioactivity behind an open steel door, where blue barrels of uranium water filled the storeroom.
Marines believed "Yellow Cake" had been burglarized days earlier by villagers searching for air conditioners, furniture and window glass.
Two initial tests -- one by the Marines and the other conducted on April 10 by a scout team from the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency -- suggested that the water contained bomb-grade plutonium mixed with uranium from earlier weapons production. They told the Marines to start guarding "Yellow Cake" until a conclusive third test for plutonium could be conducted.
Rather than risk impaired health by occupying "Location C," Arabic-speaking Marines painted a sign warning villagers away from the warehouse. The combat engineers continued to man machine gun nests, automatic grenade launchers and conducted armed patrols around Tuwaitha until they were relieved nearly two weeks ago by units from the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division.
Interviewed on April 16 as he departed Tuwaitha, Marine Sgt. A.J. Salim, 25, of California, said the engineers' security measures worked and no Iraqis were allowed in the complex, he said.
"They're staying away from 'Yellow Cake,' " said Salim, an Arabic speaker who often spoke with villagers and former workers there. "No looters. When they come to the gates, we get them out of there. They're waiting for when we leave."
The crucial third test for plutonium never materialized. The Pentagon's scout team moved on to other suspected atomic sites, and a follow-up group of physicists didn't arrive at Tuwaitha until May 3, nearly a month after the Marines first arrived and two weeks after the Third Infantry Division took over.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that for the past week U.S. soldiers have allowed Iraqis claiming to be former researchers to repeatedly enter Tuwaitha, sometimes exiting with items. The newspaper said that up to 400 Iraqis visited the sprawling complex while it was under Army control. Stolen lab equipment was left strewn across the main road outside the facility, including toxic gas monitors, microscopes and an autoclave (a container that sterilizes by using superheated steam under pressure), according to the Post.
Experts on Iraq's nuclear program are urging the Pentagon to let international inspectors back into the site to determine what's been lost and, if they can, track down any atomic or biological contraband before al-Qaida or other terrorists snatch it up.
"The situation isn't good," said physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997. "What I'm hoping is that Location C and the rest of Al Tuwaitha is being secured. This is just terrible. The Pentagon doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what has happened."
