[updated:LAST EDITED ON 23-12-02 AT 12:28 PM (GMT)]CIA documents indicate biological weapons strike failed because reconnaissance planes got shot down.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had a secret plan for a
biological weapons strike early in the Gulf War, but failed to
carry it out because his reconnaissance planes got shot
down, according to newly-declassified CIA documents.
But the documents, made public over the weekend by the
National Security Archive, a local research organization, also
indicate the Central Intelligence Agency woefully misjudged
Baghdad’s long-term intentions, predicting less than two
years before Iraq swallowed neighboring Kuwait that Iraq
would adopt “relative moderation.”
A 1992 CIA dispatch detailing the bioweapons strike does not
disclose its target or the type of the biological agent that was
going to be used in the biological weapons strike.
But researchers at the archive said they believed the
operation was probably aimed against Israel. Iraq fired
dozens of conventionally-armed Scud missiles into Israel
during the 1990-1991 Gulf War in hopes of drawing the
Jewish state into the conflict and fracturing an international
coalition of Western and Arab countries determined to eject
Iraq from Kuwait.
The biological strike, conceived by Saddam Hussein in the
fall of 1990, was to begin with a reconnaissance mission by
three Iraqi Soviet-made MIG-21 fighter jets carrying
conventional ordnance, according to the document.
“If these aircraft were able to penetrate air defenses and
successfully bomb, then a second mission was to take off
within a few days of the first,” said the CIA dispatch.
The second phase of the operation was to have included
another three conventionally-armed MIG-21s, whose task
was to divert the attention of enemy air defenses from the
single SU-22 fighter-bomber which was to deliver a biological
agent.
The strike plane was to follow the same route as the MIGs
but would have flown at an altitude of only 50-100 meters
(165-330 feet), presumably to avoid radar and make
dispersion of its deadly cargo more effective, according to the
dispatch.
“While wind and weather conditions would be critical to the
effectiveness of the mission, for security reasons there was
no intention to involve Air Force meteorologists in mission
planning,” the document said.
But the operation suffered a dramatic setback in the early
going.
The three reconnaissance MIGs were all shot down over the
Persian Gulf after taking off from Tallil Airfield near the
southern Iraqi city of An Nasariyah, according to the dispatch.
As a result, the mission of the bioweapons plane, as well as
the plan to launch decoy flights, was scrapped, the document
said.
The declassified documents also include a CIA assessment
of Baghdad’s pre-war national security goals, which shows
the US spy agency had precious little ability to read Saddam
Hussein’s mind in the run-up to the Gulf War.
The assessment, written by CIA analysts in December 1988,
or about 19 months before Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait,
predicted only “severe tensions” between the two countries
over the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan.
Control of the islands was important to Baghdad in order to
move its oil terminals away from Iran, said the CIA,
forecasting that Iraq was likely to press for their “long-term
lease” and “minor land adjustments near Umm Qasr.”
Even the overall direction of Baghdad’s foreign policy after its
war with Iran appears to have been misconstrued.
“The Iraqis … are likely to practice relative moderation in their
foreign policy, giving less emphasis to efforts to subvert
moderate Arab states,” the CIA opined optimistically.
The spy agency even went on to project that “if Iraq’s military
advantage erodes significantly, we believe the Iraqis will seek
closer ties to the superpowers, particularly the United States.
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December 23, 2002 at 12:27 pm