NucNews - November 19, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- korea Putin floats new economic incentives for North Korea AFP Saturday, November 19, 2005 http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051119/ts_afp/apecsummitskorea BUSAN, South Korea (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for drawing North Korea into large-scale development projects as a way of helping to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula. Speaking at a news conference Saturday following bilateral summit talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun, Putin said it would be "genuinely realistic" to widen the warming Russian-South Korean relationship to include North Korea in some fields. "It can become cooperation in a three-sided format: Russia, South Korea and North Korea, in the areas of energy and transport. "Such cooperation would be not only economically profitable but would also help build confidence on the Korean peninsula," Putin said. He did not name specific projects, but senior Russian officials have talked about plans to tie a trans-Korean railway line linking North and South Korea to Russia's trans-Siberian railway. This would provide an easy new channel for deliveries of gas and oil from Russia to South Korea and would provide South Korea with an export route to western Europe that would cut its current 42-day average shipping time in half, according to Russian officials. The Putin-Roh summit took place after two days of a summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ( APEC), which drew together all the participants in the six-party talks but North Korea. Russia has diplomatic ties with both South Korea and North Korea, and Putin came to the APEC summit looking for ways to leverage Russia's vast wealth in coveted energy resources into stronger influence on the region's political agenda, a goal his North Korean proposal seemed designed to further. "I want to underscore that the kind of joint action between Russia and South Korea that we are seeing today of course serves the interests of our peoples but also strengthens security in northeast Asia," Putin said. The Russian leader reiterated Moscow's support for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and called for continuation of the six-party talks aimed at encouraging North Korea to drop its controversial nuclear program. The talks, involving North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States, are "the most rational way" to resolve the problem, Putin said. Putin's call to include North Korea in development projects stood in contrast to US President George W. Bush's assertion on Friday that Pyongyang should receive no help with its energy needs -- specifically a light water nuclear reactor -- before it halts its current nuclear program. Roh seemed to give a measure of support to Putin's initiative, saying the question of linking the Korean peninsula with the European continent was a project of "high interest" to both South Korea and Russia. The South Korean leader expressed satisfaction with Russia's "active role" in promoting stability on the Korean peninsula through the six-party talks and said he believed economic development "will lead to stability and peace" in the region. Putin and Roh witnessed the signing of a bilateral action plan aimed at strengthening cooperation in trade, investment, information technology and energy and achieving goals set when Roh visited Russia in September of last year. Putin also said Russia was also willing to cooperate in the defence industry and military technology as South Korea, a military ally of the United States, is heavily dependent on US weaponry. APEC leaders demanded "substantive progress" Saturday in stalled North Korean disarmament talks following Pyongyang's pledge to scrap its nuclear programmes. ---- North Korea To Be Key Topic on Bush China Visit, Aide Says President also plans to discuss economic issues, human rights 19 Nov 2005 US State Department http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2005/Nov/21-652468.html North Korea's spent nuclear fuel rods in Yongbyon, North Korea. (© AP/WWP) North Korea’s nuclear weapons program will top the agenda when President Bush meets November 20 with Chinese leaders in Beijing, a national security aide to the president says. The discussions will focus on “how to ensure that the September 19th statement of principles achieved in the six-party talks is fully implemented by North Korea, leading to the complete dismantlement of all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and nuclear programs,” Mike Green told reporters accompanying the president to Beijing. After weeks of negotiations in talks that also included South Korea, China, Japan and Russia and the United States, North Korea agreed on September 19 to abandon its nuclear weapons programs. (See related article.) During Bush’s visit to China, the effort will be to work toward “a transformation of the Korean Peninsula and a resolution of long-standing issues, such as the movement from an armistice to a permanent peace mechanism … (and) human rights,” said Green, special assistant to the president for national security affairs. For more information, see U.S. Policy Toward North Korea. Green said the president also will address economic issues, and will push for movement toward a flexible market-based currency system in China as well as “a more balanced playing field in U.S.-China economic relations.” Beyond that, he said, Bush will be candid in discussing human rights issues, telling the Chinese president that it is “important … to give the Chinese people full opportunities to worship and to speak and to exercise their full rights freely.” Although it is important to broaden the areas of cooperation, he said, Bush believes the United States must also “be very candid [with the Chinese] about the areas where we disagree.” Expanding on the currency issue, Faryar Shirzad, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs, said the Chinese must go further in implementing commitments, made in July, that they will make their exchange rate mechanism more responsive. (See related article.) “We understand the move to full flexibility will have to be gradual and implemented over time, but it’s really time for them to begin to move much further than they have already,” he said. For additional information, see United States and China. Following is the White House transcript of the briefing by Green and Shirzad: THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Beijing, People’s Republic of China) For Immediate Release November 19, 2005 PRESS BRIEFING ON THE PRESIDENT’S VISIT TO CHINA BY MIKE GREEN, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS AND FARYAR SHIRZAD, DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC AFFAIRS Aboard Air Force One En route Beijing, People’s Republic of China 5:13 P.M. (Local) MR. GREEN: We’re on our way to Beijing. The President's official program begins tomorrow morning. He’ll go to Gangwashi Church to worship in the morning. He then has a meeting with President Hu, and then a meeting with President Wen – excuse me, with Premier Wen, and then a social lunch with the Premier. In the afternoon, he will go mountain bike riding with Chinese athletes who are training for the Olympics; talk to them a bit about their experience and their aspirations. And then in the evening he has a social dinner with the Chinese leadership. In terms of the major themes for the President's visit to China, he begins with the starting premise that we are in a position to strengthen U.S.-China relations and that we can do so based on a comprehensive and a cooperative and a constructive and a candid dialogue. So on issues where we are working well together, we’re going to try to do even more. We’ll try to find new areas to expand our cooperation. And in areas where we don’t see things the same, the President will be candid, as he always has been, with his Chinese counterparts. At the top of the list, of course, will be North Korea and how to ensure that the September 19th statement of principles achieved in the six-party talks is fully implemented by North Korea, leading to the complete dismantlement of all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and nuclear programs, and opening up the possibility for a transformation of the Korean Peninsula and a resolution of long-standing issues, such as the movement from an armistice to a permanent peace mechanism, human rights and other issues on the peninsula. Secondly, the President will also talk about economic issues. He will be working to strengthen opportunities for America’s workers, for America’s farmers. He met with President Hu in New York in September, of course, pressed on these issues. President Hu issued a good statement at the time on intellectual property rights and his own commitment to strengthening enforcement of intellectual property rights protection in China, something that he said is good for China; and other steps to create a more balanced playing field in U.S.-China economic relations. The President will be looking for some concrete action to follow up on that commitment. He’ll be pushing for movement towards a flexible market based currency system in China, as he did in New York, and also on beef and some other bilateral trade issues, such as government procurement. In addition to the economic issues, the President will be talking to President Hu and his Chinese counterparts about things that he believes they should do to strengthen Chinese society by giving more opportunities for Chinese citizens to worship, to speak freely and to exercise other rights, and also to form a civil society with non-governmental organizations that would help to buttress Chinese society at a time when China is undergoing important changes. President Hu has articulated to President Bush this notion of peaceful development. It’s clear, as the President said in his speech in Kyoto, that President Hu wants to make the Chinese people more prosperous. That's a good thing. But it’s also important, as the President will tell him, to give the Chinese people full opportunities to worship and to speak and to exercise their full rights freely. There are other issues. The President will talk about China’s role in the world. China’s responsible as a stakeholder, as a permanent member of the Security Council to make progress with us on issues with Syria, with Sudan, with Iran and so forth – with Burma, for example. And on the Taiwan question, the President will reiterate our consistent position, which is that we have a one China policy based on the three communiqués; we do not support Taiwan’s independence; we oppose unilateral moves by either side to try to change the status quo; and we want to see more dialogue between Beijing and Taipei, and particularly dialogue between the governments, because the dialogue thus far has been between the government and Beijing and the opposition and other non-governmental organizations in Taipei. That's the general thrust of what the President will be talking about. We have a very rich and diverse agenda with the Chinese. And he’ll have opportunities in a series of meetings with the Chinese leadership to address all of these issues. Q Will there be any live coverage of the President’s appearances? Do you know what China’s television plans to do as the President moves around tomorrow? MR. GREEN: The President will be making comments to the press, together with President Hu, after their meeting. He’ll also, I believe, be televised – at least in part – during his interactions with the Chinese Olympic athletes, and there may be other opportunities. And we’ve made it clear to our Chinese hosts that the President’s message is one that is positive about U.S.-China relations and should be heard by all Chinese citizens, just as when President Hu comes to the United States, his message is heard in full by the American people. Q So what do you mean by that? Are you saying that – have you requested that they give live coverage? Or what do you mean? MR. GREEN: We put it to them just the way I just said. Q Will they carry the statements live or have coverage? MR. GREEN: We don’t know exactly how they’ll cover these things. There is Chinese CCTV, the Chinese state television, there’s Phoenix TV, they have radio, they have a variety of media outlets, there is print media. But the basic expectation we have, and we’ve made it clear to them, is that they should give the Chinese people an opportunity to hear everything the President has to say about U.S.-China relations, just as we give the American people and the American press every opportunity to hear what President Hu has to say about U.S.-China relations. It’s part of how we’re going to have to strengthen our relationship, by letting people hear the leaders on both sides convey their hopes and expectations for the relationship. Q Why no questions? Why no questions at the joint appearance? Was that broached? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, they’re doing statements at this appearance, and you’ll be covering the President throughout the day tomorrow. Q Why no questions? Was that the Chinese decision or your decision? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, these are always things we discuss with the host government. Q Which was it? MR. McCLELLAN: Sorry? Q Who said "no"? MR. McCLELLAN: These are always things we discuss with the host government. Q The President's visit to church, what’s the message he’s hoping to send to the government and what’s the message he’s hoping to send to the people of China? MR. GREEN: Of course, it’s Sunday, so the President will want to worship. But it’s also important that the world see and that the Chinese people see that expression of faith is a good thing for a healthy and mature society. The church where he will worship is a church that is often called a state-sponsored church, but it’s a real church and people really do worship, and it is a real religious service and the parishioners are real people of faith who are congregating to express that faith. But there are many other religions in China. There are Muslims, there are Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, who have more opportunities to worship and to congregate and express their faith than Chinese did a generation ago, or even a decade ago. But there is still much to be done. And the message for the Chinese government is the same message the President has given President Hu before, which is that allowing all Chinese citizens to give full and free expression of their faith is something that's not a threat to the state, it’s something, as he said in his Kyoto speech, that makes for a stronger and more mature and stable society, which, ultimately, really should be in Chinese interest and consistent with President Hu’s own vision for China’s future. Q What was the feedback from the Chinese after the Kyoto speech? MR. GREEN: You've seen, I think, the Chinese Foreign Minister statements. But it’s not a new element in our dialogue with the Chinese. And it’s not a new theme for the President – he talks about freedom everywhere he goes. He talks about it with the Chinese; it’s been a feature of our discussions. You’ll note that Secretary Rice, when she came to China last, gave a speech which had some similar themes. It is a regular part of our discourse; the Chinese recognize that. They have engaged in discussions with the President on this before. President Jiang did, and now President Hu has done the same. And they expect it. Q The President going to make his case for China to move toward currency flexibility, is this something that he’s going to express concern about the – the protectionist sentiment in the U.S.? Or is this something he’s going to say that China needs to do for its own benefit? MR. GREEN: In general on these economic issues with China, we’ve taken an approach that these are steps – whether it’s intellectual property rights protection or moving to a market based exchange rate system – that are in China’s own economic interests in the near-term and the long-term. We have discussions in the joint economic committee, in the joint committee on commerce and trade at all levels, working levels and senior levels, with the Chinese side. They’re productive discussions. So the premise is that these are steps that are good for China’s own economic future, but they’re also important for the U.S. and for China’s role in the global economy. MR. SHIRZAD: That's right. Remember, it’s not just the United States that has raised the issue of the importance of flexibility in China’s exchange rate – the IMF, the G7, and other international observers, and probably most experts that look at the issue – understand that ultimately for a maturing economy like China’s, they need to have an exchange rate mechanism that’s responsive to market forces. And Secretary Snow and the team at Treasury have done a good job both in terms of public discourse, but also in terms of private discussions with the Chinese to express the importance of their making a move to fully implement the commitments they made on July 21st regarding implementing a market based flexible exchange rate mechanism. Q So just clarify for me, does flexibility from the U.S.’s perspective mean a full float at some point? Or how do you see the steps that it needs to take playing out? MR. SHIRZAD: Well, there are different exchange regimes that countries have. The question is whether they Chinese will allow market forces to help drive the movement of their currency. Right now, they control it very tightly, and the question is whether they will implement what they said on the 21st, which is to make their exchange rate mechanism more responsive. They’re clearly at a point now where they’ve moved beyond the full, rigid peg that they had before July 21st. And they need to move. We understand the move to full flexibility will have to be gradual and implemented over time, but it’s really time for them to begin to move much further than they have already. Q Faryar, if you really wanted to pressure them to take steps, one action you could take is to get them labeled a currency manipulator. Do you think that step is warranted at this time? MR. SHIRZAD: Well, the issue of how they get characterized in Treasury’s semi-annual report is really something for Treasury to issue in its report. They’ll be issuing their report, the fall iteration of that report fairly soon, and so we’ll see what they have to say. I don’t want to prejudge or preempt what they have to say. But remember, ultimately, the issue is not to pressure the Chinese; ultimately, the issue is to make them understand that for their own benefit they need to make this move. I think they do, it’s just matter of how quickly they’ll implement it. Q Do you have a time frame of when you want to see action? And are you expecting near-term action on this? MR. SHIRZAD: I don’t want to cite an artificial time frame on it. I think they understand, though, for their own sake they need to get moving on this and implement what they said they wanted to do on July 21st. Q Can I ask how you guys chose the church where the President is going to worship? MR. GREEN: This is a church where other senior visitors from the United States – including, I think, if I’m correct, the most recent visitor would have been our former Secretary of Commerce -- and so it’s one where people have worshiped before and have seen that while it is sanctioned by the state, the parishioners and the ministers are expressing their faith fully. So it’s an opportunity to worship in a genuine way, and convey to the Chinese people the personal importance the President places on this for any society. Q Mike, you've given a fairly long list of concerns that you have: freedom of worship, the currency, trade, things like that. You said that you expect it to be a candid discussion. Are you expecting it to be tense, I mean, with this very long list of things that you have concerns about? MR. GREEN: No, I don’t, because for President Hu there probably is no relationship more important in the world than with the United States and with the U.S. President. As China develops its economy, defines its role in the world, it’s of critical importance to the Chinese leaders to have good relations with us and to make sure that we are supportive of China’s goals and not proposing them. So it’s important, very important for the Chinese leadership to have successful meetings with the U.S. President, to have candid discussions and to try to work to expand the areas of cooperation. The Chinese side, our counterparts often describe these meetings officially as cooperative and constructive; they rarely mention them as candid. But we think candid is an important part of it, as I said, and the Chinese in the meetings are also candid and increasingly frank and honest and flexible in the discussions. Remember, the President saw President Hu in New York in September. They had a pretty long meeting; I think it was about 90 minutes. He’ll see him again sometime next year, when the rescheduling of the postponed visit to Washington takes place. He has met him before. And so this is an ongoing dialogue that the two leaders have and these are issues that we’ve been working through with the Chinese steadily from the beginning. Q Is it equally important for the United States to have good relations with China? MR. GREEN: The President is optimistic about U.S.-China relations. China’s growing role in the world is probably one of the greatest variables in international relations – that, and the other is where the future of Islam and terror and so forth goes. But, certainly, the rise of China’s role in the world is one of the most important variables we all face and the President is optimistic about U.S.-China relations, but believes that to make progress we have to expand the areas of cooperation, but also be very candid about the areas where we disagree. And we’ve addressed many of those issues. And we’ve also made progress in areas where we’re cooperating, like the six-party talks, where we made an important step forward on the September statement of principles. Q Mike, some analysts believe the United States has been a little disengaged in recent years in the region, generally, and that the Chinese have stepped in to fill a vacuum in some respects. How do you respond to that? MR. GREEN: I think that the easiest answer to that question is to look at the APEC leaders’ statement that just came out, where the President’s leadership and U.S. leadership is in black and white, and you have the 21 leading economies of this region signing on to an agenda that we worked collaboratively with them, but where U.S. leadership was critically important. Three years ago in APEC, the President – together with Prime Minister Thaksin of Thailand, who was the host – put forward a vision of APEC where we would expand cooperation not only on economic integration and liberalization, but also on security issues. And in this meeting, that security agenda – whether it’s counter-terrorism or avian influenza or other issues that threaten the economies of this region – is firmly in place, the cooperation is good. So that's where the rubber hits the road, in meetings like this, in agreements like this, in cooperation on issues like avian influenza, counter-terrorism and trade liberalization and pushing for a successful Doha round, is concrete progress and I think it’s very clear in the leaders’ statement. It’s true that China’s presence in Asia and in the world is growing, as you would expect from a nation that has such successful GDP growth. And that's not necessarily a threat to anyone. But in terms of the region’s agenda, making progress on issues that are of common interest, I think the President’s leadership in this most recent APEC round really speaks for itself. Q What about the bird flu, will there be specific discussions about that with President Hu? MR. GREEN: Yes, the Chinese have been forthcoming on bird flu. I think the SARS experience taught them that for their own internal interests and for their role in the world, they need to be swift and transparent. And so they were very quick to agree with us to cooperate on our international aviation influenza initiative launched at the U.N. in September. They were very helpful as we put together the APEC initiative on avian influenza. And we expect to build on that and discuss with the Chinese some further bilateral initiatives that we can implement to help China deal with a possible pandemic and to strengthen U.S.-China relations in this area. MR. McCLELLAN: And as you know, they had a good discussion about it in New York, as well. Q Is the President taking any part in this Boeing ceremony tomorrow, the sale of – no? MR. GREEN: I don’t think so, but it’s a very important thing and I think it’s a testament to how our approach to China is yielding real results – in this case, an order for seventy 737 aircraft from Boeing. Q Thank you. END 5:30 P.M. (Local) -------- ACTIVISTS BuzzFlash Interview: Scott Ritter 11.19.05 http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19907 There is a shocking truth behind the invasion of Iraq, which Scott Ritter reveals in Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (a BuzzFlash premium). Scott Ritter was a top U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 through 1998, frequently serving as the chief inspector. That gives him direct knowledge of what happened in Iraq, historical context for interpreting what happened, and — another key — independence from domestic politics, because the United Nations employed him, not our own executive branch. Those are powerful keys to understanding the mess the United States finds itself in today and telling the truth about it. Before working for the United Nations, Ritter was a major in the U.S. Marines and a ballistic missile adviser to General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf War. In this unadorned, plain-spoken interview, Scott Ritter tells readers just what got us into Iraq the second time. * * * BuzzFlash: Iraq Confidential documents your experience as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from '91 to '98, with the objective to disarm Iraq of any and all weapons of mass destruction. You were a senior member of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the organization created by the Security Council to oversee weapons inspections. In order to find potential weapons of mass destruction or weapons programs in Iraq, you had to rely on intelligence from the CIA to know where to inspect. During the inspection process, the CIA eventually infiltrated UNSCOM's mission to use the inspections to set up a coup against Saddam Hussein. How was the CIA able to do this? Scott Ritter: Well, it's a lot more complicated than that. The corruption of the UNSCOM inspection process by the CIA was two- fold. Let's talk about the exterior corruption. The disarmament process itself was used by the CIA not to disarm Iraq, but to contain Saddam Hussein by providing a façade of legitimacy for the continuation of economic sanctions. From the very beginning, the CIA's approach to the weapons inspectors was not one of, 'Let's assist the inspectors in carrying out their mandated task to disarm Iraq,' but rather, 'How can we use the inspection process to facilitate the unilateral policy of regime change in Iraq?' That policy was ordered by the executive branch of the United States government, starting with George Herbert Walker Bush in 1991 and going through the Clinton administration, and then, of course, on to the current administration of George W. Bush. From an inspector's standpoint, we were fully aware of the American policy of regime change – this was a stated policy. The problem is that the United States is a senior member of the Security Council. It has a veto capability. We as inspectors work for the Security Council. We had a problem in Iraq that the Iraqis were not telling us the truth early on. We needed to gain access to information. If you think of inspections as an automobile, and gasoline is that which powers the motor of an automobile, information powers the inspection motor. Without information about where the weapons are, you can't do an inspection. So we needed information. We had to turn to the Security Council members and other members of the United Nations community for intelligence support. So the CIA did not infiltrate the inspection process. We opened the door and welcomed them in because we needed assistance in tracking and finding these weapons to disarm Iraq. And we welcomed the CIA and any other intelligence organization, as long as they were assisting us in implementing our mandate. The problem comes when you bring in a CIA official who says that he or she is going to help you, but their real orders are coming not from the United Nations but from Washington, D.C., or Langley. And those orders are to use the inspection process to facilitate regime change in Iraq. They inherently corrupt the process. It's not that we were duped by the CIA. It's that the CIA behaved in a disingenuous manner. BuzzFlash: UNSCOM essentially was between a rock and a hard place. You needed assistance and intelligence on where to look for Iraq's weapons programs. And yet at the same time, reaching out to the various intelligence communities and agencies, did you feel like you were letting the genie out of the bottle once you requested and accepted their assistance and intelligence? Scott Ritter: You had it – we were between a rock and hard place. As I point out in my book, in 1991-1992, Rolf Ekéus, the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM, was meeting with Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister and chief negotiator on WMD issues. Aziz confronted UNSCOM and said, look, the United States has a policy of regime change. It says sanctions will never be lifted, even if we cooperate fully with the inspectors. What is our incentive to cooperate? So we knew that this was the case. We knew that there was this huge political issue. The decision that we made was to let the Security Council sort out the political problems with the United States. All we could do as inspectors was focus on our mandated task. So we separated these two issues, and we just went straight to work, trying to disarm Iraq. We kept our eyes open for any overt activities by American personnel or any other nation that were inconsistent with our mandate. And if we found somebody doing something that wasn't mandated, they were asked to leave the team. So we were assiduous in maintaining the integrity of the inspectors. But it's the process that was corrupted, not the individual inspector. We would gather information that would be shared with governments, and it's how governments used this information that ultimately, I think, highlighted the attacks on the credibility of the inspection process. BuzzFlash: From the very beginning, Iraqi intelligence officers were obviously suspicious of your mission, and were assigned to monitor and spy on you and the other inspectors. And later on, Iraqi intelligence officers actually infiltrated UNSCOM's mission, at least your communications system. Could you talk about how they were able to do this? Scott Ritter: Let's first talk about the mission given to the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. When you say the Iraqi intelligence service was targeting UNSCOM, the first thing that comes to people's minds is that the Mukhabarat was part of a deception program designed to hide weapons of mass destruction. We need to emphasize, at this point in time, it's something we weren't certain of as a weapons inspector, but today we know that the Iraqis had destroyed all of their weapons of mass destruction in the summer of 1991. So the work conducted by the Mukhabarat after that point in time was not about hiding weapons of mass destruction. It was for some other reason. Iraqi intelligence was tasked with protecting Iraq, specifically from foreign-based threats. With the United Nations weapons inspectors, you have this element of intrusive foreign presence in Baghdad that incorporates representatives from the United States and Great Britain, two nations that have sworn to remove Saddam Hussein from power. So the Mukhabarat was very concerned about the activities of the inspectors, especially as we started digging closer and closer to the security institutions surrounding Saddam Hussein himself. BuzzFlash: So what you're saying is Iraqi intelligence was between a rock and hard place because they needed UNSCOM to confirm Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction so the sanctions could be lifted. However, Saddam Hussein and Iraqi intelligence didn't want to tell the rest of the world we really can't defend ourselves all that well. Scott Ritter: They also don't want the process to set in motion events that cause their president to be assassinated. They were very concerned that the inspection process was being used by the United States to gather information about the security of Saddam. So yes, the Iraqis were in the same quandary we were. And the Mukhabarat's job – the Iraqi Intelligence Service's job – was to ascertain what the true intention of the inspection process was. Was this a legitimate vehicle of disarmament? Or is this nothing more than a Trojan Horse that the CIA was using to spy on Saddam? And what they found out is that it was both. The majority of the activities were legitimately related to disarmament. But there was an aspect of the inspection process that had been infiltrated by the CIA and was being used by the United States to target Saddam Hussein. So now the Mukhabarat's job was to parse this out even further. And this required them to aggressively spy on the work of the inspectors. They would break into our hotel rooms, rifle through our bags, and find any documents people might leave lying around. They would put listening devices in our cars, listening devices in our hotels. They would recruit people on the inside of the inspection team. And they were very effective at doing this, not only in Baghdad but also in New York. The individuals I spoke to in the Iraqi intelligence services wouldn't give away names, but they said that they had a source inside the Executive Office of the Special Commission who was passing them almost real-time information about weapons inspections. They got French government assistance to break the codes of our secure phone so they could listen to our conversations between chief inspector and the executive chairman, not because they were trying to hide things, but because they were trying to figure out what it is the inspectors are up to. BuzzFlash: At some point during this process, Iraqi intelligence officers learned that the CIA was planning a coup. How exactly did they learn about the coup, and what happened as a result? Scott Ritter: By this time in 1996, the Iraqis had put together a fairly sophisticated matrix of who the inspectors were and who they ultimately worked for. So whenever we submitted a roster of inspectors to the Iraqis, they were pretty locked in on what kind of inspection it would be, and what kind of emphasis there would be, and who on the inspection team they should be concerned about. So they have a good feel for that. But the Mukhabarat also had to deal with aspects of protecting Saddam Hussein that had nothing to do with UNSCOM, such as the CIA's own efforts to recruit people inside Iraq to target Saddam. And what the Mukhabarat did is they were tracking these two separate issues and found that there was crossover – that the CIA was using the inspection process to facilitate a coup d'etat by another group of Iraqis that was being handled by the CIA outside the framework of the weapons inspections. And the Iraqis tracked this. They infiltrated the coup and they pulled the plug on it, executed the plotters and terminated the CIA's effort. But in the process, they got definitive proof that the CIA was using the inspection process as a vehicle not only to gather intelligence, but also to trigger a coup d'etat. And it destroyed the integrity of the inspection process. BuzzFlash: When did you become fully aware of the planning of the coup d'etat in Iraq? Scott Ritter: I had no knowledge of the coup until after the fact. The failed coup was uncovered in June, after our inspection team had been pulled out. By July, we're getting an inkling that something had occurred. As we started digging around and taking a look at the stories we heard and then sifted through some data, it became evident that we were unwittingly part of this effort. We had twelve CIA people on our team in June, from a special operations unit with the CIA, and they were ostensibly responsible for logistics support and communications support. After the coup, they disappeared. We never saw them again. We gathered information inside Iraq that talked about facilities that we wanted to inspect that the CIA told us not to inspect. And it turns out that this was the unit that the CIA had recruited to help get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we saw evidence of this unit being cleaned up by the Iraqi government. So by the middle of July, end of July and early August, myself and others were getting this sinking feeling that we had been had. BuzzFlash: The CIA undermined a true experiment: Could the UN aggressively and effectively disarm a country of WMDs peacefully and avert a war? Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but if the CIA had let UNSCOM do its job, do you believe that your mission would have confirmed – as history has proven to be true – that Iraq was complying with the UN resolution and that perhaps we never would have invaded Iraq in the years that followed? Scott Ritter: Oh, there's no doubt. First of all, it's not just the CIA. We have to remember the CIA doesn't make policy – it implements policy. If the United States government had been serious about disarming Iraq, and serious about complying with the mandate when the U.S. voted for Security Council resolutions calling for the disarmament, and then lifting sanctions once Iraq was verified as being disarmed, then this problem could have been cleared up by 1993-1994 at the latest. We would have been able to wrap this up and conclude our business in Iraq, and there would still be inspectors in Iraq today conducting long-term monitoring of Iraq's industrial infrastructure to make sure that they never again reconstituted any of these weapons. It would have been a tremendous victory for disarmament, for arms control, for non- proliferation and for international peace and security. That's one of the tragedies that nobody wants to really focus on is just how good the inspectors were, and what a loss it was to the international community that the United States & ndash; not just the CIA, but the United States & ndash; corrupted the integrity of this operation. BuzzFlash: By 1998 how were you able to conclude that Iraq had destroyed its WMDs and was in compliance with the UN resolutions? Scott Ritter: First of all, it's a conclusion I never made. If you track my speaking and my writing, all the way up to the beginning of our invasion in March of 2003, I never gave Iraq a clean bill of health. What I've said is that we had ascertained that we could account verifiably for 90 to 95% of Iraq's weaponry. We had questions about a certain small percentage of unaccounted-for material. We had no evidence that this material was being retained by Iraq, but we just couldn't tell you what had happened. And so we were moving down the path of trying to figure out what happened to this material. We were monitoring Iraq – the totality of its industrial infrastructure – with the most intrusive, technologically advanced, on- site inspection program in the history of arms control. And through this monitoring, we were unable to detect any evidence of either a retained capability or a reconstituted capability in weapons of mass destruction. We could mitigate against the Iraqis having built anything new. And the longer we carried out our investigation, the less viable any potential retained stockpiles of WMD become. For instance, if Iraq had produced anthrax and lied about its destruction, and was holding on to it after a year or two, it's irrelevant because that anthrax becomes goo. The same is true for chemical agents. There came a point by 1996-1997, that even though we could not fully account for the totality of the weapons, we could ascertain that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed, meaning that there was no chance of viable weapons of mass destruction existing in Iraq. But our mandate wasn't for "fundamental disarmament" – it was for complete disarmament. And so we had to come to grips with that unaccounted-for 5 to 10 percent, and that's what we were trying to do. It's not as though we in UNSCOM were saying, look, we've done everything. We're done. We're finished. It's time to go home. We were saying there's still a job to be done, according to the mandate we were given, and we'd like to finish this job. But if someone's going to stand up and say that Iraq posed a direct threat to the international peace and security from stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, this was an absurd speculation not based on reality. BuzzFlash: In 2002, you were an outspoken critic of the invasion of Iraq. I remember watching you running around like your head was on fire, trying to tell the world that the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq was not accurate. History has proven you were right all along, and now over 2,000 U.S. soldiers have died. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. The Middle East has been destabilized. By the CIA's own account, there are more foreign fighters and terrorists trained to carry out further attacks against the United States and our allies. After no WMDs were found in Iraq, what was your reaction when the rationale for invading Iraq evolved into getting rid of Saddam, then bringing freedom to Iraq? Scott Ritter: Here we are today looking for an exit strategy in Iraq, whether it's declaring victory or achieving some sort of new definition of victory. We're searching for a solution to the Iraq problem. And I don't believe that you can talk about finding a solution to a problem that you haven't properly defined. It's widely accepted that we went to war for one reason and one reason only, and that was to disarm Iraq — a recalcitrant Saddam Hussein who was holding on to weapons of mass destruction that he might share with the forces of international terror. This was the stated reason for going to war by the president and his administration. It's spelled out in a letter from John Negroponte, who at that time was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, to the Security Council. It lists why we went to war. None of the new justifications were spelled out there. And we now know that the reason for going to war was a bald-faced lie — that it was a result of fixing intelligence around policy, as opposed to a policy derived from sound intelligence. The foundation of our involvement in Iraq is corrupt. You can't build anything positive from this corrupt foundation. If you want to speak of solving the Iraq problem, we have to go back to how we got into this mess to begin with. And today, nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody wants to talk about the deception, the lies, the distortion that took place. They say, look, we all may disagree about how we got into Iraq, but that's old. Now we have to focus on the new situation. And it's very frustrating, because you can't focus on the new situation without comprehending how we got there to begin with. We must delve into the deception and the manufacturing of information, because that represents a pattern of behavior and intent that is still present in the same people who are running the Iraq war today. The same people who deceived us getting into Iraq are deceiving us on a daily basis about what's going on in Iraq, and we can't ignore this. We can't forget about this. It's very frustrating that so many people seem willing to just say, ah, you know, that was a mess about how we got in, but let's not talk about it. And that's why I think my book is very important — I liken it to the Rosetta Stone. If you read this book, you will understand that Iraq was not an intelligence mistake, per se, meaning oops, we got it wrong. Iraq is a product of over a decade of deception and deceit, and misinformation and fabrication, on the part of the United States government and its intelligence services. BuzzFlash: In my opinion, there was nothing that anyone could have said that would have stopped the Bush administration from invading Iraq. It seems that it would have come hell or high water. UNSCOM said that Iraq was, as you said, "fundamentally disarmed." Those memos and reports were given and distributed to the CIA. What do you believe the motives truly were, if in fact Iraq did not pose a threat to its neighbors and to the rest of the world with weapons of mass destruction? Scott Ritter: It evolved over time. The initial motive, in 1991, was strictly born out of the fact that Saddam Hussein's continued survival after the U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait represented a political problem to George Herbert Walker Bush. In October of 1990, in selling a war with Iraq to the American people, George H.W. Bush said that Saddam is the Middle-East equivalent of Adolf Hitler, who must be dealt with a Nuremberg-like retribution. That's powerful rhetoric. When you call Saddam Hitler, he becomes the personification of evil. He becomes the devil incarnate. You can't do a deal with the devil. It eliminated any possibility of a diplomatic solution. Saddam had to go. And we had gone to war, and many people in America believed we were going to war to remove Saddam. But when the war ended, and Kuwait was liberated, and American troops came home, Saddam was still in power. This was a political problem — not a national security problem, but a political problem — for George Herbert Walker Bush. All they wanted was for Saddam to go away. It didn't matter if a Sunni general killed Saddam and stepped in, and governed Iraq in the exact same fashion. Saddam would be gone and the political problem would go away. When President Bush was not reelected in 1992, the Clinton administration was actually working very hard on coming up with a policy that would allow for the lifting of economic sanctions, and a normalization of relations with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat alike, told Clinton that this was impossible – that they had told their respective constituencies that Saddam was Hitler. Saddam was evil. And now Clinton wanted to do business with the devil? That was politically not an option. So the Clinton administration inherited this policy of containment and regime change, as passive as it was. With Clinton in office, the Republicans started beating him up, saying that you're not dealing with Saddam. You're not dealing with him effectively. By 1998, the Republicans had capitalized on this strategy that the Clinton administration policy towards Saddam was ineffective. The Republican-controlled Congress pushed through the Iraq Liberation Act, which put the policy of regime change into law and allocated close to $100 million of U.S. taxpayers' funds to fund opposition groups to get rid of Saddam. And then the Clinton administration was seen as ineffective in implementing this. This now becomes another domestic political issue. The Republicans use the Clinton administration's unwillingness or inability to deal with Saddam as the centerpiece of their argument that the Clinton administration has no valid international peace and security, international security, national security program. Regime change in Iraq became a centerpiece of the 2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign regarding foreign policy. This was a domestic political issue. And then it was used further because the American public had been pre-programmed into accepting at face value any negative characterization of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It was used even more after 9/11 as a vehicle to sell a neo-conservative agenda regarding how the United States interacts not only with Iraq and the Middle East, but the entire world. The truth is the Iraq problem has never been about national security or international peace and security. It's always had its roots in the domestic political debate here in the United States of America. BuzzFlash: Scott Ritter, thank you for your time. Scott Ritter: Thank you.