The New York Times harvested a mighty scoop with its 2,600-word, Oct. 25 lead story about the 380 tons of high explosives missing from Saddam's Al-Qaqaa military-industrial complex ("Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq"). But like many mega-harvests, the Times' story leaves many half- and un-answered questions behind for gleaners to gather, inspect, and chew on.
The Times and other journalists chasing the story portray the disappearance of the high explosives (HMX, RDX, and PETN) from Al-Qaqaa as shocking news. Indeed, a mere pound of HMX in the hands of a terrorist could bring down an airliner, the Times explains. The explosives could be used in car bombs against U.S. troops in Iraq, be allotted to jihadists around the world, or, as the Times reports, "be used to trigger a nuclear weapon."
The gist of the Times coverage seems to be, Why didn't Bush's troops prevent the looting of Al-Qaqaa during the invasion? John Kerry is pushing this angle on the stump this week to argue what a nimrod George W. Bush is. You can always count on a newspaper's competitor to generate a different slant, and the catch-up story in today's Washington Post ("U.S. Thinks Explosives Vanished in Spring '03," Oct. 27) does not disappoint: It quotes an administration spokesman whose generous timeline allows that the munitions might have been pilfered before U.S. troops arrived. If that's true, Bush is exonerated.
But setting aside for a moment the question of how the Al-Qaqaa revelations reflect Bush's prosecution of the war, what intrigues me is why we're hearing about the missing 40 truckloads of high explosives now, 18 months after their disappearance. It's a question the coverage has yet to address, which is odd seeing as how the international arms-control establishment has known all about the Al-Qaqaa stockpile since after the first Gulf War and about its vanishing since May 2003.
A waltz through Nexis and a skip through Google document the breadth of the public knowledge about the boom-boom Saddam stored at Al-Qaqaa. In 1989, an enormous explosion recorded there was widely reported to be a high-explosives accident related to Iraqi A-bomb research. (One ton of HMX-like explosive triggered the Nagasaki "implosion" A-bomb, according to the Times story.) In late 1991, after the first Gulf War, inspector Hans Blix recorded 255 tons of HMX at Al-Qaqaa.
The U.N. allowed Iraq to keep the high explosives for use in mining and construction, and in late 2002 when U.N. inspectors returned to Al-Qaqaa after a four-year absence they found about 35 tons of HMX missing: Iraqis told them they'd used it on civilian projects.
The Times scoop delineates the deep knowledge U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had of the arsenal: The agency warned the United States about the Al-Qaqaa stash before the invasion; after the invasion (May 2003), the IAEA fretted in an internal memo about the "explosives bonanza" terrorists might be reaping; in May 2004, Iraqi officials say they warned CPA head L. Paul Bremer that Al-Qaqaa had most likely been looted. The Times also reports that the CIA listed the site as a "medium priority" on its list of 500 locations to be searched and secured.
If we want to criticize the Bush administration for failing to capture and guard the explosives after the IAEA gave them such a stern talking to, and want to knock Bush for failing to alert the world to the dangers posed by the explosives' loss—both completely justified, as far as I'm concerned—should we not also save a brick or two to fling at the IAEA? Granted, its inspectors have not been admitted into Iraq since the U.S. military took over the country, but couldn't they have spoken up in the last 18 months if they knew hundreds of tons of HMX, RDX, and PETN were on the loose and posing such a great danger? Shouldn't the press be asking the IAEA why it's been so silent?
A feisty but brief item in yesterday's (Oct. 26) Los Angeles Times helps explain why the story broke when it did and how it did. The paper reports that an unnamed source tipped both 60 Minutes and the Times to the Al-Qaqaa story on Wednesday, Oct. 20, and the two news outlets agreed to work on it together. When 60 Minutes couldn't prepare a filmed segment in time for its Oct. 24 broadcast, it freed the Times to publish its story.
The tipster may have clued the Times and 60 Minutes in in the October correspondence between the Iraqi government and the IAEA, which was asking about the whereabouts of the Al-Qaqaa explosives. The IAEA is still responsible for tracking such nuclear weapons-related material in Iraq; the Iraqi government essentially told the IAEA it had no idea where the stuff went.