Comprehensive Report

Nizar Al Attar, who attended the CBW courses at Fort
McClellan in the US and was later to head Iraq’s CW
program and introduce BW to Al Muthanna State
Establishment (MSE). In 1964, the Iraqi Army established
a Chemical Corps, thus taking the first step that
led to the acquisition of CBW. Following the Ba’thist
revolution of 17 July 1968 that brought Ahmad Hasan
Al Bakr to power, senior army officers, encouraged
by their technologically aware subordinates, decided
to embark on a CW program. It was an amateur affair
consisting of small groups trying to develop agent. By
the early 1970s, the attempt had failed.
In 1974, a charismatic officer, Ghassan Ibrahim
founded a laboratory, nominally a respectable academic
body run by the Ministry of Higher Education
and Scientific Research carrying out legitimate scientific
research, named the Al Hasan Ibn-al-Haytham
[Al Hazen Ibn-al-Haithem] Research Institute (see
Figure 2). In reality, the institute was a front for clandestine
activity in CW, BW, electronics, and optics
under the patronage of the IIS. Ibrahim’s assistant
was an intelligence officer, Fa’iz ‘Abdallah Al Shahin,
who would later oversee Iraq’s production of CW
agents during the Iran-Iraq war and play a key role in
the development of other nonconventional weapons,
such as radiological bombs. He would also briefly
supervise part of the BW program. Later still, Fa’iz
would become Deputy Minister of Oil.
Al Hasan was a large, coordinated effort to master
the technologies associated with several aspects of
modern warfare. Quickly Al Hasan established chemical
laboratories at Al Rashad, NE of Baghdad, posing
as ‘The Center for Medical Diagnostics’ and a temporary
biological center in the Al ‘Amiriyah suburb
of Baghdad. A purpose built closed-institute soon
followed: the Ibn-Sina Center at Al Salman occupying
a peninsula formed by the River Tigris 30km south of
Baghdad. The Ibn-Sina Center masqueraded as ‘The
Center for Medical Agriculture’. After occupying a
temporary headquarters in Sadun Street in the center
of Baghdad, Al Hasan built a new headquarters and
physics laboratory at Masbah nearby and later added
an electronics laboratory at Tajiyat, north of Baghdad.
The generation of scientists trained and employed at
Al Hasan, many of whom devoted more than 20 years
of their careers to the pursuit of WMD, formed the
backbone of Iraq’s later CW and BW programs. Initially,
a group of nine scientists drawn from the Ministries
of Higher Education, Defense and Health led
the original offensive BW effort, conducting research
into bacteria, toxins, and viruses, emphasizing production,
pathogenicity, dissemination and storage
of agents, such as Clostridium botulinum, spores of
Bacillus anthracis, cholera, polio, and influenza virus.
Later, in both chemical and biological disciplines, the
Al Hasan Institute engaged prominent scientists to
train and guide more junior staff and chemical corps
officers. Dr. Muhammad ‘Abd-al-Mun’im Al Azmirli,
an Egyptian, mentored the chemists and Dr. Muzhir
[Mudher, Modher] Al Falluji led the biologists. The
Institute sponsored its staff to study abroad for PhDs
in subjects appropriate for the CW or BW effort. The
Iraqi Regime rewarded success with promotion, high
status, money, and material goods.
The second attempt to develop BW also faltered
despite considerable effort. The Minister of Defense
and Dr. ‘Amir Al Sa’adi concluded in a 1978 investigation
that Al Hasan had failed to deliver what
it promised and that there had been academic and
financial fraud. Arrests and imprisonment of several
researchers followed for fraud and embezzlement
surrounding the purported development of influenza
as a BW agent. Al Sa’adi decided that project was
a failure, not having made enough progress toward
industrial scale BW production and should be shut
down, which the Iraqi government did on 16 January
1979, exactly 6 months before President Ahmad
Hasan Al Bakr resigned in favor of his Vice President,
Saddam Husayn. The facilities and staff were parceled
out to various government establishments such
as State Organization for Technical Industries (SOTI).
The best personnel went to the IIS. Between 1979 and
1985, Iraq rebuilt and expanded the dual-use infrastructure
for BW research, but undertook little work
of significance.
• In 1979, a presidential decree created the Scientific
and Technical Research Directorate (STRD)
which later became the Technical Research Center
(TRC), as a technical support agency for the IIS
and to replace the Al Hasan as a cover mechanism
for continued work on the development of chemical
and biological agents.
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