Iraq Survey Group
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The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was a fact-finding mission sent by the multinational force in Iraq after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs developed by Iraq under the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Its final report is commonly called the Duelfer Report. It consisted of a 1,400-member international team organized by The Pentagon and CIA to hunt for suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents, and any supporting research programs and infrastructure that could be used to develop WMD.
Contents |
[edit] Formation
| The Iraq War |
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| Prior to the war |
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Iraq disarmament crisis |
| Invasion and occupation |
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2003 invasion of Iraq |
| Aftermath to present |
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Coalition Provisional Authority |
| Opinion |
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Views on the War |
| Related |
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Years: '03 • '04 • '05 • '06 • '07 |
The ISG was made up of more than one thousand Americans, Britons and Australians, with the United States providing the bulk of the personnel and resources for the operation. These people included civilian and military intelligence and WMD experts, as well as a large number people working to provide armed security and support. David Kay, a prominent U.S. scientist who searched for WMD after the first Gulf War, was chosen to head the group. The agency tasked as the head U.S. Government Agency of the ISG was a joint venture of the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency, the DoD counterpart to the CIA which is primarily responsible for inter-agency cooperation)
The Iraq Survey Group was the successor to the United Nations inspections teams, UNMOVIC led by Hans Blix and from the IAEA led by Mohamed ElBaradei, which had been mandated by the U.N. Security Council to search for illegal weapons before the conflict (See Iraq disarmament crisis).
[edit] Organization and Operations
To make the WMD search more manageable, ISG was operationally divided up into several sectors each with its own Sector Control Point. The three sectors were North, Baghdad and South, with Sector Control Point-Baghdad (also known as SCP-B or "skip bee") being the primary and largest. SCP-B and the core of the ISG staff were located on Camp Slayer at the former Al Radwaniyah Presidential Site on Baghdad International Airport in western Baghdad.
From its founding in the spring of 2003 until disbandment at the end of February 2005, SCP-B was commanded by a series of coalition officers from the U.S. Army, U.S. Marines and Australian Army. Its first commander was U.S. Army Reserve Colonel George Waldroup, who led the group from its founding until the summer of 2004. He was later picked by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to head the Strategic Support Branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Following COL Waldroup, USMC COL Frank Johnson was pulled from retirement and took the reigns until October 2004. COL Johnson was followed by Lt Col Carr, an Australian engineer, who was briefly followed by MAJ Peck (now LTC). The final commander of SCP-B was Australian Military Police Major Damien Hick.
SCP-B's missions included not only the search for WMD, but work on counter-terrorism and the ongoing investigation into the fate of U.S. Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot down during the Gulf War of 1991. Initially presumed dead, he was later declared missing when evidence emerged after the war that he had survived the crash of his aircraft.
SCP-B was organized into several Mobile Collection Teams, or MCTs, made up of members of American, British and Australian forces, with Americans providing the vast majority. An MCT generally consisted of a commander -- usually a major or captain (although MCTs were led by lieutenants and full colonels at times) -- and anywhere from ten to twenty other personnel, depending on mission requirements. The majority of SCP-B personnel were mobilized American National Guard or Army Reserve Soldiers (although the United States Navy, Marines and Air Force, as well several coalition forces, were also well represented) as well as some US Army Special Forces Personnel. The other key piece of SCP-B were the U.S. Army Military Police crews assigned to the organization. The Military Police provided convoy and site security for the MCTs as well as secure transport for ISG personnel in their travels around Baghdad. SCP-B also contained other special units, such as dog handlers (who were mostly civilian contractors), explosives ordnance disposal, ground-penetrating radar teams and a WMD transportation and storage group.
By any measure other than the obvious (actually finding WMD stockpiles), SCP-B was remarkably successful[citation needed]. Acting as an independent entity outside of the normal chain of command (ISG reported directly to Rumsfeld), it surveyed and exploited hundreds of possible WMD sites across the breadth of Iraq with very few problems. Except for two unfortunate incidents, SCP-B's casualty record was exceptional, considering the amount of time its personnel spent on the roads and out among the populace. The first incident was the paint factory explosion of April 26th, 2004, which killed two Soldiers (US Army sergeants Lawrence Roukey, and Sherwood Baker) and injured several more. These were SCP-B's first casualties in over a year of operations. The second was a vehicle-borne IED attack against Charles Duelfer's convoy, which claimed the lives of two of Duelfer's PSD (SSG Clinton Wisdom and SPC Don Clary, both of the Kansas Army National Guard's 130th Field Artillery Regiment).
Throughout the life of ISG and SCP-B, there were only two occasions where chemical weapons were found. The first was a sarin mortar shell which had been reworked into a roadside improvised explosive device by insurgents. The second was a handful of 122-millimeter rocket warheads filled with inert mustard gas that was recovered near Babylon. Both were thought to be remainders from the Iran-Iraq War and were useless as offensive weapons. Both were later destroyed by ISG personnel. In late 2004 the ISG and the MCTs undertook some counter insurgency operations, although many details remain classified. There were other missions and organizations operating within the ISG which are Top Secret and are unlikely to be declassified anytime soon.
[edit] Interim Progress Report
After six months searching for WMD, the ISG issued an Interim Progress Report on October 3, 2003. The team has found evidence of "WMD-related program activities" but no actual chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. In addition to details of dormant WMD programs, the October 2003 report also includes discoveries of non-WMD programs banned by the U.N. and concealed during the IAEA and UNMOVIC inspections that began in 2002. The discoveries made by the ISG include a "clandestine network of laboratories . . . that contained equipment . . . suitable for continuing chemical biological weapons research" and vials of "live C botulinum Okra B from which a biological agent can be produced." [1]. Lines of enquiry adopted by the ISG include the examination of sites across Iraq, as well as interviewing scientists, truck drivers and other workers with possible knowledge of WMD. The failure to find any stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons has proved a problem for Washington and London, who used intelligence indicating that Iraq did possess WMD stockpiles as one of the primary justifications for the invasion of Iraq. The British government, in particular, placed very heavy emphasis on this intelligence.
[edit] David Kay resigns
On January 23, 2004, the head of the ISG, David Kay, resigned his position, stating that he believed WMD stockpiles would not be found in Iraq. "I don't think they existed," commented Kay. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties." In a briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kay criticized the pre-war WMD intelligence and the agencies that produced it, saying "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing." [2]
Kay told the SASC during his oral report the following, though: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion-—although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."
Kay's team has established that the Iraqi regime had the production capacity and know-how to produce a great deal more chemical and biological weaponry when international economic sanctions were lifted, a policy change which was actively being sought by many United Nations member states. Kay also believed some components of the former Iraqi regime's WMD program had been moved to Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion [3], though the Duelfer Report Addenda (see below) later reported there was no evidence of this.
On February 6, 2004, Bush convened the Iraq Intelligence Commission, an independent inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war and the failure to find WMD. This was shortly followed by the conclusion of a similar inquiry in the United Kingdom, the Butler Review, which was boycotted by the two main opposition parties due to disagreements on its scope and independence [4]. In 2003, The U.S.-sponsored search for WMD had been budgeted for $400 million, with an additional $600 million added in 2004.
Kay's successor, named by CIA director George Tenet, was the former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who stated at the time that the chances of finding any WMD stockpiles in Iraq were "close to nil."
[edit] Duelfer Report
On September 30, 2004, the ISG released the Duelfer Report, its final report on Iraq's WMD programs. Among its Key Findings:
- Saddam totally dominated the Regime’s strategic decision making.
- Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime.
- The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime.
- By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support.
- Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of [Saddam's desire to rebuild Iraq's WMD capability].
- The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judged that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam’s belief in the value of WMD.
- Saddam ended his nuclear program in 1991. ISG found no evidence of concerted efforts to restart the program, and Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after 1991.
[edit] Operations Tempo 2004-2005
Although the search for WMD had been conducted earnestly and fruitlessly during the initial year of the occupation, site exploitation continued through the summer of 2004. In late summer and early fall, the WMD search tempo slowed considerably; all of the most promising sites had been exploited in 2003-2004 and even most of the unpromising sites had been exploited by fall of 2004.
In late September and into October of 2004, the number of site exploitations increased significantly, although most of these were revisits to already-exploited sites - some of which had been altered by Iraqis in the intervening months. For instance: the former Iraqi Chemical Brigade headquarters building in Baghdad was in the midst of being converted to office space when ISG personnel returned for a second visit.
ISG's exploitation operations mostly ceased in early November of 2004. Most MCTs were disbanded and the personnel returned to their parent units and the MP teams that supported them were dispersed to other camps and given other missions.[citation needed]
In January 2005, the group announced the conclusion of its search. The ISG stated that while it had, "not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003," they acknowledged "the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant capability." [5]
[edit] March 2005 Report Addenda
In March 2005 Duelfer added an addenda to the original report, covering five topics:
- Prewar Movement of WMD Material Out of Iraq, stating "ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place" but also acknowledging that "ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war."
- Iraqi Detainees, concluding "the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible. ... there is no further purpose in holding many of these detainees".
- Residual Proliferation Risks: People, concluding "former WMD program participants are most likely to seek employment in the benign civil sector, either in Iraq or elsewhere ... However, because a single individual can advance certain WMD activities, it remains an important concern".
- Residual Pre-1991 CBW Stocks in Iraq, concluding "any remaining chemical munitions in Iraq do not pose a militarily significant threat ... ISG has not found evidence to indicate that Iraq did not destroy its BW weapons or bulk agents".
- Residual Proliferation Risk: Equipment and Materials, concluding "Iraq’s remaining chemical and biological physical infrastructure does not pose a proliferation concern".
In media interviews before the addenda were published, officials went further on the important question of the possible smuggling of WMD to Syria, saying they had not seen any information indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria or elsewhere. [6]
[edit] See also
- Iraq disarmament crisis
- 2003 - 2004 occupation of Iraq timeline
- Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
- Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–2005
- Rationale for the Iraq War
- War on Terrorism
- Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly
[edit] External links
- Main
- "Statement by David Kay on the Interim Progress Report on the Activities of the Iraq Survey Group, before the House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, The House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommitte on Defence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence". October 2, 2003. (Known informally as the "Kay Report" on Iraq's WMD.)
- "Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD". 30 September 2004. (Known informally as the "Duelfer Report" on Iraq's WMD; Copies are also available at findlaw's site.)
- "Comprehensive Report Addendums of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD". March 2005.
- Other
- Teaser of upcoming documentary film Land of Confusion featuring Pennsylvania Army National Guard Soldiers assigned to the Iraq Survey Group in 2004-05.
- Description of Al Radwaniyah Presidential Site on GlobalSecurity.org
- News (Reuters): Bush orders independent probe on Iraq intelligence
- News (BBC): UK WMD committee vows to press on
- News (Associated Press): Victims of Explosion Were Members of ISG
- David Kay biography
- Iraq weapons inspector David Kay's congressional testimony Iraq Survey Group Report on WMD in Iraq
- News (War-Wire): Former UN weapons inspector replaces David Kay as Iraq WMD adviser. Washington (AFP).
- News (BBC): In Quotes: What Blair Said About Iraq's Weapons Before and After the War
- News (BBC): October 2004 report
- News (American Broadcasting Company): Bush: Iraq Invasion Worth It Despite Lack of WMD
- News (CBS): No Basis For WMD Smuggling Claims
- SourceWatch
- Secret emails, missing weapons
- Camp Speicher
