By Barton Gellman
For more than four years, United Nations arms
inspectors have obtained many of their best leads
on forbidden Iraqi weapons through a secretive and
diplomatically risky channel from the Israeli
government, according to knowledgeable sources in
the United States, Israel and the United Nations.
After a wary start born of Israel's long isolation
at the world body, Israel began providing the U.N.
Special Commission with increasingly detailed and
sensitive intelligence on its Arab adversary,
which launched 40 Scud missiles at Haifa and Tel
Aviv during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Among its
most important contributions, from the U.N.
panel's point of view, were significant leads on
the existence of a biological weapons program and
the first concrete evidence that Iraq had a
systematic campaign of deception to conceal
weapons programs it was legally obliged to declare
and dismantle.
The two-way exchange of information, which
included meetings with the director and deputy
director of Israeli military intelligence,
eventually involved Israeli analysis of aerial
photography taken by American U-2 surveillance
planes, provision of raw reports from defectors
and other human sources, and Israeli processing of
other forms of information obtained by the special
commission, known as UNSCOM.
According to three officials with direct knowledge
of the relationship, Israel had become by July
1995 the most important single contributor among
the dozens of U.N. member states that have
supplied information to UNSCOM since its creation
in April 1991. The United States, by all accounts,
remained a major supplier of information, as well
as UNSCOM's most important material and political
backer. But the arrival of fresh Israeli
intelligence after most U.S. tips were exploited
made for what one official called "this great big
candy store of nice goodies."
There is no evidence that Israel directed UNSCOM's
activity in any way, or that the U.N. panel gave
information improperly or for Israel's national
benefit. But Israel and UNSCOM have protected the
operation among their most sensitive secrets,
fearing that Iraq would use it to feed propaganda
attacks that already featured accusations of a
Zionist conspiracy behind the commission's work.
Even without evidence, those charges have
resonated among intellectuals and in the
government-controlled media in much of the Arab
world, including pro-Western Persian Gulf states
on which the American-backed U.N. panel has relied
for practical and diplomatic support.
Ewen Buchanan, the spokesman for UNSCOM, said
yesterday that the U.N. Security Council
resolutions demanding Iraq's disarmament call upon
all member states to assist the panel "in
discharging its mandate," and more than 40
countries have "helped us in the form of experts,
information, equipment, finance and in-kind help
like laboratory analysis or helicopters."
"As a general principle," he added, "we will not
confirm or deny our dealings with particular
states."
Israel's U.N. ambassador, Dore Gold, consulted
with superiors when asked about the cooperation.
When he telephoned back, he said he could say only
that "I cannot give any official Israeli
response."
Those willing to speak about the relationship,
from UNSCOM's point of view, said the commission
had no choice but to seek assistance from foreign
intelligence agencies once the extent of Iraq's
concealment efforts became clear. Israel had the
means and motive to assist the disarmament panel,
they said, but other adversaries of Iraq --
including Iran and some neighboring Arab states --
did so as well.
"I think it's perfectly valid we had contact with
the Israelis," said Tim Trevan, a Briton who until
1995 was political adviser to Rolf Ekeus, UNSCOM's
executive chairman until last year. "There's
nothing to be ashamed about with that contact."
Trevan, according to other sources, made the first
chance link between the commission and the Jewish
state. Ekeus had dispatched him to a January 1994
academic conference on disarmament in Delphi,
Greece. There he sat in the audience as David
Ivri, then director general of Israel's Defense
Ministry, made disparaging comments about UNSCOM
and hinted it was not finding all of Iraq's hidden
weapon programs.
After Trevan stood up to criticize Ivri -- arguing
that Israel should "put up or shut up," as one
participant recalled -- another Israeli pulled him
aside and introduced him to Brig. Gen. Yakov
Amidror, who was then deputy director of Israel's
Military Intelligence organization, known by its
Hebrew acronym as Aman. Three months later, in
April 1994, Amidror flew secretly to New York for
a meeting with Ekeus, said sources with firsthand
knowledge.
Scott Ritter, the U.N. inspector who resigned in
protest last month, was a central conduit in the
unfolding relationship, by his own account and
those of others familiar with the details. Other
UNSCOM staff members who traveled to the Aman
headquarters in Tel Aviv's Kirya complex included
Frenchman Didier Louis, German Norbert Reinecke
and Russian Nikita Smidovich.
The Clinton administration, which was aware of the
relationship in detail, generally supported
Israel's aid to UNSCOM, but worried about the
political difficulties that might be caused by
public disclosure. Even so, the first public hint
of the relationship came in a leak from the U.S.
government aimed at discrediting Ritter,
disclosing that he was under FBI investigation for
his intelligence contacts with Israel.
Sources said that investigation remains open, and
the FBI declined to comment. Current and former
U.S. government officials at the policymaking
level and current and former UNSCOM officials
said, without dissent, that Ritter's exchange of
information with Israel was approved by his
superiors at the commission and, in principle, by
the United States.
But some of those officials said there were
concerns about Ritter's links with Israel that
fell short of criminal suspicion. Ritter on
several occasions brought canisters of U-2 film
for processing in Israel, and from time to time
allowed Israeli technicians to make copies,
sources said.
There is apparently an unresolved legal question
about the ownership of that U-2 imagery, which is
normally classified secret in the United States.
Washington had lent the aircraft and its product
to UNSCOM. The imagery was stamped with the
notation, "REL UNSCOM/IAEA ONLY," meaning that it
could be released to the special commission and to
the International Atomic Energy Agency. U.S.
government sources said the CIA's general counsel
wrote to the Justice Department, in the context of
the Ritter investigation, that the release to
UNSCOM was legally equivalent to declassification
for purposes of U.S. espionage law.
Four independent sources with firsthand knowledge
said that Ritter and his colleagues worked with
the explicit consent of Ekeus, the Swedish
diplomat who was UNSCOM's first executive
chairman, and of Richard Butler, Ekeus's
Australian successor. The U.N. panel was aware
that Israel -- like other cooperating nations, not
least the United States -- derived valuable
military information from the relationship, but
UNSCOM insisted it would provide only such
information to Israel as would enable Israeli
analysts to assist UNSCOM.
UNSCOM gave Israel U-2 photographs, for example,
so that Israel could apply its own intelligence
databases to the structures depicted, allowing the
U.N. panel to combine information from many
sources for a fuller picture. Those familiar with
the relationship insist that UNSCOM never "traded"
information in return for Israeli help. Still, the
relationship eventually raised alarms among some
in the U.S. government. Israel received so much
American-shot imagery of Iraqi strategic
facilities from UNSCOM, officials said, that the
United States worried it could be held responsible
in part if Israel used the pictures to select
targets or flight routes for a strike on Iraq's
nonconventional weapons.
There was no doubt that Israel had strong
incentives. In 1981, as a French-built nuclear
reactor neared completion, Israeli warplanes
launched a preemptive strike to destroy the
facility at Osirak. Nine years later, a few months
before invading Kuwait, Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein threatened publicly to "burn half of
Israel" in what was taken to be a reference to
chemical weapons.
Asked whether his cooperation with Israel
validated long-standing Iraqi charges that he was
an agent of Israeli intelligence, Ritter said he
was not "America's spy or Israel's spy or anyone
else's spy," but an inspector working on explicit
authority of his superiors.
"That's a diversion," Ritter said. "It's typical
Iraqi tactics. The commission wouldn't have had to
undertake these extraordinary measures if Iraq had
been forthcoming."
The commission went to Israel, he said, because it
was not getting as much help as it wanted from
Washington and London on the most sensitive forms
of information-gathering and was looking for
another source "with an open mind, with a proven
track record of success."
In September 1994, Israel gave UNSCOM its first
major contribution -- a detailed allegation that
the Special Security Organization, run by Saddam
Hussein's younger son Qusay, was organizing the
deception and concealment operation. The tip
included physical descriptions of trucks and
depots used to move forbidden materials and
documents around the country, sources said.
Later, Israeli information helped provide what
sources described as a key to unlocking a
biological weapons program Iraq had long denied:
Israel passed along the tip that Oxoid, a company
in Basingstoke, England, had sold Iraq 40 tons of
a biological growth medium that the Baghdad
government could not account for.
In October and December 1994, Ritter led
delegations to Tel Aviv for a meeting with Maj.
Gen. Uri Saguy, then the chief of Israeli military
intelligence, and panels of analysts from other
Israeli agencies.
Thereafter, Saguy dispatched analysts on a regular
basis to New York for meetings with Ritter and his
colleagues in hotel basements and out-of-the-way
bars. Sometimes Amidror, Saguy's deputy, traveled
personally.
(c) Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 29, 1998; Page A01