Al Qa'qaa high explosives controversy
Encyclopedia
The Al Qa'qaa high explosives controversy concerns the possible removal by Baathist insurgents of about 377 tonne
s of high explosives HMX
and RDX
after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
.
The explosives, considered dangerous by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), were certified by UN weapons inspectors to be inside facilities whose doors were fastened with chains and the United Nations
' seal, at the Al Qa'qaa
industrial complex in Iraq
in 2003. By October 2004, the facility was empty.
The Bush Administration asserted before the 2004 U.S. election that the explosives were either removed by Iraq before invaders captured the facility, or properly accounted for by US forces, even while White House
and Pentagon
officials acknowledged that they had vanished after the invasion.
MSNBC
News wrote:
Time Magazine reported the sequence of events: "In late April IAEA's chief weapons inspector for Iraq warned the U.S. of the vulnerability of the site, and in May 2003, an internal IAEA memo warned that terrorists could be looting "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Seventeen months later, on Oct. 10, in response to a long-standing request from the IAEA to account for sensitive materials, the interim Iraqi government notified the agency that al-Qaqaa had been stripped clean. The White House learned about the notification a few days later."
Evidence indicated that the explosives were most likely removed after invading US forces captured the facility. The looting was witnessed by U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsman from separate units as well as officials of the new Iraqi government. Frank Rich editorialized in the New York Times (May 15, 2005):
For a timeline of events resulting in the storage and subsequent loss of the high explosives, please see Al Qa'qaa high explosives timeline
.
Former U.S. Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith (who supported Bush's war in Iraq) reported two additional incidents of significant looting in post-invasion Iraq. He witnessed U.S. troops standing outside Baghdad's Disease Center as looters attacked the complex on 16 April 2003, "taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials." At the same time, looters attacked Iraq's nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha, taking "barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere." Galbraith noted that the facilities were all under IAEA seal and that "they remained untouched until the US troops arrived."
Former counterterrorism directors for the National Security Council
Daniel Benjamin
and Steven Simon noted the danger of these nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists as a result of the U.S. invasion: "Another potential consequence of the invasion is the spread of weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda
or other terrorists... [T]he International Atomic Energy Agency
certified that there were highly radioactive materials at the al-Tuwaitha facilities, including partially enriched—though not weapons-grade—uranium. These materials could be used to fabricate one or more radiological dispersion devices—or 'dirty bombs,' as they have come to be known. Some of these materials appear to be missing—how much remains unclear—and it seems a fair conjecture that someone ... may have 'privatized' these weapons with the intent of selling them to the highest biddeer. Ultimately, this material could find its way into the hands of al-Qaeda. It is difficult to imagine a more horrifyingly ironic outcome to the war."
to mount attacks against US and Iraqi troops. Many insurgent attacks have been carried out using improvised explosive device
s made from military munitions, most often 122 mm artillery shells and landmines
. IEDs made with high explosives are far more powerful and devastating and have been used in some of the most damaging attacks carried out in Iraq, such as the August 19, 2003 suicide attack on the U.N. headquarters
, and the March 17, 2004 attack on the Mount Lebanon Hotel, both in Baghdad. It is not clear whether these attacks were mounted using explosives from Al Qa'qaa. However, on October 28, 2004 a video was released by a group calling itself "Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade" in which a masked man claimed that "the American intelligence" had helped them to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the Al Qa'qaa facility" and that the explosives would be "use[d] against the occupation forces and those who cooperate with them in the event of these forces threatening any Iraqi city." And a December 2003 report from a joint Defense Department intelligence task force concluded that the insurgents in Iraq "retain access to virtually all the weapons systems and ordnances previously controlled by the Iraqi military, security and intelligence assets. Unsecured arms depots and storage sites, in addition to open and black market availability of weapons and ammunition, eliminate the need for the [insurgents] to maintain a formidable arsenal."
Montgomery McFate
of the Human Terrain Team program noted in 2005:
s.
According to the IAEA, there were 340 tonne
s consisting of:
These explosives were stored in solid crystalline form and could be used to make powerful plastic explosive
s, are safe to transport and do not detonate on impact. The total quantity, 341.744 tonnes (753,417 pounds), would require approximately 40 large trucks to convey.
, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said, "Targeted looting of this kind of equipment has to be seen as a proliferation threat."
complex in Iraq. Al Qa'Qaa is very large, occupying 28 km² of land near to Iskandariya
and about 48 km south of Baghdad
. It includes almost 1100 individual structures and buildings. This is about the same size as Newport, Rhode Island
, Little Cayman
or Bath. As a result of its large size, most accounts of the complex deal only with a specific facility located within its bounds.
The Qa'qaa Store was located at the southern end of the facility in underground bunkers. The bunker doors were sealed by IAEA officials upon being closed. Although the doors were sealed, the bunker itself was not hermetically sealed. Air ventilation shafts leading into the bunkers were not sealed. The high explosives subject to the controversy were the only materials under UN seal at Al Qa'qaa.
The RDX was stored at the Al Mahaweel Stores, a site physically separate from, but administered by, Al Qa'qaa.
Satellite imagery of the main Al Qa'qaa complex (about 28 km ¹) is publicly available for 2001 from GlobalSecurity.org
and for 2003 and 2004 from DigitalGlobe
.
's 3rd Infantry Division following a brief battle on April 3, 2003, shortly before the fall of Baghdad
. Although no banned weapons were discovered, atropine
and 2-Pam chloride — both antidotes for nerve gas — were reported found there. Thousands of bottles of white powder were also discovered, but were found to be explosives rather than chemical weapons.
On April 10, 2003, troops from the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division
arrived at Al Qa'qaa en route to Baghdad. They stopped overnight and moved on the following day. According to the brigade's commander, Colonel Joseph Anderson, at this point the complex showed few signs of looting or damage. Al Qa'qaa was reportedly unoccupied and unguarded until the arrival of the 75th Exploration Task Force (better known as Task Force 75) on May 27. By this time, according to Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a local security chief, and other local Iraqis, the complex had been thoroughly looted with enterprising locals even renting their trucks to looters. Task Force 75 found that the complex had largely been stripped of anything of value. Although they searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings, they found no signs of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The team did not find any of the explosives sealed by the IAEA inspectors two months earlier.
On April 13, a team from the 3rd Infantry Division led by Maj. Austin Pearson arrived at Al-Qaqaa. Pearson said at a Pentagon news conference that his mission was to secure and destroy ammunition and explosives. He estimated that his team, "Task Force Bullet", removed 250 tons of material including TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords and munitions.
Pearson's story provoked skepticism as it came the morning after new videotape surfaced indicating that the explosives were still at the base after Saddam's fall; the videotape (from April 18, 2003) shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels bearing IAEA seals. "The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al-Qaqaa", David A. Kay, who directed the hunt in Iraq for WMD and visited the site, told The New York Times
. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an IAEA seal."
The situation did not become publicly known for over a year afterwards, but IAEA officials reportedly warned as early as May 2003 that looting at Al Qa'qaa could be "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Although IAEA inspectors were unable to inspect the site themselves due to the US ban on their presence, they were able to obtain commercial satellite
imagery in late 2003 that showed severe damage to the facility. Two of roughly ten bunkers in which high explosives had been stored appeared to have been leveled by blasts. Other bunkers were damaged and some were untouched.
On October 10, 2004, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote to the IAEA to say that the Qa'qaa stockpile had been lost after April 9, 2003, because of the "theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security." Nearly 340 tonnes of HDX and RDX explosives, an amount equivalent to 40 ten-ton truckloads, was said to be missing.
The news led to an immediate controversy in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Presidential challenger John Kerry
has accused President George W. Bush
of presiding over an inexcusable failure to prevent the loss of the explosives, while President Bush has criticized Senator Kerry for "jump[ing] to conclusions without knowing the facts."
On October 28, 2004, the DoD released imagery dated March 17, 2003, showing two trucks parked outside one of the 56 bunkers at Al Qa Qaa. However, the bunker nearest where the trucks were parked are not any of the nine bunkers identified by the IAEA as containing the missing explosive stockpiles.
On the same day, the London Financial Times
reported that the French and Russians may have been involved in the removal of the explosives from Al Qa'qaa before the war began, quoting Deputy Undersecretary for Defense John A. Shaw
, who said "various Russian units on the eve of hostilities [helped] to orchestrate the collection of munitions and assure their transport out of Iraq via Syria
". He also told the Washington Times "the organized effort was done in advance of the conflict". The Washington Times also reported that defense officials believed the Russians could also explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. The Russian Government has denounced this theory as "nonsense", saying that there were no Russian military in the country at the time. Shaw's theory has attracted little public support from elsewhere in the Administration.
On October 29, 2004, the New York Times reported the existence of a videotape made by a KSTP-TV
St. Paul, Minnesota television crew embedded with U.S. 101st Airborne Division
troops on April 18, 2003, nine days after Hussein's fall. The television crew accompanying US troops recorded the sealed explosives containers at the site, displaying the ammunition cache of explosives and other weapons supplies. Commentators have pointed out that the complex would have been under intensive surveillance during the war as a suspected centre of WMD production. They point out that an operation involving removing 40 truckloads of materials should have been extremely visible and would probably have been attacked, had it been spotted. Some said that the materials being moved might just as easily have been WMDs being moved to the battlefront. However, there is no indication that any such transport operation was spotted by US forces. The tape displaying the sealed explosives containers, as they were being found by the 101st Airborne Division
troops, was re-broadcast by ABC
on October 27, and by MSNBC
on October 28, 2004. The explosives, classified as "dual use" materials, had been sealed by the IAEA, and reported 18 months earlier.
The Administration subsequently stated that it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared and that the President did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known. The Bush administration asserted that an investigation had begun into how, where, and when the explosives went missing; no such investigation has been reported on since the 2004 election.
In May 2005, Iraqi official Sami al-Araji reported on the Iraqi government's investigation into the theft, indicating that the looters "came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites. They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting." (New York Times, March 13, 2005).
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s of high explosives HMX
HMX
HMX, also called octogen, is a powerful and relatively insensitive nitroamine high explosive, chemically related to RDX. Like RDX, the name has been variously listed as High Melting eXplosive, Her Majesty's eXplosive, High-velocity Military eXplosive, or High-Molecular-weight rdX.The molecular...
and RDX
RDX
RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
.
The explosives, considered dangerous by the International Atomic Energy Agency
International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957...
(IAEA), were certified by UN weapons inspectors to be inside facilities whose doors were fastened with chains and the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
' seal, at the Al Qa'qaa
Al Qa'qaa
The Al Qa'qaa State Establishment in Iraq was a massive weapons facility 48 kilometres south of Baghdad. It is near to the towns of Yusifiyah and Iskandariya at the geographic coordinates...
industrial complex in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
in 2003. By October 2004, the facility was empty.
Background
In October 2004, the Iraqi interim government warned the U.S. that nearly 380 tons of conventional explosives had been removed from the Al-Qa'qaa facility. The Bush Administration was criticized for failing to guard known weapons stashes of this size after the invasion. Critics of the Bush Administration claimed that U.S. forces were to blame for the looting, which put weapons that were formerly under UN control into the hands of insurgents.The Bush Administration asserted before the 2004 U.S. election that the explosives were either removed by Iraq before invaders captured the facility, or properly accounted for by US forces, even while White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
and Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
officials acknowledged that they had vanished after the invasion.
MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
News wrote:
- "Whether Saddam Hussein's forces removed the explosives before U.S. forces arrived April 3, 2003, or whether they fell into the hands of looters and insurgents afterward — because the site was not guarded by U.S. troops — has become a key issue in the campaign."
Time Magazine reported the sequence of events: "In late April IAEA's chief weapons inspector for Iraq warned the U.S. of the vulnerability of the site, and in May 2003, an internal IAEA memo warned that terrorists could be looting "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Seventeen months later, on Oct. 10, in response to a long-standing request from the IAEA to account for sensitive materials, the interim Iraqi government notified the agency that al-Qaqaa had been stripped clean. The White House learned about the notification a few days later."
Evidence indicated that the explosives were most likely removed after invading US forces captured the facility. The looting was witnessed by U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsman from separate units as well as officials of the new Iraqi government. Frank Rich editorialized in the New York Times (May 15, 2005):
- It's also because of incompetent Pentagon planning that other troops may now be victims of weapons looted from Saddam's munitions depots after the fall of Baghdad. Yet when The New York Times reported one such looting incident, in Al Qaqaa, before the election, the administration and many in the blogosphere reflexively branded the story fraudulent. But the story was true. It was later corroborated not only by United States Army reservists and national guardsmen who spoke to The Los Angeles Times but also by Iraq's own deputy minister of industry, who told The New York Times two months ago that Al Qaqaa was only one of many such weapon caches hijacked on America's undermanned post-invasion watch.
For a timeline of events resulting in the storage and subsequent loss of the high explosives, please see Al Qa'qaa high explosives timeline
Al Qa'qaa high explosives timeline
The Al Qa'qaa high explosives timeline lists events regarding the storage and subsequent removal of high explosives at Al Qa'qaa in Iraq, leading to the Al Qa'qaa high explosives controversy....
.
Other facilities looted
Sami al-Araji, Iraq's deputy minister of industry, noted that besides al Qa'qaa, looters had targeted explosives and other weapons material in the Nida Factory, the Badr General Establishment, Al Ameer, Al Radwan, Al Hatteen, and Al Qadisiya. Some of these factories had WMD significance, such as the Nida Factory and Al Radwan, which were part of Saddam's nuclear program in the early 1990s. The looting of five of these sites were also confirmed by the IAEA's satellite reconnaissance.Former U.S. Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith (who supported Bush's war in Iraq) reported two additional incidents of significant looting in post-invasion Iraq. He witnessed U.S. troops standing outside Baghdad's Disease Center as looters attacked the complex on 16 April 2003, "taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials." At the same time, looters attacked Iraq's nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha, taking "barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere." Galbraith noted that the facilities were all under IAEA seal and that "they remained untouched until the US troops arrived."
Former counterterrorism directors for the National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
Daniel Benjamin
Daniel Benjamin
Ambassador-at-large Daniel Benjamin is the coordinator for counterterrorism at the United States Department of State appointed by Secretary Clinton.-Life:He was a 1983 Marshall Scholar at New College, Oxford where he studied for BA in PPE....
and Steven Simon noted the danger of these nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists as a result of the U.S. invasion: "Another potential consequence of the invasion is the spread of weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
or other terrorists... [T]he International Atomic Energy Agency
International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957...
certified that there were highly radioactive materials at the al-Tuwaitha facilities, including partially enriched—though not weapons-grade—uranium. These materials could be used to fabricate one or more radiological dispersion devices—or 'dirty bombs,' as they have come to be known. Some of these materials appear to be missing—how much remains unclear—and it seems a fair conjecture that someone ... may have 'privatized' these weapons with the intent of selling them to the highest biddeer. Ultimately, this material could find its way into the hands of al-Qaeda. It is difficult to imagine a more horrifyingly ironic outcome to the war."
Impact of the looting
Many commentators expressed fears that the explosives had fallen into the hands of terrorists and would be used by the Iraqi insurgencyIraqi insurgency
The Iraqi Resistance is composed of a diverse mix of militias, foreign fighters, all-Iraqi units or mixtures opposing the United States-led multinational force in Iraq and the post-2003 Iraqi government...
to mount attacks against US and Iraqi troops. Many insurgent attacks have been carried out using improvised explosive device
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
s made from military munitions, most often 122 mm artillery shells and landmines
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
. IEDs made with high explosives are far more powerful and devastating and have been used in some of the most damaging attacks carried out in Iraq, such as the August 19, 2003 suicide attack on the U.N. headquarters
Canal Hotel Bombing
The Canal Hotel Bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, in the afternoon of August 19, 2003, killed at least 22 people, including the United Nations' Special Representative in Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, and wounded over 100. The blast targeted the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq created just 5 days...
, and the March 17, 2004 attack on the Mount Lebanon Hotel, both in Baghdad. It is not clear whether these attacks were mounted using explosives from Al Qa'qaa. However, on October 28, 2004 a video was released by a group calling itself "Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade" in which a masked man claimed that "the American intelligence" had helped them to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the Al Qa'qaa facility" and that the explosives would be "use[d] against the occupation forces and those who cooperate with them in the event of these forces threatening any Iraqi city." And a December 2003 report from a joint Defense Department intelligence task force concluded that the insurgents in Iraq "retain access to virtually all the weapons systems and ordnances previously controlled by the Iraqi military, security and intelligence assets. Unsecured arms depots and storage sites, in addition to open and black market availability of weapons and ammunition, eliminate the need for the [insurgents] to maintain a formidable arsenal."
Montgomery McFate
Montgomery McFate
Montgomery McFate is a cultural anthropologist, a defense and national security analyst, and former Science Advisor to the United States Army Human Terrain System program. As of 2011, she holds the Minerva Chair at the U.S...
of the Human Terrain Team program noted in 2005:
The high explosives
The high explosives were stored under the supervision of the United Nations due to their sensitive nature and dual use in WMDWeapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
s.
According to the IAEA, there were 340 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s consisting of:
- 194.741 tonnes of HMXHMXHMX, also called octogen, is a powerful and relatively insensitive nitroamine high explosive, chemically related to RDX. Like RDX, the name has been variously listed as High Melting eXplosive, Her Majesty's eXplosive, High-velocity Military eXplosive, or High-Molecular-weight rdX.The molecular...
, - 141.233 tonnes of RDXRDXRDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
, and - 5.800 tonnes of PETNPETNPentaerythritol tetranitrate , also known as PENT, PENTA, TEN, corpent, penthrite , is the nitrate ester of pentaerythritol. Penta refers to the five carbon atoms of the neopentane skeleton.PETN is most well known as an explosive...
.
These explosives were stored in solid crystalline form and could be used to make powerful plastic explosive
Plastic explosive
Plastic explosive is a specialised form of explosive material. It is a soft and hand moldable solid material. Plastic explosives are properly known as putty explosives within the field of explosives engineering....
s, are safe to transport and do not detonate on impact. The total quantity, 341.744 tonnes (753,417 pounds), would require approximately 40 large trucks to convey.
Chemical weapons equipment
In addition to the explosives, al Qa'qaa held some of the remnants of Iraq's chemical warfare program from the early 1990s, "including 800 pieces of chemical equipment." The areas that had been involved in chemical processing were "wrecked by fire and possible extensive looting" after the invasion; as the New York Times reported, "Unknown is the fate of such equipment there like separators, heat exchangers, mixers and chemical reactors, all of which can be used in making chemical weapons." (13 March 2005). The Times reported that "the kinds of machinery at the various sites included equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs." Gary MilhollinGary Milhollin
Gary Milhollin is the founder and executive director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a non-profit organization dedicated to stemming the spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Milhollin and the Wisconsin Project are best known for digging up the details of...
, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said, "Targeted looting of this kind of equipment has to be seen as a proliferation threat."
The storage facilities
The HMX was stored at the Qa'qaa Store, one of a number of facilities at the Al Qa'qaaAl Qa'qaa
The Al Qa'qaa State Establishment in Iraq was a massive weapons facility 48 kilometres south of Baghdad. It is near to the towns of Yusifiyah and Iskandariya at the geographic coordinates...
complex in Iraq. Al Qa'Qaa is very large, occupying 28 km² of land near to Iskandariya
Iskandariya
Iskandariya is an ancient city in central Iraq, one of a number of towns in the Near East named after Alexander the Great...
and about 48 km south of Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
. It includes almost 1100 individual structures and buildings. This is about the same size as Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...
, Little Cayman
Little Cayman
Little Cayman is an island that is part of the Cayman Islands. It is located in the Caribbean Sea, about 75 miles northeast of Grand Cayman and five miles west of Cayman Brac. Little Cayman has a permanent population of less than 170 and is about 10 miles long with an average width of 1 mile...
or Bath. As a result of its large size, most accounts of the complex deal only with a specific facility located within its bounds.
The Qa'qaa Store was located at the southern end of the facility in underground bunkers. The bunker doors were sealed by IAEA officials upon being closed. Although the doors were sealed, the bunker itself was not hermetically sealed. Air ventilation shafts leading into the bunkers were not sealed. The high explosives subject to the controversy were the only materials under UN seal at Al Qa'qaa.
The RDX was stored at the Al Mahaweel Stores, a site physically separate from, but administered by, Al Qa'qaa.
Satellite imagery of the main Al Qa'qaa complex (about 28 km ¹) is publicly available for 2001 from GlobalSecurity.org
GlobalSecurity.org
GlobalSecurity.org, launched in 2000, is a public policy organization focusing on the fields of defense, space exploration, intelligence, weapons of mass destruction and homeland security...
and for 2003 and 2004 from DigitalGlobe
DigitalGlobe
DigitalGlobe, of Longmont, Colorado, USA, is a commercial vendor of space imagery and geospatial content, and operator of civilian remote sensing spacecraft...
.
Claims of removal prior to US arrival
- "A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday, October 29, 2004 to say a team from his 3rd Infantry DivisionU.S. 3d Infantry DivisionThe 3rd Infantry Division is a United States Army infantry division based at Fort Stewart, Georgia. It is a direct subordinate unit of the XVIII Airborne Corps and U.S. Army Forces Command...
took about 250 tons of munitions and other material, including plastic explosives, from the Al-Qaqaa arms-storage facility 10 days after Saddam HusseinSaddam HusseinSaddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
's regime fell in April 2003. According to ABC News, however, "the Pentagon stopped short of saying that the material that is reputed to be lost, missing, unaccounted for is the material that this exploitation team took away." (ABC World News Tonight, 31 October 2004). - An aerial photograph declassified and released by Donald RumsfeldDonald RumsfeldDonald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
showing two trucks at the site after IAEA inspectors last visited it before the invasion. However, the trucks in the photographs were not at any of the bunkers that had been identified as containing explosives. It has also been noted that they represent only a small fraction of the total shipping capacity required to move all the explosives. - US Army Colonel David Perkins, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division which originally took the facility, and oversaw the area afterwards called the claim the explosives were taken after US troops were in the area "highly improbable". Perkins said that "that the enemy sneaks a convoy of 10-ton trucks in and loads them up in the dark of night and infiltrates them in your convoy and moves out", he said. "That's kind of a stretch too far."
- According to an NBC news crew embedded with the 101st, large stockpiles of conventional weapons were found on April 10, 2003, but not the 380 tons of HMX or RDX
Evidence against the claim of removal prior to US arrival
- A letter from former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji SabriNaji SabriNaji Sabri Ahmad Al-Hadithi served as the Iraqi Foreign Minister under Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.-Background:...
(who was also a CIA asset at the time) to deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein "suggests taking the HMX from underground bunkers where it had been kept under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency and giving it to suicide bombers." The letter was written on 4 April 2003. - Explosives were reported intact after the invasion—Col. John Peabody of the 3rd Infantry Division told AP that his troops found thousands of boxes of explosives at the facility on 5 April 2003.
- DIA confirmation—the DIA issued a report on 9 November 2003 that concluded that the "[v]ast majority of explosives and ordnance used in anti-Coalition improvised explosive devices/IED s have come from pilfered Iraqi ammunition stockpiles and prewar established ... caches."
- Pentagon official—the AP reported on 25 October 2004 "At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity."
- videotape made by a KSTP-TVKSTP-TVKSTP-TV, channel 5, is the ABC affiliate for the Twin Cities. Its transmitter is located at the Shoreview Telefarm. It is the flagship station of Hubbard Broadcasting, which also owns several other broadcasting properties across the United States....
St. Paul, Minnesota television crew embedded with U.S. 101st Airborne Division101st Airborne DivisionThe 101st Airborne Division—the "Screaming Eagles"—is a U.S. Army modular light infantry division trained for air assault operations. During World War II, it was renowned for its role in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, in Normandy, France, Operation Market Garden, the...
troops on April 18, 2003, nine days after Hussein's fall. The television crew accompanying US troops recorded the sealed explosives containers at the site, displaying ammunition caches and explosives and clearly displaying the ammunition cache of explosives and other weapons supplies. The New York Times summarized in April 2005, "videos taken by television crews with American troops show the bunkers were still full of explosives well after the invasion." - Mohammed al-Sharaa, head of the science ministry's site monitoring department: "It is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall. The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall."
- U.S. surveillance: the Los Angeles Times reported on 27 October 2004: "Given the size of the missing cache, it would have been difficult to relocate undetected before the invasion, when U.S. spy satellites were monitoring activity."
- Eyewitness testimony of Army reservists and National Guardsman from separate units as reported to the Los Angeles Times in November 2004.
- Iraqi Interim Government Investigation: Iraqi official Sami al-Araji reported on the Iraqi government's investigation into the theft, indicating that the looters "came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites. They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting."
Timeline
The Al Qa'qaa complex was occupied for two days by the United States ArmyUnited States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
's 3rd Infantry Division following a brief battle on April 3, 2003, shortly before the fall of Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
. Although no banned weapons were discovered, atropine
Atropine
Atropine is a naturally occurring tropane alkaloid extracted from deadly nightshade , Jimson weed , mandrake and other plants of the family Solanaceae. It is a secondary metabolite of these plants and serves as a drug with a wide variety of effects...
and 2-Pam chloride — both antidotes for nerve gas — were reported found there. Thousands of bottles of white powder were also discovered, but were found to be explosives rather than chemical weapons.
On April 10, 2003, troops from the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division
101st Airborne Division
The 101st Airborne Division—the "Screaming Eagles"—is a U.S. Army modular light infantry division trained for air assault operations. During World War II, it was renowned for its role in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, in Normandy, France, Operation Market Garden, the...
arrived at Al Qa'qaa en route to Baghdad. They stopped overnight and moved on the following day. According to the brigade's commander, Colonel Joseph Anderson, at this point the complex showed few signs of looting or damage. Al Qa'qaa was reportedly unoccupied and unguarded until the arrival of the 75th Exploration Task Force (better known as Task Force 75) on May 27. By this time, according to Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a local security chief, and other local Iraqis, the complex had been thoroughly looted with enterprising locals even renting their trucks to looters. Task Force 75 found that the complex had largely been stripped of anything of value. Although they searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings, they found no signs of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The team did not find any of the explosives sealed by the IAEA inspectors two months earlier.
On April 13, a team from the 3rd Infantry Division led by Maj. Austin Pearson arrived at Al-Qaqaa. Pearson said at a Pentagon news conference that his mission was to secure and destroy ammunition and explosives. He estimated that his team, "Task Force Bullet", removed 250 tons of material including TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords and munitions.
Pearson's story provoked skepticism as it came the morning after new videotape surfaced indicating that the explosives were still at the base after Saddam's fall; the videotape (from April 18, 2003) shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels bearing IAEA seals. "The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al-Qaqaa", David A. Kay, who directed the hunt in Iraq for WMD and visited the site, told The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an IAEA seal."
The situation did not become publicly known for over a year afterwards, but IAEA officials reportedly warned as early as May 2003 that looting at Al Qa'qaa could be "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Although IAEA inspectors were unable to inspect the site themselves due to the US ban on their presence, they were able to obtain commercial satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
imagery in late 2003 that showed severe damage to the facility. Two of roughly ten bunkers in which high explosives had been stored appeared to have been leveled by blasts. Other bunkers were damaged and some were untouched.
On October 10, 2004, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote to the IAEA to say that the Qa'qaa stockpile had been lost after April 9, 2003, because of the "theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security." Nearly 340 tonnes of HDX and RDX explosives, an amount equivalent to 40 ten-ton truckloads, was said to be missing.
The news led to an immediate controversy in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Presidential challenger John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
has accused President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
of presiding over an inexcusable failure to prevent the loss of the explosives, while President Bush has criticized Senator Kerry for "jump[ing] to conclusions without knowing the facts."
On October 28, 2004, the DoD released imagery dated March 17, 2003, showing two trucks parked outside one of the 56 bunkers at Al Qa Qaa. However, the bunker nearest where the trucks were parked are not any of the nine bunkers identified by the IAEA as containing the missing explosive stockpiles.
On the same day, the London Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
reported that the French and Russians may have been involved in the removal of the explosives from Al Qa'qaa before the war began, quoting Deputy Undersecretary for Defense John A. Shaw
John A. Shaw
John A. "Jack" Shaw served as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security and in a variety of other senior U.S. Government positions. Prior to his appointment by former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Shaw was President and CEO of the American Overseas Clinics Corporation...
, who said "various Russian units on the eve of hostilities [helped] to orchestrate the collection of munitions and assure their transport out of Iraq via Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
". He also told the Washington Times "the organized effort was done in advance of the conflict". The Washington Times also reported that defense officials believed the Russians could also explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. The Russian Government has denounced this theory as "nonsense", saying that there were no Russian military in the country at the time. Shaw's theory has attracted little public support from elsewhere in the Administration.
On October 29, 2004, the New York Times reported the existence of a videotape made by a KSTP-TV
KSTP-TV
KSTP-TV, channel 5, is the ABC affiliate for the Twin Cities. Its transmitter is located at the Shoreview Telefarm. It is the flagship station of Hubbard Broadcasting, which also owns several other broadcasting properties across the United States....
St. Paul, Minnesota television crew embedded with U.S. 101st Airborne Division
101st Airborne Division
The 101st Airborne Division—the "Screaming Eagles"—is a U.S. Army modular light infantry division trained for air assault operations. During World War II, it was renowned for its role in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, in Normandy, France, Operation Market Garden, the...
troops on April 18, 2003, nine days after Hussein's fall. The television crew accompanying US troops recorded the sealed explosives containers at the site, displaying the ammunition cache of explosives and other weapons supplies. Commentators have pointed out that the complex would have been under intensive surveillance during the war as a suspected centre of WMD production. They point out that an operation involving removing 40 truckloads of materials should have been extremely visible and would probably have been attacked, had it been spotted. Some said that the materials being moved might just as easily have been WMDs being moved to the battlefront. However, there is no indication that any such transport operation was spotted by US forces. The tape displaying the sealed explosives containers, as they were being found by the 101st Airborne Division
101st Airborne Division
The 101st Airborne Division—the "Screaming Eagles"—is a U.S. Army modular light infantry division trained for air assault operations. During World War II, it was renowned for its role in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, in Normandy, France, Operation Market Garden, the...
troops, was re-broadcast by ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
on October 27, and by MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
on October 28, 2004. The explosives, classified as "dual use" materials, had been sealed by the IAEA, and reported 18 months earlier.
The Administration subsequently stated that it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared and that the President did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known. The Bush administration asserted that an investigation had begun into how, where, and when the explosives went missing; no such investigation has been reported on since the 2004 election.
In May 2005, Iraqi official Sami al-Araji reported on the Iraqi government's investigation into the theft, indicating that the looters "came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites. They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting." (New York Times, March 13, 2005).
External links
- Global Security page on Al Qa'qaa http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/al_qa_qaa.htm
- UNMOVIC chronology http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/pages/chronology.asp