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High­light­ing aspects of the Iraqi stand­off that have not received as much atten­tion as they deserve, this broad­cast updates a num­ber of points of inquiry devel­oped in pre­vi­ous broad­casts on the subject.

1. Before turn­ing to the sub­ject of Iraq, the dis­cus­sion touches on the death of Sen­a­tor Paul Well­stone and some inter­est­ing com­ments made by Sen­a­tor Robert Byrd. Sen­a­tor Wellstone’s death and the Home­land Secu­rity bill are syn­op­sized by the com­ments of Sen­a­tor Byrd, and For The Record lis­ten­ers are urged to “read” between the lines. “As his col­leagues hur­riedly tried to give the pres­i­dent a domes­tic secu­rity bill, Sen­a­tor Robert C. Byrd took the floor this morn­ing to tell them of a ‘truly great’ sen­a­tor from the first cen­tury A.D. named Hel­vid­ius Priscus. One day this Roman was met out­side the sen­ate by the emperor Ves­pasian, who threat­ened to exe­cute him if he spoke too freely. ‘And so both did their parts,’ Mr. Byrd said. ‘Hel­vid­ius Priscus spoke his mind; the emperor Ves­pasian killed him. In this effem­i­nate age it is instruc­tive to read of courage. There are mem­bers of the U.S Sen­ate and House who are ter­ri­fied, appar­ently, if the pres­i­dent of the United States tells them, urges them, to vote a cer­tain way that may be against their belief.’” (“Byrd, at 85, Fills the Forum with Romans and Wrath” by John Tier­ney; The New York Times; 11/20/2002; p. A1.)

2. Con­cern­ing the Home­land Secu­rity Bill, Byrd was more emphatic. “‘This mon-stros-ity,’ Mr. Byrd has been call­ing the bill, repeat­edly lift­ing its 484 pages above his head with trem­bling hands and fling­ing them down on his desk with the fury of Moses smash­ing the tablets.” (Idem.)

3. Next, the broad­cast turns to the sub­ject of Iraq. Among the aspects of the Iraq/U.S. con­fronta­tion is the fact that many individuals-and agencies-within the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and mil­i­tary are at vari­ance with the Bush administration’s pol­icy. “Mobi­liz­ing the United States for war is hard enough, but it becomes truly dif­fi­cult when the State Depart­ment, the Pen­ta­gon brass and the intel­li­gence agen­cies are all, for some­what dif­fer­ent rea­sons, express­ing doubts about the mis­sion. Con­gress is run­ning scared on Iraq, for fear of seem­ing unpa­tri­otic on the eve of midterm elec­tions. But that polit­i­cal silence has masked the increas­ingly vocal grum­bling through­out the Wash­ing­ton bureau­cracy.” (“Doubt in the Ranks” by David Ignatius; Wash­ing­ton Post; 11/1/2002; p. A35.)

4. Mr. Ignatius fur­ther devel­ops the dif­fer­ences of opin­ion between ele­ments of the national secu­rity estab­lish­ment and George W. Bush. Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld is not well regarded by many at the Pen­ta­gon. “Washington’s dis­sent extends fur­ther, into the ranks of the mil­i­tary. The extent of Pen­ta­gon mis­trust of the lead­ing Iraq hawk, Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald Rums­feld, was revealed in a remark­able arti­cle last month by Ver­non Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks of The [Wash­ing­ton] Post. They reported that mil­i­tary anger over Rumsfeld’s ‘fre­quently abu­sive and inde­ci­sive’ styles was ‘influ­enc­ing the Pentagon’s inter­nal debate over a pos­si­ble inva­sion of Iraq, with some offi­cers ques­tion­ing whether their con­cerns about the dan­gers of urban war­fare and other aspects of a poten­tial con­flict are being suf­fi­ciently weighed.” (Idem.)

5. The CIA has also been far more skep­ti­cal of U.S. pol­icy than media cov­er­age would lead us to believe. Among the rea­sons for their skep­ti­cism is the view that attack­ing Iraq will divert resources from the effort against Bin Laden. (Mr. Emory sug­gests the Under­ground Reich may have just such a goal in mind.) “Another skep­ti­cal bureau­cracy is the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. At a time when the CIA is wag­ing a global anti-terrorism war against al Qaeda, the Iraq talk strikes many intel­li­gence offi­cers as a dan­ger­ous dis­trac­tion. CIA ana­lysts fear that in its eager­ness to find an Iraqi ‘smok­ing gun,’ the Bush admin­is­tra­tion may be ‘cook­ing’ the intelligence-that is, imply­ing con­nec­tions between al Qaeda and Sad­dam Hus­sein that have not been estab­lished.” (Idem.)

6. “Rank-and-file CIA offi­cers ‘don’t want to do this war,’ says one for­mer agency offi­cial of his for­mer col­leagues. They fear, in part, that an Iraq war will jeop­ar­dize the ‘liai­son’ rela­tion­ships with other intel­li­gence ser­vices that are cru­cial in fight­ing al Qaeda.” (Idem.)

7. “If Pres­i­dent Bush is going to lead the coun­try into bat­tle, he needs to begin by con­vinc­ing his own national secu­rity bureau­cracy. The effects of Iraq, like Viet­nam, could last a gen­er­a­tion. It’s cru­cial to get it right-and to have a united coun­try that will stay the course behind the pres­i­dent, even when things turn nasty and opti­mistic assump­tions prove wrong. . . .He [Bush] may choose war, but if he does so today it will be despite wide­spread, if largely silent, dis­sent.” (Idem.)

8. Among the dis­sent­ing voices on Iraq within the ranks of the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment was for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Navy James Webb. “When for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Navy James Webb gave a speech last Thurs­day at the Naval Post­grad­u­ate School in Mon­terey slam­ming the Bush administration’s threat­ened war with Iraq, an out­sider might have expected the offi­cers assem­bled there to give him a frosty recep­tion. In fact, the oppo­site occurred. The respect­ful admir­ing wel­come he received gave an unusual, some­what coun­ter­in­tu­itive glimpse into the often-closed world of the U.S. mil­i­tary. Among the Naval Post­grad­u­ate School’s stu­dents and fac­ulty, at least, it seems that inde­pen­dent, crit­i­cal think­ing is alive and well.” (“At Navy School in Mon­terey, Voices of Skep­ti­cism about Iraq War” by Robert Col­lier; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 11/10/2002; p. A3.)

9. “Granted, Webb is no out­sider. A much-decorated for­mer Marine offi­cer, he became assis­tant defense sec­re­tary and sec­re­tary of the Navy dur­ing the Rea­gan administration-quitting the lat­ter job in 1988 to protest bud­get cut­backs in the Navy’s fleet expan­sion pro­gram. In recent months, Webb has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s Iraq pol­icy, call­ing it, in an op-ed in The Wash­ing­ton Post, a dis­trac­tion from the fight against al Qaeda.” (Idem.)

10. “But in his intro­duc­tion before a packed audi­to­rium, the school’s super­in­ten­dent, Rear Adm. David Elli­son, called Webb a ‘mil­i­tary hero’ and a ‘ded­i­cated pub­lic ser­vant.’ Webb took the baton and ran with it, warn­ing that a war in Iraq-and a pos­si­ble long-term occu­pa­tion of the country-would be a crit­i­cal mis­take. ‘We should not occupy ter­ri­tory in Iraq,’ he said. ‘Do you really want the United States on the ground in that region for a gen­er­a­tion.?’” (Idem.)

11. “I don’t think Iraq is that much of a threat,’ said Webb, an opin­ion rarely heard among cur­rent or for­mer Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. But Webb recalled proudly that as Navy sec­re­tary in 1987, ‘I was the only one in the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion who opposed the tilt toward Iraq in the war with Iran,’ refer­ring to the U.S. shar­ing of intel­li­gence and arms with Sad­dam Hussein’s forces.” (Idem.)

12. “The reac­tion at Mon­terey to Webb’s speech might have sur­prised Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld, who has led the administration’s charge on Iraq. ‘His rep­u­ta­tion may be con­tro­ver­sial, but a lot of things he said we tend to agree with,’ said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Paul Tanks, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in space sys­tems oper­a­tions.” (Idem.)

13. Col­lier goes on to describe the sig­nif­i­cance of the reac­tion Webb received. The Naval Post­grad­u­ate School is a very impor­tant insti­tu­tion. “The Naval Post­grad­u­ate School, at least in civil­ian cir­cles, does not have the name recog­ni­tion of mil­i­tary insti­tu­tions like West Point. But it is a pre­mier school for the U.S. armed ser­vices, giv­ing master’s and Ph.D. degrees to mid-level offi­cers of the Navy and other branches. About one-quarter of its stu­dent body is for­eign, from the armed forces of 45 nations. Some depart­ments, such as mete­o­rol­ogy and com­puter sci­ence, rank with the best of U.S. civil­ian uni­ver­si­ties.” (Idem.)

14. The arti­cle goes on to make a very impor­tant point about the mil­i­tary, some­thing gen­er­ally not rec­og­nized by civil­ians. “‘The mil­i­tary is not mono­lithic,’ said John Arquilla, a pro­fes­sor of defense analy­sis who was in the audi­ence Thurs­day. ‘These are all mil­i­tary offi­cers, they’re very sen­si­ble peo­ple, and Webb is a very, very thought­ful guy.’ Arquilla, like Webb, is one of the military’s crit­i­cal thinkers, an oft-quoted expert on what he calls ‘net­work theory’-studying decen­tral­ized orga­ni­za­tions like al Qaeda.” (Idem.)

15. Arquilla goes on to echo Webb’s view. “‘Iraq is a ter­ri­ble detour from what we ought to be doing,’ Arquilla said. ‘The real threat is from the al Qaeda net­work. Sad­dam is a min­i­mal threat to us. He knows if he uses any of his weapons of mass destruc­tion against us or our allies, we’re going to nuke him into glass, but if al Qaeda uses them, what are we going to retal­i­ate against? Whom do we tar­get?’ Arquilla explained that many stu­dents agree with Webb. Mil­i­tary offi­cers, he said, are far from the hard-line, uncrit­i­cal fol­low­ers that most civil­ians think they are.’” (Idem.)

16. “‘Most of my stu­dents are in spe­cial oper­a­tions, they want to be chal­lenged, they are off-design thinkers by nature,’ Arquilla said. ‘Over­all, mil­i­tary offi­cers have a great open­ness of mind. There’s a great capac­ity for inno­v­a­tive think­ing. They’ve seen a lot, they’ve done a lot, they come here at mid-career. Now we’re get­ting many who are rotat­ing out of Afghanistan. This isn’t like four-star gen­er­als who are just think­ing how to pro­tect their con­ven­tional force struc­tures.’” (Idem.)

17. One of the con­sid­er­a­tions that may have influ­enced the think­ing of some of the mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence crit­ics of the Bush administration’s Iraq pol­icy is Saddam’s acqui­si­tion of a pow­dered chem­i­cal agent called Aerosil. This agent (man­u­fac­tured by the Degussa chem­i­cal com­pany of Ger­many), could cause enor­mous casu­al­ties among U.S. troops in Iraq. It might be given to ter­ror­ist ele­ments if Bush pro­ceeds with an inva­sion of Iraq. Many U.S. intel­li­gence ana­lysts, includ­ing offi­cers of the CIA, believe that Saddam’s equip­ping of ter­ror­ists with weapons of mass destruc­tion is more prob­a­ble if the U.S. invades. One of the pos­si­bil­i­ties to be borne in mind con­cerns the manip­u­la­tion of the var­i­ous forces in this con­fronta­tion by the Under­ground Reich–present in the Al Qaeda net­work, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Iraq, the PLO and the Israeli right-wing. “Iraqi sci­en­tists know how to make chem­i­cal weapons that can pen­e­trate mil­i­tary pro­tec­tive cloth­ing, and Iraq imported up to 25 met­ric tons last month of a pow­der that is a cru­cial ingre­di­ent to such ‘dusty’ weapons. Iraq told the United Nations the pow­der was des­tined for a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany that a for­mer weapons inspec­tor says was ordered by Pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein before the 1991 Per­sian Gulf War to work on chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons. The pow­der, sold under the brand name Aerosil, has par­ti­cles so small that, when coated with deadly poi­sons, can pass through the tini­est gaps in pro­tec­tive suits.” (“Iraq Chem Threat-New Weapon: Poi­son Dust Pen­e­trates Gear” by Matt Kelly [AP]; The San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 11/18/2002; p. 5A.)

18. It is worth not­ing that one of the agents poten­tially con­tem­plated in con­nec­tion with Aerosil is VX. It appears that the Al Shifa phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal plant in Sudan (con­trolled by the Al Qaeda net­work) actu­ally was pro­duc­ing chem­i­cal weapons-specifically a “binary” ver­sion of VX. “If Iraq made and used a pow­dered form of its dead­liest nerve agent, VX, it could kill U.S. troops dressed in full pro­tec­tive gear, accord­ing to a 1990 Defense Intel­li­gence Agency assess­ment. Although the military’s pro­tec­tive suits have been improved since then, experts say dusty weapons could pen­e­trate the new suits. . . The 1990 DIA doc­u­ment said sol­diers could pro­tect them­selves by throw­ing rain pon­chos over their chem­i­cal suits, which would reduce the fatal­ity risk to near zero. One expert wrote later: ‘One gets the sense that this was rec­om­mended in the fact of few other options.’” (Idem.)

19. “The researcher, Eric Croddy of the pri­vate Cen­ter for Non­pro­lif­er­a­tion Stud­ies, said dusty VX would be a seri­ous dan­ger to U.S. troops. VX is so toxic that, in its liq­uid form, a drop on the skin can kill within min­utes. ‘The effects of dusty VX, depend­ing on how it gets in the body, would be some­what faster,’ Croddy said. ‘It’s cer­tainly much more inju­ri­ous and much more of a severe threat.’” (Idem.)

20. “Dusty chem­i­cal weapons are formed by mix­ing a liq­uid chem­i­cal agent with a fine pow­der to coat the powder’s tiny par­ti­cles with the deadly poi­son. The par­ti­cles’ small size allows them to pass through the fab­ric of a pro­tec­tive suit and any tiny gaps around the seal of a gas mask. The lat­est U.S. mil­i­tary pro­tec­tive suits have a layer of char­coal in the fab­ric to trap any poi­sons that might pen­e­trate the outer cov­er­ing, but par­ti­cles small enough could pass through even the char­coal layer. . .” (Idem.)

21. “The poi­so­nous pow­der also would set­tle in the tini­est nooks and cran­nies of build­ings and equip­ment, mak­ing decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion extremely dif­fi­cult. VX in its liq­uid form already is a decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion chal­lenge; the sticky poi­son is per­sis­tent and can­not be neu­tral­ized eas­ily with sub­stances such as bleach. Even if dusty chem­i­cal weapons caused no U.S. casu­al­ties, they could force Amer­i­can sol­diers to work in clumsy pro­tec­tive gear, decon­t­a­m­i­nate their equip­ment and avoid con­t­a­m­i­nated areas, giv­ing Iraqi sol­diers time to mount defenses.” (Idem.)

22. As if that wasn’t scary enough, Aerosil may have been used in the (as yet unsolved) anthrax attacks in the United States. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the Under­ground Reich was behind the anthrax attacks. “A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of sci­en­tists and bio­log­i­cal war­fare experts are express­ing skep­ti­cism about the FBI’s view that a sin­gle dis­grun­tled Amer­i­can sci­en­tist pre­pared the spores and mailed the deadly anthrax let­ters that killed five peo­ple last year. These sources say that mak­ing a weaponized aerosol of such sophis­ti­ca­tion and vir­u­lence would require sci­en­tific knowl­edge, tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence, access to expen­sive equip­ment and safety know-how that are prob­a­bly beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of a lone indi­vid­ual. . .” (“FBI’s The­ory on Anthrax Is Doubted: Attacks Not Likely Work of One Per­son, Experts Say” by Guy Gugliotta and Gary Mat­sumoto; Wash­ing­ton Post; 10/28/2002; p. A1.)

23. Assess­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that Aerosil may have been used in the anthrax attacks, the pro­gram notes that experts believe that two main pos­si­bil­i­ties exist for the type of agent used in the attacks-“fumed sil­ica.” “Fumed sil­ica has myr­iad uses, mostly as a thick­en­ing agent in prod­ucts includ­ing ceram­ics, house paint, tooth­paste and cos­met­ics. It is not widely known as an aerosol addi­tive. ‘If you’re going to put it into the lung, there has to be a mech­a­nism to clear it, oth­er­wise you just fill up somebody’s lung with sil­ica after repeated dos­ing,’ said [Richard] Dalby, of the Aerosol Lab. The anthrax mailer, he noted, obvi­ously wasn’t wor­ried about giv­ing his vic­tims sil­i­co­sis.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

24. “Some fumed sil­i­cas are extremely dif­fi­cult to make, but at least two-Aerosil and Cab-O-Sil-are read­ily avail­able and sold com­mer­cially in bulk. Either prod­uct, in the­ory, could be used to coat anthrax spores. Aerosil is based in Ger­many and Cab-O-Sil, in Boston. Both firms have offices around the world.” (Idem.)

25. The Banca del Got­tardo (affil­i­ated, in turn, with Al Taqwa, Al Qaeda and the Banco Ambrosiano scan­dal) also had con­nec­tions with the for­mer Soviet bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­gram. In that con­text, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the use of Aerosil by that pro­gram. “Ken Alibek, a for­mer deputy direc­tor of the Soviet bioweapons pro­gram now run­ning an Alexan­dria biotech­nol­ogy firm, said the Sovi­ets used Aerosil in agent pow­ders, and a clas­si­fied Defense Depart­ment memo in 1991 said Iraq had ‘imported approx­i­mately 100MT [met­ric tons] of Aerosil dur­ing the last 8–9 years.’” (Idem.)

26. It is inter­est­ing and pos­si­bly very sig­nif­i­cant that the man­u­fac­turer of Aerosil is Degussa, the for­mer I.G. Far­ben sub­sidiary that made the Zyk­lon B in World War II. Note, in par­tic­u­lar, the role of a Degussa sub­sidiary in arm­ing Iraq with its weapons of mass destruc­tion. Degussa is also among the defen­dants in a suit by vet­er­ans of the Per­sian Gulf War. See FTR#87.) The Degussa sub­sidiary that makes Aerosil is “Aerosil & Silanes.”)

27. Degussa’s best-known prod­uct was the Zyk­lon B used in the con­cen­tra­tion camps dur­ing World War II. One of the prin­ci­pal pro­pa­ganda doc­u­ments used by the Nazis to real­ize their agenda was the anti-Semitic forgery “The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion”. The doc­u­ment has achieved a remark­able degree of cir­cu­la­tion in the Mid­dle East. Dur­ing the Mus­lim holy month of Ramadan, Egypt­ian state tele­vi­sion has shown a long, made for TV series called “A Rider with­out a Horse.” That series is based on the Pro­to­cols. One of the few Arab voices to be raised against this was a Pales­tin­ian busi­ness con­sul­tant, Qais S. Saleh. “Broad­cast­ing dur­ing Ramadan nearly guar­an­tees audi­ences in the tens of mil­lions, and wide­spread cov­er­age on efforts to ban it only widened its appeal. A real dan­ger is that there has been a trend in Arab soci­eties toward visual inputs of infor­ma­tion, where satel­lite TV pro­grams some­times serve as the only con­duit of infor­ma­tion to the Arab fam­ily. The main rea­son why we as Arabs should reject this pro­gram and the text it uses is that is an imported piece of anti-Semitic big­otry that was forged in one of the dark­est chap­ters in Euro­pean his­tory.” (“The Road to Imported Big­otry” by Qais S. Saleh; The San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 11/14/2002; p. 19A.) Amen.