Iraq's Nuclear Quest: Germany's Role

efreedomnews ^ | Jonathon Rhodes

[xzins]

Saddam's Nuclear Quest: 1980 - 1991
Jonathan Rhodes
September 22,2002

Saddam Hussein built an extensive procurement network to develop nuclear weapons in the 1980's. Having confirmed Iraq's intention of producing plutonium based nuclear weapons material at the French built Osiraq reactor, Israel preemptively destroyed the reactor on June 7, 1981, before the first nuclear fuel was loaded and the reactor went "hot." Saddam then changed course away from plutonium and towards enriched uranium.

Project 182 originated in 1984/85 after France decided against rebuilding the Osirak reactor. The Project 182 reactor was intended to be a natural uranium - heavy water type. The program stalled due to the lack of foreign assistance, but after invading Kuwait, Iraq  accelerate its program to develop a nuclear weapon by using radioactive fuel from the Osiraq reactor. It made a crash effort in September, 1990 to recover enriched fuel from the  reactor, with the goal of producing a nuclear weapon by April, 1991.

In Germany, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA - Federal Criminal Police) and Urenco Deutschland confirmed that blueprints of a very advanced gas centrifuge had been stolen and sold to Iraq sometime before 1991. Bonn officials called the matter the worst case of German nuclear export violations ever. The [suspected] expert, Karl-Heinz Schaab, is a former Urenco scientist, who had left Urenco and "set himself up as a consultant". Schaab and his wife Brigitte were convicted three years ago [1993] of having exported a number of carbon fiber centrifuge rotors to Iraq prior to the Gulf War; they were given a suspended prison sentence. Prior to their arrest in Austria, the couple had been sought by German authorities in Brazil. Schaab sold the design of TC-11, a powerful super-critical gas centrifuge to Iraq for less than DM 500,000 (US$350,000).[Schaab was convicted of treason by Germany in 1999, paid a $32,000 fine and received a 5 year suspended sentence]

Another German firm, Siemens daughter Interatom GmbH, supplied equipment and training to Iraq in 1989. In 1995, Iraq informed the IAEA that it obtained more know-how from Interatom than previously reported, including data on gas centrifuge cascade piping that Interatom had also been supplying to Urenco. In early February 1996, Siemens denied that such know-how transfer had occurred. The IAEA had nothing to retract from its former report on the 29th inspection in Iraq (held Oct.17-24, 1995) or its conclusions. Interatom trained Iraqi welding specialists in Germany in late 1989 for 43 weeks; each training lasted five weeks on average. Some welders were in fact top-flight Iraqi centrifuge design-engineers. That revelation was made known to the IAEA in 1995. The Bonn government immediately canceled the training after Siemens learned its Iraqi partner was an arm of Baghdad's secret nuclear program, involved in both foreign know-how procurement and recruitment of technology spies abroad. Both Siemens and the German Ministry of Economic Affairs had applied pressure on the IAEA, objecting to the naming of Siemens and other German companies whose equipment had been found by IAEA inspectors in Iraq since 1991.
[World Information Service on Energy]
 

Three days in to Desert Storm, in 1991, attacks on the reactor started. Fifty-six F-16's struck first, followed by eight F-117 strikes over a months time before the site was declared unusable as a nuclear weapons factory. The program finally stopped on 17 January 1991.

After the UN weapons inspectors got to work in Iraq following the end of Gulf War I, the world was shocked to find:

"The Iraqi nuclear program was massive, for most practical purposes it was fiscally unconstrained, was closer to fielding a nuclear weapon, and was less vulnerable to destruction by precision bombing than coalition air commanders and planners or US intelligence specialists realized before DESERT STORM. The target list on 16 January 1991 contained two nuclear targets; but after the war, inspectors operating under the United Nations Special Commission eventually uncovered more than twenty sites involved in the Iraqi nuclear program; sixteen of the sites were described as “main facilities.”"[Federation of American Scientists]
 

"Iraq had purchased giant magnets and centrifuges for enriching uranium, had imported German components to enhance the range of Scud missiles purchased from the Soviet Union, had bought plants for producing chemical and biological agents, and had loaded those agents into warheads. [Shopping with Saddam]

 

See: Nuclear Quest II - 1991-2002

[xzins]

Nuclear Quest II link

click here

[Mr. Mojo]

Germany's quest to exterminate Jews continues unabated. ....and they've found in indirect way of doing it.

[paguch]

Is it not time Americans began to boycot German products?

[xzins]

Prior to their arrest in Austria, the couple had been sought by German authorities in Brazil. Schaab sold the design of TC-11, a powerful super-critical gas centrifuge to Iraq for less than DM 500,000 (US$350,000).[Schaab was convicted of treason by Germany in 1999, paid a $32,000 fine and received a 5 year suspended sentence]

Suspended sentence and 32000 fine. He made $320,000. Pretty good deal.

I'll bet that scared other german investors away!

[Mr. Mojo]

Yeah, it is. Problem is, with the exception of Becks, I love German beer. ...And German cars are still by far the best engineered machines in the world. But they don't make too many items most Americans buy, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Boycotting products made in China is a lot tougher.

[Mr. Mojo]

Treason ain't what it used to be, so it seems.

[Michael81Dus]

Excuse me but you should take a closer look on your sources. It is impossible to get a 5-year suspended sentence. The limit is 2 years imprisonment suspended for 4 years...

[elhombrelibre]

I often think Europeans support the PLO as another way to finish what the NAZIs started. They even think the US is too close to Israel. I guess they always want to side with Saddam and Arafat since they don't have elections and hate Jews enough to kill them. No wonder there is so much anti-Americanism in Europe. We're holding up the final solution.

[desertcry]

Krauts will always be krauts, the MASTER RACE! Now, they are wearing the mantle of peace maker, much like the religion of peace.

[paguch]

Keep in mind the only sustained peace Europe has had in the past century was provided and paid for in U.S blood and support. Our reward? The return of the Natzi's and the Vichi.
When we take Iraq and find their fingerprints I hope Americans remember.

[desertcry]

I quit buying german products more than 20 years ago! They are over priced, and over hyped in quality. Now they are adding their anti-Americanism as well. One has either to be an extreme lover of krauts, an anti-American, or just a complete fool to buy german.

[Mr. Mojo]

I agree completely. It's no coincidence that the most anti-semitic of Euro nations - France and Germany - also happen to be the ones that sell WMD materials to Iraq and support Israel's enemies in general. Old Europe, being the impotent dinosaur that it is, knows that it can't directly take care of the Third Reich's unfinished business by itself, so they enlist the Arabs to do the dirty work. Ariel Sharon should tell both the Krauts and Frogs that if Iraq lanches a successful WMD attack on Israel, and we discover incontrovertible proof that the dirty fingerprints of France and Germany are all over those weapons, Israel will hold Old Europe directly responsible for the attack (with all that entails). I guarantee you that Old Europe would then see things a bit more clearly.

[desertcry]

I have compassion on you, I know how it feels to be governed
by an arrogant crook. But arrogant crooks can't be gotten rid off easily, the good people of Germany must work much harder to rid themselves of their blight, der herr kraut schroeder.

[Michael81Dus]

I agree with you, but not with your post regarding German products. I hate threads like that, it always ends the way that the one group insults the other... so irrational. Don´t think that people in Germany are different. They show the same reactions: feeling offended, reacting with isolation and insulting the baaad baaad others. That´s what you call Anti-Americanism and I call your sentiments Anti-Europeanism.

You completely ignore that e.g. Germans don´t hate Jews. The jewish community grew to 100,000 last year and this week the government signed a state treaty with the central jewish council in Germany like they did decades ago with the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutherian Church.

[Kay Soze]

"A German court on June 29, 1999, convicted Schaab of treason and sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and a $32,000 fine, but then suspended the prison term because he had served 15 months in a Brazilian jail."
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021015-90292292.htm


You should take a closer look at your nations history.

Germany is still my nations enemy.

[Kay Soze]

Film ties Germans to Iraqi nuclear program
Charles J. Hanley
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published 10/15/2002

NEW YORK — A new investigative film traces the roots of the Iraq nuclear crisis to links between German industry and Baghdad's bomb builders, and questions the lenient sentence — probation — handed down to a German engineer for treason in aiding the project.
The documentary, "Stealing the Fire," also offers a rare close-up look at a "proliferator," the engineer Karl-Heinz Schaab, who emerges on film as a bland, gray, fastidious 68-year-old technician who protests that he is "too small to be turned into a scapegoat for the others."
The film, produced and directed by Oscar-winning documentarian John S. Friedman and Eric Nadler, premieres today at a New York theater.
Blueprints and other documents that Schaab and associates brought to Iraq in the late 1980s, along with Schaab's own hands-on skills, were a vital boost to Baghdad's development of gas centrifuges — machines whose ultra-fast spinning "enriches" uranium by separating U-235, the stuff of nuclear bombs, from non-fissionable U-238.
Much of Iraq's nuclear infrastructure subsequently was wrecked by American and allied bombing in the 1991 Gulf war.
More was destroyed during U.N. inspections inside Iraq in the 1990s. Baghdad officials deny they are working on atomic weapons today.
But reconnaissance photos released by the Bush administration, as it seeks support for a potential war against Iraq, indicate the Iraqis have been rebuilding sites previously used for nuclear development. A newly released U.S. intelligence report says they may have nuclear weapons by 2010.
"Stealing the Fire" looks at the source of these capabilities.
Iraq was failing with other enrichment technologies when German centrifuge specialists Bruno Stemmler and Walter Busse, recruited by a German company, H&H Metallform, came to Baghdad in 1988 and sold the Iraqis old designs for centrifuges.
The next year they brought Schaab, who provided components, technical reports and, most important, a stolen design for an advanced "supercritical" centrifuge.
The design, classified secret in Germany, was used in enriching nuclear-power fuel at the European government consortium Urenco, for which a Schaab-owned company worked as a subcontractor. The Iraqis paid $62,000 for the key documents.
In an on-film interview, Schaab said that on his last Baghdad visit, in April 1990, he personally helped install Iraq's first test centrifuge. Bomb production would require thousands of such devices.
A German court on June 29, 1999, convicted Schaab of treason and sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and a $32,000 fine, but then suspended the prison term because he had served 15 months in a Brazilian jail.
He had fled to Brazil in 1995 after U.N. inspectors uncovered documents in Iraq exposing the German connection. At Germany's request the next year, the Brazilians arrested the fugitive engineer, but freed him when a Brazilian court held that his crime was political and he could not be extradited.
In 1998, Schaab returned to Germany to be with his dying mother and to surrender to authorities, apparently assured his cooperation would win him leniency.
The light sentence he received raised questions, however, among nonproliferation specialists. American physicist David Albright, who was on the U.N. inspection team, suggested that the German government wanted to minimize public perception of Schaab's crime.
"I think they wanted the Schaab story to disappear.
The film suggests that some people want Schaab himself to disappear. His attorneys told the filmmakers that Brazilian authorities had warned them that foreign secret services wanted to kill or kidnap their client, and suggested that the closely timed deaths of associates Mr. Stemmler and Mr. Busse in the early 1990s might not have been natural, as reported.
"Stealing the Fire" leaves such questions unexplored, but it firmly establishes that German companies have supplied technology usable in Baghdad's plans.
One high-ranking defector from Iraq's nuclear program said Germany was an "open field" for Iraqi ambitions in the 1980s, particularly for purchases from such companies as chemical giant Degussa.
A top Degussa executive retorted that "by the German laws, there were no illegal deliveries" during this pre-Gulf war period.
German export controls, widely regarded as too lax, were toughened after the Gulf war. German industry was not alone, however, in helping develop Iraqi capabilities. From 1985 to 1990, the U.S. Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses.
Schaab "of course did it for the money," said his attorney, Michael Rietz. But the centrifuge specialist — described by wife, Brigitta, as "very quiet, very well-behaved; he doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink" — insisted he was focused as much on the technological challenge, and not on illegality and international repercussions.
"I stumbled naively into this thing," he said.

[desertcry]

.... not with your post regarding german products.... I stand by my statements about german products. Examples: I used to own an MB, the initial quality looked fairly priced. But 2 years later, I found the quality was skin deep, and the maintenance cost was unacceptable. I quit buying german cars after that, and bought Japanese. I find my Acura to be much more reliable than the MB I had. Furthermore the Japanese as a people have been much more supportive of America than the germans. Thus I feel they deserve my business, not the germans nor the french, who owe more American blood, and goods than any "allies" we have. I'm sorry that you are offended, but you must admit that the germans as a whole have been less than a friend to America lately.

[Michael81Dus]

That´s a different story, first 5 years jail, fine then suspension. Ok. But five years suspended by sentence are not allowed.

Can you tell me why Germany is your enemy? BTW it´s not your nations enemy. The contrary is correct.

Those who voted for Hitler are today 91 years or older (today is 70th anniversary of Hitler´s appointment to Chancellor) and those who fought with the age of 14 (!) at the end of the war are now 72!

Think about it. Peoples change, new generations come.

[Michael81Dus]

You´re not well informed. One German product can not stand for all products. The Fed. Rep. of Germany has always been one of the closest allies of the US, it´s the Schröder government trying to go a third way... not the people.

Please look at my profile and learn, that even Germany of today is supporting the US.