Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack carried out 25 UNSCOM inspection missions, including eight as Chief Inspector, by far the most of any woman conducting biological weapons inspections in Iraq. Trained as a veterinarian and a microbiologist, Kraatz-Wadsack served in the German armed forces, conducting medical biodefense research, before she joined UNSCOM in 1995. Since 2006, Kraatz-Wadsack has held several senior positions at the United Nations, including Chief of the WMD Branch and Chief of the Regional Disarmament Branch both in the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, and as Chief of Staff in the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism for Syria.

In this interview with Filippa Lentzos, senior lecturer at King’s College London and Bulletin biosecurity columnist, Kraatz-Wadsack discusses her experiences as a biological inspector.

Filippa Lentzos: Tell me how you got involved in UNSCOM.

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: I was working as a military officer at the medical biological defense facility of the German Armed Forces in Munich, developing test systems for the rapid detection of biological pathogens. In late 1994, a call came through from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Defence asking for an expert to go to Baghdad for a biological inspection. I didn’t know at the time what the inspection role would entail, but I thought it seemed interesting. Only later was I told it would be a residential post for three months. I was first asked in December and had to be in Iraq already in January so it was a bit of a rush to get there—I ended up taking my last oral vaccine on the plane to Bahrain.

At that stage, I had still not been briefed on my role. The only thing I had been told was to wear something suitable for inspections in the desert. I brought my military boots, woollen socks to prevent blisters, generic green military trousers and a jeans shirt. We were there as civilian UN personnel, not military personnel, so we couldn’t have clothes showing our rank or nationality.

On arrival at the Baghdad UNSCOM monitoring centre, I was greeted by the previous Chief Inspector of the interim monitoring team, who said, “Gabriele, you are the new Chief Inspector.” His team was departing soon after and my team, consisting of two other members, whom I had never met, was coming in. We were a brand new team; none of us had ever been to Iraq before, and none of us had ever been on an inspection.

By this time, the Iraqis had declared some dual-use facilities, but they had not declared a biological weapons program and were actively hiding it. UNSCOM had some biological baseline inspections in 1994 to assess sites for future monitoring and one resident interim biological monitoring team. Missile and chemical monitoring were already in place; ongoing biological monitoring was the last to be put in place—and that was to be my job.

Filippa Lentzos: So by the time you arrived in Baghdad in early 1995, there was still no sense there was a biological weapons program?

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: A sense maybe, but no real findings or validated assessments. Previous inspection teams had reported that things looked a bit strange at some facilities and needed to be monitored, but even sampling at Al Hakam hadn’t revealed anything of suspicion, so there wasn’t really a “smoking gun”. Everything was starting to focus on monitoring. The interim monitoring team that preceded my team had only been in country for a few weeks. I had three months ahead of me—the longest stint for monitoring in the biological area yet—and I was under pressure as Rolf Ekéus wanted to report to the UN Security Council by April that biological monitoring was fully operational.

Filippa Lentzos: What were the key monitoring tools?

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: Monitoring was based on declared legitimate activities and was designed to enable the discovery of anomalies or deviations from an established baseline. The most important tool was on-site inspections by knowledgeable inspectors—key factors being technical expertise and inspection skills. The technical background of biological inspectors covered all areas of microbiology, from research and development, through production to bioprocess engineering.

During monitoring inspections, a major task was to conduct discussions with Iraqi technical experts, managers and directors at facilities being monitored, as well as with government officials at the National Monitoring Directorate—all of which required skills beyond technical knowledge. Other monitoring activities included inventorying dual-use equipment. This was done by placing a tag on the equipment and recording the information in a database. There was occasional sampling. Cameras connected to VCR recorders were installed at some of the most important facilities to enhance monitoring. In total there were 24 cameras, 16 of them at Al Hakam.

But in the biological field, the usefulness of cameras isn’t straightforward. It is not simply a matter of what you see. You need to know what you’re looking for and what you’re looking at. The primary role of the camera footage for us was to identify any deviation from our baseline inspection data, that would then trigger an on-site inspection. For example, we learned that work at the main fermenters of the Al Hakam alleged single cell protein production facility was regularly done only during the day, and the Iraqis did not work Fridays because that was their weekend. We also knew how many people normally operated them. The minute you see something different—you suddenly see protective clothes, you see more people around, you see more activity, you see unusual patterns of activities —that’s what you’re looking for with the cameras, and, in such cases, we could immediately go inspect. The Iraqis had no control over the cameras and they didn’t know what we saw and the VCR recorder was behind a sealed cabinet.

At our Baghdad monitoring centre, we were able to look at the camera images in real time. Once, when one of the cameras at Al Hakam stopped transmitting late in the evening, a technician and I went out immediately to investigate and found a power cable had been cut. I believe the Iraqis were testing if we were really watching them.

Filippa Lentzos: What indicators were there that Iraq might have had, or still had, a biological weapons program?

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: One example: Before my arrival, UNSCOM had information that Iraq had imported 39 tons of growth media, which you need as nutrients for growing bacteria. In and of itself, there’s nothing suspicious about growth media, you can use it for all sorts of legitimate reasons, but this was an unusually large import. The key question was: What was it for? The Iraqis claimed it was for the Ministry of Health and for diagnostic use in hospitals. We needed to investigate the claim, by locating, inventorying the types and quantities stored, and comparing the data with the declarations provided to my monitoring team.

At one point during my initial three-month residency, there was also a non-resident biological inspection team coming in to investigate Iraq’s undeclared biological weapons program. As the resident monitoring team, we collaborated with them and worked hand-in-hand on the growth media imports. While my focus was the monitoring declaration of available growth media at a particular storage site, their focus was investigating the purpose of the original imports and storage. On the monitoring side, I discovered that the Iraqi declaration for that store had been altered by shifting the decimals. For instance, the 25 kilogram containers became 2.5 kilogram containers, and the 100 kilogram containers became 1 kilogram in their declaration. In fact, they had provided only information for small amounts of growth media and not the huge quantities in containers of 25, 50 and 100 kilogram sizes which we discovered behind a locked door that we had originally been told we could ignore because the growth media stored there had expired. Of course, we insisted the door be opened, which it eventually was, after back-and-forth arguing about not finding the keys.

As my monitoring team assisted the non-resident inspection team, we also participated in an interview with the storekeeper, who wanted to convince us that the imported media had been sent to hospitals for diagnostic purposes. As the chief inspector of the resident monitoring team, I had already separately reported to New York that the sheer amount of growth media was not in line with diagnostic purposes at hospitals, and that large containers of 25, 50, and 100 kilograms would not be suitable for the declared purposes. An average hospital in Iraq might use one kilogram of growth media, not 25 kilograms, and nowhere near 100 kilograms per year. When you take small quantities out of large containers, the remaining growth media spoil because it absorbs moisture from the air. That was really the key evidence: The container sizes were not suitable for diagnostic purposes in hospitals.

After my report, I was then tasked by New York to find the remaining growth media. I had to analyse the types of sites that may use growth media in their work. My findings showed there were many large-volume containers at the sera and vaccine institute at Amiryah, the Al Razi institute for research, and the Al Hakam facility that still held some remaining quantities of the imported growth media, some half full, some empty and some still in its original packaging. I weighed every container! In the end, I could inventory only 22 tons of the 39 tons that had been imported, which led Rolf Ekéus to report to the UN Security Council that 17 tons were unaccounted for. In a subsequent admission, Iraq confirmed that the unaccounted growth media had been consumed in the production of biological warfare agents, such as 8,500 litres of anthrax and 19,000 liters of concentrated botulinum toxin, in its offensive biological warfare program.

Filippa Lentzos: Tell me about Al Hakam.

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: Al Hakam also turned out to be another strong indicator of proscribed activities. It was an obscure facility. It wasn’t on anyone’s map in the Gulf War, and it hadn’t been bombed in 1991. The facility wasn’t known because none of its equipment had direct foreign suppliers. All its equipment was from Iraqi civilian facilities that had been transported to Al Hakam. For instance, they used fermentor lines from legitimate veterinary vaccine production, but disassembled them and reinstalled them in Al Hakam.

Al Hakam was a huge site in the desert, three by four kilometers in size, located far away from civilization. There were different buildings on the site—for research and development, for production, and for an animal house. All buildings were separated from each other and spaced out. The perimeter had multiple air-defense installations, and the facilities’ layout and security arrangements looked more like a military site than the commercial chicken feed production site Iraq had declared. The Iraqi declaration asserted that Al Hakam was a dedicated facility for large volume production of single-cell, protein-based chicken feed and for biopesticides, but this didn’t match with what we observed.

For example, during my first visit to Al Hakam, I only saw three chickens in an outdoor pen, but they were feather-picking and in a terrible state. Chicken tend to feather-pick when they are in overcrowded cages, or when they don’t have enough light, or not enough proteins in their feed. But you’d think a single-cell protein production facility would provide enough protein, and they were in an open pen with plenty of outside light. And why were there only three chickens? For me, these were hints that something was wrong. My hunch was that it was staged; that the chickens had been brought to Al Hakam from an actual chicken farm with crowded cages to deceive inspectors about the true nature of Al Hakam.

Then there was Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha. I met her on my first visit to Al Hakam. I didn’t know then that she had been in charge of producing biological warfare agents for the Iraqi BW program, including at Al Hakam. I was told she was the director of this “chicken” facility. From the beginning, I thought she looked out of place. She had on a nice dress, compared to me in my more practical, hands-on outfit. She seemed shy. I questioned her about single-cell protein and biopesticide production and the equipment present at Al Hakam, but she didn’t seem to know much. The questions were certainly not answered to my satisfaction.

So there were strong indicators that signalled something was out of place with the stated purpose of the Al Hakam facility.

Filippa Lentzos: I like thinking of this encounter between Taha and you. Two strong women, one in the biological weapons world, and one in the disarmament and non-proliferation world. There are few histories of women in either of these fields. I know you were one of the early women in uniform in Germany, too. How was the UNSCOM experience for you, from a woman’s perspective?

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: There were more women in the biological teams than there were in the UNSCOM missile or chemical teams. We also had an all-female, non-resident biological team to inspect the Iraqi women colleges—men and women had separate colleges there. It wasn’t unusual to have women in senior positions in Iraq. I saw women in many different careers. I met female deans of colleges. There was a female director of an industrial site. Women also could drive cars, they could smoke, they could wear whatever they wanted. There was no impression that they were in a subordinate position to men. So, it didn’t seem so unusual for me to be a woman doing my job in Iraq. For me, differences in interactions had more to do with personalities than with gender.

Filippa Lentzos: During your first three months in Iraq, there were several indications that Iraq might have had, or still had, a biological weapons program. What happened next?

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: In its report to the Security Council in April 1995, UNSCOM described the imported growth media and the missing 17 tons, and the unusual features of Al Hakam—its isolation and air defences, specific production lines and materials—and concluded that these indicators pointed to offensive biological weapons activities and specifically to the industrial production of biological warfare agents for weaponization.

UNSCOM’s judgements were not only based on the findings and assessments from the investigation teams, but also on the specific evidence we had found during our monitoring inspections when we were comparing declared activities with the site’s features, and inventoried equipment and materials and analysed discrepancies. In addition, over a dozen international experts at an UNSCOM-convened panel unanimously accepted that the only conclusion stemming from Iraq’s imports and its failure to account for its activities pointed to a high risk that Iraq had engaged in an offensive biological weapons program. Rolf Ekéus reported these conclusions to the UN Security Council in April 1995 and, while UNSCOM’s report was clear about its findings and evidence, Rolf Ekéus also continued to pressure Iraq to obtain its direct public admission of an offensive biological weapons program to present undisputed conclusions to the UN Security Council.

He succeeded in his efforts. In fact, the Iraqi leadership admitted to Rolf Ekéus on July 1, 1995 that they had an offensive biological weapons program and that they produced biological warfare agents. But they also declared that they had unilaterally destroyed everything in 1991—and they falsely claimed they never weaponized the agents they produced.

This was before the defection of Hussein Kamel, who was the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein and the de facto second man in Iraq. Many people, politicians and researchers, get that wrong, and link Kamel’s defection, on August 7, 1995 with Iraq’s first admission of its offensive BW program. That is not correct.

Over time more and more came to light. The main problem was in verifying the declared unilateral destruction. While my main task was monitoring, I became also involved in the disarmament investigations.

There are differences between disarmament inspections and monitoring inspections. For example, the disarmament inspections were directly searching for prohibited activities. With unilateral destruction, all you have is a declaration that the program has ceased, which might or might not be true, so the disarmament teams have to search for evidence of past prohibited activities. In monitoring inspections, there are people, equipment, material present at facilities, and your job is to look for anomalies and deviations from a baseline declaration. You compare what they declare with what you observe at the site. They declare five fermenters; you can see there are five fermenters. They declare it’s for XY purpose; you can verify it’s used for XY purpose. This is completely different than looking for something which allegedly doesn’t exist anymore and proving, or verifying, its absence.

Iraq’s claim of unilateral destruction of its biological weapons in 1991 made the verification process extremely difficult, and, in the end, I believe, they came to regret it. That’s one of the key reasons it was so complicated to resolve issues related to the biological weapons program. Initially, they had concealed it, successfully until 1995, and then information came piecemeal. First, “we produced, but destroyed”. Then, “we weaponized agents, but we destroyed the weapons.” Then “OK, we had more agents, but we destroyed the agents.” It was piecemeal information at a time when they were allegedly being transparent. But there was still information missing and cases of falsified documentation.

Filippa Lentzos: Tell me about the Al Hakam destruction—what some would call the crowning glory of the biological weapons inspections in Iraq.

Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack: After Iraq finally admitted that Al Hakam was a purpose-built biological weapons production facility, it was, according to the terms of Security Council Resolution 687, to be removed, destroyed, or rendered harmless. For Al Hakam, there was a strong case that the facility had to be completely destroyed and demolished.

In practice, it was not that simple. Prior to the destruction, my team had to do a full inventory of everything obtained and used for the biological weapons program—the stocks of materials and agents, the equipment, every single piece. Then UNSCOM drew up a destruction protocol. In principle, everything was to be destroyed, but Iraq was permitted to make a pitch to the executive chair and ask for exemptions, which they did. They asked for a release of three industrial chillers, because they said, they needed them for the hospitals. With the sanctions and lack of supplies, UNSCOM was reasonable and exempted the chillers. The problem was, the Iraqis didn’t return the gesture. They moved those chillers to an industrial facility instead of to the hospitals, and it was back and forth over months before Iraq finally put them at a hospital.

Finally, in May/June of 1996, a commission team supervised the actual physical destruction of the buildings, equipment, and materials at the site. Equipment and materials from two other known facilities that had been used in the proscribed biological weapons program were also transported to Al Hakam to be destroyed there.

I would like to emphasize that the monitoring inspections over the years by a dozen resident biological teams, and their meticulous and extensive work, produced very good results. I have given you some examples in this interview. The teams’ activities and findings provided the basis for the conclusion by UNSCOM’s executive chair that Iraq did not resume proscribed activities during the time of our in-country monitoring. My experience is that this is a convincing example that biological monitoring can work effectively.