Tim Trevan was a British expert in weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In 1992 he joined the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors in Iraq. His Saddam’s Secrets is one of the better books on the subject. He goes into great detail about all of the jobs the inspectors carried out but focuses upon the biological weapons program which Iraq tried to hide. It’s the coverage of each inspection team that went to Iraq that reveals how Baghdad lied about its program until UNSCOM ended in 1998.
Treven documents how from the start of inspections in 1991 Saddam Hussein carried out a deception campaign to keep his weapons programs a secret from the United Nations. That started with its first weapons declaration to inspectors in April 1991 in which it claimed it had never tried to build a nuclear bomb or produce biological weapons. It also did not disclose all of its chemical or missile programs. UNSCOM originally believed that it could disarm Iraq in 45 days but its initial defiance showed that it was not going to happen. It’s this process of hide and seek that the author spends so much time on.
Saddam’s Secrets goes through the changes the inspections went through to discover Iraq’s weapons. At first, they believed they could find the weapons and equipment but in the earliest visits to suspected sites they found Iraq had moved material sometimes right in front of the UN teams. That then led them to shift to interrogation of Iraqis and analysis. By asking detailed questions the inspectors found holes in the Iraqi stories and made them admit to what they were up to. Analysis focused upon things like labels on equipment that could lead UNSCOM back to the suppliers to find out what Iraq had ordered which would give a general idea of what was worked on and in what quantities.
The author also goes into how the Iraqis tried to adapt. They kept a close eye upon the inspectors and figured out which personnel were involved in investigating which programs so that they could cleanse sites when they arrived. They also put documents and equipment in trucks and drove them around the entire time UN teams were in Iraq. The Iraqis tried to deny entry to sites even though they agreed to that. Finally they attempted and eventually succeeded in dividing the United Nations from the inspections. Under chief inspector Rolf Ekeus any complaint by Baghdad was met with a united response from the Security Council and UNSCOM. Later on as inspections and sanctions wore on certain countries like Russia and France started souring on the process and allowed Iraq to get the UN secretary general to work independently of UNSCOM which undermined their standing. That allowed Saddam to stop cooperating with the inspectors in 1998.
Despite all that the inspectors were amazingly successful in uncovering what Iraq worked upon. Baghdad for example ended up admitting to working on a nuclear bomb and disclosed all of the biological agents that it tried to weaponize. By 1998 there were still outstanding issues however such as 20 tons of complex growth media for the biological program, 200 tons of precursors chemicals for the production of VX gas, and the full extent of its long range missile program. This would become the basis for the American and British claims that Iraq still had WMD that led to the 2003 invasion.
Trevan was actually in that camp when his book was published in 1999. He believed that Iraq’s deceptions proved that Saddam Hussein would never give up his WMD. In fact, Baghdad destroyed all of its stocks of biological and chemical agents and ended its attempt to build a nuclear bomb by 1991 showing that the inspections worked. The problem was they didn’t know that until after the overthrow of Saddam because he was obsessed with keeping things secret.
Much has been written about Washington and London lying about Iraq’s weapons to justify the 2003 Iraq War but Levan helps show that the general consensus in the West was that Iraq still had WMD and was working on its nuclear capabilities because it never came clean to the inspectors in the 1990s.
If one wants to find out about the ins and outs of the UNSCOM inspections then Saddam’s Secrets is the book to read. It is superior to others like Scott Ritter who told completely different stories between his first and second books. It also has much more details than the writings of Richard Butler the second head of UNSCOM who mostly covered the end of the inspection process.
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