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American Morning

Interview With Ken Pollack

Aired December 09, 2002 - 07:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the topic of Iraq, it says nearly the 12,000 pages of declarations add up to nothing -- that's the word from Baghdad -- as in no weapons of mass destruction.
The White House, though, believes Iraq's massive dossier is nothing but a work of fiction. It says it plans to provide the intelligence to prove it.

What, then, are the documents likely to reveal, if anything?

Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst and the author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq" is now with us here in New York City.

Good to see you, Ken.

KEN POLLACK, "THE THREATENING STORM": Good morning to you.

HEMMER: A couple of basic questions. Why are there 12,000 documents in the first place?

POLLACK: Well, it seems that the Iraqis have declared every single site that the inspectors ever visited in the 1990s, as well as every single facility in Iraq that they're willing to declare that could conceivably be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. So, every fertilizer plant, every pharmaceutical facility, all of which could be converted, they've declared. And my own feeling is probably every kid with a chemistry set in Iraq is probably listed in that document.

HEMMER: Have they gone overboard, or have they gone to the point where they say, see, you know, we're giving you all of this stuff right now, and it just proves to the point that we have nothing?

POLLACK: It's clearly the latter. They're trying to convince the world that they are coming clean. And so, they're saying, see, we've told you everything, we've told you about more stuff than you wanted to know about. Don't you believe that we're clean, that we don't have any of these weapons?

HEMMER: Another basic question. In 1998, when the inspectors left Iraq, they said they were unable to account for 4,000 tons of materials that could make chemical weapons, 600 tons of material that could make VX nerve gas, 26 Scud missiles, 500 bombs which could carry items like mustard gas. To me, this seems like a huge volume. Why, then, can you not locate it? POLLACK: Well, it certainly is a huge volume. This is the problem. We are very concerned that Iraq has this much stuff. In fact, they may have more conceivably. The problem is Iraq is a very big country, and the government doesn't want us to find it. It's a country the size of France, and imagine, sending 100 or 200 people on a plane to France and saying to them, find 500 bombs somewhere in France. They could be anywhere. And by the way, the government and people of France don't want you to find them

HEMMER: Which is not an easy job, as you well know. The U.N. or the U.S. or Iraq, of those three players in this triad right now, where is the burden of proof?

POLLACK: Well, unfortunately, I think the burden of proof now lies with the United States. I think that's unfortunate, because it shouldn't be. As the administration keeps saying, the burden of proof is supposed to be on Iraq. All of the resolutions state that Saddam must comply, he must disarm himself, and it's simply up to the inspectors to certify that he is complying.

But the problem is that we've locked ourselves into a situation where that's clearly not the case, and now the rest of the world is looking at us and saying, well, if you think the Iraqis are lying, prove it to us. That is hugely difficult.

HEMMER: So, then, the U.S. then, Ken, takes this intelligence information, gives it to the U.N., and says, this is what we know because X person left this city three years ago, and he talked about this factory out there. So, then, do you go in and send your inspectors immediately to that plant?

POLLACK: Maybe, maybe not. That's one way to handle it. You can certainly give information to the inspectors and say, we want you to look at this facility. We've got information that makes us believe that there's something there.

Another way to handle it, though -- and the U.S. might choose to do this -- is we could simply go to all of the different countries on the U.N. Security Council and in private say them, look, the Iraqis are lying in this document. We know they're lying. Here's all the information that we have, and we don't want to go public with it, because we believe it would reveal sources and methods that would be damaging to the sources and to our ability to keep track of Iraq. But we know the Iraqis are lying, and you know the Iraqis are lying, and it's time that we took action.

HEMMER: Let me shift your focus to this whole issue of defectors. There's a possibility that the U.N. could help ferry out some of these scientists, take them to a neutral third country -- maybe Cyprus, maybe some other location -- and question them to give them essentially personal protection and freedoms. You don't necessarily think this will work even if you get them out of the country. Why not?

POLLACK: Well, if you could get them out of the country, you've got a better shot at making it work. It's going to be hard to get them out of the country, because my guess is the Iraqis are going to claim that a bunch of them are dead; others have fled the country. Still, others are going to say, we don't want to go.

Even if you can get them out of the country, though, the problem is you simply don't know what kind of control Saddam Hussein has over these people. He may have a couple of family relatives, people we don't even know about, locked up in the Mukharabat, the secret intelligence's dungeons, and they may know it. The scientists may know it.

So, when they're sitting in Geneva or Cyprus or some place like that, they may know that their beloved son or cousin or father is sitting with the Mukharabat gun to his head, and they're going to be very fearful about what they're going to say.

HEMMER: And there it is, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Thank you, Ken. Good to see you here.

POLLACK: Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

HEMMER: Ken Pollack.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.







Aired December 9, 2002 - 07:18   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the topic of Iraq, it says nearly the 12,000 pages of declarations add up to nothing -- that's the word from Baghdad -- as in no weapons of mass destruction.
The White House, though, believes Iraq's massive dossier is nothing but a work of fiction. It says it plans to provide the intelligence to prove it.

What, then, are the documents likely to reveal, if anything?

Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst and the author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq" is now with us here in New York City.

Good to see you, Ken.

KEN POLLACK, "THE THREATENING STORM": Good morning to you.

HEMMER: A couple of basic questions. Why are there 12,000 documents in the first place?

POLLACK: Well, it seems that the Iraqis have declared every single site that the inspectors ever visited in the 1990s, as well as every single facility in Iraq that they're willing to declare that could conceivably be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. So, every fertilizer plant, every pharmaceutical facility, all of which could be converted, they've declared. And my own feeling is probably every kid with a chemistry set in Iraq is probably listed in that document.

HEMMER: Have they gone overboard, or have they gone to the point where they say, see, you know, we're giving you all of this stuff right now, and it just proves to the point that we have nothing?

POLLACK: It's clearly the latter. They're trying to convince the world that they are coming clean. And so, they're saying, see, we've told you everything, we've told you about more stuff than you wanted to know about. Don't you believe that we're clean, that we don't have any of these weapons?

HEMMER: Another basic question. In 1998, when the inspectors left Iraq, they said they were unable to account for 4,000 tons of materials that could make chemical weapons, 600 tons of material that could make VX nerve gas, 26 Scud missiles, 500 bombs which could carry items like mustard gas. To me, this seems like a huge volume. Why, then, can you not locate it? POLLACK: Well, it certainly is a huge volume. This is the problem. We are very concerned that Iraq has this much stuff. In fact, they may have more conceivably. The problem is Iraq is a very big country, and the government doesn't want us to find it. It's a country the size of France, and imagine, sending 100 or 200 people on a plane to France and saying to them, find 500 bombs somewhere in France. They could be anywhere. And by the way, the government and people of France don't want you to find them

HEMMER: Which is not an easy job, as you well know. The U.N. or the U.S. or Iraq, of those three players in this triad right now, where is the burden of proof?

POLLACK: Well, unfortunately, I think the burden of proof now lies with the United States. I think that's unfortunate, because it shouldn't be. As the administration keeps saying, the burden of proof is supposed to be on Iraq. All of the resolutions state that Saddam must comply, he must disarm himself, and it's simply up to the inspectors to certify that he is complying.

But the problem is that we've locked ourselves into a situation where that's clearly not the case, and now the rest of the world is looking at us and saying, well, if you think the Iraqis are lying, prove it to us. That is hugely difficult.

HEMMER: So, then, the U.S. then, Ken, takes this intelligence information, gives it to the U.N., and says, this is what we know because X person left this city three years ago, and he talked about this factory out there. So, then, do you go in and send your inspectors immediately to that plant?

POLLACK: Maybe, maybe not. That's one way to handle it. You can certainly give information to the inspectors and say, we want you to look at this facility. We've got information that makes us believe that there's something there.

Another way to handle it, though -- and the U.S. might choose to do this -- is we could simply go to all of the different countries on the U.N. Security Council and in private say them, look, the Iraqis are lying in this document. We know they're lying. Here's all the information that we have, and we don't want to go public with it, because we believe it would reveal sources and methods that would be damaging to the sources and to our ability to keep track of Iraq. But we know the Iraqis are lying, and you know the Iraqis are lying, and it's time that we took action.

HEMMER: Let me shift your focus to this whole issue of defectors. There's a possibility that the U.N. could help ferry out some of these scientists, take them to a neutral third country -- maybe Cyprus, maybe some other location -- and question them to give them essentially personal protection and freedoms. You don't necessarily think this will work even if you get them out of the country. Why not?

POLLACK: Well, if you could get them out of the country, you've got a better shot at making it work. It's going to be hard to get them out of the country, because my guess is the Iraqis are going to claim that a bunch of them are dead; others have fled the country. Still, others are going to say, we don't want to go.

Even if you can get them out of the country, though, the problem is you simply don't know what kind of control Saddam Hussein has over these people. He may have a couple of family relatives, people we don't even know about, locked up in the Mukharabat, the secret intelligence's dungeons, and they may know it. The scientists may know it.

So, when they're sitting in Geneva or Cyprus or some place like that, they may know that their beloved son or cousin or father is sitting with the Mukharabat gun to his head, and they're going to be very fearful about what they're going to say.

HEMMER: And there it is, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Thank you, Ken. Good to see you here.

POLLACK: Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

HEMMER: Ken Pollack.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.