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The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was a fact-finding mission sent by the
multinational force in Iraq
Multinational may refer to:
* Multinational corporation, a corporate organization operating in multiple countries
* Multinational force, a military body from multiple countries
* Multinational state, a sovereign state that comprises two or more na ...
to find the
weapons of mass destruction alleged to be possessed by Iraq that had been the main ostensible reason for the
invasion
An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity aggressively enter territory (country subdivision), territory owned by another such entity, gen ...
in 2003. Its final report, ''Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq WMD'' (commonly referred to as the Duelfer Report, named after the head of the ISG
Charles A. Duelfer), was submitted to Congress and the president in 2004.
It consisted of a 1,400-member international team organized by
the Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a meton ...
and
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
to hunt for the alleged stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...
, including
chemical
A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., w ...
and
biological agents, and any supporting research programs and infrastructure that could be used to develop WMD. The report acknowledged that only small stockpiles of chemical WMDs were found, the numbers being inadequate to pose a militarily significant threat.
Formation
The ISG was made up of more than one thousand
American,
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
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and
Australian citizens, with the United States providing the bulk of the personnel and resources for the operation. These people included civilian and military intelligence and WMD experts, as well as a large number of people working to provide armed security and support.
David Kay, who had been a weapons inspector after the first
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...
, was chosen to head the group. The agency tasked as the head U.S. government agency of the ISG was a joint venture of the CIA and the
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence.
A component of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the ...
(DIA), a
Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to:
Current departments of defence
* Department of Defence (Australia)
* Department of National Defence (Canada)
* Department of Defence (Ireland)
* Department of National Defense (Philipp ...
intelligence agency. Chosen as the senior military officer of the ISG was MG
Keith Dayton, who was tasked TDY from his assignment as Deputy Director, Human Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency.
The Iraq Survey Group replaced the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
inspections teams (the
(UNMOVIC), led by
Hans Blix
Hans Martin Blix (; born 28 June 1928) is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978–1979) and later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As suc ...
) and from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (led by
Mohamed ElBaradei
Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei ( ar, محمد مصطفى البرادعي, Muḥammad Muṣṭafá al-Barādaʿī, ; born 17 June 1942) is an Egyptian law scholar and diplomat who served as the vice president of Egypt on an interim basis from 14 July ...
), which had been mandated by the
UN Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
to search for illegal weapons before the conflict (''See
Iraq disarmament crisis
The Iraq disarmament crisis was claimed as one of primary issues that led to the multinational invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003. Since the 1980s, Iraq was widely assumed to have been producing and extensively running the programs of biologi ...
''). None had been found.
The ISG was a combined joint/multi-agency intelligence task force operating in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). It was made up of personnel from all four services, US Government Agencies, the Australian and UK Armed Forces as well as UK and Australian Governmental Agencies. The ISG mission was to organize, direct, and apply intelligence capabilities and expertise to discover, capture, exploit and disseminate information on individuals, documents and other media, materials, facilities, networks, and operations relative to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), Terrorism, Former Regime Intelligence, as well as Iraqi or Third-Country Nationals associated with the Former Regime, detained by the Former Regime, or subjects of Indictment for War Crimes or Crimes against Humanity.
The ISG's mission also included the ongoing investigation into the fate of
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
Captain Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot down in 1991 during the
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...
. Initially presumed dead, he was later declared missing when evidence emerged after the war that he had survived the crash of his aircraft. On August 2, 2009, the Navy reported that Speicher's remains were found in Iraq by United States Marines belonging to MNF-W's Task Force Military Police. His jawbone was used to identify him after study at the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs at
Dover Air Force Base
Dover Air Force Base or Dover AFB is a United States Air Force base under the operational control of the Air Mobility Command (AMC), located southeast of the city of Dover, Delaware. 436th AW is the host wing and runs the busiest and largest a ...
. According to local civilians, Speicher was buried by
Bedouins
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Ar ...
after his plane was shot down. The evidence proved that Speicher did not survive the crash. Senator Nelson attributed the delayed finding to the culture of the locality: "These Bedouins roam around in the desert, they don't stay in one place, and it just took this time to find the specific site."
Organization and operations
To make the primary mission of WMD search more manageable, ISG was operationally divided up into several sectors each with its own Sector Control Point. The three sectors were North,
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...
and South, with Sector Control Point-Baghdad (also known as SCP-B or "skip bee") being the primary and largest. The bulk of the ISG staff and SCP-B were located on
Camp Slayer
Victory Base Complex (VBC) was a cluster of U.S. military installations surrounding the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). The primary component of the VBC was Camp Victory, the location of the Al-Faw Palace, which served as the headquarters f ...
at the former
Al Radwaniyah Presidential Site on
Baghdad International Airport
Baghdad International Airport , previously Saddam International Airport ( ar, مطار بغداد الدولي, Maṭār Baġdād ad-Dawaliyy) is Iraq's largest international airport, located in a suburb about west of downtown Baghdad in the ...
in western Baghdad. One of the major supporting elements of the ISG was the Combined Media Processing Center (CMPC). It consisted of four components, CMPC-Main (CMPC-M) at
Camp Al Sayliyah, Qatar, CMPC-Baghdad (CMPC-B) located on Camp Slayer, as well as CMPC-North (CMPC-N), and CMPC-South (CMPC-S). The initial nucleus of the CMPC were drawn from DIA document exploitation personnel. By the summer of 2004, the CMPC had grown to over four hundred mostly civilian document and media processors and linguists/translators living and working primarily in CMPC-M at
Camp Al Sayliyah, Qatar, and CMPC-B at Camp Slayer in Iraq.
Acting as an independent entity outside of the normal chain of command (ISG reported directly to
Donald Rumsfeld), it surveyed and exploited hundreds of possible WMD sites across the breadth of Iraq with very few problems. There were two incidents which incurred fatalities. The first incident was a paint factory explosion of April 26, 2004, which killed two soldiers, US Army sergeants Lawrence Roukey, and Sherwood Baker, and injured several more. The mission had been previously abandoned because of security concerns. These were the ISG's first casualties in over a year of operations. The second was a vehicle-borne
improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mecha ...
(IED) attack against
Charles Duelfer
Charles A. Duelfer is Chairman of Omnis, Inc., a consulting firm in aerospace, defense, intelligence, training, and finance. He is a regular commentator in the media on intelligence and foreign policy and is the author of ''Hide and Seek: The Sea ...
's convoy, which claimed the lives of two of Duelfer's Physical Security Detail, SSG Clinton Wisdom and SPC Don Clary, both of the
Kansas Army National Guard
The Kansas Army National Guard is a component of the Army National Guard and the Kansas National Guard. Kansas Army National Guard units are trained and equipped as part of the United States Army. The same ranks and insignia are used and Nation ...
's B Battery, 2/130th Field Artillery Battalion.
Throughout the life of ISG, there were two occasions where chemical weapons were found. The first was a single
sarin mortar shell which had been reworked into a roadside IED by
insurgents
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...
. The second was a handful of 122-millimeter
rocket warheads filled with inert
mustard gas that was recovered near
Babylon. Both were thought to be remainders from the
Iran–Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Ba'athist Iraq, Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations S ...
, when Iraq was in some sense a US ally, and were useless as
offensive weapon
An offensive weapon is a tool made, adapted or intended for the purpose of inflicting physical injury upon another person.
Legality England and Wales
Under England and Wales' Prevention of Crime Act 1953, Section 1(1) states it is an offence to ca ...
s. They were later destroyed by ISG personnel. In late 2004 the ISG and the MCTs (mobile collection teams) undertook some counterinsurgency operations, although many details remain classified. There were other missions and organizations operating within the ISG which are Top Secret and are unlikely to be declassified anytime soon.
Interim Progress Report
After six months searching for WMD, the ISG issued an Interim Progress Report on October 3, 2003. The team said it had found evidence of "WMD-related program activities" but no actual
chemical
A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., w ...
,
biological or
nuclear weapons. In addition to details of dormant WMD programs, the October 2003 report also includes discoveries of non-WMD programs banned by the UN and concealed during the
International Atomic Energy Agency and
UNMOVIC
The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was created through the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1284 of 17 December 1999 and its mission lasted until June 2007.
UNMOVIC was meant to ...
inspections that began in 2002. Lines of enquiry adopted by the ISG include the examination of sites across Iraq, as well as interviewing scientists, truck drivers and other workers with possible knowledge of WMD.
David Kay resigns
On January 23, 2004, the head of the ISG,
David Kay, resigned his position, stating that he believed WMD stockpiles would not be found in Iraq. "I don't think they existed," commented Kay. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties." In a briefing to the
Senate Armed Services Committee
The Committee on Armed Services (sometimes abbreviated SASC for ''Senate Armed Services Committee'') is a committee of the United States Senate empowered with legislative oversight of the nation's military, including the Department of Def ...
, Kay criticized the pre-war WMD intelligence and the agencies that produced it, saying "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing." Sometime earlier, CIA director
George Tenet had asked David Kay to delay his departure: "If you resign now, it will appear that we don't know what we're doing. That the wheels are coming off."
Kay told the SASC during his oral report the following, though: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion-—although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."
Kay's team established that the Iraqi regime had the production capacity and know-how to produce chemical and biological weaponry if international economic sanctions were lifted, a policy change which was actively being sought by a number of
United Nations member states
United may refer to:
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. Kay also believed some components of the former Iraqi regime's WMD program had been moved to
Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion, though the Duelfer Report Addenda (see below) later reported there was no evidence of this.
On February 6, 2004,
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
convened the
Iraq Intelligence Commission
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction is a panel created by Executive Order 13328, signed by U.S. President George W. Bush in February 2004. The impetus for the Commission l ...
, an independent inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war and the failure to find WMD. This was shortly followed by the conclusion of a similar inquiry in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, the
Butler Review, which was
boycotted by the two main opposition parties due to disagreements on its scope and independence. In 2003, the US-sponsored search for WMD had been budgeted for $400 million, with an additional $600 million added in 2004.
Kay's successor, named by CIA director George Tenet, was the former UN weapons inspector
Charles A. Duelfer, who stated at the time that the chances of finding any WMD stockpiles in Iraq were "close to nil."
Duelfer Report
On September 30, 2004, the ISG released the Duelfer Report, its final report on Iraq's purported WMD programs. This report recorded the relationship of the Iraqi regime with WMD over time and in so doing investigated the decision making process, and underlying assumptions, of the regime. Key to the investigation was lengthy interviewing of all top officials including Saddam, examination of regime documents, and investigations of various sites in Iraq. Among its conclusions were:
*
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...
controlled all of the regime's strategic decision making.
* Hussein's primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have
UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the regime.
* The introduction of the
Oil-for-food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the regime.
* By 2000-2001, Hussein had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support.
*
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
was Iraq's pre-eminent motivator.
* The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judged that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam's belief in the value of WMD.
* Hussein ended his nuclear program in 1991. ISG found no evidence of concerted efforts to restart the program, and Iraq's ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after 1991.
* Iraq destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile in 1991, and only a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions were discovered by the ISG.
* Hussein's regime abandoned its biological weapons program and its ambition to obtain advanced biological weapons in 1995. While it could have re-established an elementary BW program within weeks, ISG discovered no indications it was pursuing such a course.
* Hussein wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability, which was essentially destroyed in 1991, after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical
chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
* Hussein deceived his own army and the best intelligence agencies in the world into believing he still had WMDs because he believed none of his enemies would dare attack him if he had WMDs, notably Iran, "as there was a strong need to maintain the outward appearance of possessing a WMD capability to deter Iran."
* Hussein believed the US and the coalition that threatened to go to war against him if the UN resolutions were not met was bluffing.
* The pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s was to assure Iraqi safety from Iranian aggression, and "this led to a difficult balancing act between the need to disarm to achieve sanctions relief while at the same time retaining a strategic deterrent. The regime never resolved the contradiction inherent in this approach."
Operations Tempo 2004-2005
Although the search for WMD had been conducted earnestly and fruitlessly during the initial year of the occupation, site exploitation continued through the summer of 2004. In late summer and early fall, the WMD search tempo slowed considerably; all of the most promising sites had been exploited in 2003-2004 and even most of the unpromising sites had been exploited by fall of 2004.
In late September and into October 2004, the number of site exploitations increased significantly, although most of these were revisits to already-exploited sites - some of which had been altered by Iraqis in the intervening months. For instance: the former Iraqi Chemical Brigade headquarters building in Baghdad was in the midst of being converted to office space when ISG personnel returned for a second visit.
ISG's exploitation operations mostly ceased in early November 2004. By early 2005, the MCTs were disbanded and all but two former MCT members, Army Sergeants 1st Class Marshall Lowery and Robert Shano, returned to their parent units and the MP teams that supported them were dispersed to other camps and given other missions. Lowery and Shano agreed to remain in Iraq and continue running convoys for the ISG until it was deactivated. Although Lowery rotated back to the US after the ISG was deactivated, Shano extended his tour in Iraq to serve with a group of coalition advisors mentoring the Iraqi officer candidates at the Military Academy in Al-Rustimaya.
In January 2005, the group announced the conclusion of its search. The ISG stated that while it had, "not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003," they acknowledged "the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant capability."
March 2005 Report Addenda
In March 2005 Duelfer added
addenda
An addendum or appendix, in general, is an addition required to be made to a document by its author subsequent to its printing or publication. It comes from the gerundive , plural , "that which is to be added," from (, compare with memorandum, ...
to the original report, covering five topics:
* ''Prewar Movement of WMD Material Out of Iraq'', stating "ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place" but also acknowledging that there was evidence "about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved," and that this evidence was "sufficiently credible to merit further investigation." IAG noted that, due to security concerns, it "was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war."
* ''Residual Pre-1991 CBW Stocks in Iraq'', concluding "any remaining chemical munitions in Iraq do not pose a militarily significant threat ... ISG has not found evidence to indicate that Iraq did not destroy its BW weapons or bulk agents".
* ''Residual Proliferation Risks: People'', concluding "former WMD program participants are most likely to seek employment in the benign civil sector, either in Iraq or elsewhere ... However, because a single individual can advance certain WMD activities, it remains an important concern".
* ''Residual Proliferation Risk: Equipment and Materials'', concluding "Iraq’s remaining chemical and biological physical infrastructure does not pose a proliferation concern".
* ''Iraqi Detainees'', concluding "the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible. ... there is no further purpose in holding many of these detainees".
In media interviews before the addenda were published, officials went further on the important question of the possible smuggling of WMD to
Syria, saying they had not seen any information indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria or elsewhere. Other details surfaced after the Duelfer Report, which helped fill in the blanks left by the ISG investigation. Duelfer also concluded that Saddam planned to resume production of weapons of mass destruction once the United Nations lifted economic sanctions.
See also
*
Rationale for the Iraq War
The rationale for the Iraq War, both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent hostilities, was controversial. The George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationaliza ...
*
WMD theories in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War
*
Sector Control Point - Baghdad
References
External links
;Main
* "
Statement by David Kay on the Interim Progress Report on the Activities of the Iraq Survey Group before the House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, The House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence''". October 2, 2003. (Known informally as the "Kay Report" on Iraq's WMD.)
* "
''". September 30, 2004 (Known informally as the "Duelfer Report" on Iraq's WMD; Copies are also available a
) This link includes the "Addendums to the Comprehensive Report," released in March 2005.
* "
Iraq The War Card'".
The Center for Public Integrity 9/11–September 2003
;Other
Teaser of upcoming documentary film ''Land of Confusion''featuring Pennsylvania Army National Guard Soldiers assigned to the Iraq Survey Group in 2004-05.
* News (
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was esta ...
)
Bush orders independent probe on Iraq intelligence* News (
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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