Иракские документы: История публикации и удаления секретных материалов о ядерной программе

Operation Iraqi Freedom 2003 documents are some 48,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that were discovered by the U. S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The documents date from the 1980s through the post Saddam period. In March 2006, the U. S. government, at the urging of members of Congress, made them available online at its Foreign Military Studies Office website, requesting Arabic translators around the world to help in the translation. In early November 2006, the entire set of documents was removed. Media reports stated that the website was taken offline because of security concerns regarding the posting of sophisticated diagrams and other information regarding nuclear weapon design prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Releasing the documents over the Internet to gain the help of translators around the world was an idea pushed by Congressman Pete Hoekstra. After the documents were taken offline, however, Representative Hoekstra blamed the administration for following this advice: "Well, you know, we have a process in place. It looks like they screwed up." Former CIA and State Department counterterrorism expert Larry C. Johnson said, "It's like putting firearms in the hands of children. The problem is that the documents without context aren't going to tell you a lot." Johnson also noted that "it's also an indictment of the intelligence community. They don't have the resources they haven't got the time to go through this stuff." Other experts have suggested that the problem is that bloggers will cherry pick information from the documents to solidify their own perspectives without putting the tidbits they find in an overall historical context. Former CIA terrorism specialist Michael Scheuer pointed this out in an interview with the New York Times: "There's no quality control. You'll have guys out there with a smattering of Arabic drawing all kinds of crazy conclusions. Rush Limbaugh will cherry pick from the right, and Al Franken will cherry pick from the left."

In November 2006, the documents were removed from the Internet by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The U. S. government had already received warnings about the site's content from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who was specifically concerned about sensitive documents about the pre 1991 Iraqi nuclear program, but the documents were not removed until the New York Times informed the government that it would be publishing an article about the sensitive material. The New York Times called the material a "nuclear primer" because it included about a dozen documents in Arabic that contained "charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs." The fear was that these documents would give Iraq's nuclear secrets to Iran and thus aid the Iranian WMD program. Some criticized the Times for publishing the article. But Joseph Cirincione, director for nonproliferation at the Center for American Progress, pointed out that the Times had not put the documents online: "The journalists are the heroes. They got the stuff pulled down. This is what we want our journalists to be doing, to exposing these kind of abuses of power. Its Chairman Hoekstra and Chairman Roberts who insisted, against all the evidence, against everything we know, against what David Kay has told us, what the Iraq survey group has told us, there was no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in Iraq. They were desperate to try and prove that case, somehow justify this extremely costly and catastrophic war. It's their zealotry that's caused the harm, not investigative journalism."

Several news stories about some of the documents were published after their release. Document BIAP 2003 000654 was translated by Joseph Shahda and generated an article in the Weekly Standard. The document is a memo from the commander of an Iraqi Air Force base requesting a list of "the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests." Document IZSP 2003 00001122, signed by a Ba'ath Party official, indicates that the Iraqis were worried about the Americans smuggling in and planting weapons of mass destruction (specifically, mobile weapons labs) in order to justify the invasion. Document ISGZ 2004 019920 is a letter from Iraqi Intelligence in 2002 warning agents to be on the lookout for Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The letter warns that Zarqawi and another individual are in Iraq and states that apprehending them is a "top priority". According to the Associated Press (16 March 2006), "Attached were three responses in which agents said there was no evidence al Zarqawi or the other man were in Iraq." ABC notes that "The document does not support allegations that Iraq was colluding with al Qaeda." A series of "Sheen 27" documents show Saddam's regime was very involved in training fighters in the use of "improvised explosive devices" or IEDs. In a news report by Laurie Mylroie, several documents are discussed that speak of "Arab Fedayeen" (i. e. non Iraqis) and the use of "of the people" bombs. Mylroie asserts that one of the documents that was posted was then taken down. The authors of the Iraqi Perspectives Project discussed these documents both in the report and in a hearing before the U. S. House of Representatives (6 April 2006), indicating that Saddam was training a secular pan Arab army. They wrote in the Foreign Affairs article about the documents, "In the years preceding the coalition invasion, Iraq's leaders had become enamored of the belief that the spirit of the Fedayeen's 'Arab warriors' would allow them to overcome the Americans' advantages. In the end, however, the Fedayeen fighters proved totally unprepared for the kind of war they were asked to fight, and they died by the thousands." According to ABC, "A Pentagon study released today concludes, however, that the information didn't do Saddam Hussein any good because he never acted it on though it proved to be accurate." Another document suggests that the Iraqi government planned to respond to the 2003 U. S. invasion of Iraq with "camels of mass destruction"—camels fitted with suicide bombs that would meet the invading army. In another document, Saddam's son Qusay orders captured Kuwaitis to be used as "human shields" against the invaders. Document 2RAD 2004 601189 ELC, is given the synopsis: "Abu Zubaydah Statement on the Capability of al Qaidah to Manufacture and Deliver Nuclear Weapons to the U. S." Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and is believed to be the highest ranking member of al Qaeda to be held. There is no indication that this document links Abu Zubaydah to Iraq in any way. Professor Fritz Umbach notes, "the 'statement' itself is nothing more than an Arabic summary of a 2002 CBS News story on Zubaydah's claims. It has no identifiable link to Iraq, other than the odd fact that it appears on a U. S. government site billed as Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents."