Raid on the Sun(20)
The French, however, soon had new mysteries to investigate. Before he had been sent to prison, Khidhir Hamza’s onetime boss, Jaffar Jaffar, had begun pursuing a two-track process to create fissionable, bomb-grade uranium: while construction on Osirak was being completed, Jaffar would also begin work on the method pioneered by the Americans working on “Little Boy,” one of the atomic bombs developed during World War II—magnetic enrichment. This alternate enrichment process uses huge electromagnets to separate uranium isotopes, known as EMIS for electromagnetic isotope separation, inundating the U235 with radioactive neutrons, making it suitable for bomb-grade fuel.
Salman Rashid, a bright, energetic young electrical engineer who had studied in Britain, was recruited to work with Jaffar on designing a huge electromagnet for the uranium enrichment. It was a tough assignment since much of the research was still classified in the West. Making things worse, neither Jaffar nor Rashid was particularly strong in mathematics, and the two encountered a good deal of trouble handling the very involved design calculations. The Iraqi NRC contracted with a Swedish company in Geneva, Brown Boveri, to help Rashid with the design.
About a month after Meshad was killed, Rashid set off for Geneva for a two-month research fellowship, accompanied by an Iraqi security officer and a half dozen assistants. It soon became clear to everyone involved in nuclear research in Geneva that Rashid was interested solely in magnetic enrichment. The week before he was due to return, the young electrical engineer suddenly came down with the flu. It was a particularly virulent case. Rashid was having trouble swallowing, and soon he began to bloat, his neck and jowls becoming alarmingly swollen. He was admitted to the American Hospital in Geneva, but the staff physicians were stumped. An Iraqi doctor was summoned, but he, too, could not identify the virus. No one had seen this kind of flu before. Six days after experiencing the first symptoms, Rashid was dead. An autopsy seemed to point to some kind of poisoning, though the exact agent could not be isolated.
The security officer insisted Rashid was never out of his sight, but colleagues admitted that the young scientist had frequented the many bars and restaurants in Geneva. Plenty of opportunities to poison or infect him had existed if someone so desired.
Several weeks later yet another Iraqi engineer, Abdul-Rahman Abdul Rassoul, visiting Paris on Atomic Energy business, was suddenly taken ill after contracting “food poisoning” at an official French banquet. He died within days.
The epidemic of Iraqi nuclear scientist deaths and the sabotage at La Seyne-sur-Mer continued to raise eyebrows in France, a country never at a loss for conspiracy theories to begin with. By summer the French media were full of speculation about who was behind the mysterious attacks. And more than ever, France’s complicity in Iraq’s nuclear program was continually in the news. The head of France’s Nuclear Energy Commission, André Giraud, a longtime critic of the treaty, warned that Iraq could well be seeking nuclear weapons. Others in the scientific and military communities were alarmed as well. One American nuclear expert pointed out that a reactor such as Osirak was designed for “nations engaged in the indigenous production of nuclear-power reactors. Iraq would have no great economic or energy incentive to establish a nuclear power generating capacity.” What did that leave other than military purposes?
Chirac insisted that the French Atomic Energy Commission was in complete control of the reactor. He had already announced that France would supply Iraq with only the caramelized uranium. But Hussein, it turned out, was having none of that. He began a counter media campaign, deriding the Western nations that were now so afraid of Iraq.
“These Arabs, the Zionists said, could do nothing but ride camels,” Hussein scoffed sarcastically. “How could a people who only know how to ride camels produce an atomic bomb?”
Iraq invoked the treaty: the nation would settle for nothing less than the original deal: seventy-two pounds of 93-percent-enriched weapons-grade uranium. Any substitute, they insisted, would not allow Iraqi scientists the full range of “peaceful” research activities planned at al-Tuwaitha. Changing the deal would force Iraq to suspend payments—and perhaps even the oil shipments—negotiated in the original treaty. France quietly decided to abide by the original agreements: Iraq would get its seventy-two pounds of fully enriched uranium. But Chirac insisted that French scientists were still in charge.
From the earliest days, when he began to plan a possible mission to strike Osirak, General Ivry worried that the reactor would go hot before he could hit it. Once the reactor was radioactive, any bombing would bring the risk of fallout and large civilian casualties, potentially in the thousands. Despite Hofi’s operations, Iraq had continued steaming ahead undaunted. The cores that Ivry had initially hoped to see destroyed at La Seyne-sur-Mer had been repaired and shipped to Baghdad. He knew about the deaths of Meshad and the others, even though Hofi, of course, never spoke of such things openly. But the deaths of a few nuclear scientists, while creating chaos and anxiety inside al-Tuwaitha, did little to stop Iraq’s mammoth nuclear program.