Part 4: “Coming out Fully”
Author’s Note:
The debate over Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and whether or not they were a serious threat to the US, has polarized the world, and American politics. The central issue at stake is whether or not war on Iraq was justified and whether or not the American people were lied to. While biological and chemical weapons were also at issue, Bush administration officials presented the distinctly alarming specter of an imminent nuclear threat, which could arrive in the form of a “mushroom cloud” if America hesitated to take action.
Dr. Imad Khadduri was a top scientist involved in Iraq’s nuclear program from 1968 until the end of 1998, when he was able to escape. He now serves as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada. This is his life story, and the story of what really happened inside the Iraqi nuclear program as told by Khadduri and other officials in interviews, and in the advance release of Khadduri’s memoirs, which will be available in American bookstores in December.
In presenting its case for war, the Bush administration insisted the U.S. had to disarm Saddam’s regime of alleged weapons of mass destruction quickly, before it could pass them onto al-Qaida terrorists eager to make 9-11 pale beside the nightmarish specter of a possible “mushroom cloud.”
The President stated that the regime posed a “direct and growing threat” to America, justifying preemptive invasion and regime change.
An imminent nuclear threat was repeatedly mentioned by administration officials in the media and in speeches.
Secretary of State Colin Powell stated, “We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program” and Vice-President Dick Cheney told media that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program.
Dr. Khidir Hamza, a former physics professor from Iraq, who claimed to be “Saddam’s Bombmaker,” gave testimony before a Congressional subcommittee about Iraq’s nuclear capability, warning that the regime could have three nuclear bombs within three years.
“One thing is clear: These weapons must be must be dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must be dislodged from power,” said Sen Joe Biden, D-Delaware.
The hearings, he added, were “not designed to prejudge any particular course of action.”
On October 6, 2002 President Bush addressed the nation, warning that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with atomic weapons. “If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball,” Bush said, “it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed.”
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told media, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Both Bush and Cheney warned of the threat of “nuclear blackmail.”
Disturbed by what he called a deliberate misinformation campaign, Khadduri turned to his wife Niran in August 2002, and announced that he was going to “come out fully:” a reference to leaving his quiet life behind and telling what he knew about the nuclear program.
Two hours later, his first article, Iraq’s nuclear non-capability, was finished. In it, Khadduri raised serious doubts about the credibility of British and American intelligence, uponwhich, the White House said its claims of a nuclear threat were founded.
“Bush and Blair are pulling their public by the nose,” Khadduri wrote, “covering their hollow patriotic egging on with once again shoddy intelligence. But the two parading emperors have no clothes”.
Khadduri recounted the dismal condition of Iraq’s nuclear scientific community, many of whom were unemployed and scrounging for work, the lack of managerial leadership, and the lasting consequences of the bombings of Gulf War I, including the lack of appropriate buildings and an infrastructure for such an enterprise.
Scientist ignored by ‘big media’
Khadduri’s article was sent to several major newspapers, including the New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Independent and The Times.
No one was interested.
A UN official later emailed Khadduri, “A lot of people are doing their homework. Not the press.”
Enter Erich Marquardt, editor of online journal Yellow Times. The editor and the scientist established a strong rapport, leading to the publishing of several articles.
Soon the Toronto Star was calling and Canadian TV was battling for a first interview with Khadduri. Other interviews followed, including one with Reuters, but Khadduri was largely ignored by the American newspapers and television, and remained relegated to the less-trafficked independent pages of Yellow Times.
A plan for CBS‘ “60 Minutes” to carry the first American interview of Khadduri was reportedly scrapped at the last minute, because an American consultant to CBS believed (but had no proof) that the American government probably had secret data proving a nuclear program.
Then came a call from CNN. Khadduri reports an Arabic-named CNN representative, called from CNN headquarters in Atlanta, after reading one of the Yellow Times articles authored by Khadduri. Two months of discussions about an interview followed, with the representative objecting to Khadduri’s desire to mention a neo-conservative role in the disinformation campaign. Khadduri would not relent, and CNN never called back.
CNN senior foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour later made general statements suggesting her own network kowtowed to the Bush administration in its war reporting.
The statement was an interesting bookend to CNN’s Eason Jordan’s famous mea culpa describing how his network kowtowed to Saddam.
“Swallowed up by the politicians”
Meanwhile, prior to the war, Khadduri was contacted by and corresponded with a member of the Iraqi Action Team at the IAEA (referred to here, as “B”) who was scouring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction in the fall of 2002.
“B” had concurred with the articles written by Khadduri and published on Yellow Times.
“We established an immediate rapport,” Khadduri said, “He wondered whether I would be willing to have an interview with the IAEA and ultimately by UNSCOM, in accordance with the SecurityCouncil recommendations. I agreed on the condition that the interview would be carried out in Toronto, as I did not feel safe enough outside Canada.”
A fascinating email trail between the scientist and the WMD hunter ensued.
“If America is going to war over a proven fraud then there is a huge problem,” wrote B.
“It would appear this is all a game and that no one is really serious about preventing a war. I have tried to be technically rigorous. I guess we will be swallowed up by the politicians.”
He also referred to the strong US reliance on the testimony of Khidir Hamza, referred to commonly in the west as “Saddam’s Bombmaker.”
“A professional liar?”
B continued: “Hamza left the country in 1995 with government permission. He was interviewed and allowed to leave. He knew nothing and they knew it. He lies all the time…If Hamza can influence Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld with access to the office of the secretary of defense, then the US is bankrupt. To rely on this guy when you have all of the CIA and NSA etc. getting data and the secretary listens to Hamza instead?
We need to do something.”
The email was dated February 8, 2003.
Three weeks later, WorldNetDaily and Newsweek broke stories on the “sensitive” documents of 1995 Hussein Kamel debriefing in Jordan, with WND revealing far more of the contents.
In the UN interview, Kamel stated that all weapons had been destroyed, and no nuclear program was underway. He also characterized Hamza as a “professional liar” who could not deliver, and was let go. The debriefing also indicates that the UN assessed a document given to them by Hamza as a fake.
Khadduri said, “Kamel’s testimony was suppressed for eight years until it’s ferreting out in February 2003.”
It was in fact, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who was popping up across the globe like a vexing jack-in-the-box, offering sensitive UN documents to interested reporters, of which there were few.
Ritter offered Fox and Friends the documents live on the air, but the hosts ignored the offer.
This reporter, Newsweek and later Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who in early February revealed that Tony Blair’s “intelligence dossier” was plagiarized from a student thesis, obtained the sensitive UN documents.
Media watchdog Fair.org called the revelation of the documents, “biggest story of the Iraq crisis,” but the story was largely left unexplored by the rest of the media.
Kamel’s name had been repeatedly invoked by administration officials as they sought to convince the public Iraq posed an imminent threat.
Colin Powell, who said there was no indication that Iraq had ever abandoned its nuclear weapons program, was especially fond of using Kamel’s name prior to the revelation that Kamel actually said all such weapons were destroyed and there was no program underway.
Meanwhile, an exception to the aforementioned American media blackout of Dr. Khadduri, was Fox News Channel.
In February of this year Khadduri appeared on John Kasich’s show, the very week that the story revealing Hussein Kamel’s debriefing documents broke.
An ignorant Kasich, apparently unaware of the stories, talked over the top of Khadduri, and insisted there definitely was a post-Gulf War nuclear program because Kamel had said so.
He also asked Khadduri if he was a Saddam sympathizer.
‘In all fairness,” Khadduri notes, “Kasich did hold another interview and he courageously did correctly quote a few damning lines from my articles.”
Aluminum tubes, uranium discounted
On February 16, B wrote on the notorious aluminum tubes that the Bush administration insisted were proof of a reconstituted nuclear program: “Fact. The aluminum tubes have been used to build tens of thousands of rockets. Hypothesis. The tubes might be diverted for centrifuges. Can’t people understand the difference between fact and hypothesis?”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that the aluminum tubes were not intended for nuclear weapons development but for the reverse engineering of 81- millimeter rockets
In other “B” emails, he advised, “I cannot approach the press or write articles,” adding “I thought the Powell speech was the bottom of the barrel. They have no useful evidence. The aluminum tubes are a joke. They are parts for rockets that Iraq has had for 17 years and now the US is trying to coach them on how to divert them to poor centrifuges!”
Faleh’s house, Blix blunders
One issue that Khadduri found especially provoking was the UN search of Faleh Hamza’s house.
Falih (or Faleh) Hamza, is a laser physicist who Khadduri says had no part in Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
“They claimed that the documents they had found in his home indicated that Iraq had a hidden laser enrichment process for uranium,” Khadduri commented, “Falih did carry out such research in the eighties. It did not bear any promise and he terminated the effort in 1988. We, the Iraqi nuclear team, even included that scientific experience in our final report to the IAEA in October 1997 in which we laid out the complete history of the nuclear weapons program. The documents and reports were neither secret nor related to the nuclear weapons program. ”
A friend of Khadduri’s in the Iraqi Action Team in Vienna then informed him of a “revealing fact” just one day before Blix’s report to the Security Council on January 27, 2003.
“Upon Blix’s insistence, the teams had obtained from the American and British Intelligence a list of about twenty five sites, one of which was ultra hush-hush,” Khadduri said, “The inspectors duly visited and inspected each one of these sites in December 2002 and had found absolutely no evidence of any rejuvenated nuclear weapons program. In fact, some of them even came out stating that US Intelligence was providing them with nothing but “garbage after garbage after garbage.‘”
Khadduri complains that in his report to the Security Council on January 27, 2003 Blix failed to mention the lack of findings of the secret Intelligence information provided by the American and British Intelligence.
B wrote Khadduri: “Yes, a finding of ‘no finding,’ especially in a place where something was specifically alleged is a major finding.”
Khadduri faults Blix on another point, accusing him of intentionally spreading misinformation: “[Blix] also promoted the case of Falih Hamza as being another belated uranium enrichment attempt by Iraq, hence adding fuel to the misinformation campaign. In all fairness, Mohamed el-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, did chide Blix the following day for not taking into account IAEA’s knowledge on this matter, which was that the 3000 pages of documents were financial statements and Faleh’s own lifetime research work, and had nothing to do with the nuclear weapons program.”
On the Faleh issue, B wrote to Khadduri, “Notice how Powell softened his talk on Faleh’s house? A big softening. I hope you still feel it’s worth talking to me. Someone made that softening happen.”
On March 8, Jacques Baute, head of the Iraqi Action Team of IAEA inspectors, flew to Toronto for a meeting with Khadduri.
(Note: Baute is not the identity of “B”)
“We knew each other from Baghdad, as he was an inspector in Iraq for many years,” Khadduri said, “We spent seven hours reminiscing mostly about the nuclear weapons program before 1991, as he was well versed on its non-rejuvenation after that time. “I still had with me a few bits of information on that period that fitted in his jigsaw puzzle. He encouraged me to persuade other colleagues to come forward to bolster the IAEA’s position that it had interviewed senior scientists in the program.”
Signing your own “death warrant”
Khadduri was particularly irked by Powell’s claim that Iraqi scientists were asked to sign confessional declarations, with a death penalty clause.
They were allegedly used to force the scientists to promise not to reveal their secrets to the IAEA inspection teams.
“Exactly the opposite was true,” says Khadduri, “The four or five, as I recall, such declarations, the last of which was in 1997, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession!”
“One would have thought that had Powell’s Intelligence services provided him with a copy of these declarations,” he added, ” and not depended on ‘defectors’ testimonies who are solely motivated by their self-promotion …and availed himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually said,…”
On this issue, B wrote: “What did you think of the Powell talk? Is it really that desperate?….For example, everyone with a security clearance in the US has an annual ‘refresher.’ It is noted that criminal acts of divulging information are punishable by death and you have to sign this form. I don’t do it anymore because I am not in the US…I’ll bet Powell himself has signed such a form in the last twelve months.”
B added, “I was, personally, very influenced by the terrorism part, because the nuclear part was a joke. If Saddam is harboring [al-]Qaida, then there is plenty of reason to act. If it is aluminum tubes, then the US has a ten year attack window!”
How key officials steered the course toward war
Key facts regarding Bush administration claims about a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear program have been uncovered by investigative reporter Paul Sperry of WorldNetDaily, and are as follows:
- Former Energy Department intelligence chief Thomas Rider, who agreed with the White House claim that Iraq had reconstituted its defunct nuclear-arms program was awarded a total of $20,500 in bonuses during the build-up to the war. As acting director of Energy’s intelligence office for nine months preceding the war, Rider, a human resources bureaucrat with no intelligence experience, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September. Rider ordered the officers to “shut up and sit down,” according to sources familiar with the meeting. As a result, State was the intelligence community’s lone dissenter in the key National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Rider stepped down in February, a month before the war.
- The conclusion formed the cornerstone of last fall’s 90-page Top Secret intelligence report used to justify preemptive war on Iraq. Sources familiar with the NIE meeting say Rider was not a strong advocate for the position held by many lab engineers and physicists, some former inspectors in Iraq, that not only were the aluminum tubes more likely intended for conventional artillery rockets, but that Baghdad was not in fact reconstituting a nuclear weapons program.
- State’s intelligence arm, INR, ended up writing the dissenting opinion in the report asserting,: “Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors.” It added that it “accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment.” State concluded that the evidence Baghdad was rekindling a nuke program was “inadequate” and didn’t “add up to a compelling case.”
- David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, told Sperry that at the time the NIE was being drafted he talked to centrifuge experts at the labs who strenuously objected to the administration’s claims that the aluminum tubes could not be used for anything but centrifuges. The result was a political, not a properly reasoned, decision about Baghdad’s nuclear-bomb ambitions, Albright said.
- The tubes argument, which was first leaked to the New York Times by the CIA and Pentagon early last September, was subsequently voiced by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in speeches and media interviews. Albright says Energy officials were forbidden from sharing with their skepticism with the press. “When I talked to some of the scientists at the labs, there was just this reaction of: ‘We just don’t believe there’s a nuclear weapons program.’ ” Albright said.
- Albright told Sperry that CIA Director George Tenet, who chaired the meeting, “made up his mind – and who’s going to stand up and fight a Cabinet official?” adding, “The CIA’s been playing games because their butt’s on the line and they’re not going to go down easily on these aluminum tubes.” Sperry: “He said it was the linchpin in the administration’s withering argument that Iraq posed an exigent threat to America, particularly since its companion allegation that Iraq recently sought uranium from Africa was largely discredited in the wake of its belated admission that supporting documents were discovered to be forgeries.” “On the uranium, they can say, ‘Aw, it’s one piece of information, but the rest holds together,'” Albright said. “But if the aluminum tubes goes down, they’re finished. I mean, that was the centerpiece of their argument that Iraq had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program and posed an imminent threat.”
- The Bush administration waited a month-and-a-half to turn over evidence backing its uranium charge against Iraq to a U.N. nuke group that had requested it – and only after the president amplified the charge in his prewar State of the Union speech. Just 10 days after finally receiving the evidence in February, the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered it was a fraud. The letters alleging a sales agreement between the African nation of Niger and Iraq for more than 500 tons of uranium were easily identified as forgeries. The IAEA, which was conducting nuclear inspections in Iraq, made its findings public in a report to the U.N. Security Council in early March. In a recent letter to Congress, the State Department, for one, acknowledged it learned the embarrassing truth at that time. Yet it didn’t correct an Iraq “fact sheet” it put out in December that included the charge. The White House also remained silent. The next week, President Bush gave the order to invade Iraq. WND Washington bureau chief Paul Sperry detailed the uranium scandal in “Chronology of a Cover-up“.
The Bush administration, it’s case for a revived nuclear program crumbling, latched onto Baghdad scientist Mahdi Obeidi, who had led American troops to centrifuge parts he had buried under his rose garden 12 years ago.The administration failed to mention, that Obeidi, the previous head of the centrifuge enrichment process, himself stated that Iraq’s nuclear program was never revived after 1991.
Jacques Baute, chief U.N. nuclear inspector for Iraq, concurred with the
WND’s Paul Sperry commented, “That the CIA would invite CNN over to Langley to videotape the old dug-up parts shows just how little proof the administration has to support its pre-war claims, and how desperate it is to spin the public away from its burgeoning Weaponsgate scandal.”Sperry also stated, “Congress needs to call White House and CIA aides to testify in formal and open hearings – unless, of course, it intends to abdicate its oversight powers along with its power to declare war.”
Dead scientists don’t talk
David Kay, head of the 1200-member Iraqi Survey Group charged with searching for WMD in Iraq, told the US Congress recently that he had found no evidence of weapons stockpiles or active production facilities. He suggested he had found evidence of aspirations and desire to continue work in fields of chemical and biological weapons, which findings were declared a victory and vindication by President Bush.
Kay’s statement indicates there was no evidence of a nuclear program, although he repeatedly mentioned suspicious and uncharacterized “projects” by Dr. Khalid Said, the leader of the secret PC3’s Group 4.
Dr. Said won’t be giving testimony about Iraq’s nuclear program though.
According to Khadduri and others, Said had taken over as leader after Dr. Khidir Hamza (“Saddam’s Bombmaker”) was kicked out in 1987 for inferior performance, after only six months in the position.
Kay referred to scientists being afraid to testify, and difficulties in investigating the area of nuclear issues because Dr. Said is now deceased.
Dr. Said died in a hail of bullets when he failed to stop quickly enough at a US checkpoint on April 8, 2003.
And as previously reported in this series, the US has now sent Dr. Hamza back to Iraq, to report on the state of the nuclear program, in what appears to be a strange case of usurpation of the mantle of expert authority.
The choice of Hamza is troubling given his credibility problems which have received almost no press in America. Hussein Kamal in his defection debriefing by the UN called Hamza a “professional liar” and both Kamel and UN official, Prof. Maurizio Zifferero, a former Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that a document provided by Hamza was a “fake.” Britain’s Sunday Times later revealed that documents provided to them by Hamza were ruled to be “fake” also.
The documents claimed reconstitution of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
Last year, David Albright told Australia’s Lateline, “I must apologize that we no longer can in any way recommend Dr. Hamza. I unfortunately now believe he is deliberately distorting both his past credentials and his statements about Iraqi nuclear capabilities then and now.”
Albright is a physicist, and President of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C.
Albright cooperated actively with the IAEA Action Team from 1992 until 1997 and questioned members of Iraq’s former uranium-enrichment programs about their statements in Iraq’s draft Full, Final, and Complete Declaration. After leaving Iraq, Hamza worked in the US for ISIS for two years.
Albright said, “I believe that his statements are often inaccurate, they’re inconsistent,” adding, “I think he’s distorted his title dramatically.”
Ironically, Hamza is quoted as an authoritative source on a White House web page on Iraq, called “Apparatus of Lies.”
This reporter asked Dr. Imad Khadduri if his testimony had ever been sought by US government officials, or if he had ever been asked to testify before Congress.
“Never, ” he replied.
The lack of interest in questioning Khadduri, who has been available for questioning for five years, and whose experience in the program was according to interviewed officials, far more extensive and recent than “Saddam’s Bombmaker,” raises serious questions about the motivation, competency and thoroughness of “intelligence” presented to the American public on Iraq and of David Kay’s investigatory processes.
In addition to the lack of evidence of a nuclear program, Sperry’s investigations for WorldNetDaily led to the following reports:
- U.S. intelligence services unanimously agreed last fall that “no specific intelligence information” tied Iraq to U.S. terrorist attacks, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Their findings were presented to the president Oct. 2 in a still-secret report on Iraq. The summary, or “key judgments” section, of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate was recently declassified. WorldNetDaily obtained a copy from the National Security Council. (The report is different from the unclassified 25-page white paper the CIA made public on its website last October.) Page 4 of the report states: “… [W]e have no specific intelligence information that Saddam’s regime has directed attacks against U.S. territory.” WND’s Sperry stated that the statement appeared to undercut a popular theory among Iraq hawks that Baghdad conspired with al-Qaida operatives to try to blow up New York’s Twin Towers in 1993, and possibly sponsored the repeat attack on them in 2001. He points out that since the Sept. 11 attacks, Iraq hard-liners – including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former CIA Director James Woolsey – have openly embraced the theory, first published in the book “The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks.” “In fact, Woolsey wrote the foreword to the book, authored by Laurie Mylroie, an adjunct fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. Woolsey, who has argued for starting ‘World War IV’ in the Middle East, called the book ‘brilliant and brave,” Sperry said.
- In addition, Paul Wolfowitz The Pentagon’s No. 2 official also backtracked from a recent nationally televised claim that “a great many of [Osama] bin Laden’s key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime to attack in Iraq.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made the remark on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Challenged the next day by a news wire to provide evidence to back the shocking revelation, Wolfowitz said he had misspoken. Sperry added, “In addition, the administration has linked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to al-Qaida, and repeatedly cited him in asserting prewar links between al-Qaida and Iraq. U.S. intelligence officials, however, have not confirmed a link, and have noted he may have acted independently of bin Laden’s network. The administration has produced no credible evidence of direct Iraqi sponsorship of al-Qaida attacks on America or its interests abroad – an alleged conspiracy the U.S. intelligence community dismissed before the war in a 90-page classified report to the president, though he still suggested otherwise in public speeches and remarks.”
Other administration officials have backpedaled also, and language appears to have softened to include adjectives like Iraqi “aspirations” or “desires” for WMD, and “programs” of WMD, which could arguably include intent and paperwork, rather than actual weapons.
Imad Khadduri contends that Bush, Blair and their senior officials waged a criminal invasion based on misinformation.
“Is this the democracy model for a “liberated” Iraq?” he asks.
Meanwhile, well-known law professor Francis Boyle, politicians, journalists and even some US cities are sabre-rattling, demanding investigations and even impeachment. The motivations are mixed and are said by academic observers to range from those seeking justice to politicians scrambling to “cover their ass” by accusing the President of lying while feigning ignorance of true intelligence in order to explain their own vote for war in Iraq.
Next up: Part V: ‘Weaponsgate’
Related Articles:
Part 1: Beginnings
Part 2: Hurtling Towards the Bomb
Part 3: The Gathering Storm
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Note: Dr. Khadduri’s new book, titled Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions should be available in American bookstores at the end of December.
The author has agreed to ship copies out himself to Etherzone readers who want to obtain a copy of the book now. Signed copies are also available and inquiries should be directed to Dr. Khadduri via his website: Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : Republication in whole or in part is expressly prohibited without prior permission from the author or publisher.
scientist’s statement.
A source who declined to be named said Obeidi and his family are beingheld incommunicado in Kuwait. “No green card for him. They’re probably afraid he’ll go on Fox News and say there never was a nuclear program after 1991,” quipped the source.