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khaosworksUS mulling what to do with Iraq's weapons scientists
May 7, 2003
- By JOHN LEICESTER
Of course, without the help of Von Braun's team, and others, American efforts to outstrip the Soviets in missile technology and eventually space travel probably wouldn't have succeeded. The moral question is still begged - is it right that the very people you characterized as evil are now given sanctuary because they can work for you? And in this case, are you really using them to benefit, but are you clasping real serpents to your bosom?
Or perhaps the experience of Paperclip, no matter how bad a taste in our mouths it leaves, teaches us a different lesson: that science and morality truly have no relevance to each other, and pragmatism always trumps any echoes of conscience we might have.
May 7, 2003
- By JOHN LEICESTER
PARIS - The United States, anxious to keep deadly knowledge from falling into the wrong hands, is mulling the possibility of finding alternative work for scientists who once labored on Iraq's weapons programs, a U.S. official said Tuesday.Operation Paperclip ring any bells? It was the government operation post-WW II to find and grab as many Nazi scientists as possible and induct them into US research programs. Ostensibly, the program was to allow in only scientists who were innocent of war crimes, not the hard-core Nazis. In practice, even SS Majors like Werhner Von Braun - who stood by impassively when slave labor was being used in his early rocket experiments for the Nazis - had their records altered and presented for re-evaluation so they could pass. It wasn't all that difficult to find them - the Nazis preferred surrendering to the US rather than the Soviets, who, far from wanting to use their brains, would rather have seen those brains scattered across walls pockmarked with bullets from previous firing squads.
Iraq's atomic weapons program alone employed about 1,000 core technicians and scientists, whom Saddam Hussein called his "nuclear mujahedeen."
"There is a substantial risk" that some scientists already have left Iraq to work elsewhere, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The American official noted that nuclear scientists and others in the former Soviet Union have been put to work in non-threatening scientific research and something similar could be done in the case of Iraq.
The official said the number of people involved in the search in Iraq for evidence of its weapons programs is expected to soon exceed 2,000.
But he said U.S. officials don't see any need to let U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country, apparently ruling out a request by the U.N. nuclear watchdog to let it send a mission to Iraq's main nuclear site.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, wrote to U.S. officials last week to request access to Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear research facility after reports emerged of looting there, the agency said.
The U.S. official left open the possibility, however, that U.N. weapons inspectors would be involved in Iraq in the future. He said it was highly likely experts from countries that did not fight the war would be involved in efforts to uncover Iraq's weapons programs.
Of course, without the help of Von Braun's team, and others, American efforts to outstrip the Soviets in missile technology and eventually space travel probably wouldn't have succeeded. The moral question is still begged - is it right that the very people you characterized as evil are now given sanctuary because they can work for you? And in this case, are you really using them to benefit, but are you clasping real serpents to your bosom?
Or perhaps the experience of Paperclip, no matter how bad a taste in our mouths it leaves, teaches us a different lesson: that science and morality truly have no relevance to each other, and pragmatism always trumps any echoes of conscience we might have.
