Don’t Shoot the Messenger; But Question His Motives!

On February 15, 2006 the ABC News program Night Line ran a story about the latest evidence for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The program aired excerpts form a group of 12 hour audio recordings which spanned from the early 1990’s to the year 2000. The tapes were given to Night Line by Bill Tierney, a former Army Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector. In the story there was a featured recording from 1996 in which the former dictator Sadam Husain warned that the U.S. will be attacked by terrorists, quote:
“In the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction."
Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop.
"In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."
According to Bill Tierney the tapes have been interpreted by the State Department, de-classified and released

However, Tierney, a credentialed Iraqi interpreter, has depicted the tapes from a different angle. Bill Tierney is suggesting that Sadam was going to facilitate a terrorist attack on U.S soil. He goes on the say on the Sean Hannity show: “I disagree completely (with the ABC airing), because Saddam also says in other tapes that the war is ongoing," Tierney said, "And when I was there [in Iraq] as an inspector, what struck me is that these people were still in the fight. There was no change of heart like you had in Germany after World War II. They were still in the fight. It makes perfect sense."

Tierney’s interpretation and the State Department’s are at odds on this point. A spokeswoman for John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, said information contained in the transcriptions of the tapes was already known to intelligence officials: "Intelligence community analysts from the CIA, and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating, from a historical perspective the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their post-war analysis of Iraq's weapons programs nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey group report," she said in a statement.
"The tapes mostly date from early to mid-1990s and cover such topics as relations with the United Nations, efforts to rebuild industries from Gulf war damage and the pre 9/11 situation in Afghanistan."

Since the interpretations are so variegated and Bill Tierney has had such an unusual propensity to be atypical, I find that it’s important to consider the source in this particular case. By this, I in no way assert that Bill Tierney is incapable of being objective, I am merely suggesting that he has a colorful past, such that, he may be coloring the issue with his own bias.

Tierney is on record as saying, “There was no question that Iraq had triggering mechanisms for a nuke, the question was whether they had enriched enough uranium. Given Iraq’s intensive efforts to build a nuke prior to the Gulf War, their efforts to hide uranium enrichment material from inspectors, the fact that Israel had a nuke but no Arab state could claim the same, my first-hand knowledge of the limits of UNSCOM and IAEA capabilities, and Iraqi efforts to buy yellowcake uranium abroad (Joe Wilson tea parties notwithstanding), I believe the TWELVE years between 1991 and 2003 was more than enough time to produce sufficient weapons grade uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. Maybe I have more respect for the Iraqis’ capabilities than some.” However there is no evidence for a post 1991 nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

Tierney has also fused his personal ideology with his professional mission. He appeared on Coast to Coast, a few weeks before the war in Iraq began; an excerpt: "Bill Tierney... was the guest for the first two hours of Friday night's show. He believes that Iraq has nuclear capability ... Tierney claims that he has pinpointed a hidden location in Iraq where there is a uranium enriching processing facility. 'You can't put an underground chamber on the back of a truck,' Tierney said, indicating that if an inspection were made in this suggested area, the Iraqis would not be able to haul off the evidence.
Tierney's methods of ascertaining this location were rather unconventional. “I would ask God and just get a sense if something was valid or not, and then know if I needed to pursue it,' he said. His assessments through prayer were then confirmed to him by a friend's clairvoyant dream, where he was able to find the location on a map. 'Everything she said lined up. This place meets the criteria,' Tierney said of a power generator plant near the Tigris River that he believes is actually a cover for a secret uranium facility."

Tierney is the only former UNSCOM member who also put in some lengthy protest time outside Terry Schiavo's hospital and as an Iraqi’s interpreter he was relieved of duty for praying with a detainee during an interrogation. Again, these events do not indicate that the former UN weapons inspector is incapable of being objective or telling the truth on certain levels. Nor do these events suggest that he is in some way mentally unstable. However I am suggesting that his propensity towards the extreme may be suiting his view about Sadam and WMD’s. I’m interested in seeing how this develops as a news story and how the press deals with the facts of his interpretation. I hope that the press will make an attempt to get to the bottom of this, if Tierney is correct, then a war with Iraq may be justified. But given his track record, he may just be another crackpot attention junkie. I’m leaning towards the latter at this point.