WMD stockpiles found

[fintstone]

Don't look now, but looks like another county's WMD are being destroyed on GW's watch (just like Libya). You cannot argue with success. It it also makes it clear how easy it is to hide WMD stockpiles. These were hidden so well that they could not find them themselves...for decades.

Washington Post
January 10, 2005
Pg. 1
Albania's Chemical Cache Raises Fears About Others
Long-Forgotten Arms Had Little or No Security
By Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer

TIRANA, Albania -- Near the end of his 40 years in power, Enver Hoxha
prepared his tiny country for an invasion he warned was sure to come. The
Marxist dictator built 750,000 concrete bunkers in the 1970s and 1980s and
imported large quantities of weapons to repel an expected attack by
Americans, Soviets, Yugoslavs or perhaps all three at once.
But his most prized weapons acquisition was a state secret known only to the
Albanian leader and his closest advisers -- a secret that only now is coming
fully to light.
In the mid-1970s, U.S. and Albanian officials now believe, Hoxha arranged
the purchase of several hundred canisters of lethal military chemicals to be
used in weapons against invading armies. The chemicals included yperite, or
sulfur mustard, one of the chemicals used by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to
slaughter thousands of Kurdish civilians in the 1980s, as well as lewisite
and adamsite, which are based on arsenic.
This deadly stockpile was hidden in one of Hoxha's bunkers, then forgotten
after Hoxha died in 1985. The communist regime fell in 1991. The current
Albanian government's surprise discovery of the canisters, acknowledged to
U.S. and U.N. officials several months ago, has also led to the disclosure
of the country that apparently supplied the chemicals: China.
Albanian officials recently allowed a reporter from The Washington Post to
view the stockpile, a move that comes as there are ongoing efforts by the
fledgling democracy to renounce the country's past and bolster its
international standing. While the stockpile is small compared with the vast
chemical weapons holdings of Russia and the United States, it is worrisome
to U.S. officials because of what it represents: one of scores of
undocumented or poorly secured weapons caches worldwide that could be
exploited by terrorists with deadly effect.
"The threats turn up in the darndest places," said Joseph Cirincione, a
weapons expert and director of the Non-proliferation Project at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. "It illustrates the problem we face with
Cold War arsenals, which are still deadly and still large. Just as you have
to worry about what a crazy man is thinking in a cave in Afghanistan, you
also have to worry about what happens to these weapons in places like
Albania and North Korea. It's not that the Albanians would use them, but a
terrorist group could learn of them and then try to pick the low-hanging
fruit."
Although Albania moved quickly to secure the stockpile after its discovery,
the chemicals had little or no protection for more than a decade, at a time
when the country was roiled by social and economic upheaval internally and
civil war across the border in Kosovo, U.S. officials in Washington said.
The 16 tons of chemicals theoretically contain enough poison for millions of
lethal doses. In practical terms, casualties from an attack using mustard or
lewisite would greatly depend on how and where the chemicals were dispersed.
Weapons experts say a well-designed release of chemicals in a crowded,
indoor setting could potentially kill hundreds or perhaps thousands of
people.
The discovery also is significant because it appears to confirm something
that U.S. intelligence analysts have long suspected: China's past role as a
purveyor of chemical weapons technology. While China is believed to have
halted such exports long ago, the discovery of Chinese-made yperite in
Albania has fueled concerns about the possible existence of similar
forgotten or abandoned stockpiles in other countries.
U.S. officials note that China also provided military aid to Romania, to
what was then Yugoslavia and to several Middle Eastern countries in the
1970s and 1980s. China has never acknowledged transferring military
chemicals abroad, and no stockpiles traced to China are known to have turned
up until now. If they existed in the past, U.S. intelligence analysts say,
the chemicals might have been destroyed, hidden away or -- as in the case of
Albania -- forgotten.
It is theoretically possible, intelligence analysts say, that more
undiscovered chemicals could yet be found in Albania. However, Albanian
defense officials, who now are preparing to destroy the yperite with help
from U.S. and U.N. agencies, say they are confident that all of Hoxha's
canisters are safely locked away.
"We have searched everywhere, and I can declare to you that Albania has no
more such weapons," said Albanian Lt. Col. Muharrim Alba, a senior arms
control specialist with the Albanian Defense Ministry.
But Alba also acknowledged that Albania had been unable to find a shred of
documentation describing the original purchase by Hoxha three decades ago.
The investigation has turned up no letters, receipts or inventories, or even
a single officer of the former government who is willing or able to recall
how the chemicals were obtained.
"It was the height of the Cold War," said Alba, shrugging. "Communist
countries helped each other. And they didn't always leave documents to show
what they did."
'Ready to Be Used'
The small army outpost that serves as a holding cell for Albania's chemical
stockpile is less than 25 miles from Tirana, the dusty capital of this
mountainous country of 3.4 million people. But reaching it requires a
treacherous journey over steep mountain roads better suited for goats than
the four-wheel drive vehicles and ancient microbuses that regularly ply
them.
Asphalt quickly gives way to narrow dirt trails hewn into the sides of the
scrub-covered hills. Finally, a rutted path branches sharply to the right to
reveal a cluster of bunkers, some of them cut into the mountain itself. The
largest bunker, a flat-roofed brick structure no bigger than a volleyball
court, is surrounded by a double curtain of wire fences, the inner one newly
installed with U.S. aid and festooned with various sensors and cameras. It
is here that Hoxha's chemicals are stored.
On a recent afternoon, a small cluster of young army guards, wearing green
fatigues and toting Kalashnikov rifles, kept a wary eye on visitors to the
compound while some of their comrades scoured the brush for firewood to ward
off the December chill. Standing just outside the largest bunker, Albanian

continued..

[fintstone]

Lt. Col. Fadil Vucaj pointed out the multiple layers of security and
explained, in the matter-of-fact language of a career military officer, why
such unusual protections were needed.
"These chemicals stored here could be used as weapons of mass destruction,"
said Vucaj, a chemical weapons expert. "You could spray them from an
airplane or use them in a bomb. They are ready to be used, just as they
are."
Inside the building are row after row of containers and bottles of various
colors and sizes. Most are red cylinders roughly the size of a propane tank.
Numerals and, in some cases, Chinese characters are clearly visible on the
outer casing. The Chinese writing identifies the contents of each container
but not the origin. Altogether, the bunkers hold nearly 600 vessels
containing about 16 tons of what is known in military jargon as "bulk
agent."
The chemicals inside the canisters are products of an early generation of
chemical weapons engineering. Yperite, a colorless or brown liquid with a
garlicky odor, was the chief cause of death and injury from chemical warfare
during World War I. Lewisite was the result of a U.S. attempt to improve on
Yperite's lethality, but its invention in 1918 came too late for its use in
the Great War. Other chemicals in the stockpile include a yperite-lewisite
blend sometimes known as HL, as well as other chemicals designed to
incapacitate, rather than kill.
The Albanian chemicals aren't nearly as deadly as more modern nerve agents,
such as sarin and VX. But if released in a crowded stadium or subway car,
they could cause scores or perhaps hundreds of casualties, U.S. and Albanian
officials say. And, before their rediscovery by the Albanians, they would
have been an easy target for thieves.
"The tanks are in good condition, they don't leak, and they are portable,"
Vucaj said. "To terrorists, they would have been very attractive."
A History of Isolation
Hoxha's intentions in acquiring the chemicals can be reliably deduced from
his record as Europe's long-serving communist autocrat. After taking control
of the country in 1944, the xenophobic Hoxha (pronounced HOE-djah) alienated
one powerful ally after another as he led his impoverished country into
extreme isolation.
An admirer of Joseph Stalin, Hoxha broke with the Soviet Union in the late
1960s after denouncing Nikita Khrushchev for straying from Marxist
principles. He publicly applauded Mao Zedong's brutal Cultural Revolution in
the late 1960s, a move that briefly earned Albania special status as China's
proxy at the United Nations and its chief ally in Europe. China rewarded
Hoxha with massive amounts of economic and military aid, including large
quantities of arms.
It was during this period, probably in the middle 1970s, that Albania
acquired the chemicals, U.S. and Albanian officials say. To analysts, the
Chinese pedigree of the chemicals is self-evident, given the Chinese labels
on the canisters and the close military ties that existed between the two
countries. China has acknowledged producing chemical weapons in the past,
although it now says its stockpiles and production facilities have all been
destroyed.
The Albanians are less willing to point fingers. "Where the material came
from is a question for technicians to answer," said Pandeli Majko, Albania's
37-year-old defense minister and a former prime minister. "For us, the
important thing is that it is being destroyed."
The arms pipeline between Albania and the Chinese military machine went dry
in the late 1970s when Hoxha soured on his new partners, publicly scolding
the Chinese for seeking to normalize ties with the West. By 1979, Albania
was virtually friendless in the world, with a plummeting standard of living
that already was the lowest in Europe.
To keep control over his population, Hoxha stoked fears of an imminent
invasion by any of a number of foreign armies said to be plotting together
to destroy what he called his "workers' paradise" -- a favorite phrase among
communist leaders. He drafted legions of laborers for Albania's most
ambitious public works project: the construction throughout the country of
750,000 military bunkers, one for every four Albanians living at the time.
The purchase of the chemicals suggests that Hoxha might have believed the
invasion threat was real.
"It would be typical of him, given his mind-set at the time," said one U.S.
intelligence analyst who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
"It's the same mind-set that produced three-quarters of a million bunkers
and such large numbers of conventional weapons. If Russia, the United States
and Yugoslavia are all planning to attack you, you do whatever you can to
defend the motherland."
Destruction to Begin in 2006
If all goes according to plan, sometime in 2006 a custom-made mobile
incinerator will arrive in Albania from the United States to begin the
process of physically destroying Hoxha's chemical stockpile. Trucks will
haul the machine across the steep mountain roads to the very door of the
bunker where the chemicals are now stored.
Albania signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993. The treaty, signed
by 167 nations, required disclosure and destruction of chemical weapons by
1997, although many signatories have failed to meet the deadlines. Albania's
discovery of the chemicals last year meant that it was out of compliance
with the treaty; destruction of them will bring it back into good standing
with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the
international chemical arms watchdog agency.
Already, Albania has garnered international praise for immediately
disclosing the existence of the stockpile, then moving quickly to secure the
chemicals in preparation for their destruction.
"Anytime a country comes clean about a chemical weapons stockpile and then
moves to destroy it, it reinforces the norm against these weapons and
reduces the potential for a diversion," said Jonathan Tucker, a chemical
weapons expert and senior researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation
Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
For its efforts, Albania is to receive $20 million in U.S. aid to pay for
the physical destruction of the stockpile. As a country with ambitions to
someday join NATO and the European Union, Albania also gets a chance to
strengthen ties with Western nations and to burnish its credentials as a
partner in the global effort against terrorism. Majko, the defense minister,
said his country's actions reflect a "psychological" break with the past.
"After the Cold War, we have passed from a phase of irresponsibility and
entered a phase of responsibility and transparency," Majko said.
"Transparency means not only saying, but doing."
With the planned destruction of the chemicals, the United States also is
crossing a threshold, though one less heralded. The $20 million set aside
for Albania by the Bush administration is the first U.S. money earmarked for
eliminating unconventional weapons anywhere outside the former Soviet Union.
While the United States has spent billions helping Russia destroy missile
warheads and retrain weapons scientists, government regulations have for
years blocked the use of federal funds to eliminate similar threats
elsewhere in the world. Two years ago, State Department officials had to
turn to a private organization, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, founded by
Ted Turner and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), to fund a plan to remove
weapons-grade uranium from a nuclear reactor in the former Yugoslavia.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who has proposed legislation to lift the
spending restrictions, argues that destroying weapons stockpiles such as the
one in Albania should be near the top of the nation's defense priorities.
"The president has argued, quite correctly, that the most important security
problem in the world is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,"
Lugar said. "Yet to this day, there are some people who oppose spending this
money -- people who say that the Russians and the Albanians should take care
of their own problems.
"But given how these weapons are already dispersed, there's a real
possibility that one could be stolen and used to kill a lot of people,"
Lugar said. "To me, you can't do enough to make sure the American people are
spared from that sort of thing."

[Superman]

What a victory. I feel so much safer now that Albania is less of a threat. They were starting to frighten me terribly.

Dubya is just a genius.

[lendaddy]

And just where is it you think terrorists get their weapons? This is a good thing.

[Superman]

Yeah, destruction of dangerous material is a good thing. And it's convenient for Dubya to take credit for this. Yep, we've got the world shaking in its boots. I guess we can rest easy now that terrorism has been stopped. They might still want to attack us, but if all they can find is fingernail clippers then I conclude we are safe. All hail Dubya.

Wait a minute. How much fertilizer and diesel fuel is out there? Hmmmm......

[Joeaksa]

What a victory. I feel so much safer now that Albania is less of a threat. They were starting to frighten me terribly.

Yea Supe,

Just wait until Bin Laden gets ahold of some of this material then you WILL start to be frightened.

Just love these people that lick the ground where Klinton or Kerry leave a slime, yet when the current elected administration does some good in the world and they are turned upon...

JoeA

[red ufo]

The only WMD in the middle east are Israels nukes.

UBL is probably dead. Only a couple look alikes with prothetics are used to imitate him.

How come all that facial recognition software isn't used on UBL or Saddam? Its only used on law abiding taxpayers for over due speeding tickets.