Aletho News

David Albright: Purveyor of Nuclear Lies

Larouche | November 12, 2011

David Albright, the founder and director of the Institute for Science and International Security, in Washington, D.C., remains at the center of provocative press coverage of the Iranian nuclear program and the International Atomic Agency (IAEA) report issued (to governments) on Nov. 8. “The IAEA cannot get any more cooperation from Iran,” Albright declared to the PBS Newshour’s Ray Suarez, a few hours after the IAEA report was issued. “And I think the time has come that the Board of Governors probably needs to pass a resolution calling on Iran to cooperate with the IAEA and give them some time to cooperate. And then probably, if they don’t, this would then be referred to the Security Council for further consideration.”

Albright seems committed to playing the same kind of pernicious role he played in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, this time with respect to Iran.

Albright was a key figure in bringing to the West, Khidir Hamza, who was sold to, and then by, the pro-war neo-cons as “Saddam’s bomb maker.” Hamza was brought out of Iraq by Albright in 1994, and was then employed by him at ISIS from 1997 to 1999. They co-wrote a book and a number of articles on Iraq’s alleged nuclear program. In one article, entitled “Iraq’s Reconstitution of its Nuclear Weapons Program,” published in Arms Control Today in October 1998, they claimed “Iraq is suspected of having made progress on a number of bottlenecks in its weapons program, at least those that could be done with little chance of detection by inspectors.” They warned that if the UN inspection program were to become ineffective “Iraq could reconstitute major aspects of its nuclear weapons program.”

Hamza was later exposed as a fraud and a liar by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. “Had Albright in fact been a true nuclear expert, especially one fortified with firsthand experience as a former UN weapons inspector, he would not have had any association with Khidir Hamza, the disgraced Iraqi defector who claimed to have firsthand knowledge of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program.” Ritter wrote in a 2008 article, “The Nuclear Expert Who Never Was.” “A true nuclear expert would have recognized the technical impossibilities and inconsistencies in Hamza’s fabrications.” Hamza, however, did prove to be very useful to the neo-cons in driving the United States into the needless invasion of Iraq.

Albright and Hamza eventually parted ways, but Albright continued to play his role, as well. On Sept. 7, 2002, Albright published a piece arguing that what had been a uranium extraction facility prior to the 1991 Gulf War, was active once again. “Unless inspectors go to the site and investigate all activities, the international community cannot exclude the possibility that Iraq is secretly producing a stockpile of uranium in violation of its commitments under Security Council resolutions. The uranium could be used in a clandestine nuclear weapons effort,” he wrote. He based his conclusion on commercially available satellite pictures.

While he later became skeptical of claims that Iraq was on the cusp of building a nuclear bomb, he never wavered from the other claims of chemical and biological weapons, also part of the case for war. “In terms of the chemical and biological weapons, Iraq has those now,” he told CNN on Oct. 5, 2002. “How many, how could they deliver them? I mean, these are the big questions.” The fact that no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons were ever found by the occupying forces showed the fraud of these claims.

Ritter’s exposé of Albright’s lack of expertise received backup from Alexander DeVolpi in a Feb. 15, 2009 posting in response to comments posted in defense of Albright on Ritter’s article, including from Frank Von Hippel of Princeton University. DeVolpi is a retired nuclear engineer from the Argonne National Laboratory, and a veteran of 40 years of field work in nuclear physics, nuclear reactors and arms control. Of Albright, he says: “Dave’s a friendly guy, but I always found him shallow on experience, and now realizing that he was once on the research staff of Princeton University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, I have a better understanding of his predisposition and educational preparation. With no substantive foundation, he has expressed himself as philosophically opposed to nuclear power. This is not uncommon, particularly with academics associated with Princeton who evince no hands-on or other practical field experience regarding nuclear-weapons, nuclear reactor technology or verification methodology.”

November 14, 2011 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering