Who Are Those Inspectors?

By Sean Gregory Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2002
    • HUSSEIN MALLA/AP

    CHECKUP: An inspector searches an idle Iraqi airfield for devices that spray deadly agents

    In their blue jeans and baseball caps, the U.N. weapons inspectors roaming around Baghdad may look like dotcom alums with clipboards, but they were selected with care. "We're not taking people off the street for this job," says Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the agency searching for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq. Buchanan says that of the hundreds of applications the U.N. rejected for the 302 spots filled on the inspections team so far, some were very impressive, some not. "We have the adventurers who just think it would be cool to go to Iraq," he says.

    Before joining UNMOVIC or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is searching Iraq for nuclear weapons, the inspectors were, among other things, military officers, chemists, bacteriologists and photo interpreters. They come not only from military-research facilities but also from peacetime laboratories, private industry and academia. Those already selected range in age from 25 to 65.


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    The U.N. resolution investing power in the inspectors said they had to represent "the broadest possible geographic base"; accordingly, they come from 49 countries. Among the team members are a retired U.S. Army colonel who guided nuclear inspectors through Russia in the 1990s to enforce disarmament agreements, an Egyptian chemist who worked for her country's atomic-energy laboratory and a Virginia man who founded his own security-consulting company.

    In addition to technical skills, team leaders look for individuals who will work well together. So that members can communicate without translators, they must speak English. Nuclear inspectors with the IAEA learn on the job at headquarters in Vienna; novices are paired with experienced inspectors once in the field. UNMOVIC inspectors get an initial five weeks of general training covering everything from Iraqi history and culture to safety and the legal underpinnings of weapons inspections. Then they concentrate in a single field, like vaccine production. They are trained in how to spot anomalies in facilities that can have both a benign civilian use and a more sinister military one. Team members are also taught how to use the latest weapons-detection gadgets. Mock inspections require them to encounter fake Iraqi officials hiding fake long-range missiles, say, or fake mustard gas.

    The pay isn't bad: around $70,000 to $80,000 a year, tax free, depending on experience. But the hours are long. If one is to judge by the past inspection campaign in Iraq, from 1991 to 1998, inspectors won't get many breaks during their one-to four-month stints in the field. Plus, it's stressful work. Says Nikita Smidovich, UNMOVIC's training chief: "We tell our inspectors that their job is to collect data, period." But the team members know that peace is at stake. Says Jacques Baute, a French former physics professor and weapons expert who is now the chief nuclear inspector: "We have to be more accurate than ever. Every single report will trigger consequences."