Defective Defection

It is not difficult to understand why, as the New York Times reported on Friday, the U.S. is eager for the U.N. to encourage Iraqi weapons scientists to take asylum in America and divulge the locations of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The scientists and their families could then join “a witness protection program” planned for such defectors. Especially in these most urgent and time-constrained of circumstances, weapons inspection relies on a kind of educated guesswork; inside information could eliminate much of this uncertainty and mean the difference between peace and an extended, disastrous war.

But a wise appreciation of the value of defectors has, it seems, led some in the federal government to an overzealous, overreaching conclusion. Later in the same article, the Times reports that some officials in the Department of Defense feel it isn’t enough for the U.N. to seek out those weapons scientists who they feel might be amenable to offers of defection—they think U.N. officials should actively demand that certain scientists come to America and spill the thermonuclear beans, whether scientists like it or not. In all but name, these scientists would be kidnapping victims.

While the motives behind this particular plan are quite clear—defectors may be the best way to prevent a megalomaniac from continuing to produce deadly weapons with our proverbial name on them—it does not take much thinking to realize that a forced defection is hardly a defection at all. Expecting those who have not left Hussein of their own accord—whose own shifted sympathies or self-interest play no part in coming here—to give us helpful information is something like writing “spaceship” on an Oldsmobile and waiting for lift-off.

After all, kidnapped Iraqi weapons scientists—people whose chosen vocation is creating the very missiles and aerosols that our Department of Defense presumes to be pointed at us—are perhaps not the most likely to ’fess up the location of their alleged deadly masterwork. Does Donald H. Rumsfeld—and those in the White House, who the Times notes also approve of this plan—really think his forcibly-abducted songbirds will develop an instantaneous Stockholm Syndrome on American planes and start whistling the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”?

One might object that the successful domestic witness protection program does not always work with enthusiastically willing informers—Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, the infamous right-hand man of mafioso John Gotti, did not turn himself in to the FBI in a contrite moment. But mob informers, at least, have some credible punishment over their heads—gargantuan jail sentences. By contrast, Iraqi scientists have little to fear from anyone until they defect.

Perhaps a less gullible mind would read between the lines of the defense department’s announced intentions. It seems naive to take at face value the department’s absurdly improbable plan to kidnap our enemies’ bombsmiths and hope the kind offer of asylum will move them to reveal their secrets. Since jail-time might not be as effective with Iraqi scientists as mobsters, the defense department could find itself tempted to turn to a bit of off-the-books torture once the U.N. handed over the new guests.

But there remains the very real possibility that a forced defector is not equivalent to, but actively worse than, none at all. In the unlikely event that one does squeal, who’s to say that an abducted weapons scientist won’t feed us incomplete information and red herrings? Since defectors are normally so helpful to intelligence—when they are willing, that is—it is not difficult to imagine our attention focusing on information from forced defectors, with a dangerous drop-off in more haphazard, but less absurd, traditional random-check weapons inspections. In a situation where so much rides on the outcome of these inspections, it is imperative that the defense department listen to the state department and U.N. critics and abandon this misguided, potentially devastating course of action.