PROJECT
MORNING STAR
Our cooperative
relationship with the Iraqis allowed us unprecedented access to the Iraqi
military. For example, the Iraqis had captured a large artillery piece from the
Iranians during the liberation of Al-Faw. They could not identify its origin
and were perplexed by the unusual 170-mm bore. Artillery pieces worldwide are
generally manufactured in standard bore sizes, normally 122-mm, 130-mm, 152-mm,
155- mm, 175-mm, and 203-mm. We knew they had captured this gun: Army
Colonel Gary Nelson—our newly assigned defense attaché in Baghdad and an
artillery officer by training—had seen it while it was on display at a victory
celebration in Baghdad. We knew what it was, and we wanted it.
The Iranians had acquired
this self-propelled howitzer in 1987. At that time, it was the longest-range artillery
piece made anywhere in the world, capable of firing a rocket-assisted
projectile to a range of almost sixty kilometers. It had been used by the
Iranians to conduct harassment fire from the Al-Faw Peninsula into Kuwait’s
northeastern oil fields. The Iranians were applying military pressure on the
Kuwaitis in a variety of ways, as punishment for supporting Iraq in the war and
for alleged violations of oil export and pricing policies of OPEC (Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries). This artillery fire was complemented by
Chinese-made “Silkworm” cruise missile attacks on Kuwait’s oil ports and by
naval attacks on Kuwaiti shipping in the Gulf.
The attacks were the catalyst for
the March 1987 decision to register Kuwaiti oil tankers under the American flag
(a procedure called “reflagging”) to offer some protection for oil shipping in
the region. The U.S. Navy could not legally protect foreign shipping, but a
merchant ship flying the U.S. flag was entitled to armed escort through the
Persian Gulf war zone.
The high level of U.S.
interest in the gun had little to do with the situation in the Persian Gulf and
rested instead on the fact that the weapon had been designed half a world away
to fire on the capital city of a close U.S. ally, South Korea. What the Iraqis
had captured on the Al-Faw Peninsula, though they did not realize it, was a
weapon designed and built by North Korea to fire on Seoul from the North Korean
side of the Demilitarized Zone. The U.S. military refers to it as a Koksan gun.
While inspecting the gun
(the project was called Morning Star), we discovered more evidence of Iraq’s
use of nerve gas. As I rooted around the cramped driver’s station of the gun
system looking for anything of intelligence value—maps, notes, logs, manuals,
firing tables, communications charts, and so forth—I found several used
atropine injectors. These auto-injectors had been manufactured in Iran and were
similar to those I had found earlier on a battlefield on Al-Faw. I showed one
of the injectors (and pocketed another) to both Majid and the brigadier general
commanding the artillery depot, explaining that these used injectors indicated
to me that a nerve agent had been used at Al-Faw.
I was careful not to accuse
the Iraqis, but the implication was clear. The brigadier general replied that
Iraqi artillery doctrine calls for use of obscurant smoke in the preparatory
artillery barrages. His “analysis” was that the Iranians mistook the smoke rounds
for nerve gas and, therefore, self-administered atropine.
Not wanting a
confrontation while standing in the middle of an Iraqi military installation, I
did not mention to the Iraqi officers that we had also discovered
decontamination fluid in many places on the weapon, most noticeably trapped in
the headlights. It would make no sense for the Iraqis to decontaminate the
vehicle if they had only fired smoke rounds at the Iranians.
Just as the Ukrainian intelligence chief noted, the gun was well-engineered and manufactured. It was an intelligence boon – these guns pose a threat to U.S. forces in South Korea.
