This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Lesley Stahl speaks with Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Grossi is the guy tasked with keeping the world from being on the brink of nuclear war, keeping an eye on countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Twenty years ago, the nuclear control bodies of the IAEA and the United Nations heavily in Iraq. In November 2002, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft spoke with Hans Blix, a former IAEA leader who headed the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission at the time. .
Blix and his team were about to enter Iraq to search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. time.
Kroft’s report would prove to document the preparation of the U. S. invasion, but not in the way many expected.
As Kroft reported in November 2002, Blix’s team consisted of 280 weapons inspectors from around the world. International experts had access to helicopters, surveillance aircraft and detection devices, some of which had been specially designed for the mission. UN Security Council Resolution 1441 gave the team free, unconditional and unlimited access to anywhere in Iraq and allowed them to take Iraqi scientists and their families out of the country for interviews.
While previous groups of inspectors had clashed with the Iraqis waiting for their every move, Blix told Kroft he was confident his team could now surprise the Iraqis.
“We’ll move to a lot of positions where they don’t anticipate us,” Blix said.
Two months after the release of Kroft’s report, Blix made an explosive announcement. In January 2003, Blix said that after some 400 inspections, he and his team had uncovered “no irrefutable evidence” in Iraq.
But later that month, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said he continues to view Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as a threat. Hinting that Iraq is still seeking to expand nuclear weapons, Bush said: He learned that Saddam Hussein has recently sought significant amounts of uranium in Africa.
On 7 March 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, then Director General of the IAEA, joined Blix in a report to the UN. According to ElBaradei, the IAEA had concluded that documents purporting to show that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger were, in fact, forged.
Less than two weeks later, the United States invaded Iraq.