Peter Arnett - Baby Milk Factory Controversy

Baby Milk Factory Controversy

One of Arnett's most controversial reports during the Gulf War was a report on how the coalition had bombed a baby milk factory. Shortly after the report, an Air Force spokesman stated "Numerous sources have indicated that is associated with biological warfare production". Later the same day, Colin Powell stated "It was a biological weapons facility, of that we are sure". White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater stated "That factory is, in fact, a production facility for biological weapons" and "The Iraqis have hidden this facility behind a façade of baby-milk production as a form of disinformation."

The image of a crudely-made hand-painted sign reading "Baby Milk" in English and Arabic in front of the factory, and a lab coat dressed in a suit containing stitched lettering reading "BABY MILK PLANT IRAQ" only served to further the perception that purportedly civilian targets were simply being made to look like that by Saddam Hussein, and that Arnett was duped by the Iraqi government. The sign appeared to have been added by the Iraqis before the camera crews arrived as a cheap publicity ploy. Newsweek called the incident a "ham-handed attempt to depict a bombed-out biological-weapons plant near Baghdad as a baby-formula factory."

Arnett remained firm. He had toured the plant in the previous August, and was insistent that "Whatever else it did, it did produce infant formula". Described as being a veritable fortress by the Pentagon, the plant, Arnett reported, had only one guard at the gate and a lot of powdered baby milk. "That's as much as I could tell you about it ... t looked innocent enough from what we could see." A CNN camera crew had been invited to tour this plant in August 1990. They videotaped workers wearing new uniforms with lettering in English reading, "Iraq Baby Milk Plant".

Interviewed later, Michel Wery, the plant's French contractor who helped build it, gave an interview in which he stated that the plant was producing solely baby milk when it started up in 1979, and was not equipped to breed pathogens. The plant closed in 1980, he said, when the last French technicians working for his company left Baghdad. Wery said he had heard that production had restarted after the United Nations embargo put in place in the fall of 1991, but he doubted whether that was possible after a 10-year lull. Two dairy technicians had been in the plant at least four times since to make repairs; one stated that, during a visit in May 1990, it was all normal dairy equipment and that the plant was actually canning milk powder. The suspicious uniform stitching was actually part of the original uniforms supplied by the French, and in fact the footage showing the uniforms was shot in August 1990. Part of the problem in reconciling the various U.S. and foreign accounts is that administration officials said they were constrained by security considerations from revealing exactly how they knew about the plant. At the same time, the New Zealand technicians and the French builder were not at the plant after May and cannot be certain of what happened after their departure.

White House reports diverged at this time. One official claimed that the plant was converted in 1990. Another claimed that it was a "backup" bioweapons facility, which had not yet been converted. A third said that it was not a bioweapons facility, but that it was used to make items crucial to bioweapons research; all three claimed insider information. In a confidential memo from December 1992, a State Department employee discussed the issue of the plant and reported that there were no hidden chambers or inappropriate machinery, and that it appeared to be a perfectly normal factory for producing powdered milk.

The plant had undergone security modifications since May 1990. Amongst these were camouflage paint on all the buildings in the complex, a security fence, and the positioning of two SA-2 Surface-to-air missile batteries. In addition, the Iraqis had claimed that they were getting powdered milk for the plant from Nestlé, but Nestlé said that was false. They said they had supplied no products to this plant.

Colin Powell gave the president a briefing a week before the plant was bombed. Powell told President Bush that intelligence based from agents inside Iraq stated that the Iraqis had altered the plant into a biological weapons plant.

The Iraq Survey Group visited the facility in May 2004 and found that it was inoperable and had been out of operation for some time prior to the invasion. The plant was searched extensively and no evidence was found of WMD production, although the production facilities and factory floor were littered with remnants of baby milk production, including large piles of powdered baby milk that had congealed into solid masses.