John Barry

About the author: John Barry is the national security correspondent for Newsweek. He has written or co-authored five books, his current project being a history of NATO nuclear policy. Barry has also made several television documentaries, including a six-part series on the history of NATO for the BBC.

Although Saddam Hussein admitted that Iraq had built biological warheads, he claimed that in accordance with the mandates of the UN in the aftermath of the Gulf War these weapons had been destroyed. UN weapons inspectors in Iraq have always been dubious of Hussein's claims, and with the help of aerial photographs, a team of UN inspectors indeed located a part of the remaining stockpile of Iraqi biological weapons in Al Nibai. The find was particularly important to the UN teams because they had been accused of wasting time, money, and effort...