A Special Report Commisioned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Prepared by Kenneth R. Timmerman

H. THE MBB/CONSEN CONNECTION

According to press accounts appearing in Austria, West Germany, and Grat Britain, Messerschmidt Bolkow Blohm was the prime contractor of Iraq's solid fuel missile programs.39 Norbert Gansel, the Opposition Parliamentary expert in Bonn, says MBB began a basic research program in Iraq in 1984, but told the West German Government it would "phase out" its cooperation with Iraq in 1985 because the military purpose of the program had become known40 By 1987, MBB was stil present in Iraq - in the Saad 16 R&D complex in Mosul, and elsewhere. But soon thereafter the german aerospace giant passed on its share to a Swiss-base consulting group called Consen.

In fact, Consen's Director, Karl Adolf Hammer, had been chief of MBB's Armaments Technology Division until 198741, and when he set up Consen he brought over as many as one hundred MBB engineers. Consen continued to work with an MBB subsidiary, MBB Transtechnica, to acquire specialized equipment for Saad 16. And it set up a web of front companies specialized in clandestine techonology procurements troughout Europe.

Wholly- owned Consen subsidiaries began operating in Monaco (Consen S.A.M., Consen Investment S.A.M.), Switzerland (Condor Projekt A.B., IFAT Corporation Ltd, Consen S.A, Desintec A.G.), Austria (Delta Consult GmbH, Delta System GmbH) Jersey (Transtechno Ltd),and West Germany (GPA, PBG).42. Consen also sought technologies from Sagem in France (inertial guidance systems), Snia BpD in Italy (solid-fuel propellants), Bofors in Sweden (electronics), Wegmann in West Germany (rocket launch systems), The German transport giant, M.A.N., provides essential parts of the missile launch vehicle.

MBB apparently kept working on the missile projects until very recently: A BBC documentary in September 1990 stated that MBB had provided Iraq with sophisticated warhead technology43, which it may have gleaned from its participation in SDI research carried out for the U.S. Department of Defense44.

And these were only some of the largest suppliers of Iraq's ballistic missile programs. Here are a few more:

In Austria:

- Consultco, an engineering firm drew up design plans and blueprints for the Saad 16 plant;

- Hutter and Shranz, a construction firm that sent workers to build weapons labs at hte Mosul site;

- Ilbau, an explosive expert that provided special "blow-out.-walls" for the missile test labs and explosive labs. If there was an accident, these shelters were designed to pop-out to allow explosive energy to escape instead of destroing the entire building;

In Germany:

- Blohm Maschinbau, Waldrich-Siege, and Fritz Werner provided Computer-controlled numerical machine-tools for various weapons plants;

- Gildemeister Projecta of Bielefeld provided a wide variety of machine-tools, engineering and contracting services, and was the prime contractor for the Saad 16 facility;

- Integral/Sauer Informatic/ICME, provided 10.6 million DM of computer programs;

- Leifeld & Co provided sophisticated rocket nozzles, a stumbling to many Third World missile programs;

- Siemens provided special electronics for the automatic control of complex rocket fuel mixtures;

Others suppliers are listed in the data base in the appendix.

CONCLUSION

Iraq has pursued its strategic weapons plants with a determination rarely seen in the Third World. Its engineers and industrial managers have shown increasing expertise at selecting programs and promising technologies, and for getting them organized in record time. They have also proved themselves to be masters of black market procurement.

Over the past decade, Iraqui buyers have literally run circles round Western Intelligence agencies. And in most cases, they did so by finding allies at the political level of Western governments who would support their purchasing programs for purely mercantile reasons.

The bottom line was drawn clearly in testimony last year before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee by the Director of Central Intelligence, William Webster.

Aked whether Iraq or Libya could have developed its poison gas production capability alone, he replied : "the principle is that none of these countries were able to develop their own capability without foreign assistance. Much of that foreign assistance came from West German companies."45

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