By Adam LoBelia

The war in Iraq has former University professor, Dr. Carleton Phillips, in need of a newfound sense of direction and guidance.

The Texas Tech University biology professor spent about a year in Iraq as part of a State Department mission to revitalize Iraq’s science programs and prevent the talent there from working for groups hostile to the United States. In a lecture he gave to biology students on Wednesday, he described a history of science being used to create deadly weapons, and how to steer vulnerable scientists away from these programs.

“A lot of people ask, ‘Is there any reason to worry about this?'” Phillips said. He then related a short history of chemical and biological weapons development in countries like Japan, the Soviet Union, Libya and Iraq.

A combination of disgruntled and unemployed scientific experts and the temptation of working for a high payment meant that scientists from all over could possibly lend their services to groups or countries for the purpose of making unconventional weapons. Phillips called this a “shopping tour of rogue nations,” comparing it to the weapons of mass destruction marketplace that was recently uncovered in Pakistan.

His job in Iraq was to expand the options of many scientists who found themselves out of work now that the ruling government was no more. When he first came to Iraq there was no official Iraqi government (just the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer); no banking system and much of the technical and communicational infrastructure was damaged or destroyed by the war. There was also the persistent threat of attack by looters and terrorists.

The State Department gave him and his colleagues plenty of money to buy weapons, transportation and security; and were given the task of independently tracking down and conferring with Iraqi scientists. Their goal was to turn them from weapon-makers to jobs in the civilian sector.

Originally, though, there was a chance that he would not be sent over for that purpose. The State Department at first had a very tough stance on former weapons of mass destruction (WMD) scientists, insisting that they be jailed, or limited to what fields they would be allowed to pursue (for instance, no scientists would be allowed to work with vaccines or nuclear material). Phillips argued against them and his side prevailed.

He said his overall mission was, “to bring these men and women back into the real world of science.” Working out of his office in Saddam’s Royal Palace and also going out to places like Basra and Mosul, Phillips searched for top Iraqi scientists and assisted in the reconstruction of Iraqi science programs, including Iraqi schools and universities.

This would prove to be no small task. Aside from the usual dangers of being attacked in Iraq, he found particular challenges in rebuilding Iraq’s science programs. Not only were many Iraqi science buildings damaged or destroyed, but also the CPA’s policy of debaathification resulted in many top Iraqi professors being fired. The result, as he put it, was “chaos on the campuses.”

As far as Iraq’s WMD programs, he said Iraq did have them up until at least 1996 and there were dangerous materials still in Iraq when the war began. He related a story about a scientist who told him that a whole stock of biological agents were lost because of power outages that destroyed their ability to preserve them in freezers.

Although he specializes in mammalian biology, Phillips said his most valuable expertise came in reorganizing Iraq’s university system.

“I understood how universities work in an international sense,” he said. “I was able to look at science issues in the universities and see what they needed to do in a university system.”

There were some tough times along with his successful stay in Iraq.

“Some of the worst days I’ve had was when terrorists killed women translators,” he said. “One day you’d work with someone and the next day they’d be gone.”

Despite that, Phillips was able to push Iraq’s scientists in the right direction, hopefully keeping them out of the hands of terrorists and rogue nations and working for Iraq’s future.

Former biology professor, Dr. Carleton Phillips, spent a year in Iraq to revitalize science programs and prevent scientists from working for hostile nations. (Harry Tanielyan/The Chronicle)