The World's Most Dangerous Man

Frustrated, Bull turned back to artillery design. He helped South Africa build one of the best artillery pieces in the world, the G-5 155-millimeter howitzer and its long-distance pickle-shaped shell. He used artillery shells acquired from the U.S. Army, however, and in 1980 he pleaded guilty to smuggling embargoed arms to South Africa and spent four months in prison.

After his release, a bitter Bull moved to Brussels and met Sarkis Soghanalian, a Miami businessman who was selling arms to Iraq. Soghanalian says Bull soon was trying to interest the Iraqis in building huge guns. Apparently, he succeeded. Indeed, a British Customs official told U.S. News, two big guns had been ordered and one, code-named "Baby Babylon" by the Iraqis, already had been sent. It had a 16-inch bore and was about 120 feet long—the same size as one of the Bull guns in HARP. But it failed during testing in Iraq, and British Customs seized the replacement parts. The second, "Big Babylon," was to be the monster, 512 feet long with a 39-inch bore. It was to be built of 52 pieces; apparently, 44 of them already had been sent to Iraq when the others were intercepted.

Big Babylon would have been the fulfillment of Bull's dream—and Saddam Hussein's, too. Such a gun, mounted at a 45-degree angle and shooting rocket-boosted projectiles, could obtain unheard-of distances—or launch satellites, as Bull wrote in a book published in 1988. He estimated that a three-stage rocket shot out of his smaller 16-inch gun could fly 5,000 miles. In theory then, the supergun would have been able to lob huge projectiles at Iraq's enemies for much less than the cost of ballistic missiles. The falling shells might penetrate antimissile defenses being built by Israel—surely an attractive idea to Hussein.

But would it have worked? Chuck Bernard, a former Navy rocket-and-ballistics expert who worked with Bull in the early 1960s, contends that what might be gained militarily by the gun's long range would be lost in its inaccuracy. And some military analysts argue that a monstrous gun pointed at, say, Tel Aviv would have been an easy target for Israeli bombers. Could it have been a launcher for spy or communications satellites instead? "We guess it certainly was intended as a launcher for satellites, but there's no reason to preclude launching anything else," said a British Customs spokesman. "Remember, what goes up might well come down."

THE NUKES

How quickly can Iraq get the bomb?

The most troubling single question about Iraq's growing arsenal is how close Saddam Hussein is to having nuclear weapons. The official U.S. estimate is that Iraq won't be a nuclear power for five to 10 years. But an increasing number of U.S. intelligence officials, as well as British and Israeli experts, believe Iraq could acquire a nuclear capability in as few as two to five years.

Baghdad is sparing no expense in its pursuit of the bomb. Following Israel's 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, Hussein seems to have followed the example of Pakistan and China and begun seeking an easily concealed enrichment process that can produce weapons-grade uranium.

Using this method, uranium ore is first converted in a chemical process to uranium hexafluoride gas. Iraq already has 250 tons of uranium concentrate, called yellowcake, legally purchased a decade ago from Niger, Portugal, Brazil and Italy. The stockpile is not subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. An Iraqi industrial complex at al-Qaim, built by European companies, which ostensibly processes phosphate ore, also has plants that can produce hydrogen fluoride that can be used to make nerve gas or to make uranium hexafluoride gas. Most press coverage of Iraq's nuclear effort has concentrated on 27 pounds of weapons-grade uranium that survived Israel's 1981 bombing, but that uranium is regularly inspected by the IAEA and is unlikely to be used for a weapons program except in dire circumstances.