Iraq Survey Group: Encyclopedia II - Iraq Survey Group - Organization and Operations

Iraq Survey Group - Organization and Operations

To make the WMD search more manageable, ISG was operationally divided up into several sectors each with its own Sector Control Point. The three sectors were North, Baghdad and South, with Sector Control Point-Baghdad (also known as SCP-B or "skip bee") being the primary and largest. SCP-B and the core of the ISG staff were located on Camp Slayer at the former Al Radwaniyah Presidential Site on Baghdad International Airport in western Baghdad.

From its founding in the spring of 2003 until disbandment at the end of February 2005, SCP-B was commanded by a series of coalition officers from the U.S. Army, U.S. Marines and Australian Army. Its first commander was U.S. Army Reserve Colonel George Waldroup, who lead the group from its founding until the summer of 2004. He was later picked by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to head the Strategic Support Branch of the Department of Defense. The final commander was Australian Military Police Major, Damien Hick.

SCP-B's missions included not only the search for WMD, but work on counter-terrorism and the ongoing investigation into the fate of U.S. Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot down during the Gulf War of 1991. Initially presumed dead, he was later declared missing when evidence emerged after the war that he had survived the crash of his aircraft.

SCP-B was organized into several Mobile Collection Teams, or MCTs, made up of members drawn from American, British and Australian forces. It also contained other specialist units containing Dogs, laboratories and EOD. An MCT generally consisted of a commander -- usually a major or captain (although MCTs were lead by lieutenants and full colonels at times) -- and anywhere from ten to twenty other personnel, depending on mission requirements. The majority of SCP-B personnel were mobilized American National Guard or Army Reserve Soldiers. The other key piece of SCP-B were the U.S. Army Military Police crews assigned to the organization. The Military Police provided convoy and site security for the MCTs as well as secure transport for ISG personnel in their travels around Baghdad. SCP-B also contained members from the US Airforce and US Navy that acted in various roles.

By any measure other than the obvious (actually finding WMD stockpiles), SCP-B was remarkably successful. Acting as an independent entity outside of the normal chain of command (ISG reported directly to Rumsfeld), it surveyed and exploited hundreds of possible WMD sites across the breadth of Iraq with very few problems. Except for two unfortunate incidents, SCP-B's casualty record was exceptional, considering the amount of time its personnel spent on the roads and out among the populace. The first incident was the paint factory explosion of April 26th, 2004, which killed two Soldiers and injured several more. These were SCP-B's first casualties in over a year of operations. The second was a vehicle-borne IED attack against Charles Duelfer's convoy, which claimed the lives of two of the Soldiers detailed to protect him.

Throughout the life of ISG and SCP-B, there were only two occasions where chemical weapons were found. The first was a sarin mortar shell which had been reworked into a roadside improvised explosive device by insurgents. The second was a handful of 122-millimeter rocket warheads filled with inert mustard gas that was recovered near Babylon. Both were thought to be remainders from the Iran-Iraq War and were useless as offensive weapons. Both were later destroyed by ISG personnel.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Organization and Operations", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki