Widespread looting—including looting of radiological sources—became a major problem in Iraq after the March 2003 coalition forces invasion, complicating U.S. efforts to secure and collect radiological sources. Media reports of the looting at Iraq’s Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, for example, brought public attention to the scattering of radioactive materials throughout populated areas, posing health and safety risks to Iraqis. In May 2003, the IAEA, which had inventoried nuclear and radiological materials at Tuwaitha, raised concerns about Iraqi citizens’ exposure to radiation and publicly asked the United States to secure these materials. Given the extensive looting, DOD could not assume that facilities and items within them, including radiological sources, would remain intact or in place for later collection without being secured. Many facilities that were no longer under the control of Iraqis, such as abandoned government research facilities and industrial complexes, were looted. For example, a 2004 government report on the search for WMD stated that looters often destroyed sites after a coalition military unit moved through an area, since the coalition did not have the forces available to secure the various sites thought to be associated with WMD. According to one DTRA official, the looting was more extensive than he had ever seen before. The looting was reported to have included removing wiring and pipes from walls and from the ground; stealing desks, windows, sinks, and floors; and even dismantling and removing whole buildings. While some looting may have been done to thwart the U.S. mission, according to DTRA officials, most of it seemed to be related to selling or reusing common materials such as scrap metal rather than seeking radiological or nuclear materials. At the Tuwaitha facility, for example, looters dumped partially processed uranium ore from large containers onto the floor and took the containers. DOD found that fully securing sources from looters was challenging because of their persistence. According to a DTRA official’s personal assessment, no amount of forces could have controlled the rampant looting. At the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, DOD concentrated security in those areas where radiological and nuclear materials were stored, but looters continued to penetrate the less secure areas of Tuwaitha, a large complex of over 90 buildings. The scattering of radiological sources by looters complicated the later collection of those sources. In one dramatic instance, looters stole large cobalt sources from an Iraqi radiological test site in early September 2003, when U.S. troops were guarding the site. The large, open site, which was apparently designed for carrying out radiation exposure experiments in the surrounding areas, contained eight metal pillars, each with a pulley system to raise a cobalt source from a concrete storage pit to the pillar’s top. Looters tore down and removed three of these pillars and also took the cobalt sources from two of them. (See fig. 1.) After several days of extensive searches in the area, DTRA recovered both stolen sources. According to a DTRA official, the metal pillars were probably the looters’ intended target, and the sources may have been taken unintentionally when they became caught in the pulley mechanisms. For about the first 6 months after the war began in March 2003, military commanders had insufficient guidance and equipment appropriate for collecting and securing radiological sources that they discovered. As a result, they were forced to make ad hoc decisions about recovering and securing these sources. During this time, DTRA—the agency DOD had assigned to the WMD elimination mission 12 days before the war began—was working to fill gaps in preparations for the mission to collect and secure radiological sources. It was not until September 2003 that DTRA finalized the terms of the contract for collecting the radiological sources and collections began throughout Iraq. Military commanders in Iraq initially had no policy guidance on which radiological sources to collect, and what to do with them once they were collected. DOD did have some specialized teams with radiological expertise, such as the 11-person Nuclear Disablement Team, which had been set up to disable WMD and associated production facilities in Iraq. This team had the expertise to move radiological sources, including packaging radioactive material and designing safety procedures to minimize radiation exposure. However, military commanders lacked sufficient equipment appropriate for safely collecting and moving radiological sources. Without adequate official guidance and equipment to handle the radiological sources they encountered in Iraq, military commanders were left to make ad hoc decisions about recovering and securing the sources. They acted because they were concerned about the inherent health and safety risks of radiological sources to coalition soldiers and the Iraqi populace, as well as the potential for enemy or terrorist forces to use the sources to construct dirty bombs. For example, lacking the proper radiation shielding equipment, the Nuclear Disablement Team moved a radiological source to Tuwaitha with improvised shielding because an officer judged that the unshielded source posed the risk of radiation exposure to Iraqis working in the vicinity. The team created what was described as “field expedient” packaging by lining an ice chest with lead bricks that were brought from the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. However, the container did not sufficiently shield the driver of the military vehicle carrying the source from radiation exposure. Therefore, the team further improvised shielding by placing metal sheets salvaged at the site between the driver and the container in the back of the vehicle. This additional shielding reduced the radiation at the driver’s seat to a level that just met the team’s safety standard for exposure. However, the radiation in the back of the vehicle still exceeded that standard. Consequently, a second military vehicle followed the loaded vehicle at a safe distance to prevent occupants of any other vehicles from following so closely that they would be exposed to unsafe levels of radiation. On the basis of his assessment of the team’s experience with moving the source described above, the commander of the Nuclear Disablement Team decided it was too risky to allow his troops to move any more sources without proper handling equipment and containers. Because some military officers were reluctant to move radiological sources to a single consolidation site without adequate handling and packaging equipment or official guidance, coalition forces had their troops guarding sources around Iraq. In some cases this posed health risks—for example, some sources were secured in bases where U.S. troops were already stationed, creating the need to protect the troops from accidental exposure to radiation. When sources were secured outside controlled areas, however, security risks resulted. For example, according to a DTRA official, field commanders complained to him after he arrived in July 2003 that protecting radiological sources in some field locations exposed their troops to increased risks of attacks. Estimates of how many soldiers were removed from their military duties to guard sources were not available, but we were told of instances in which troops were left guarding sources for several months. According to a DOE expert involved in DTRA’s later collections, for example, a small group of troops had guarded sources at an oil drilling operation from May until early September 2003. Between March and September 2003, as individual military commanders acted independently to collect or secure radiological sources when they discovered them, DTRA was working to fill gaps in preparations for the mission to collect and secure radiological sources. According to DTRA officials, they only gradually became concentrated on radiological sources as their initial focus on eliminating WMD diminished because stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons were not found. First, DTRA tried to establish much-needed guidance on which radiological sources to collect and where to consolidate them. According to a DTRA official, these and other issues had been discussed in prewar planning in late 2002, but guidance had not been issued. In July 2003, the DOD Office of Policy issued guidance on collecting and securing radiological sources for field commanders, which a DTRA official told us was all the policy guidance that DTRA needed. However, DTRA still needed to specify standards for health and safety as well as for transportation for its collection missions. According to the DTRA commander who set up collection operations in Iraq, DTRA used U.S. standards to ensure safety, but these standards were modified for the Iraq situation. For example, instead of using radioactive cargo placards on vehicles, which would be required by U.S. standards but might attract an insurgent attack, DTRA notified local military commanders along the route of its cargo when moving sources. In addition, DTRA engaged in extensive, and ultimately unsuccessful, coordination within DOD to provide protection for its contractor at the Tuwaitha storage site through a contracted security force, but eventually obtained protection for its collection mission through coalition forces headquarters. This security force stood by for deployment to Iraq while the Department of Defense General Counsel, DOD’s Central Command, and coalition military headquarters considered DTRA’s request to arm this force. When this request was denied, DTRA decided in late 2003 that sufficient protection could be provided by military forces. For each collection mission, DTRA coordinated protection through the coalition forces headquarters, and could draw upon a military police platoon for a security escort. Also, starting in March 2003, DTRA worked to coordinate arrangements with DOE for its assistance with collecting radiological sources. DOE was to send both technical experts from one of its national laboratories and shipping containers to Iraq for the collection effort. However, the arrangements were complicated by DOE’s concerns about potential disposal of collected sources at its U.S. facilities and about the safety of DOE experts working in Iraq, as well as by communication difficulties. DOE had concerns about potential lawsuits arising from disposing of sources at its U.S. facilities. A DOE official told us that mislabeled or improperly packaged containers could lead to lawsuits if, for example, a source in a container was mislabeled and turned out to be a source that DOE’s U.S. site was not licensed to possess, or if poor packaging led to radiation leakage in the United States.