ABSTRACT
Michael S. Elleman knew missiles inside and out, forward and backward. During the trajectory of his career, he worked to make them more lethal, then, developing misgivings, to limit them. Science was in Elleman’s blood. At the University of California at Berkeley, he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics, a field of study that was influenced by his father. In the late 1990s, Mike joined several visits to Iraq by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), which was disbanded in 1999 amid allegations that the United States had used it to spy on the Iraqi military. Replacing UNSCOM was the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, charged with managing inspections of Iraq’s missile infrastructure and headed by former Swedish foreign minister Hans Blix. After the US-led invasion obviated the UN mission in Iraq, Elleman resumed his focus on the dismantlement of obsolete Soviet arms.
