47 Facts About Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter served as a member of UNSCOM overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, from which he resigned in protest.

Scott Ritter has visited Russia in support of Russia since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In June 2024, Scott Ritter claimed that US authorities seized his passport and prevented him from visiting Russia.

The son of an Air Force officer and a military nurse, Scott Ritter was born into a military family in 1961 in Gainesville, Florida.

Scott Ritter graduated from Kaiserslautern American High School in Kaiserslautern west of Mannheim, Germany in 1979.

Scott Ritter studied the history of the Soviet Union there and received departmental honors.

In 1980, Scott Ritter served in the US Army as a private.

Scott Ritter served in this capacity for about 12 years.

Scott Ritter filed multiple internal reports challenging Schwarzkopf's claim that the US had destroyed "as many as 16" of Iraq's estimated 20 mobile Scud missile launchers, arguing that they could not be confirmed.

Scott Ritter worked as a weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission from 1991 to 1998, which was charged with finding and destroying all weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related manufacturing capabilities in Iraq.

Scott Ritter was the chief inspector in fourteen of more than thirty inspection missions in which he participated.

Scott Ritter was among a group of UNSCOM weapons inspectors which regularly took Lockheed U-2 imagery to Israel for analysis, as UNSCOM was not getting sufficient analysis assistance from the United States and the United Kingdom.

Scott Ritter said that he supported this, and we initiated a cooperation that was very short-lived.

Scott Ritter's testimony was disputed by Richard Butler, chief UN arms inspector for Iraq, who claimed that Scott Ritter made factual errors and harmed UNSCOM's mission.

The previous chief inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekeus, said that Scott Ritter was "not in a position to know all of the considerations that go into decision making on the commission," and defended Albright's support for UNSCOM.

Scott Ritter became a popular anti-war figure and talk show commentator.

However, in his 1999 book Endgame, Scott Ritter says that he was the one who had originally pushed for the fateful inspection of the Ba'ath party headquarters over the doubts of Butler, his boss, and planned to use 37 inspectors.

Scott Ritter rejected the notion of removing Saddam Hussein's regime by force.

Scott Ritter again promoted a conciliatory approach toward Iraq in the 2000 documentary In Shifting Sands: The Truth About UNSCOM and the Disarming of Iraq, which he wrote and directed.

In 2002, Scott Ritter traveled to Iraq to address the Iraqi Parliament as a private citizen.

Scott Ritter told the parliament that the US was about to make an "historical mistake" and urged it to allow inspections to resume.

Nathan Guttman in his review for The Forward said Scott Ritter accused the "pro-Israel lobby of dual loyalty and 'outright espionage'".

Scott Ritter said that Israel was pushing the Bush administration into war with Iran.

Scott Ritter accused the pro-Israel lobby of invoking the Holocaust and of making false claims of antisemitism.

Coughlin wrote that Scott Ritter said "that the Bush administration is in danger of making the same mistake over Iran that it did during the build-up to the Iraq war, namely getting the facts to fit the administration's policy of effecting regime change in Tehran".

Coughlin said, Scott Ritter concedes the "measures the Iranians have taken in pursuit of nuclear glory" which include the "concealing the existence of key nuclear facilities".

Scott Ritter said that there was no quid pro quo with Al-Khafaji and he told Al-Khafaji the financing "can have no connection to the Iraqi government".

Scott Ritter was the subject of two law enforcement sting operations in 2001.

Scott Ritter was charged in June 2001 with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl.

Scott Ritter was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child".

Scott Ritter suggested at the time that the case, which coincided with his prominent dissent against the buildup to the Iraq War, was a smear campaign designed to silence him.

Scott Ritter was arrested again in November 2009 over communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site.

The next month, Scott Ritter waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was released on $25,000 unsecured bail.

Scott Ritter rejected a plea bargain and was found guilty of all but the criminal attempt count in county court in Rochester, New York on April 14,2011.

Scott Ritter was sent to Laurel Highlands state prison in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, in March 2012 and paroled in September 2014.

Scott Ritter became one of its most active members and was eventually selected as an assistant chief.

Scott Ritter has blamed this behavior on his ongoing depression.

Scott Ritter apparently had not commented previously on Ukraine, or Russia.

Scott Ritter was suspended from Twitter for violating its rule on "harassment and abuse" afterwards but his account was reinstated the next day.

Scott Ritter compared Ukraine to a "rabid dog" which needed to be shot.

Scott Ritter compared the treatment of Russians under Ukrainian law to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews.

DisInfoChronicle, a website of the NGO Detector Media which claims to refute Russian disinformation, wrote that Scott Ritter was being used by Russia to "promote narratives needed by the Kremlin".

In May 2023, Scott Ritter began a book tour of Kazan, Irkutsk, and Yekaterinburg for his most recent book, Disarmament in the time of the Perestroika, which examines nuclear weapons agreements between Russia and the United States.

In January 2024, Scott Ritter visited Chechnya, addressing thousands of Chechen fighters in a central square in Grozny, the capital.

Later in January 2024, Scott Ritter arrived in the Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast region in Ukraine, guarded by GRU agents, and spoke with collaborationist governor Vladimir Saldo.

The Kyiv Post denounced Scott Ritter's visit as "illegal" due to the lack of Ukrainian consent.

Scott Ritter said that the agents never showed him a warrant and never gave him a receipt when they seized his passport.