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Iraq's Unconventional Programs, the CIA, and the Iraqi Opposition

Iraq News, AUGUST 16, 1998

The central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .

I.  IRAQI DEFECTOR WARNS OF IRAQ'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM, NYT, AUG 15
II. HOW THE CIA NEARLY BOTCHED HIS DEFECTION, NYT, AUG 15
   Tomorrow, "Iraq News" will deal with the howls of protest--from 
Richmond VA to Jerusalem--over the US/UK attempt to toss UNSCOM/IAEA to 
the Iraqi wolves in the name of a new policy called "deterrence," even 
as, in fairness to the UK, it is a policy conceived in Wash DC, even as 
the glory days of the UK are not that far behind.  Maggie Thatcher did 
not act as a poodle to the US.
   The NYT, yesterday, carried two important articles which merit 
elaboration.  They recounted the Sept 94 defection of a senior Iraqi 
nuclear scientist, Khidhir Hamza, while detailing Saddam's determined 
efforts, going back to the early 1970's to build a nuclear bomb.  As the 
NYT explained, Hamza decided to speak out, because of his frustration at 
Iraq's continued blocking of weapons inspections. 
   Iraq has the know-how to build a bomb, if it managed to acquire the 
fissile material.  A number of individuals/institutions have explained 
that including most recently, Israel's Labor Party head, Gen. Ehud 
Barak, in his Aug 6 address to the Nat'l Press club, in which he chided 
the Clinton administration, among others, for its failure to support 
UNSCOM/IAEA inspections [see "Iraq News," Aug 11].  
  The NYT stories also underscored the limits of US, or any Western, 
information about Iraq.  As the paper explained, "Only after the war did 
US intelligence officials learn that they had grossly underestimated 
Iraq's nuclear program, which they had believed to be 10 years from 
producing a nuclear bomb."  Actually, the problem was only recognized 
after Hussein Kamil's Aug 95 defection--four years after the war and 
after four years of the most intrusive int'l monitoring regime ever 
devised, as Hamza was given an extraordinarily cold shoulder, when he 
first defected.
   As Hamza explained to the NYT, following Israel's 1981 bombing of the 
Osirak reactor, Iraq adopted an entirely new tack, vastly expanding its 
clandestine program, as the staff grew from 400 to 7,000, while "US 
intelligence officials knew little of the Iraqi effort, in part because 
the enrichment program relied on a technique abandoned by the United 
States after the World War II Manhattan Project some 40 years earlier. 
'They never put two and two together,' Hamza said."
   Last Sunday, Sec Def Cohen was asked by Sam Donaldson on ABC's This 
Week, "If the UN doesn't have the ability to inspect, how does it know 
whether [Saddam] is reconstituting his [unconventional weapons] 
ability?"  Defending the Clinton administration's abandonment of the 
UNSCOM/IAEA regime, he replied, "The United States has national means of 
intelligence gathering that can satisfy us."  Are we really sure, given 
our past record?
  The NYT also described how Hamza managed to defect.  He contacted a 
classmate of his from their undergraduate days at MIT, Ahmed Chalabi, 
head of the Iraqi Nat'l Congress, then based in Northern Iraq.  Hamza 
escaped to the North, where Chalabi put him in touch with the CIA.   
But, as former CIA officer Warren Marik recounted, the CIA botched the 
defection.  It didn't really believe Hamza.  Concerned about Saddam's 
pursuing him, Hamza left for Libya, of all places.  Eventually, Hamza 
managed to make useful contact with the CIA, in Hungary, and the agency 
managed to get his family, which was being threatened by the regime, out 
of Baghdad, by smuggling them to Northern Iraq.
  What proved, eventually, to be the successful defection of a senior 
nuclear scientist stands in contrast to the botched defection earlier 
this year of a major bw scientist, Nassir Hindawi, who never made it 
out, as reported by the NYT, Mar 24, and The Guardian, Mar 26 [see "Iraq 
News," Mar 31].  It is interesting to consider whether that defection 
would have gone differently, if the Clinton administration had 
maintained a significant presence in Northern Iraq and had not abandoned 
the Iraqi opposition on Aug 31, 96, proclaiming that US interests lay in 
Southern Iraq and not the North.