Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=12-23-2003

TYPE=INTERVIEW

NUMBER=3-841

TITLE=POST-SADDAM HUSSEIN (Part #2)

BYLINE=CAROL PEARSON

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

MR. BORGIDA

Now, the Bush administration says Saddam Hussein is being treated as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. That means he cannot be forcibly interrogated. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency will direct the interrogation.

Dr. Jerrold Post is a psychiatrist who founded and headed the CIA's Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. In part 2 of his interview with our Carol Pearson, Dr. Post, who is no longer with the CIA, talks about what he thinks is the best approach in questioning Saddam.

MS. PEARSON

With respect to the interrogation, you were quoted as saying that the interrogators should play to Saddam's ego. If you were to advise them, how would you advise them to proceed?

DR. POST

It's very important for him still to be seen as a heroic figure in pan-Arab history. He very much wants that image to be there. I believe there was just a fraction of a second glimpse of this shattered man. We're not going to see that again. In fact, to come on hard and strong and try to "break him" is guaranteed, in my judgment, to produce a defiant response. Whenever he is under pressure, he comes back harder and more aggressively than ever.

By playing to a swollen ego, what I mean is he is very proud of his accomplishments. We desperately would like to know what happened to those weapons of mass destruction, we and the Brits in particular. Well, I guess I would be playing to his narcissism. How clever he was, after all, to be able all those years to evade the UNSCOM inspectors. Wow, wasn't it remarkable that all of these people we sent in after the conflict couldn't find those weapons. How did he do that? That's amazing.

MS. PEARSON

Would you try to get Saddam to talk about the weapons of mass destruction that he may or may not have had and why it's so important for him to play this kind of cat and mouse game with the West?

DR. POST

Saddam, after 1990, finally had achieved what he had sought throughout his life and been denied -- a reputation as a major league, world-class world power. And when he gave a guttural grunt, oil barrel prices jumped $20 a barrel, the Dow Jones fell 20 points. He had the world by the throat. More importantly, though, [he was] fulfilling the prophecy of his uncle that some day he would be seen as a heroic leader in Iraqi and Arab history, following in the path of Nebuchadnezzar, of Saladin, and of Nasser. The Palestinians were shouting from the rooftops in refugee camps in Jordan, in Gaza and the West Bank for their new-found hero who was going to liberate Jerusalem for them, just as his uncle had prophesized. So, finally, it was really a transformational moment.

Well, world-class leaders have world-class weapons. Did he destroy them just before the end? Did he send them off to another country? I have no idea. But that this was crucial to his image of himself as a leader was very clear.

He deprived his country of $92 billion, it's estimated, in funds by his non-cooperation with the sanctions regime. Would he have done that as a bluff? I don't think so.

MS. PEARSON

Dr. Post, how would you say that Saddam Hussein's childhood shaped his actions as a dictator?

DR. POST

This was one of the most wounded people psychologically I've ever profiled. It all goes back to the womb. It was in the fourth month of his mother's pregnancy with him when his father died of "internal causes," presumably cancer. In the eighth month of that same pregnancy, her firstborn son, 12 years old, died.

She understandably became gravely depressed, both tried to kill herself and to abort herself of the pregnancy with Saddam. When he was born she would not look at her newborn son, would not take him into her arms. And he was rescued by his uncle Khairallah, her brother, and raised the first few years, until she remarried. When he went finally to join her, he was greeted by a stepfather who was both physically and psychologically abusive to him.

It's hard to imagine a worse beginning for this life. This would have produced deep psychologically wounds, what we call psyche of the wound itself. Most people with this beginning would be weak, ineffective, never be able to be a fully competent adult. Saddam took a different path, though, and developed over-compensatory grandiosity. His uncle, in particular, took him in hand and told him one day he would play this wonderful role in Arab history. So his way of compensating for this shattered psychology underneath was with the grandiose palaces, this cult of personality, this exalted stature on the world scene.

But we have to remember, underneath it all there is a vacuous hole, just like the hole he emerged from on that remarkable day.

(End of interview.)

NEB/PT