Our Man in Baghdad

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r>

Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot 

By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
>From the International Desk
Published 4/10/2003 7:30 PM

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and
low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past
Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a
bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their
instrument for more than 40 years, according to former
U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence
officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a
dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and
former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together
the following account. The CIA declined to comment on
the report.

While many have thought that Saddam first became
involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start
of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first
contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when
he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked
with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd
al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy
in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be
identified, described as "a horrible orgy of
bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who
spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then
regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the
Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the
mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet
Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose
members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and
conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to
withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked
everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State
Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to
buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own
domestic communists into ministry positions of "real
power," according to this official. The domestic
instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan
Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most
dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA
operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties"
with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close
connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian
leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement,
Roger Morris, a former National Security Council
staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying
that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and
anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department
official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became
a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According
to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment
in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite
Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to
observe Qasim's movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy
Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge
of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an
Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian
intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed
Darwish's account.

Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel
Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the
Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his
own personal account. Three former senior U.S.
officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was
completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA
official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his
nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's
driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and
arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had
bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had
a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his
coat.

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S.
intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the
floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose
calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin,
escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian
intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials
said.

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by
Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to
Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam
was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and
put him through a brief training course, former CIA
officials said. The agency then helped him get to
Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam
at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as
having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."

In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the
upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time
playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by
CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to
Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.

One former senior U.S. government official said: "In
Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine
Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class.
Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was
your basic dive."

But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits
to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as
Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger
were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S.
intelligence officials said.

Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his
Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a
gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since
they knew of Saddam's American connection, according
to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S.
diplomat in Egypt at the time.

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party
coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind
the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F.
Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official
strongly denied this.

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running
around asking what the hell had happened," this
official said.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that
the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the
CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National
Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were
then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down,
according to former U.S. intelligence officials with
intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these
sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings,
presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr
al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told
UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask
that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding.
This was serious business."

A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like
the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just
after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All
4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."

British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King
of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior
Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of
Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great
victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence
operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an
old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the
communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."

Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz
a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath
Party.

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with
Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq
war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA
regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield
intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance
aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed
forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a
U.S. interagency intelligence group.

This former official said that he personally had
signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite
intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to
produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I
thought I was losing my mind," the former official
told UPI.

A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a
top team of three senior officers from the
Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to meet
with the Americans.

According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided
military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February
1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao
peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.

The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience
came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000
Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its
neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become
its bitterest enemy.
Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International
 

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