INSIDE THE IRAQI NUCLEAR PROGRAM
A HIGH-RANKING NUCLEAR
SCIENTIST TELLS ALL
By: Sherrie Gossett*
Part
1: Beginnings
Author’s
Note:
The debate
over
Dr. Imad Khadduri was a top scientist involved
in Iraq's nuclear program from 1968 until the end of 1998, when he was able to
escape. He now serves as a network administrator in
It
was on a mild autumn evening in 1968 that Imad
Khadduri first received the invitation that would change his life. Sitting in
an open-air café near the
Khadduri was intrigued: "I was not aware that the Russians had built a two
Mega Watt research reactor at Tuwaitha, twenty
kilometers east of
After taking a
look at the research projects underway, Khadduri joined his former high school
colleagues who were working with several International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) sponsored scientists in the group.
The
Ghazi Darwish, a prominent chemist, directed the meetings of the
Nuclear Research Center (NRC), whose membership numbered around 120.
Khadduri recalls
the meetings, which included scientific lectures and managerial planning, as
having an atmosphere "fragrant with enthusiasm, drive and high
hopes."
Early in the
summer of 1969, after spending several months doing research, Khadduri decided
it was time to complete his PhD.
He then planned
to return to the
A turn of events
would mean that Khadduri would resume his studies in
Young
scholar in Britain
During a
Mikdashi had followed his PhD supervisor’s transfer to the
"Why don’t
you stay here at the
The next day,
Khadduri met with Dr. T. Derek Beynon, lecturer in
the Reactor Physics Group in the (then) Department of Physics and Astronomy at
the
Dr. Beynon was particularly impressed with a letter of
recommendation from Jafar Dhia
Jafar that Khadduri was carrying in his coat pocket.
Beynon explained that Jafar had
finished his PhD at the same Physics and Astronomy Department four years ago,
and had made a lasting impression with his completion of a PhD thesis in
minimum time. The subject? Strong
nuclear interactions.
A year later, Jafar, who was at that time was the head of the Physics
Department at the Nuclear Research Institute and a member of the top level
Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, was offered a job at the Physics Department at
the University of Birmingham, by Professor Burcham,
the Head of the Physics and Astronomy Department.
Jafar instead returned to
Khadduri was
quickly accepted into the
Four Iraqi
students were enrolled for the Reactor Technology Masters course in 1969: Tariq al-Hamami, Abdallah Kendoush, Riyadh Yahya Zaki and Khadduri, all on
Iraqi government scholarships.
Khadduri wound up
the sole choice of the university to continue on to a PhD, which he earned in
December 1973.
Peaceful
nuclear research
Khadduri then
rejoined the
On the same day, Khalid Said, a PhD physicist who had studied in the
England, had also started his work there and was immediately assigned to be the
head of the Nuclear Research Center, reportedly due to his prominent Ba’athist status.
Khadduri had
severed his own party connection in 1962.
Muyasser al-Mallah, a fellow
Eager to focus on
research rather than administration, Khadduri joined Mansoor
Ammar and Muqdam Ali in the
Reactor Department.
It was at a
scientific conference later that year (1974) that Khadduri would discover the
detectors he worked on in
He immediately
proposed a project to search for uranium in
Khalid Said approved, and provided Omran
Mousa -a "faithful and devoted" driver, a
vehicle, communication equipment, official papers, soldiers and finance.
A Bedouin guide
later joined the entourage, as it ventured into more remote terrain.
Searching
for uranium in the mountains
Khadduri
began his search in the northeast mountains near the Iranian border, close to a
Kurdish village called Hero.
"I would
have 50 soldiers spread around in a circular formation, with me at the center,
fanning along with me as I planted the [detectors]," he recalls. "The
yellow uranium ore was even visible on the surface."
The group then
headed south and spent several months in the barren desert of Jil, on the Iraqi-Saudi border Siroor
Mirza, the head of the geology department at the
Nuclear Research Institute, accompanied Khadduri’s
entourage and provided detailed maps indicating possible uranium deposits in
the middle of the desert.
Later, near the city of al-Qaim near the Syrian
border Khadduri and company "struck it rich."
The results of
preliminary tests indicated heavy uranium concentrations near an area called Akashat.
A city then arose
around a phosphate production plant that was built there.
One of the
plant’s buildings was for the extraction of uranium ore in the form of
yellowcake.
"The
extracted by-product would later be transported by rail north to the al-Jazeera nuclear site, near
There, a
processing plant was located, which required yellowcake as feed material in
order to produce pure nuclear grade uranium dioxide, which in turn was
chlorinated to produce uranium tetrachloride.
This was the
"feed material" for the "Baghdatrons"
-a name derived from Calutron (which in turn derives
from the contraction of
The "Baghdatrons" were central parts of a machine process
used primarily for production of
Many months
later, Khadduri returned to the
Jafar
returns
At
the urging of Khalid Said, Khadduri wrote a letter to
Jafar Dhia Jafar, urging him to return to
Jafar was still working in
He agreed to quit
his post at CERN, return to
The first Iraqi
International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy was held in
Khadduri, who was
in charge of the reactor technology sector, oversaw the evaluation of the
submitted papers and allotted the time for them.
His attention was
immediately drawn to Yehya al-Meshad,
Egyptian nuclear reactor scientist, whose expertise in nuclear reactor
technology and gift for expressing complex principles with clarity was
evidenced in ten papers submitted for the conference.
Al-Meshad was on sabbatical leave from
He subsequently
won a 2-year contract, which ended in1977 -at which point he was hired by the
Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and became a prime mover in the program.
Meanwhile,
Malcolm Scott suggested that the Iraqis start a one-year Reactor Technology
Master of Science course based on the material that he had developed for his
course at
Scott said that
he would be willing to accept any graduate student of the course, for a PhD
program at
Coordinating with
the
"The
students were completely under our guidance at the Nuclear Research Institute,
but their degrees would be conferred by the Physics Department at the
Dabbling
with critical mass
"I also
engaged [al-Meshad] in developing a computer program,
or code, to calculate the burn-up of the reactor’s nuclear fuel instead of
depending on the simplified hand calculated formulas that were left to us by
the Russians," Khadduri said.
"Our code
and calculations opened up the possibility of calculating critical mass, the
correct density at which a highly enriched uranium 235 sphere would undergo a
self-sustaining chain reaction; this could become a reactor, if controlled, and
an atomic bomb, if uncontrolled."
The duo’s work on
code yielded yet another co-authored report: CORELOAD: A Computer Code for Calculating the Evolution of the
Operation History of the IRT-2000 Reactor.
Khalid Said and Jafar Dhia Jafar were supportive of the
efforts.
Implosion
scenarios
Khadduri and Yehya al-Meshad also started
dabbling with different "implosion scenarios" that would start with a
smaller spherical sphere of uranium but would increase its density to a
critical value.
"This fissioning process is rapidly repeated, in a very short
time, in a self-sustained chain reaction. The bomb explodes, releasing intense
amounts of energy and radioactive fission products, "said Khadduri.
Khadduri’s and al-Meshad’s
calculations matched the experimental results carried out in the forties for
the Manhattan Project, and were then written up in report No. NR-14: The Use
of Multigroup Transport Method for Criticality
Calculations of Some Fast Spherical Assemblies.
Plutonium
239
Having mastered
the tools for calculating the burn-up rate of the nuclear fuel in the reactor Jafar and Khadduri then jointly carry out a detailed
calculation on the possible production of weapons grade fissionable plutonium
239 from the operation of the Russian reactor’s fuel –"a long shot"
according to Khadduri.
Plutonium 239
constitutes the core of another type of atomic bomb.
"With our
low power research reactor, it would have taken decades to obtain the required
amount of nuclear weapon grade plutonium," states Khadduri, "The
relevance of the work, however, was the knowledge of the required
calculations."
Those
calculations would form yet another Khadduri nuclear report: The Possible Production of Pu239 from the IRT-5000
Reactor, co-authored with Jafar.
Power generating plant
The Iraqi team
visited several nuclear power plants in
Khadduri was part
of the team that met with and negotiated with the suppliers’ delegations.
Negotiations with
Mitsubishi at their headquarters in
"We were
nearing the end of it, when…Mr. Ito, the head of the Japanese delegation,
excused himself after [someone whispered] in his ear. He went out for five
minutes, and returned to declare the end of the negotiations," said
Khadduri.
Westinghouse,
American supplier for nuclear fuel for most Western and Japanese nuclear power
stations, had just called to refuse supply of nuclear fuel to
The scientists
would soon head to
Photos
copyrighted and supplied by Dr. Imad Khadduri
Next up -
Part 2: Assasination in
* * * * * *
Note: Dr. Khadduri's new book, titled Iraq's Nuclear
Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions should be available in American
bookstores at the end of December.
The author has
agreed to ship copies out himself to Etherzone
readers who want to obtain a copy of the book now. Signed copies are also
available and inquiries should be directed to Dr. Khadduri via his website: Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage.
Part 2:
Hurtling towards the bomb
Author’s
Note:
The debate
over
Dr. Imad Khadduri was a top scientist involved in Iraq's
nuclear program from 1968 until the end of 1998, when he was able to escape. He
now serves as a network administrator in
In 1974, a top
level Iraqi government delegation, lead by Saddam Hussein, arrived in
The delegation
was headed by Abdul Razzak al-Sashimi (known as Chouqi) and consisted of Jafar
Dhia Jafar, Hussain al-Sharastani and Humam Abdul Khaliq
Al-Sharastani, a prominent chemist, was later tortured,
jailed, and pressured to help build an Iraqi nuclear bomb. He managed to escape
from
Abdul Razzak al-Hashimi was nicknamed Chouqi, because of his propensity for generating
sheer chaos. The term is a derivative of the slang Chouqqa,
which refers to a large ’breaker’ marble used to ‘shoot’ and scatter smaller
marbles in every direction.
An entourage of
Iraqi chefs and special firewood were flown to
The visit became
known as the "Masgoof Visit."
By 1976, a $300
million deal had been completed for two reactors—one a 40 Megawatt (MW) reactor
that the French dubbed OSIRIS and a smaller reactor called
OSIRIS was a
relatively large research reactor and
The designs for
the reactors were to be prepared at Saclay Nuclear
Research Institute near
The French later
referred to the entire project as OSIRAK.
The
training for the operation of the two reactors (and on the six experimental
rigs that were the prime reason for buying them), was to be held at
Mahdi Shukur Ghali
Obeidi, a solid state materials scientist, was in
charge of putting together the scientific and engineering team. In early 1980,
about 60 scientists, engineers and technicians were sent to the research center
at Saclay to take an accelerated French language
course followed by a year of training on the operation of the two reactors and
the six experimental rigs.
Mahdi was later assigned to head the centrifugal
enrichment process team in the eighties. This is the same Mahdi
Obeidi, who at the end of June 2003, led Americans
troops to some hidden documents and centrifugal parts buried under a rosebush
in his back yard. Little media
play was given in the US to Obeidi’s accompanying
statement indicating Iraq had not rebuilt its nuclear weapons program after
1991.
In
The French had
suddenly switched the type of the nuclear fuel that would be used in the two
reactors. Instead of the 80% enriched cylindrical elements, specified three
years earlier in the purchase contract, the Iraqis were stunned to hear they
would instead be getting an 18% "caramel" type fuel.
In fact as soon
as the initial contract had been signed, the French immediately started to
design the 18% ‘caramel’ fuel.
The low enriched
"caramel" fuel was designed solely for the
Assasination in
"The Mossad, smashed Yehya’s head with
a copper rod as he entered his hotel room in
"The only
witness, a French woman, was ‘mysteriously’ run over by a car and killed a few
days later. "
The date was June
13, 1980.
Adding to the
mounting difficulties, Khadduri had criticized some of the Ba’ath
party team members for their incompetence.
His criticism
soon reached
Khadduri was
ordered to return to
It was the first
of several clashes between Khadduri and Saddam’s political-military
-intelligence network, which would eventually make Khadduri’s
escape from
Basil al-Saati along with a few loyal party members escorted
Khadduri, his wife, and their three-month old daughter Yamama to the airport,
following at close range in order to prevent any defection.
Khadduri returned
to the
Not one to waste
time, he started translating it into Arabic.
Khadduri
continued this self-imposed intellectual regimen until what he calls the
"genuine start" of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, which he dates
to September 3, 1981.
Towards
the Nuclear bomb
In early 1981,
unknown to Khadduri at the time, events were already in motion behind the
scenes concerning the "fumbling goal" of obtaining a nuclear bomb,
even as the Iraqi government began harassing some of the country’s top
scientists.
Hussain al-Shahrastani, the
brilliant chemist who went to
After Hussain’s arrest, Jafar appealed
to Chouqi in his defense.
True to his
nickname, Chouqi then rushed to Saddam and made false
accusations against Jafar.
Saddam ordered
the house arrest of Jafar in January 1980
In 1981, after
hearing of Jafar’s arrest, Khadduri began to visit
and comfort Jafar’s distraught mother. She had been
confiding in Khadduri’s father, who was her medical
doctor.
Humam Abdul Khaliq, head of the
Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, called Khadduri to his office: "If you do
not stop visiting Jafar’s mother, they will fry
onions on your ass", he warned.
Khadduri
disregarded the warning.
Years of Iraqi
scientific endeavor came to an end on the evening of June 7, 1981 when
"We heard
the blasts and ran to the rooftops. We could see the cloud plumes even tens of
kilometers away," Khadduri recalls, calling the act
"belligerent."
He describes
Hurtling
towards the bomb
Saddam took the
political decision to initiate a full-fledged weapons program immediately
afterwards, according to Khadduri.
This meant the
dispersed team had to be resurrected and reunited.
Jafar had to be released from jail. Chafing and humiliated
from the experience, Jafar was slow to agree to the
plan.
"I believe
that he wrote, while still interned, several technical reports on the matter to
Saddam to that effect," Khadduri said.
Jafar was then released and arrived at the
Khadduri was soon
called for, leaving his library sanctuary behind.
Basil al-Qaisy , (Khadduri’s childhood
friend who had initially invited him into the atomic program,) Munqith al-Qaisy, Munqith al-Bakir, Zuhair al-Chalabi, Nabil Karnik, Imad
Ilyia and a few others were called into a meeting
with Jafar.
"Department
3000"
At first, the
secret organization that Jafar set up for the nuclear
weapons program was called "Department 3000, Research and
Development."
All the
departments were still carrying on with peaceful nuclear research under the watchful
eyes of the IAEA -except for Department 3000.
Covert
purchases, overt gleaning
Advancement was
fueled by an abundance of publicly available American research materials and
the ease with which covert procurements were made.
He also cut a
deal on the west coast to obtain two lasers needed for experiments in uranium
enrichment.
The lasers were
picked up at the
Khadduri soon
moved to a small planning group that was working directly with Jafar on the nuclear weapons program
Part of the
planning was the assignment of scientists and engineers to attend relevant and
worthwhile conferences and symposiums abroad in order obtain needed
information.
At the end of
1983, he was transferred to the nuclear electric power plant project, which was
put on a higher priority level, under the direction of Khalid
Said.
In the winter of
1987, Khadduri attended a high-level meeting chaired by Humam
Abdul Khaliq, the Head of the Iraqi Atomic Energy
Commission, in which the top priorities were outlined.
Khadduri left the
meeting with the realization that the nuclear electric power plant project was
no longer a priority and was instead to become a façade for the IAEA to focus
on and follow, while the real nuclear weapons program would remain undetected,
advancing rapidly.
"What had
actually transpired at the time was a crucial turning point in the Iraqi
nuclear weapons program. I was not aware then of a shake up that happened
behind the scenes," Khadduri recalls.
The
secret PC3
The shake up was
instigated by a letter by Khidir Hamza
sent early in 1987 to Saddam Hussein.
Khadduri notes
that Khidir Hamza, referred
to in the west by his self-given title, "Saddam’s Bomb Maker," had
either failed in his assignment to make progress with the gaseous diffusion
enrichment process or had coveted Jafar’s position as
head of the program. Khadduri leans towards the former theory, noting Hamza’a alleged lack of leadership skills.
"He was a
loner, only adept at working on his theoretical ‘three-body’ problem for more
than two decades. He did not have the charisma or the courage to lead a team.
His distaste of any experimental scientific work provided a focal point for
many humorous puns."
Hamza had written an inflammatory report to Saddam Hussein
accusing Jafar of procrastination and wasting
resources.
Saddam was
furious and demanded an explanation.
Jafar’s administrative load was soon lightened with the
arrival of Dhafir Selbi,
the previous head of the administration department at the Nuclear Research
center, and an old high school friend of Khadduri’s.
Selbi had been asked to join the top management team of
the nuclear weapons program, and he soon transformed the program by a thorough
restructuring.
Selbi, who refers to himself now
simply as "Haj, visitor to
breakthrough his "brainchild" and
"Perestroika."
Selbi used zumras, an Arabic metaphor for "teams" that
would be comprised of engineers and scientists, delegated by their various
scientific and engineering departments, to tackle specific design proposals.
Khadduri and Selbi explained that the zumra would work through and
materialize the designs through collective interactive thought encompassing all
related scientific and engineering activities.
This was in
radical contrast to the previous mode of work where the design was put forth by
one department, then shuffled back and forth between the various groups who
would just attach their notes individually, with no significant interaction.
The nuclear
weapons project in its entirety came to be known as the Petrochemical 3 (PC3)
project and in the summer of 1987, replacing "Department 3000."
The resulting restructuring
resulted in the following organization of the nuclear program:
Group 1: The centrifugal enrichment process, which was
assigned to Mahdi Shukur Ghali Obeidi. Several months
later, Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law, took
direct responsibility for that group.
Group 2: The PIG and TIG enrichment processes was assigned to
Jafar Dhia Jafar. [PIG and TIG would soon to be dropped
and replaced by the Electromagnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS) enrichment
process per Dhafir Selbi.
Group 3: The "administrative support" group that
would lighten Jafar’s administrative chores was
assigned to Dhafir Selbi.
This group was responsible for covert purchasing, the provision of scientific
and engineering information, the documentation of the
scientific reports, the mechanical and electrical manufacturing activities and
in a later stage the supervision of their design activities. Khadduri was
incorporated into that group in September of that year, 1987.
Group 4: Khidir Hamza
was asked to drop the diffusion process and was assigned to gather a team for
the design of the nuclear bomb. However, Khadduri reports that Hamza was soon kicked out after a few months and the
nuclear weapon design group was assigned instead to Khalid
Said.
As
previously reported by WND and Newsweek, United Nations documents
recording the debriefing of Hussein Kamel in
Said Kamal, "He worked with us, but he was useless and was
always looking for promotions. He consulted with me but could not deliver
anything."
The same document
indicates the UN concluded a document produced by Hamza
was a fake.
Khadduri said,
"There is not a single documented scientific report of any work by Khidir Hamza relating to critical
mass or a nuclear bomb in the archive of the
Hamza’s testimony to Congress on
Hussein
Kamel takes charge
In October 1987,Saddam appointed Hussein Kamel,
who was already the Head of the Military Industrialization Corporation (MIC) to
be in charge of Groups 2, 3, and 4.
In addition, Kamel took a direct and separate leadership of Group 1 that
was distanced from Groups 2, 3 and 4. Group 1 was to work on the centrifuge
enrichment process under the continued direction of Mahdi
Shukur Ghali Obeidi.
The activities of
these four groups would be made completely invisible from the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
In January 1989,
PC3 was established within the Ministry of Industry and Military
Industrialization (MIMI) under Hussein Kamel and
included the whole of the Iraqi national nuclear program (enrichment and
weapons). Petrochemical 1 and Petrochemical 2 were established large-scale
refinery projects undertaken by MIMI during the eighties.
"In contrast
to Khidir Hamza’s false
claims, Jafar Dhia Jafar, Humam Abdul Khaliq and Dhafir Selbi, were, in my opinion, the true dynamic prime movers
of the nuclear weapons program," Khadduri said.
In 1987, with Khidir Hamza kicked out of the
role of the head of the weapon design team, Khalid
Said took over the role.
Dr. Said won't be
giving any testimony now about the nuclear program though. He died in a hail of
bullets after he failed to stop fast enough at an American checkpoint in
Meanwhile, Dr. Hamza is currently working for the
"Activity
3W"
Dhafir Selbi cancelled the work
on PIG and TIG enrichment research, deciding that the Electromagnetic Isotope
Separation (EMIS) method that employed huge magnets, referred to as Calutrons (or Baghdatrons) was
the best approach.
The EMIS method
was implemented during the World War II in the Manhattan Project to produce the
first American atomic bombs that were dropped on
The
decision was made to go forward with the enrichment process as fast as
possible.
Dhafir called for Khadduri the following day. "Jafar’s scientists are not doing their abc’s of scientific research," he complained.
"They are tiring a bit after six years and are not properly researching
published articles on their new assignment. I want you to flood them with
proper scientific and engineering information. I also want you to take hold
again of the documentation procedure. The scientific quality of some of our
reports that I have seen should have been thoroughly reviewed and reworked
before being approved and distributed." He assigned Khaddar one employee, Khawla. Khadduri then added Salam
Toma, a close friend, to his team. Khadduri now
headed Dhafir’s Activity 3W, in Group 3, labeled
Information and Documentation.
Information
avalanche
Khadduri
immediately headed to the large research library of the Iraqi Atomic Energy
Commission.
He soon found the
complete set of the
Khadduri quickly
set about pouring over the yearly indexes of the NSA trove, searching for
certain keywords: critical mass, Manhattan Project, Calutron,
critical assemblies.
Salam Toma and Khawla went to work digging through the volumes.
Two weeks later,
they brought had compiled more than fifty pages of relevant citations.
How many of the
cited works were already present in the library?
Almost
all -ninety six percent.
In one dusty box
that had not opened since the sixties Khadduri found the Manhattan Project
books and reports.
Over 160 patents
related to the Manhattan Project, were then obtained from the World
Intellectual Property Organization in
"It probably
cost us no more than $100," he remarked.
Next came the hunt for a microcard
reader.
Some of the key
documents were on microcard, a predecessor of the
microfiche and the microfilm.
One crucial and
important report, TID 5232 in Division 1,Volume 12 on
the "Chemical Processing Equipment: Electromagnetic Separation
Process" was on one of these microcards.
"Dhafir instructed me to find, hell or heaven, a microcard reader that can print the images, thirty years
after the demise of that technology," said Khadduri.
An Egyptian in
Due to Khadduri‘s efforts, four months later, by the end of 1987
the scientists and engineers had their hands full of critical scientific
information on the Calutron process.
They quickly set
to work on the "Baghdatron."
It was just the
beginning of the information avalanche though.
Since the
mid-seventies, Khadduri had been in charge of accessing Dialog -the world’s
first online information retrieval system - from the
Khadduri used a
special small isolated room on the outskirts of the
Some obstacles
still stood in the way. First, it was expensive to have an open line from
A station was set
up in
In order to
secure the supply of special books, reports and hard-to-get articles, Khadduri
saw to it that several accounts were opened with various information suppliers.
These included the British Lending Library, the
A positive report
was submitted by Jafar in the summer of 1990 to
Hussein Kamel on the remarkable progress Khadduri’s team made in securing, organizing and
disseminating large amounts of critical nuclear information .
Jafar proposed to make the benefits of Khadduri’s
research and archiving activities widely available.
Hussein Kamal approved of the idea and ordered Khadduri’s
department to go public, and serve all Iraqi ministries, research centers and
universities, free of charge.
It was the first
department from PC3 to become public. The new name of Khadduri’s
enterprise was the "Center for Specialized Information," part of the
Ministry of Industry.
Notra Trulock III,
knows all too well the pivotal role dissemination of American scientific data
played in the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Trulock
is the former director of intelligence for the Department of Energy (DOE) in
the
According to Trulock the best reports on the Iraqi’s exploitation of US
nuclear weapons secrets were done within the DOE, but were suppressed by the
department’s arms controllers and have never seen the light of day.
"I had a
bootleg copy of one such report on the Iraqis’ acquisition of nuclear
information from the national labs, but I was never able to get it widely
distributed to the intelligence community," said Trulock.
An Energy Department intelligence officer told Trulock
that all existing copies of the report were destroyed after he left the
department.
Documentation
Khadduri had also
been set to work on proper documentation of the activities of PC3.
This included
insuring the scientific quality of research reports, and documenting reports
submitted by scientists and engineers after returning from abroad to attend
scientific conferences.
It also included
documenting covert purchases.
The originals
were kept in Building 61 at the Nuclear Research Center, which was the
Electronics Department under Basil al-Qaisi, Khadduri‘s childhood friend who had invited him into the
nuclear program in 1968.
The second set
was at the Trade Union building in front of al-Rasheed
Hotel, the location that was targeted by David Kay in September 1991.
The third
location was al-Hayat building, an intelligence
adjunct near the presidential palace. Hamid and a
staff of ten worked in the basement of building 61, to maintain the records,
making microfilm copies of the engineering drawings and producing the required
number of copies of the reports to be distributed to scientists and engineers.
Soon, the storm
clouds of war were gathering, and Khadduri’s team
rushed to copy the nuclear program reports onto optical disks and find an
appropriate place to hide the originals.
Next Up - Part III: War, reconstruction and escape.
Part
3: The gathering storm
Author’s
Note:
The debate
over
Dr.
Imad Khadduri was a top scientist involved in Iraq's
nuclear program from 1968 until the end of 1998, when he was able to escape. He
now serves as a network administrator in
As the threat of
Gulf War I approached, Khadduri and his staff hurriedly set about storing and
hiding the documents of the nuclear program.
In early 1990,
Khadduri chose Canon’s new CanoFile 150 as the means
of duplication - a scanning machine that could capture and store the image of
both sides of a scanned document on a high-capacity magneto-optical disc.
Khadduri ordered
two along with five empty disks. Canon’s representative offered the sixth disk,
which Khadduri kept for backup and which later play a critical part in hiding
documents from UN inspectors after Gulf War I.
The first CanoFile was shipped out of
With both devices
ready, and with war approaching, the whole documentation staff set to work
scanning and saving the 1600 reports that represented ten years of work and
development.
Khadduri saw to
it that the scanned documents were properly indexed.
Hiding
nuclear documents
Salam and Khadduri then went to the bazaar near al-Mustansiryah Street and bought three large aluminum trunks
to place the records in. A nearby German-built secondary technical school was
chosen as the hiding place.
Inside the school
they found the ideal hiding location: a windowless room that could only be
accessed by going through two other rooms.
This became the
place where the reports of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program were hidden.
Not trusting intelligence
and security staff, Khadduri recommended Selbi not
let them know the location of the trunks. Selbi
agreed.
Salam and Khadduri then carried out the delivery of the
trunks alone.
Heavy locks were
installed in all three rooms.
Dhafir got a set of keys, and Salam
and Khadduri kept the only other two sets.
Khadduri also
kept the magneto-optical disks that stored the 1600 reports of the secret PC3
program.
A week later, an
enraged Khadduri found a cardboard carton belatedly dumped on his desk with reports
from Khalid Said’s Group 4.
Said had stubbornly refused to adhere to Khadduri’s
strict documentation and indexing procedures, and had been allowed to make his
own arrangements, but had apparently failed to do so.
It was too late
to properly index the papers with those already locked away in the aluminum
trunks. Beside himself with anger, Khadduri sent Salam
to take the carton to the technical school. An upset Salam, just left the
cardboard box atop the trunks.
One year later,
David Kay would find the cardboard box, which would result on the destruction
of the al-Athir site by UNSCOM inspectors.
In the autumn of
1990, the research gurus of Khadduri’s Center for
Specialized Information set up shop at on the mezzanine floor of the Ministry
of Industry.
His deputy at
department 3W, Mashkoor Haidar,
took over the documentation responsibility for PC3. Mashkoor
and the staff of the documentation group in turn answered to Adil Fiadh.
Khadduri handed Mashkoor the keys to the three rooms where the aluminum trunks
were stored, but kept the magneto-optical disks.
Jafar demanded that Khadduri also hand over the disks to
Abdul Halim al-Hajjaj, Khalid Said’s associate.
Khadduri strongly
objected, not trusting anyone else to keep the data secure, but Jafar insisted.
"With a
broken heart, and spirit, I handed over the three full magneto optical disks to
Halim," he said.
Jafar was still looking for them seven years later.
The
gathering storm
With Gulf War I
hovering on the horizon, Khadduri, along with other select scientists and
executive members of the management team were assigned alternate living
quarters in the event of attack.
Khadduri took his
family to the city of
Khadduri heard
that not a single foreigner was employed in the construction due to its
secrecy.
"Most of the
portable trays of microfiche and catalogues were taken to our homes. We
dispersed the racks of microfilms in different locations so as not to suffer
from a single hit," Khadduri said, "At home, personal suitcases were
prepared, official personal
papers gathered and dozens of batteries were purchased,"
he recalls.
At dawn, with
electricity and telephone systems down the Khadduri family packed the two cars;
Niran’s and Imad’s
government assigned one, and then drove off to Sharqat
with his mother and Lisa, their dog.
Khadduri recalls
worrying about whether American "smart bombs" might accidentally
target and breach the Russian reactor at Tuwaitha,
releasing devastating radioactivity.
Bombs did fall on
Tuwaitha while the reactor was still operational,
Khadduri says.
"The
operators first fled the building when the bombs first fell close to them but
then returned, shut down the reactor and put a steel cover over the open pool
as the bombs exploded tens of meters from the building. Fortunately, that steel
cover was not breached neither was the concrete containment of the reactor
holding the water that cooled the reactor."
The Iraqi nuclear
weapons program stopped dead in its tracks that morning, and was never
rejuvenated, Khadduri said.
How close was
Khadduri’s summary:
"In total,
we were, in my estimate, about 10-20 percent of where we should have been had
Through the
war
The
Khadduri’s temporary home shook from shock waves that
they attributed to ammunition depots exploding miles away.
His
family made frequent use of a crude underground shelter that they dug in front
of the house.
Intermingled with
the hard times the scientist recalls fond memories:
Dhafir and his two brothers cooking fish, Masgoof style, in front of their house as war planes flew
overhead and bombs exploded in the distance; Niran
and Imad spending evenings playing cards with the
families of Sabah Abdul Noor
and Mahir Sarsam, two
senior scientists from Group 4 of the PC3 nuclear project.
Late at night,
Khadduri recalls, they would walk home with a lantern, shooing away stray dogs.
Khadduri’s family also received news of war casualties. A
housing complex belonging to al-Badir electrical
establishment, south of Sharqat near Samara, was
bombed by with a reported 50 women and children killed. Similar news reached
them of more civilian casualties in an attack on the Ishtar
housing complex near the
Rebellion
against Saddam
During the war,
Khadduri ventured into
Khadduri, fearing
a violent reaction of the Iraqi people to "our abject defeat,"
whispered to Sarsam, "Allah Yustir
(God protect us)!"
"Little had
I known of the
"Only a year
or two later did I learn of the extent of the brutal repression inflicted by
the Ba’athist stalwarts on the revolting people, the
heroic popular extent of the uprising, the extensive damage to the holy Moslem
shrines in Karbala and al-Najjaf
and the horrendous mass grave yards. "
Khadduri and his
friends also heard of anger at the Americans who had allowed the helicopters of
the Republican Guards to fly freely and participate in the repression.
"The Kurds
in the North, like the Arabs in the South, had naively believed Bush senior’s
call for an uprising, only to be let down, left unaided and be
slaughtered," Khadduri recalls.
"Coming down
from Sharqat, we saw some of the Republican Army’s
modern tanks heading north, unhindered, to quell the Kurdish uprising."
Seeing the
failure of the uprisings, and fearing a strengthened Saddam, Khadduri moved
swiftly to obtain up-to-date passports for his wife and children.
Khadduri himself
was forbidden to obtain a passport, since he was part of the nuclear team. The
only exceptions were for official business as approved by the Intelligence
Agency.
It was the first
step in a long and arduous ordeal of secretly escaping from
In the meantime,
numerous attempts to retire from government service were rejected by the Iraqi
government.
Rebuilding
Extensive damage
to the Iraqi infrastructure and subsequent rebuilding would occupy the nuclear
scientists and engineers for years.
During the war,
Khadduri learned
A week after the
war ended, Jafar gave Khadduri his first post-war
assignment.
He was to convene
an Electricity Rehabilitation Symposium in
A third of
Passing along a
highway south of Sharqat during the war, Khadduri
remembers seeing miles-high walls of fire from spilled oil engulfing the Baiji oil refinery plant.
Khadduri along
with other nuclear scientists and engineers later supervised the rebuilding of
oil refineries, which were up and running again within a few months as well.
In the summer of
1991, as the telecommunications infrastructure was being repaired, Khadduri
undertook an enterprise of his own initiative: networking all of the research centers
and universities throughout
Over a period of
two years, Khadduri and Ayad Muhaimid
used external Hayes modems, to network about sixty research centers and
universities with a telephone dial-up service allowing them access to the many
databases on CD-ROMs that were located at the Center for Specialized
Information in the Ministry of Industry in Baghdad.
Khadduri’s
research center back in business
At the same time
the electrical symposium was held, one week after the war ended, work had
resumed at the Center for Specialized Information.
Khadduri’s center had accumulated about twenty scientific and
engineering databases, including all five million
Additional
holdings included PhD theses abstracts extending back to 1864, and the
microfilm ‘treasure" of industrial and US military standards and
industrial catalogues.
"Within a
few months after the war, we would normally open our offices at eight in the
morning to a waiting line of twenty to thirty government engineers, students
and university researchers eager to get information, for free, for the
rehabilitation of their sectors or for writing their theses," Khadduri
said.
The center’s
staff also wrote their own computer program to distribute their monthly
salaries: "The department responsible for that in the now slowly
disintegrating PC3 was incapable of running their own program on the relocated
and dismembered mainframe computer," Khadduri explains.
Prison and
interrogation
As the UN
inspectors were beginning to arrive, a memo was written in April/May 1991 by Jafar Dhia Jafar
and Naman al-Niami, a top
level chemist in the nuclear weapons program, to Hussain
Kamal, outlining all of the nuclear sites.
The list was
submitted before the adoption of Resolution 687 (1991) by the United Nations
Security Council. Kamal ordered the disclosure of
selected activities and sites and the concealment of the others from the list –
notably the al-Athir weapon design center and its
activities.
Nuclear
scientists and engineers went to Jafar to ask for
access to their reports to aid in the UN interviewing process.
Jafar, at that time, was appointed Head of the MIC, under Hussain Kamal’s authority, in
return for having led the successful rebuilding of the electricity sector.
Jafar decided to hand over the contents of one
documentation center to the UN inspectors. These encompassed the reports of the
declared activities only.
In late summer of
1991, Jafar then gave a "fatal order" to Adil Fiadh to retrieve the hidden
documents and reports.
All of the
documents that had been hidden in the technical school, had been placed in a
train wagon -its doors then welded shut- that kept shuttling between Basra in
the south and Mosul in the north.
After Jafar’s order went out to return the documents, the train
car was halted and the welded doors pried open. The aluminum trunks, boxes of
microfiche of design drawings and the cardboard box containing the reports of
the undeclared activities of Group 4 (that were dumped on Khadduri‘s
desk at the last minute) were all returned to the documentation center at the
Labor Union building, next to the MIC building.
"Within a
few days later, the UN inspector David Kay and his colleagues unexpectedly
raided the Labor Union building and retrieved the documents, including the
cardboard box, leading to heated verbal exchanges and face-to- face
confrontation between David Kay and Jafar, which was
videotaped and broadcast," Khadduri recounts.
"A week
later, the inspectors raided the
Hussain Kamel suspected a security
leak, and immediately ordered the arrest of about twelve people connected with
documentation, including Adil Fiadh,
Mashkoor Haidar, and
Khadduri.
They were
individually interrogated by a committee headed by the Deputy Head of MIC, Amer al-Ubaidi -who later became
the Oil Minister in 1996 and was captured by US forces in May 2003.
The group was
incarcerated incommunicado for eighteen days at the Fao
Establishment building on
"Some of the
interned suffered psychologically, broke down and cried heavily, realizing that
our lives were at the whim of Hussain Kamel’s mood," Khadduri recalls.
After concluding
that no security breach had occurred, the interned were released after being
demoted, Khalid Said included.
Jafar was removed as director of MIC with Amer al-Ubaidi taking over the
past. Jafar then became "scientific
advisor" to the palace court of Saddam (an insignificant post) and took on
full responsibility for the continued rehabilitation of the electricity sector.
"Jafar also dabbled in fanciful irrigation projects to
divert water from the Tigris near
Meanwhile back at
Khadduri’s research center, he was made aware of the
activities of PC3 and some military activities of the MIC, since the
researchers had to go past him in order to access databases of the
Khadduri was in
that post until 1994 when he left for the Foreign Ministry.
Ever since his
imprisonment, Khadduri was kept under innervating, close surveillance by
Saddam‘s intelligence agencies. Some friends risked their own safety by telling
Khadduri they had been approached to give information on the scientist. The
constant watching and the pressure put on his friends would soon send Khadduri
spiraling into anxiety and depression.
The 6th
disk: scientific innuendo
Meanwhile, Jafar contacted Khadduri, asking for his help in storing
highly sensitive documents he kept at his home. David Kay’s searches were
worrying Jafar.
Khadduri had
stored one of the CanoFiles at his home, and had kept
the complimentary sixth disk which had been given by Canon has part of the
initial purchase deal. He set to work storing and archiving Jafar’s
highly sensitive documents.
"I glimpsed
the monitor, whenever I had the chance, to see what was being archived,"
Khadduri recalls, "I was not that pleased with some of it. It was plainly
a blatant exaggeration, or promising extrapolation, of what we were achieving
using the Baghdatrons in 1990, signed by Jafar and presented by Hussain Kamal to Saddem. It would have
been misleading as to the true progress of the work, if you do not grasp
scientific innuendo. "
After 5 hours, Jafar’s trusted driver Omran,
(the same driver who accompanied Khadduri on his uranium searches) left with a
filled magneto-optical disk and the box of documents.
Meanwhile the
IAEA was singly concerned with Group 4’s activities that entailed the design of
the bomb, and did not ask for or show interest in the uranium enrichment activities
of PC3.
The copied
magneto-optical disc of Group 4’s activities was handed over to them.
Says Khadduri, " I am not sure whether they knew of, or even now have,
the other two discs."
Those two disks
contained the images of the rest of PC3’s reports, that Khadduri had kept
separate from the cache that was found by David Kay in September 1991. It was
these disks that Khadduri had objected to handing over to Abdul Halim al-Hajjaj, Khalid Said’s associate.
Into "
Following the
prior imprisonment and interrogation, Khadduri soon found intelligence services
had sent a plant to work at his research center.
False accusations
followed and Khadduri found himself increasingly
harassed.
Enter Mohammad
al-Sahhaf, the Foreign Minister at the time, and the
famed Information Minister ("Baghdad Bob") during the 2003 war.
Al-Sahhaf wanted Khadduri to bring his expertise to the
Foreign Ministry with the goal of networking its departments, and creating an
efficient electronic management of the ministry’s daily communications, as well
as archiving its historical files.
Within a period
of three years, the project was completed, and the new computer center was
staffed by five people.
Khadduri’s staff trained about 250 diplomats on the use of word processing.
Butting heads with a "rabid" intelligence officer
Khadduri, ever
more eager to get his family out of
The controversy
began when "Baghdad Bob" appoved Khadduri’s idea to assign 80 diplomats, including 5
intelligence officers, a mundane typing assignment: compiling electoral lists
for a 1995 parliament election.
The 80 had just
graduated from a word processing class, and there was little time to compile
the task.
When Khadduri
told al-Sahhaf about 5 intelligence officers who had
not accepted their assignments, he was angry.
"The
Intelligence bastards" al-Sahhaf shouted,
picking up the phone.
Intelligence
officer Salah Abdul Rahman
al-Hadithi was indignant over receiving the
pedestrian typing assignment. "I retorted with a quote from Saddam that
curtly shut him up," Khadduri said.
Three years
later, Khadduri found out the intelligence officer had immediately filed a report
to Saddam, detailing how Khadduri’s name was
mentioned in a New York Times article, as having a possible connection
to the Israeli Mossad. Ever since the officer filed
the vengeful report, Khadduri had been under additional secret investigation.
The report also
referred to al-Sahhaf’s attempt to secure a
diplomatic post for Khadduri abroad. Al-Sahhaf had
been sensitive to Khadduri’s desire to get his family
out of
In the
intelligence file however, Saddam had scribbled in red ink that Khadduri
"shall not see the Iraqi border" in his lifetime.
Planning
escape
Within a few
years after the end of the 1991 war, Niran, Khadduri’s wife, noticed that colleagues at the private al-Mansoor University College, where she was teaching computer
languages, were disappearing - escaping Iraq, legally or illegally, including Khidir Hamza who lectured there.
It was after the
sudden and unexpected 1994 disappearance of Niran
Khadduri' close friend, Samira Katoola
and her husband Tawfiq, both former Atomic Energy
Commission PhDs, along with their children, that the Khadduri family decided it
was time to find a way to escape, despite the risk involved.
"Since there
was no air travel due to sanctions throughout the nineties, the escape routes
were limited through the risky north to
Difficulties
abounded, including the fact that Niran’s and the
children’s names were
linked to Khadduri’s name in
government intelligence and security databases, especially at the passport
offices.
Trying to obtain
an exit visa for them would set off alarms.
Khadduri’s wife Niran, was the first to escape to
On the eve of one
planned escape, Saddam’s personal assistant and trusted secretary, Abid al- Hamid Mahmood Himood, (Abid Himood) issued a
hand-written order signed by himself and delivered by
a messenger, ordering the confiscation of the passports of Khadduri’s
daughters Yamama and Nofa, and his son Tammam
Two years later,
after many heartbreaking attempts and trials, and betrayal by either a Ba’athist neighbor or a university colleague, the Khadduri’s met their helpmeet for espape
in a Christian named Bassim Ysho’
Putrus, referred to in Khadduri’s
book by his traditional name, Abu Diyar.
"Abu Diyar would only help Christians to escape, due to an
unsavory religiously discriminating experience he had endured in the early
nineties," Khadduri explains, "he could only trust Christians to not
expose him."
Abu Diyar obtained passports and exit visas for the children.
In the meantime,
Khadduri was called into yet another meeting with Jafar.
This time they were in the midst of preparing the final declaration for the
United Nations on the scope of the nuclear weapons program, before and after
the 1991 war.
"We were
about to submit the total gamut of our activities in that report to the
IAEA," Khadduri explains, "Many meetings were held with all of our
colleagues in the now defunct PC3, some of whom I had not seen for several
years. We would spend countless hours in the secret house in Jadiriyah district going over reports, papers and faint
memories. One sticking point was the fate of the magneto-optical discs that Jafar had made me hand over to Abdul Halim
al-Hajjaj before the start of the 1991 war. The
disappearance of the two discs that contained Groups 1, 2 and 3 reports angered
Jafar."
Three hours later
the group still had not gotten to the bottom of who had or what happened to the
magneto optical discs.
Betting on
In the meantime,
Khadduri completed the single page form to apply for a Landed Immigrant
application to
The filled form
was secretly sent in 1995 to the Canadian Consulate in
More than a year
of tense waiting followed.
The sinister
machinations of Abid Himood
haunted Khadduri. The scientist knew his phones were tapped, and was cautious
about what he said. Friends felt threatened by aggressive intelligence
grilling. No matter what Khadduri did, Himood seemed
to find out about it, thwarting every plan.
Khadduri began to
slide into chronic depression.
Abu Diyar and Khadduri suspected that there was a "super
Intelligence Agency," higher than the known eighteen intelligence
agencies, controlled by Abid Himood
and whose personnel were unknown to the rest of the intelligence and security
services.
Al-Sahhaf tried to help by contacting Mohammad al-Douri (Abu Omar) at the Intelligence headquarters to
intercede on Khadduri’s behalf. Abu Omar invited
Khadduri to meet with him at their headquarters, next to the Mansoor restaurant that was bombed in the
The
Khadduri
explains: "It is told that Saddam did enter that meeting place with his
sons, leaving his personal guard at the front of the building. They then
proceeded
to leave the building immediately through the back door
minutes before the exploding bunker busters. He apparently had purposely
arranged to hold that meeting as a bait. He intended
to confirm to himself the information that was reaching him indicating that the
head of his guard entourage was in fact informing the Americans on his
movements and location. It is rumored that Saddam summarily executed him after
the failed attack. "
During Khadduri’s escape planning, Abid Himood, the shadowy head of the "super
intelligence" agency, fed up with al-Sahhaf’s
(Baghdad Bob) continued nagging about Khadduri’s
case, upped the ante by ordering Khadduri to be arrested if he set foot in the
Foreign Ministry again.
Abu
Diyar finally successfully got Khadduri a passport
with another name on it. "By doing that, he would be able to get all of us
out of
Khadduri
and his children would make a successful escape after midnight, at 3 in the
morning, with Abu Diyar and a trusted Jordanian
driver: they were headed for Traibil, a city at the
Jordanian border.
Twenty-four hours
later, a suspicious Abid Himood
dispatched five senior presidential palace staff members to Traibil,
but it was too late to stop the family.
The Khadduris had made it across the border into
Exhiliration
and catharsis
Khadduri recalls
the "exhilarating reunion" with his wife Niran
on Sunday August 2.
"An
impromptu feast was thrown by the neighbors in the building where she had
rented an apartment," he recalls.
They were
summoned the next morning to the Canadian Embassy in
"During that
first week in Amman, I experienced several nightmares of volcanic suppressed
fears," Khadduri recalls, "I would wake up drenched in sweat and
trembling as I dreamt that I was somehow back in Iraq and being asked to report
to Intelligence. I was beginning to unwind."
Dhafir Selbi, Khadduri’s life long friend and previous boss at PC3, had
managed, after seven years of waiting after his retirement, to obtain his
passport. He met up with the family in
Six months later,
a senior Canadian diplomat traveled to
They left for
Arriving in a
snowstorm, twelve years old Nofa broke out in tears,
"I don’t have any friends here," she said. "I don’t know how to
speak English. I want to go back to
"She
persevered and flourished," her father reports. Nofa later wrote an
account of her childhood experience during Gulf War I that has been posted in
the Internet.
Khadduri went on
to land a job as a network administrator at a small college in Toronto, living
quietly until hearing the Bush administration claims of an active Iraqi nuclear
program jolted him into action.
Late in August
2002, after hearing President Bush utter what Khadduri described as "an
ominous deliberate misinformation campaign" he turned to his wife Niran and announced the end of his "low profile slumber." Khadduri would soon take leave from his
network administrator job to complete his memoirs, and write for an independent
news site, while ‘big’ media and government in
Next up
Part IV: "Coming out fully"
Part
4: "Coming out Fully"
Author’s
Note:
The debate
over
Dr. Imad Khadduri was a top scientist involved in Iraq's
nuclear program from 1968 until the end of 1998, when he was able to escape. He
now serves as a network administrator in
In presenting its
case for war, the Bush administration insisted the
The President
stated that the regime posed a "direct and growing threat" to
An imminent
nuclear threat was repeatedly mentioned by administration officials in the
media and in speeches.
Secretary of
State Colin Powell stated, "We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has
ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program" and Vice-President Dick Cheney
told media that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program.
Dr. Khidir Hamza, a former physics
professor from
"One thing
is clear: These weapons must be must be dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must
be dislodged from power," said Sen Joe Biden, D-Delaware.
The hearings, he
added, were "not designed to prejudge any particular course of
action."
On October 6,
2002 President Bush addressed the nation, warning that the Iraqi dictator must
not be permitted to threaten
National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice told media, "We don't want the smoking gun to be
a mushroom cloud."
Both Bush and
Cheney warned of the threat of "nuclear blackmail."
Disturbed by what
he called a deliberate misinformation campaign, Khadduri turned to his wife Niran in August 2002, and announced that he was going to
"come out fully:" a reference to leaving his quiet life behind and
telling what he knew about the nuclear program.
Two hours later,
his first article, Iraq’s nuclear
non-capability, was finished. In it, Khadduri raised serious doubts
about the credibility of British and American intelligence, upon which, the
White House said its claims of a nuclear threat were founded.
"Bush and
Blair are pulling their public by the nose," Khadduri wrote,
"covering their hollow patriotic egging on with once again shoddy
intelligence. But the two parading emperors have no clothes".
Khadduri
recounted the dismal condition of
Scientist
ignored by ‘big media’
Khadduri’s article was sent to several major newspapers,
including the New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The
Independent and The Times.
No one was interested.
A UN official
later emailed Khadduri, "A lot of people are doing their homework. Not the
press."
Enter Erich Marquardt,
editor of online journal Yellow Times.
The editor and the scientist established a strong rapport, leading to the
publishing of several articles.
Soon the Toronto
Star was calling and Canadian TV was battling for a first interview with
Khadduri. Other interviews followed, including one with Reuters, but Khadduri
was largely ignored by the American newspapers and television, and remained
relegated to the less-trafficked independent pages of Yellow Times.
A plan for CBS‘ "60 Minutes" to carry the first American
interview of Khadduri was reportedly scrapped at the last minute, because an
American consultant to CBS believed (but had no proof) that the American
government probably had secret data proving a nuclear program.
Then came a call from CNN. Khadduri reports an Arabic-named CNN
representative, called from CNN headquarters in
CNN senior foreign
correspondent Christiane Amanpour
later made general statements suggesting her own network kowtowed to the
Bush administration in its war reporting.
The statement was
an interesting bookend to CNN’s Eason
"Swallowed
up by the politicians"
Meanwhile, prior
to the war, Khadduri was contacted by and corresponded with a member of the
Iraqi Action Team at the IAEA (referred to here, as "B") who was
scouring
"B" had
concurred with the articles written by Khadduri and published on Yellow Times.
"We
established an immediate rapport," Khadduri said, "He wondered
whether I would be willing to have an interview with the IAEA and ultimately by
UNSCOM, in accordance with the Security Council recommendations. I agreed on
the condition that the interview would be carried out in
A fascinating
email trail between the scientist and the WMD hunter ensued.
"If
"It would
appear this is all a game and that no one is really serious about preventing a
war. I have tried to be technically rigorous. I guess we will be swallowed up
by the politicians."
He also referred
to the strong
"A professional liar?"
B continued:
"Hamza left the country
in 1995 with government permission. He was interviewed and allowed
to leave. He knew nothing and they knew it. He lies all the time…If Hamza can influence Richard Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld
with access to the office of the secretary of defense, then
the
We need to do
something."
The email was
dated February 8, 2003.
Three
weeks later, WorldNetDaily and Newsweek
broke stories on the "sensitive" documents of 1995 Hussein Kamel debriefing in
In the UN
interview, Kamel stated that all weapons had been
destroyed, and no nuclear program was underway. He also characterized Hamza as a "professional liar" who could not
deliver, and was let go. The debriefing also indicates that the UN assessed a
document given to them by Hamza as a fake.
Khadduri said,
"Kamel’s testimony was suppressed for eight
years until it’s ferreting out in February 2003."
It was in fact,
former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who was popping up across the globe
like a vexing jack-in-the-box, offering sensitive UN documents to interested
reporters, of which there were few.
Ritter offered
Fox and Friends the documents live on the air, but the hosts ignored the offer.
This reporter,
Newsweek and later Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who in early
February revealed that Tony Blair's "intelligence dossier" was
plagiarized from a student thesis, obtained the sensitive UN
documents.
Media watchdog
Fair.org called the revelation of the documents, "biggest story of the
Kamel’s name had been repeatedly invoked by administration
officials as they sought to convince the public
Colin Powell, who
said there was no indication that
Meanwhile, an
exception to the aforementioned American media blackout of Dr. Khadduri, was Fox News Channel.
In February of
this year Khadduri appeared on John Kasich’s show, the very week that the story revealing Hussein Kamel’s debriefing documents broke.
An ignorant
Kasich, apparently unaware of the stories, talked over the top of Khadduri, and
insisted there definitely was a post-Gulf War nuclear program because Kamel had said so.
He also asked
Khadduri if he was a Saddam sympathizer.
‘In all
fairness," Khadduri notes, "Kasich did hold another interview and he
courageously did correctly quote a few damning lines from my articles."
Aluminum
tubes, uranium discounted
On February 16, B
wrote on the notorious aluminum tubes that the Bush administration insisted
were proof of a reconstituted nuclear program: "Fact. The aluminum tubes
have been used to build tens of thousands of rockets. Hypothesis.
The tubes might be diverted for centrifuges. Can’t people understand the
difference between fact and hypothesis?"
The International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that the aluminum tubes were not intended
for nuclear weapons development but for the reverse engineering of 81-
millimeter rockets
In other
"B" emails, he advised, "I cannot approach the press or write
articles," adding "I thought the Powell speech was the bottom of the
barrel. They have no useful evidence. The aluminum tubes are a joke. They are
parts for rockets that
Faleh’s
house, Blix blunders
One issue that
Khadduri found especially provoking was the UN search of Faleh
Hamza’s house.
Falih (or Faleh) Hamza, is a laser physicist who Khadduri says had no part
in
"They
claimed that the documents they had found in his home indicated that
A friend of Khadduri’s in the Iraqi Action Team in Vienna then informed
him of a "revealing fact" just one day before Blix’s
report to the Security Council on January 27, 2003.
"Upon Blix’s insistence, the teams had obtained from the American
and British Intelligence a list of about twenty five sites, one of which was
ultra hush-hush," Khadduri said, "The inspectors duly visited and
inspected each one of these sites in December 2002 and had found absolutely no
evidence of any rejuvenated nuclear weapons program. In fact, some of them even
came out stating that US Intelligence was providing them with nothing but
"garbage after
garbage after garbage.‘"
Khadduri
complains that in his report to the Security Council on January 27, 2003 Blix failed to mention the lack of findings of the secret
Intelligence information provided by the American and British Intelligence.
B wrote Khadduri:
"Yes, a finding of ‘no finding,’ especially in a place where something was
specifically alleged is a major finding."
Khadduri faults Blix on another point, accusing him of intentionally
spreading misinformation: "[Blix] also promoted
the case of Falih Hamza as
being another belated uranium enrichment attempt by
On the Faleh issue, B wrote to Khadduri, "Notice how Powell
softened his talk on Faleh’s house? A big softening. I hope you still feel it’s worth talking to
me. Someone made that softening happen."
On March 8,
Jacques Baute, head of the Iraqi Action Team of IAEA
inspectors, flew to
(Note: Baute is not the identity of "B")
"We knew
each other from
Signing
your own "death warrant"
Khadduri was
particularly irked by Powell’s claim that Iraqi scientists were asked to sign
confessional declarations, with a death penalty clause.
They were
allegedly used to force the scientists to promise not to reveal their secrets
to the IAEA inspection teams.
"Exactly the
opposite was true," says Khadduri, "The four or five, as I recall,
such declarations, the last of which was in 1997, held us to the penalty of
death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and
reports that may still be in our possession!"
"One would
have thought that had Powell’s Intelligence services provided him with a copy
of these declarations," he added, " and not depended on ‘defectors’
testimonies who are solely motivated by their self-promotion …and availed
himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually
said,…"
On this issue, B
wrote: "What did you think of the Powell talk? Is it really that desperate?….For example, everyone with a security clearance in the
B added, "I
was, personally, very influenced by the terrorism part, because the nuclear
part was a joke. If Saddam is harboring [al-]Qaida, then there is plenty of reason to act. If it
is aluminum tubes, then the
How key
officials steered the course toward war
Key facts
regarding Bush administration claims about a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear
program have been uncovered by investigative reporter Paul Sperry of WorldNetDaily, and are as follows:
The buried centrifuge parts
The
Bush administration, it’s case for a revived nuclear
program crumbling, latched onto
The
administration failed to mention, that Obeidi, the
previous head of the centrifuge enrichment process, himself stated that
Jacques Baute, chief U.N. nuclear inspector for
A source who declined to be named said Obeidi and his
family are beingheld incommunicado in
WND’s Paul Sperry commented, "That the CIA would
invite CNN over to
Sperry also stated, "Congress needs to call White House and CIA aides to
testify in formal and open hearings – unless, of course, it intends to abdicate
its oversight powers along with its power to declare war."
Dead
scientists don’t talk
David Kay, head
of the 1200-member Iraqi Survey Group charged with searching for WMD in
Kay’s statement
indicates there was no evidence of a nuclear program, although he repeatedly
mentioned suspicious and uncharacterized "projects" by Dr. Khalid Said, the leader of the secret PC3’s Group 4.
Dr. Said won’t be
giving testimony about
According to
Khadduri and others, Said had taken over as leader after Dr. Khidir Hamza ("Saddam’s Bombmaker") was kicked out in 1987 for inferior
performance, after only six months in the position.
Kay referred to
scientists being afraid to testify, and difficulties in investigating the area
of nuclear issues because Dr. Said is now deceased.
Dr. Said died in
a hail of bullets when he failed to stop quickly enough at a
And as previously
reported in this series, the
The choice of Hamza is troubling given his credibility problems which
have received almost no press in
The documents
claimed reconstitution of
Last year, David Albright
told Australia's Lateline, "I must apologize that we no
longer can in any way recommend Dr. Hamza. I
unfortunately now believe he is deliberately distorting both his past credentials and his
statements about Iraqi nuclear capabilities then and now."
Albright is a physicist, and President of the Institute for Science and
International Security (ISIS) in
Albright
cooperated actively with the IAEA Action Team from 1992 until 1997 and
questioned members of
Albright said, "I believe
that his statements are often inaccurate, they're inconsistent," adding,
"I think he's distorted his title dramatically."
Ironically, Hamza is quoted as an authoritative source on a White House web
page on
This reporter
asked Dr. Imad Khadduri if his testimony had ever
been sought by US government officials, or if he had ever been asked to testify
before Congress.
"Never, " he replied.
The lack of
interest in questioning Khadduri, who has been available for questioning for
five years, and whose experience in the program was according to interviewed
officials, far more extensive and recent than "Saddam’s Bombmaker," raises serious questions about the
motivation, competency and thoroughness of "intelligence" presented
to the American public on
In addition to
the lack of evidence of a nuclear program, Sperry's investigations for WorldNetDaily led to the following reports:
Other administration officials have backpedaled
also, and language appears to have softened to include adjectives
like Iraqi "aspirations" or "desires" for WMD, and
"programs" of WMD, which could arguably include intent and paperwork,
rather than actual weapons.
Imad Khadduri contends that Bush, Blair and their senior
officials waged a criminal invasion based on misinformation.
"Is this the
democracy model for a "liberated"
Meanwhile,
well-known law professor Francis Boyle, politicians, journalists and even some
Next up: Part
V: ‘Weaponsgate’
Part 5: Weaponsgate
Author’s
Note:
The debate
over
Dr. Imad Khadduri was a top scientist involved in Iraq's
nuclear program from 1968 until the end of 1998, when he was able to escape. He
now serves as a network administrator in
"And ye
shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. John VIII-XXXII"
---Inscription in main lobby of CIA headquarters
As former Iraqi
nuclear scientist Dr. Imad Khadduri, a Canadian
resident, continues to be ignored by the Bush administration officials and
mainstream American media, David Kay, who is in Iraq reportedly working hard to
uncover the truth about the alleged Iraqi nuclear program, repeatedly cited
only a dead scientist in his recent report to media -Dr. Khalid
Said.
As mentioned
earlier in this series, Dr. Said cannot report on the nuclear issues raised by
the Bush administration because was killed by American troops on April 8, 2003
when he failed to stop quickly enough at a
Adding to the
omission of ignoring the "live" scientist, Khadduri was very familiar
with the work of Khalid Said’s
Group 4 activities under the secret PC3 group (see previous installments of
this series) and at one point carried and concealed the only magneto-optical
disk of Said’s group work with him.
The omission is
more ironic given that behind the scenes, an IAEA official (referred to here
simply as "B") is currently in the process of questioning Khadduri
about Said.
"Many of us
questioned Oeidi saying that Khalid
was behind centrifuges because dead men can't defend themselves," writes
"B." "Frankly, we were not impressed with Khalid
as a manager and as a technician. Would you be willing to share your candid
opinion with me of Khalid as a leader and as a
technical visionary?"
And referring to
Jacques Baute, chief International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), nuclear inspector in
A "Faustian bargain?"
Dr. Gordon Prather, a physicist
who was the army's chief scientist during the Reagan years, notes the reports
that Kay was fired from his position as deputy director of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Iraq Action Team in the early 1990s because of his
contacts with the
One
Pentagon source indicated Kay was not seen or heard of at the Pentagon in the
1980’s when he was on staff. The source believes from as far back as the ‘80’s
Kay may have been a CIA operative.
Khadduri told
this reporter, "We were informed by our Security/Intelligence - since the
day that David Kay was put in
he set-up his communication trailer in front of the Khairat
building -where the inspectors were encircled for a week- in September 1991, he
beamed the scanned reports gleaned from that building directly to the CIA in
Langley, and then to the UN/IAEA."
David Kay went on
to later tell media, "I realize it was always a bargain with the Devil --
spies spying. The longer it continued, the more the intelligence agencies
would, often for very legitimate reasons, decide that they had to use the
access they got through cooperation with UNSCOM to carry out their
missions."
"Both Hamza and Kay are snakes, and I don’t mind going on record
saying that," Prather commented.
Objective
reports?
David Kay is
presently tasked with uncovering the actual objectives, scope, and dimensions
of
Kay gave media a
short unclassified report
on Oct. 2, the same day that he gave behind-closed-doors "interim
report" to a panel of several congressional committees.
Kay’s report is
notable for its subtle and sophisticated omissions which are characteristic of
the language of political propaganda and persuasion and not merely a function
of the unfinished nature of the work.
The report is
peppered with linguistic vagaries expansive enough to drive a hypothetical
biological weapons trailer through - including phrases and words like "may
have," "research," " plans," "could be applied
to," "indications" of, "interest, "laboratory possibly
used for," "can be used to produce " (vs. was used to
produce) "searching for" and "capacity."
It is a report
impossible for journalists to corroborate because of the vagaries and the lack
of names of scientists interviewed -except for the dead one.
There is said to
be "no proof" the notorious two trailers President Bush said were
"weapons of mass destruction," were used for biological weapons
production, but Kay instead uses a ‘reverse-logic’ stating, "nothing we
have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production."
The mere realm of
possibility thus becomes sufficient cause for a hypothesis reaffirmed, and for
the endless and impossible proving of a negative - a hallmark of the
administration’s war arguments.
The case of
the mysterious "mushroom cloud"
Unnamed Iraqi
officials allegedly told Kay that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons
development at "some future point" putting the nuke activity
reiterated by the administration prior to the war, as well as an important
pre-war rationale, in the realm of Steven Spielberg’s "Department of Pre-Crime."
Others allegedly
told Kay that Saddam "wanted" to restart the nuclear program,
but no proof has been uncovered that there was capability or operation of even
the most elemental activity of such.
Evidence of
renewed nuclear weapons research has not been found, not even esoteric doodling
on the back of a
Kay reported that
Dr. Khalid Ibrahim Said
(the "dead scientist") "began several small and relatively
unsophisticated research initiatives that could be applied to
nuclear weapons development."
Could be applied
in what way? Were they directly related to nuclear weapons research or were
they research initiatives in another field with unavoidable "dual" applications
common to the field of nuclear physics? Were these initiatives done for the
government or his own enjoyment and exercise as a scientist?
These and other
important basic questions are not answered in the vague language of the report.
The villainous
vial
Among the
"finds" of the report, was a vial of live C. botulinum
Okra B. (from which a biological agent can be produced) hidden in the back of
an Iraqi scientist’s refrigerator.
The tube was touted as a vindication of war, but it raises another question:
was a bombing campaign and the deaths of over 10,000 people, and the dropping of napalm the only way the
technologically superior and intelligence-equipped US could get to a vial of crunk hidden in the back of a lone scientist’s
refrigerator?
Said Kay,
"This discovery -- hidden in the home of a BW scientist -- illustrates the
point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material
that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons."
However the
report gives no evidence of any capability of biological weapons production.
Glen Rangwala of Cambridge University points out that botulinum type B can also be used for making an antidote
for common botulism poisoning and for that reason many countries and military
laboratories keep sample strains, including the
"Throughout
the report, Kay kicks up a sandstorm of suggestiveness, but no more,"
wrote Fred Kaplan in MSNBC’s Slate.
Kaplan called
Kay’s report, a "shockingly lame piece of work."
The
‘compassionate war’
WMD and terrorist
connections were not the only themes that were and continue to be exposited as
pretext for the preemptive war.
In his address
before Australian parliament, President Bush invoked a familiar theme of the
inhumane brutality of Saddam Hussein, suggesting that it was a vindication of
war.
"Who can
possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in
power?" Bush asked as he wrapped up a six-nation lobbying campaign
addressing Asian and Pacific allies.
Administration
officials have repeatedly referred to Saddam Hussein’s hideous atrocities
including victim’s tongues being cut out, brutal rapes and persons being fed
head-first into a shredding machine.
They were
powerful emotional appeals to a compassionate
The references to
brutality though beg a question related to the second presidential debate of
the 2000 campaign, regarding the genocide in
In 1994, 600,000
people were hacked to death with machetes and otherwise brutally murdered in a
frenzy of violence so horrific one African missionary said, "There are no
more devils in Hell. They are all in
Aerial
photographs showed an apocalyptic scene of rivers running red with blood while
clogged with the bloated corpses of tens of thousands of people.
Former President
Clinton did not intervene, and later apologized for "missing" the
genocide.
During the
presidential debate, Bush was asked if he would've done anything differently.
Bush indicated he
would not have acted differently,
adding, "I thought they made the right decision not to send
The fact that the
brutality in
Calling for
investigations
Meanwhile
journalists, politicians and academics as well as two
California cities and grassroots
citizen groups , are calling for investigations, and
even impeachment.
WorldNetDaily Washington bureau chief Paul Sperry commented,
"Congress needs to call White House and CIA aides to testify in formal and
open hearings – unless, of course, it intends to abdicate its oversight powers
along with its power to declare war. "
The
New York Times’ Paul Krugman argued, "If that
claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in
American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than
Iran-contra."
John
Dean, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon said, "Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to
Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential
scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush
Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get
Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take
control of
Dean, in his
previous legal analysis for Findlaw.com, was careful to add that there needed
to be proof that President Bush knowingly lied.
Supporters of the
President consider such suggestions outrageous, and even traitorous, citing the
need for the nation to be unified in the face of the enemy of terrorism.
Administration
officials have previously suggested that media if too critical in its coverage, could in effect be aiding the enemy –terrorists.
Calling for impeachment : "We told you
so!"
Meanwhile,
law professor Francis Boyle
of the University of Illinois, continues to spearhead calls for
impeachment of Bush,
Cheney,
Ashcroft
and Rumsfeld.
Boyle leads the Impeach Bush Now campaign, which is largely run by
"hard-working and idealistic students."
Responding to Khadduri’s revelations, Boyle said, "I and others in
the American peace
movement were saying this months ago when a crisis was first developing - that
there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) over there, and it was all just
propaganda to generate a war," Boyle said.
"Now for the
legal and constitutional aspect, if we take a look at the resolution passed in
October authorizing the use of military force, the ‘whereas’ clauses are filled
with statements that were wrong. They were propaganda at the time and drafted
into legislation by Alberto Gonzalez - then sent to Congress.
We are in a
situation where the White House procured a de facto declaration of war
on a basis of fraud and misrepresentation.
The point is, if
President Clinton can be impeached for lying about sex, what about President
Bush for lying about war?"
Bush
"cooked" over "conspiracy?"
Boyle agrees with
John Dean who has said that the situation may fall under the "conspiracy
to defraud" statue, which if applied to Nixon, is also applicable to Bush.
"To put it
bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus
information, he is cooked," Dean said, "Manipulation or deliberate
misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be ‘a high
crime’ under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a
violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal
anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony ‘to defraud the United
States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.’
Boyle observes,
"We’ve seen Congressman Conyers say the administration absolutely lied
about these WMD, now Sen. Kennedy has said the war was procured in the basis of
fraud."
But is it
credible that Democrats really were in the dark when it came to intelligence
questions, including those Democrats who sat on intelligence committees? And if
they were, why did they not speak out vigorously before the war?
"I think
they knew all along," said Boyle, "knew it
was propaganda concocted by the spin-cons at the Pentagon."
On
a possible congressional reaction, Boyle speculated, "They will say they
did vote for war, but were lied to. They might act to protect themselves, by
sponsoring a bill of impeachment."
"I
think it will become clearer as time goes on, about the assertions regarding
WMD -WMD that aren’t there - regretfully for everyone involved, including those
serving so bravely in our military, the killed, wounded and the 10,000 Iraqi
civilians killed."
"It’s a
terrible mess."
He adds that
impeachment comes down to citizen participation: "The Congress is
empowered to impeach a sitting President, but will only do so in response to
overwhelming public pressure"
"
Meanwhile, as
American anti-war demonstrators plan another march on
the Capitol and San Francisco on October 25th, Imad Khadduri says he weeps over Iraq, which he says has
served as fodder for the political ambitions of both Saddam Hussein and
President Bush, with the Iraqi people a mere afterthought.
Khadduri, like so
many others, has suffered at the hands of Saddam, yet says he fears
"Bush, Blair
and their senior officials lied to their people, knowingly, and waged a
criminal invasion …Is this the democracy model for a ‘liberated’
The scientist was
motivated earlier this year to compile his notes on the Iraqi nuclear program,
and review information with his former associates as well as release documents
pertaining to covert operations of the pre-Gulf War program.
The author
generously shared much of that information with this writer over a period of
months starting in February 2003, in the form of phone interviews, email
interviews, emails sent to him from other Iraqi nuclear officials on the
history of the program, -all information that would wind up forming critical
parts of his new book, "Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage." In addition, this
writer received a rough draft of chapter four, the fascinating email trails
between the IAEA’s "B," and the scientist,
and finally an advance electronic copy of the book prior to its release.
The availability
of the book, originally slated to be in American bookstores in December or
January, has now been accelerated due to demand generated by the publication of
this series. The Washington Post has expressed interest in Khadduri’s
information, and investigative reporter Seymour Hersh
of the New Yorker recently completed a one-hour interview with the scientist.
The
"Lion of
Meanwhile,
Khadduri predicts that the
"The Lion of
Babylon will rise again," he predicts
Khadduri’s comments were mirrored by statements made by US
intelligence experts who previously warned administration officials that Saddam
posed no imminent threat to the
Classic military
strategy theory often counsels against backing an opponent who is not an
imminent threat into a "corner" and allowing him no "way
out," warning that such a controversial move may create a greater danger
than previously existed, thereby complicating military decision-making.
That type of
counsel also appeared in a still-secret report given to the President on Oct. 2
2002. The summary, or "key judgments" section, of the 90-page
National Intelligence Estimate was recently declassified. WorldNetDaily
obtained a copy from the National Security Council. (The report is different
from the unclassified 25-page white paper the CIA made public on its
website last October.) Page 4 of the
report said
"Saddam if
sufficiently desperate might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaeda
–with worldwide reach and extensive terrorist infrastructure, and already
engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the United States could perpetrate the
type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct."
A chemical or
biological weapons attack against the
Meanwhile, Osama
bin Laden sidekick Ayman al-Zawahiri
has issued an ominous tape-recorded warning: "But we tell
"364
days of desecration"
How prepared is
the
"The only
thing that's moving fast in
"Crude
politics"
Sperry,
author of "Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on
Terrorism" has been highly critical
of the Bush administration’s "diversion" from Osama bin Laden
to Saddam Hussein,
stating, "It's abundantly clear that Bush is playing politics with
homeland security. Apparently his own political survival is more important than
that of the people he swore to protect from al-Qaida after
9-11. That's not leadership, that's cowardice."
Syndicated
columnist Michelle Malkin recently wrote a scathing
indictment of government failures, saying American politicians were spitting on the
graves of the victims of 9/11.
Malkin warned that one day of remembrance and rhetoric by
corrupt, callous and incompetent politicians, will be followed by "364
days of desecration in deed."
Meanwhile David Kay continues his search for WMD in
"It is far
too early to reach any definitive conclusions," says Kay, "and, in
some areas, we may never reach that goal."
The information
provided in this report raises serious questions about the information and
processes used to reach those conclusions.
The fact that the
US is having such difficulties reaching definitive conclusions about WMD
after the launching of preemptive war -the philosophy of which is
rooted in superlative and unerring prior intelligence – will continue to
raise serious questions that demand substantive answers and action.
* * * * * *
Note: Dr. Khadduri's new book, titled Iraq's Nuclear
Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions is available in American bookstores
and from the publisher/author.
The author has
agreed to ship copies out himself to Etherzone
readers who want to obtain a copy of the book now. Signed copies are also
available and inquiries should be directed to Dr. Khadduri via his website: Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage www.iraqsnuclearmirage.com
Sherrie Gossett can be reached at: spy_glass_3@yahoo.com
Published in the October 24, 2003 issue of Ether Zone.
Copyright © 1997 - 2003 Ether Zone.
