new information on Iraqi weapons

[Seth Ackerman]

To All:

In news that "raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles
attributed to Iraq still exist," Newsweek's March 3 edition reports that
Hussein Kamel -- the former Iraqi weapons chief whose 1995 defection
proved the turning point in the decade-long U.N. weapons inspections
process -- had revealed in classified briefings to inspectors and CIA
analysts that Iraq destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological
weapons in 1991, as Iraq claims.

Until now, Kamel, who was killed shortly after returning to Iraq in 1996,
has best been known for exposing Iraq's deceptions about how far its
pre-Gulf War biological weapons programs had advanced. But according to
Newsweek's John Barry, who has covered the U.N. inspections for more than a
decade, Kamel also told inspectors that "the [weapons] stocks had been
destroyed" and all that remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks,
microfiches" and molds for warheads. But this part of his testimony was
"hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing
still more."

The news is particularly  noteworthy because hawks in the Bush
administration have frequently referred to the Kamel episode as evidence
that U.N. inspectors are incapable of disarming Iraq on their own.  Kamel's
defection "should serve as a reminder to all that we often learned more as
the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself,"
Vice President Dick Cheney said last August in a speech warning against
sending inspectors back to Iraq.

Seth Ackerman

---

[Note: As quickly becomes obvious, the headline over this article is a red
herring.]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/876128.asp?0dm=-11DK#BODY

Exclusive: The Defector's Secrets

Before his death, a high-ranking defector said Iraq had not abandoned its
WMD ambitions

By John Barry
NEWSWEEK

March 3 issue -  Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to
defect from Saddam Hussein's inner circle, told CIA and British intelligence
officers and U.N. inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the gulf war,
Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the
missiles to deliver them.

KAMEL WAS SADDAM Hussein's son-in-law and had direct knowledge of what he
claimed: for 10 years he had run Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and
missile programs. Kamel told his Western interrogators that he hoped his
revelations would trigger Saddam's overthrow. But after six months in exile
in Jordan, Kamel realized the United States would not support his dream of
becoming Iraq's ruler after Saddam's demise. He chose to return to
Iraq-where he was promptly killed.

        Kamel's revelations about the destruction of Iraq's WMD stocks were
hushed up by the U.N. inspectors, sources say, for two reasons. Saddam did
not know how much Kamel had revealed, and the inspectors hoped to bluff
Saddam into disclosing still more. And Iraq has never shown the
documentation to support Kamel's story. Still, the defector's tale raises
questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist.

        Kamel said Iraq had not abandoned its WMD ambitions. The stocks had
been destroyed to hide the programs from the U.N. inspectors, but Iraq had
retained the design and engineering details of these weapons. Kamel talked
of hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches and even missile-warhead
molds. "People who work in MIC [Iraq's Military Industrial Commission, which
oversaw the country's WMD programs] were asked to take documents to their
houses," he said. Why preserve this technical material? Said Kamel: "It is
the first step to return to production" after U.N. inspections wind down.

        Kamel was interrogated in separate sessions by the CIA, Britain's
M.I.6 and a trio from the United Nations, led by the inspection team's head,
Rolf Ekeus. NEWSWEEK has obtained the notes of Kamel's U.N. debrief, and
verified that the document is authentic. NEWSWEEK has also learned that
Kamel told the same story to the CIA and M.I.6. (The CIA did not respond to
a request for comment.)


         The notes of the U.N. interrogation-a three-hour stretch one August
evening in 1995- show that Kamel was a gold mine of information. He had a
good memory and, piece by piece, he laid out the main personnel, sites and
progress of each WMD program. Kamel was a manager-not a scientist or
engineer-and, sources say, some of his technical assertions were later found
to be faulty. (A military aide who defected with Kamel was apparently a more
reliable source of tech-nical data. This aide backed Kamel's assertions
about the destruction of WMD stocks.) But, overall, Kamel's information was
"almost embarrass-ing, it was so extensive," Ekeus recalled-including the
fact that Ekeus's own Arabic translator, a Syrian, was, according to Kamel,
an Iraqi agent who had been reporting to Kamel himself all along.