----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Burford" <cburford at gn.apc.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Cc: <office at stopwar.org.uk> Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 3:02 AM Subject: Urgent for UK MP's debate - Newsweek bombshell on Iraqi defector
> Can anyone forward this item spotted by Seth, urgently to UK MP's for the
> important debate in the House of Commons today. It is just the sort of
> issue of concealing or manipulating the evidence that has blown up in the
> face of the British government before. Also it echoes recent murder trials
> in the UK where it emerges the prosecution have concealed important
> information of use to the defence.
>
> The core of the war campaign is that the Iraqi's must be lying about still
> having WMD. Have the US and British governments concealed important
> evidence that Iraq may not?
>
> Some MP needs to stand up with a copy of Newsweek in their hand for the
> television cameras, and ask Blair a question, which will be taken up by
all
> the media within 24 hours.
>
> Chris Burford
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>