The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Part Four

by emptywheel

Overview: In this series, I examine some funky aspects of the story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi scientist who hid nuclear blueprints and centrifuge parts under his rose bush. The first post provides a timeline of Obeidi's story. The second and third posts raise several problems with Obeidi's story: the explanation for how the materials were preserved is unlikely, the blueprints don't match details we know of said blueprints, and the prototype pieces Obeidi says he turned over don't match the pictures the CIA released of them. In this post, I will look Kurt Pitzer's role in the early part of the story.

As I've shown in the last two posts, there are reasons to doubt the materials Obeidi turned over to the Americans are authentic.These reasons are not enough, IMO, to discount the story entirely. But they raise enough questions to beg an examination of the provenance of the materials. How credible is Obeidi's story about meeting Kurt Pitzer and through him negotiating a deal with the Americans?

Obeidi's Story

To answer that question, I'm going to examine the stated or presumed motives of Obeidi and Pitzer. As I'll suggest, the behaviors of Obeidi and Pitzer are not entirely consistent with their  presumed motivations.

Obeidi states his motivations clearly and repeatedly in his book. Throughout, he describes his desire to protect his family. After the fall of Baghdad, he also describes trying to minimize his exposure from having the centrifuge. Obeidi describes his options in depth. He considered selling the centrifuge, but worries about getting caught. But, he thinks,

...the idea of assisting another covert nuclear program was repugnant to me. The only other option left was to give them to the Americans. Deep inside, I yearned to reveal the truth about the capabilities leftover from the Iraqi centrifuge program and finallly rid myself of this liability.But by approaching the Americans, I could completely lose control of my destiny. There was no way of knowing how they would treat any of Iraq's former WMD scientists. And I was still holding evidence. (205)

As described here, Obeidi's motivations make sense. As I've reviewed, Obeidi's limited interrogation and captivity is fairly unique among the Iraqi scientists and some didn't survive, so he was right to worry about his safety. (Though remember, this was written after Obeidi experienced significant difficulties with the Americans.) And, he was right to turn the centrifuge from a liability into a benefit. My biggest confusion about Obeidi's story is the timing.

Here's a timeline of Obeidi's (the book) and Pitzer's (the magazine) versions of the early part of this story (plus David Albright's involvement, for his seemingly impartial stance). There's a disagreement about the timing of Obeidi's and Pitzer's first meeting. Pitzer says it happened "a few days after U.S. troops took over the city in 2003." Baghdad fell on April 10, which would put their meeting no later than April 13 or 14. Obeidi doesn't provide a clear date for their meeting. But both the narrative structure of his book (which places the Pitzer meeting after the bomb removal, which happened on or after April 17) and logic (which says Obeidi wouldn't have met with his colleagues in a garden with a large bomb in it) suggest the meeting took place at least a few days after April 17. Which makes sense, since David Albright reports his first call from Obeidi (which itself took place one day after Obeidi contacted Pitzer)  as taking place in late April.

Date	Obeidi	Pitzer	Albright
3/19-4/10		Embedded with 3rd ID
4/10	Starts trying to get rid of bomb in backyard	Jumps embed
4/11	Sets up meeting with Lt. Copley
4/12	Fails to meet Lt. Copley	W/ Lt. Klysa, Marine Civil Affairs
~4/14		Meets Obeidi
~4/16	Meets Cpt. Butler	Calls Albright
~4/17	Cpt. Butler removes bomb
~4/18	Meets with Adil/Faris, Faris contacts Americans
~4/20	Meets Pitzer
~4/21	Calls Albright		Hears from Obeidi
4/28		Publishes only story from Iraq
Until 5/17	Meets regularly with Pitzer	Meets regularly with Obeidi
~5/15	Visit from Kurd	Obeidi reveals his centrifuge
~5/17	Interview with CIA then DIA	Interview with DIA then CIA
Until late May/June	Interviews with CIA
~Late May	Digs up centrifuge, no mention of Pitzer

In any case, Obeidi almost certainly met Pitzer after he met Captain Butler, an engineer whom Obeidi found sympathetic. Which raises the question of why--rather than presenting his story to an officer trained in ordnance--Obeidi risked exposing his identity to a complete stranger with no apparent background in weapons at all. Pitzer explains this by suggesting that Obeidi had already been rebuffed by the military.

He had tried contacting U.S. troops, but they had rebuffed him and threatened him with arrest if he showed up again. Now he wanted to know if I could use my satellite phone to help him.

Perhaps he had been. Obeidi seems to have left out any details that reflect badly on the US, so if he was rebuffed, he may have chosen to obscure it. Or perhaps Obeidi presented his colleague Faris' unsuccessful attempt to turn himself as his own. But that doesn't change the fact that, by Obeidi's own description, he had already met someone in the US military he trusted before he sought out any journalist. And as Obeidi's description of his attempt to find a journalist at the Palestine Hotel reveals, every time Obeidi contacted the US or westerners, he risked arrest or harrassment.

"I am trying to get inside the hotel" [Obeidi] shouted.
"Nobody goes in without a pass," he said.
"I am a scientist," I said. "A radio broadcast said we should turn ourselves in."
The chanting around me grew deafening, and the marine looked fidgety.
"You're not coming in here!" he shouted. "What do you want me to do? Do you want me to handcuff you and take you to prison?" (207)

So it just doesn't make sense that after he had already had a several conversations with someone at his own home, Obeidi would then entrust his story to a complete stranger.

I should admit one possibility. Obeidi might just be very smart. That is, he may have realized that the best way to protect himself would be to alert the outside world to his presence and willingness to work with authorities. His contacts with David Albright almost certainly helped him go free after he was imprisoned. And the CNN interview--for all its faults and inaccuracies--seems to have been a critical factor as well. So it may be that Obeidi calculated he'd be safer talking to a journalist than someone in the military.

Kurt Pitzer's Story

Which brings me to Kurt Pitzer. Pitzer's motivations are less clear than Obeidi's. He does not acknowledge his active role in the book so we can't divine his character. And while he does admit he was the journalist who helped Obeidi connect with David Albright in the MoJo article, he doesn't say why he dedicated so much time to Obeidi's cause. The jist of his MoJo story--to raise concerns about proliferation associated with Iraqi scientists who were not yet accounted for--suggest he has some recognition of the problem of proliferation. For the rest of his motivation, we can only make assumptions given the limited biography MoJo gives.

Kurt Pitzer is a former commercial longline fisherman and relief worker who has reported from many of the world's turbulent regions, including the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He was embedded with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq, then jumped his embed as Baghdad fell. He met Dr. Mahdi Obeidi soon afterward and helped him go public with Saddam Hussein's remaining nuclear secrets. He and Obeidi cowrote The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind, which will be published in paperback in September.

From that, it might be safe to assume Pitzer has a taste for adventure and an interest in helping others. Presumably, he also has an interest in journalistic scoops.

But therein lies the beginning of my confusion. Taste for adventure? I can see how that'd bring you to Iraq, after reporting in the Balkans, West Bank, and Afghanistan. An interest in helping others? That helps explain why Pitzer would interrupt what he was doing to make sure Obeidi found a way to bring his family out of Iraq safely.

It's the reporting thing that I don't get.

According to my timeline, Pitzer was in Kuwait and Iraq from (presumably, since he was embedded with the 3rd Infranty Division) before March 19 until at least the time when Obeidi got arrested on June 3. And according to Lexis Nexis a La Carte, he published just one article the entire time he was in Iraq, a story for People Magazine on April 28 describing some of the negative aspects of the occupation.

Now, it's not so much the post-embed period that seems odd to me. It is possible that Pitzer listened to Obeidi's story and realized he had a better story in front of him, asking to use his satellite phone, than he would meet wandering the streets of Baghdad for the next month. I can only presume Pitzer and Obeidi agreed to write a book together very early in their relationship. Josh Marshall reported that Obeidi had a book deal already by August 6, when Obeidi was stuck in Kuwait. So unless Pitzer followed Obeidi to Kuwait, then the interviews and deal to write the book took place in Baghdad in May and June.

And it certainly sounds like Pitzer put in enough time for the interviews. He describes meeting Obeidi every day during this period, for over a month's time.

So we waited. A dapper 59-year-old, Obeidi arrived every day to greet me wearing an elegant abiyaa robe. When he felt especially nervous, we met in clandestine locations: by lamplight at my translator's home or in the courtyard of an Iraqi acquaintance. At other times, we sat on plastic lawn chairs in his garden, trying to figure out how he could avoid arrest by U.S. troops, as his wife and daughters served us cookies and tea. Every now and again, he would drop hints about the secrets he wanted to reveal.

There simply aren't that many people to call, using the satellite phone, from Iraq. So I've got to assume they must have also been conducting interviews.

I would say, though, that it's rather remarkable that, after spending at least a month interviewing Obeidi, Pitzer didn't manage to get any part of the scoop with CNN. Think about that. Pitzer could have submitted Obeidi's story for publication any time between the Obeidi's June 3 arrest and the June 24 CNN scoop. Why wait? Here's a guy who invested at least a month in this story, who didn't report it for the first time until the book appeared in 2004.

But let's put that aside. Perhaps the CIA requested Pitzer hold off on the story--they asked the same of CNN, after all.

It's Pitzer's embed, though, that seems very odd. Being embedded with the 3rd ID may not be so glamorous as being embedded with the 75th XTF, as Judy was. But damn, the 3rd ID was the unit that led the charge to Baghdad. It did some of the most heroic fighting of the war. How do you embed with such a unit and not write anything?

Now, it appears that Pitzer has never been a prolific reporter--at least not since 1993, when he worked for the LAT on a local beat. According to Lexis Nexis, Pitzer was a local reporter for the LAT in 1993-94 (not really a hot spot, but you've got to start somewhere), he reported from the Balkans for the Boston Globe in 1999 (about 10 stories worth, primarily as a correspondant contributing to other Globe writers' stories), wrote two stories from Afghanistan in 2001 and two stories from Palestine in 2002. And, of course, one from Iraq.

Pitzer does, however, show a great deal of consistency in the subject of his reporting. His Balkans stories offer some perspective from refugee camps, as when his contribution to a story was:

In the Macedonian capital, Skojpe, about 100 young ethnic Albanians danced to Albanian pop music and waved flags from the United States, Britain, and France, confident that the pact would lead to a quick return home.

"To think that I could be going back soon, it's unbelievable. I love America," shouted Petrit Bytyqi, 19, a refugee from Pristina, Kosovo's capital. Grabbing the American flag out of his hand, his friend Muharrem Berisha screamed above the music: "We're going home."

From both Afghanistan and the West Bank, he offered commentary on how well a particular organization was managing PR. He found the Northern Alliance to be weaker than the KLA:

For media covering events in Afghanistan, the communications failure has been bewildering. Many of the same journalists covered the last major international conflict, in Kosovo, where a similar rebel organisation mounted an undoubtedly more successful comms campaign. In 1999, the Kosovo Liberation Army wooed the international community by presenting itself as a victim of genocide, with the clear message that its forces wanted Nato assistance to restore peaceful living conditions in its homeland.

Although its use of modern PR tools was mostly limited to a website run by Kosovar Albanians in exile, the KLA ran an effective grassroots campaign implemented through its best spokespeople, the refugees. As media were kept out of Kosovo during the Nato bombardment, more than one journalist noted KLA activism in the refugee camps in 1999, where fighters went tent to tent in Albania and Macedonia urging refugee families to paint for journalists a horrifying picture of atrocities either witnessed or heard of second hand. Significant differences between the two conflicts cannot excuse the fact that the failure of the Northern Alliance to convey a similar message shows a remarkable lack of homework on the part of its comms staff.

'The problem is that we have for so long been fighting against the Taliban, we don't have a clear message to communicate about what we are for,' says Hashmat Moslih, an Afghan resident of Australia who has returned to his country to fight with the Northern Alliance . 'We need to recast ourselves in a positive light and speak in terms that the West can understand.'

Whereas the Palestinian Authority was doing a much better job than the Northern Alliance.

'We've started focusing on putting a human face on our tragedy,' Agawani says. 'We now understand the Western audience will be less likely to respond to the killing of 'a child' than to that of 'seven-year-old named Mustafah who loved to play soccer and was afraid of the dark'. It helps Western audiences understand the effect on people who are real.'

And, while there were no refugee camps in Iraq, Pitzer's one story did report some color of the lives of those living under the occupation.

For many, looting was a form of revenge. "My apartment is very small, and this is going to take up most of the space in my living room," said Abdul Karim, an unemployed agricultural-goods salesman who liberated a thronelike chair from the "People's House," one of Saddam's many luxurious Baghdad residences. Abdul, who lives in the poor Shi'ite neighborhood of Saddam City in Baghdad, says he was thrown into prison in 1994 for a year and a half and regularly beaten after he got involved in a real estate dispute with members of Saddam's secret police. Ever since his release he has found it impossible to find a job. Now, he boasts, "I plan to sit on this chair every night and think of what they did to me."

Pitzer seems to have a passion for either spinning the voices of refugees and the uprooted or documenting them spin their own voices.

So if Pitzer's publishing just one or two stories, how does he pay for these trips to hot spots? It may be another, related affiliation. Pitzer has some kind of affiliation with World Picture News (WpN), an online agency representing photographers internationally. While Pitzer doesn't appear in the list of employees, he has served as their spokesperson in stories on participant photos from the London bombings or the Tsunami.

Photos posted by witnesses of disasters and important events proliferated last year after the Asian tsunami disaster, said Kurt Pitzer, a spokesman for World Picture News, which represents professional and amateur photographers. On Thursday, the agency posted dozens of messages offering to represent photographers who had photos of the devastation and confusion in London.

Images of important events captured by witnesses have been a growing phenomenon since a bystander videotaped Rodney King being beaten by police officers in 1991 in Los Angeles. The photos have begun to spread much more quickly as high-bandwidth Internet connections have become more common, Pitzer said.

Pitzer is also mentioned in founder Seamus Conlan's account of his trip to Iraq for the war. And WpN represents a photographer named Molly who worked in Iraq, who appears to be the Molly that went into the Palestine Hotel to get Pitzer for Obeidi (Pitzer is reported in Conlan's account to have been in Iran with Molly immediately prior to Iraq, "on the trail of the heroin smuggling trade that helps fund al Qaeda;"  once again, Pitzer didn't write any stories, although Molly does appear to have taken photographs). So maybe WpN is paying Pitzer's way as he flies around the world but doesn't write any stories (although, considering WpN's revenue over a 6-month period in 2001 was $200,000, I doubt it.

Frankly, I don't know what to make of Kurt Pitzer. Either he's an adventurer who adopts the title of journalist to gain entre to the world's political hotspots. Or, he's a guy who travels the world hoping to give voice to people in those chaotic places. Either way, how convenient that Obeidi, completely by chance, took a risk to tell his story to someone who didn't need to report stories daily, but instead could drop everything for a month to help Obeidi strike a deal with American intelligence services.

What a remarkable coincidence.

Comments

[njr]

bells ring:
Throughout, he describes his desire to protect his family

Jessica Lynch story... the Iraqi who was nearly blinded and brought to the US, WITH HIS FAMILY, has there been any follow up with this family... or was this FAMILY and its protection, part of the fabricated story

bells ring as I recall instances of references to Chalabi leaks saying they couldn't be verified because it was too dangerous to "family members still in Iraq".

Was Chalabi using the Bush "Family Values" meme, or someone else, or ???

[njr]

Kurt is ... I cannot dig deeply enough to find a suitable synonym. He has an advantage over us, EW, because he is a bottom feeder who understands the weaknesses of both western and arab logic.

[emptywheel]

njr

I think his family really HAS gotten to the US. At least David Albright says they did.

The question is what did he do to protect his family while still in Iraq (and Kuwait)?