The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Part Five

by emptywheel

Summary: In this series of posts, I examine some funkiness regarding the story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclear scientist who claimed to have buried a nuclear centrifuge under his rose plant. In part one, I lay out a timeline for his story. Parts two and three examine some problems with the materials he turned over. Part four questions the stories Obeidi and Pitzer told about their meeting. In this post, I look at central prop in this story, a WaPo article that provided Obeidi's motivation for reaching out to Pitzer. The WaPo story doesn't discredit the story, but it does raise the possibility that Chalabi's INC was involved in this story.

When faced with the challenge of how to turn over his centrifuge to the Americans without getting arrested, Mahdi Obeidi turned to a WaPo article for inspiration. He explains he was given the Internet printout of the article by a friend. It reminded him of former weapons inspector David Albright, whom Obeidi had met and misinformed in the late 1990s. That reminder gave him the idea to reach out to David Albright to see if he could broker a meeting with the Americans.

I reread the Washington Post article downloaded from the Internet, which named me as one of the Iraqi scientists inspectors had most wanted to interview outside Iraq before the war. The article quoted a former inspector named David Albright, who was based in Washington. I had met Albright a few times after the defection of Hussein Kamel in 1995. It occurred to me to try to contact him. Someone like him would understand the significance of what I had to offer, which I figured was of a nature too technical for the U.S. troops hunting for actual weapons in Iraq. (The Bomb in My Garden 206-7)

How Did Obeidi Get the Article?

How does a guy living in a totalitarian society get a hold of a WaPo article naming him as a subject of interest of the dictator's enemies? Obeidi provides the following explanation:

A friend had given me a copy of a Washington Post article he had downloaded form the Internet that listed me as one of the top five scientists that inspectors hoped to interview outside Iraq. (9)

Now, Iraq had limited Internet access before the invasion. Your average Joe could use an Internet cafe, where all "offensive" material was censored (which would almost certainly have included the WaPo). And someone with more money and privilege could pay to have private access in his home, which didn't have the same filters. Obeidi probably fit into the latter category--in his book he describes setting up "illegal" satellite TV access at both his and his daughter's home and he tells David Albright that he followed Albright's statements in the Western press to monitor whether his (Obeidi's) lies were working. So I assume that, even if Obeidi didn't have Internet access, one of his close associates did.

But consider how dangerous this particular article would be. Apparently, when a person in Iraq set up private Internet access, he had to sign a statement stating:

...the subscription applicant must report any hostile website seen on the Internet, even if it was seen by chance. The applicants must not copy or print any literature or photos that go against state policy or relate to the regime. Special inspectors teams must be allowed to search the applicant's place of residence to examine any files saved on the applicant's personal computer.

I'm not arguing the WaPo in general would be considered hostile (although I could see how your average paranoid absolute dictator might think so). But this particular WaPo article had to be considered hostile. It relates the conflict between Iraq and UNMOVIC over which scientists would be made available for interviews with inspectors. And then, admitting the Bush Administration hadn't released a list of the scientists it wanted to interview, the article published a short version of its own list. Which is precisely what Saddam was trying to avoid.

Three weeks after the start of weapons inspections, the question of access to Iraqi weapons scientists poses one of the biggest challenges yet to U.N. efforts to disarm Iraq. The Bush administration last week repeated its demand that President Saddam Hussein deliver top weapons scientists for interviews outside Iraq. So far, Iraq has given no clear sign that it will cooperate, despite U.S. threats that a refusal could lead to armed conflict.

Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, on Thursday asked Iraq in a letter to turn over the names of all scientists involved in its previous biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs, as required by a Security Council resolution. Meanwhile, the White House is preparing its own list -- a who's who of top Iraqi scientists based on the assessments of U.S. intelligence agencies, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

When this article appeared, UNMOVIC inspectors were already running around Baghdad. I can only imagine the possession of such an article would be regarded as evidence of intent to defect.

Which makes it remarkable that Obeidi would have accepted this article. He describes at length the constant fear he lived under.

It is difficult to describe the sense of total fear we lived under. I censored myself at work and at home because I knew my family wasn’t safe. Even with the person I am closest to in the world, my wife of thirty-four years, I didn’t have the courage to express my true feelings. We knew our telephone was most likely tapped, and we feared the microphones were hidden in our car or in household items such as a vase, a lamp, or the television. We trained ourselves to guard every word we said, no matter how private. My most painful regret is how my highly classified work affected my family. They lived in terror that any night I might not come home, that I might have been imprisoned or tortured. (10-11)

And when Obeidi travels abroad to search for resources for the nuclear program, his family is explicitly threatened with death if he tries to defect. For a guy doing his best to keep his family safe, why would he keep such an article around?

Which is not to say Obeidi had it in December 2002. Perhaps he got it after the fall of Baghdad, when he didn't have to worry (as much) about Saddam's police. Obeidi doesn't ever say when he received the article.

But if he received the article after the fall of Baghdad, it would suggest there was some contact not revealed in any of these narratives. And of course, after the fall of Baghdad, it wouldn't necessarily be an Iraqi who gave Obeidi the article.

WaPo and Khidir Hamza

One more thing makes me suspicious of this article. It relies on Khidir Hamza, one of Chalabi's unreliable defectors. From the article:

"In my opinion, 80 to 90 percent will defect," said Khidir Hamza, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist who fled Iraq in 1994 and now lives in Virginia. "Think about it: If you're an Iraqi scientist getting by on a few dollars a month and you have a chance to live in freedom with your family for the rest of your life -- why wouldn't you cooperate?"

Hamza is the author of Saddam's Bombmaker, a book full of unsupported claims about Saddam's nuclear program which was promoted with the help of the INC. Hamza made quite the killing on the talk circuit before the war, claiming Saddam was within months of reconstituting his nuclear program. The best explanation of Hamza's credibility comes from Hussein Kamel, responding to a fraudulent letter (it's unclear what the details are) written by Hamza:

General Hussein Kamal – we call this person Hazem. He is dark, tall, bigger than me. He is a professional liar. He worked with us but he was useless and always looking for promotions. He consulted with me but could not deliver anything. Yes, his original name is Khidir but we called him Hazem. He went to the Baghdad University and then left Iraq. He is very bad. He was even interrogated by a team before he left and was allowed to go. He used to work in the building opposite the Rasheed Hotel. It was a design center.

It's not so much that Hamza says anything unreliable in this WaPo article (although he pushes a predictably optimistic line). It's that his centrality to the story suggests the INC may have been involved with the genesis of this article. Which leads me to ask one more question about this article. How did Obeidi get an article, possibly placed by the INC, in Baghdad either under dictatorship or during a war? Does it mean someone associated with the INC, or an ally passed on the article?

And Hamza's centrality to the article raises one more possibility. Obeidi describes thinking Albright, then in DC, might be able to give him some perspective on what the US intended to do with scientists. The article reminded him he knew someone in the US who might be able to intercede.

The thing is, Obeidi knew Hamza as well, at least as well as he knew Albright. He would have known Hamza from the nuclear development program--he even gives Hamza a fairly gratuitous mention in his book.

In fact, it wasn’t until Hussein Kamel took over that the IAEC formed a separate group to investigate an explosive device for the nuclear material. At first, he gave responsibility for the weaponization effort to Dr. Khidir Hamza, but after several months he let him go and shifted responsibility for it to Dr. Khalid Ibrahim Sa’id. (65)

Now, if Obeidi decides to call Albright on the grounds that Albright knows Obeidi and the technical aspects of a nuclear program, don't you think Obeidi'd call Hamza on the grounds that Hamza knows him, knows (somewhat) the Iraqi program, and is a fellow Iraqi? Plus, Hamza is talking openly about defections, how good they can be. Don't you think Obeidi would have called Hamza to talk about just that issue?

There is no mention of Hamza's involvement in establishing contacts with the Americans in either Obeidi's book or Pitzer's shorter narrative. But here is how Pitzer describes the way the CIA and DIA found Obeidi:

More than a month after our first meeting, our satellite phone calls had failed to produce any kind of safe-haven offer from Washington. Operatives from the Defense Intelligence Agency as well as the CIA had tracked Obeidi down through third parties, summoned him to their respective headquarters, and demanded that he surrender all he knew. [my emphasis]

Now, in the book, Obeidi describes Albright as having brokered the meeting with what appear to be the CIA (I'll return to this in the next post). But the syntax of this passage suggests that at least one more third party helped set up meetings. Considering the DIA and CIA converged on Obeidi at about the same time, is it possible that Hamza alerted Chalabi's allies at DIA of Obeidi's willingness to talk? According to Obeidi's book, the (presumed) DIA interview occurred just off the grounds of Chalabi's headquarters at the Hunt Club, after all.

The possibility that Hamza was involved in the brokering of meetings provides a possible explanation for the inter-agency tensions surround Obeidi's arrest--a subject I'll take up in my next post in this series.

Update:

Just now re-reading the rest of the WaPo article and noticed this:

Designs for the equipment were never surrendered to U.N. inspectors after the Gulf War, and are believed to still exist in Iraq, along with the practical know-how acquired by Obeidi through years of trial and error.

Kind of an interesting move, setting up the expectation that along with Obeidi might come designs for the equipment, don't you think? Particularly since most of these designs were turned over...

I also found this quote--the only from an anonymous official--interesting:

"The one thing that survived the Gulf War and sanctions was Iraq's brain trust," said a Pentagon intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It's one thing to go to Iraq and see a piece of equipment. But the most important thing is to be able to talk to the guy who worked the equipment."

Pentagon intelligence official could be anyone from Stephen Cambone to an OSP flunky to someone genuinely, um, intelligent. At the time this statement was issued, it would have logically come from one of the former, since Saddam was never going to let his scientists go, so the demand created an unfulfilled demand that they could use to start the war. But I find it interesting, too, because of the way Rummy reverted to HUMINT after it became clear there would be no real WMDs found.

Comments

[peanutgallery]

ew-
what do you make of obeidi's cameo in hamza's book?

[emptywheel]

pg

Ah nuts (no pun intended), you're not going to make me read another crummy defector book, are you?

I haven't read it. But I know that Hamza says he came with Obeidi to the US in 1975. Is that what you're talking about? That doesn't show up in Obeidi's book. And in spite of the doubts I've got about Obeidi's book, I still trust it more than Hamza's. Somewhat.

[lukery]

ew - i've been wondering if you were still down this rabbit hole!

do you use your earthlink email account? (i'm interested in your opinion of leopold's latest. he says that the 1*2*6 leaker isn't ari)

[lukery]

ew - i've been wondering if you were still down this rabbit hole!

do you use your earthlink email account? (i'm interested in your opinion of leopold's latest. he says that the 1*2*6 leaker isn't ari)

[emptywheel]

lukery

Yup, still down here with the white rabbit.

I did respond to that email. I'll try to resend. Yes, I saw JLs piece, and thought of you. Let me see if I can resend.

[emptywheel]

lukery

I resent my response. Let me know if you didn't get it.

[peanutgallery]

Well, you're right, Hamza's book makes Obeidi's look like high literature in comparison. But of course what's interesting is that if both books were midwifed by Albright they show the 2000 and 2004? official insider versions of the WMD narratives. What stays the same? What is different? The 1975 trip is an important omission I think.

[emptywheel]

But to what degree did Albright really midwife these? I'm beginning to think that people like the INC regard him as a useful fool.

In any case, if you say I have to, I'll go pick up Hamza.

Sigh. See, I'm really enjoying David Halberstam's Bill Belichick book and don't want to read anymore defector trash...