The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Conclusion

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. Part five looks the WaPo article that is a central prop in Obeidi's story. Part six examines some of the tensions within the intelligence agencies dealing with Obeidi. This post summarizes the evidence presented in the other posts, then speculates on what may have actually happened.

Finally! My much-delayed conclusion to my series on Mahdi Obeidi. In this post, I'll review everything I've presented before (note, I'm not putting links for stuff covered earlier--if you want a particular link, ask me for it in the comments), then provide two different speculative scenarios for what might really have happened. As I've been saying throughout this series, I don't think I've disproven the story of Mahdi Obeidi. I think his story--as told--is possible. But I do think it improbable.

I speculate below that one of two things happened with the Obeidi story. I think it possible that Obeidi had something less spectacular to turn over, and that the CIA simply fluffed up the story to serve their needs. But I also think it possible that the the CIA contacted Obeidi during the war, encouraged him to defect, had him contact Pitzer as his first intelligence contact, then made up the centrifuge and blueprint story out of thin air. If either scenario were true, it would suggest one of the Bush Administration's biggest pieces of proof of Saddam's ongoing intent was completely made up. But before I flesh out these scenarios, let me lay out the evidence I've given so far.

Discrepancies between the Stories

The stories claim different dates for the first contact between Obeidi and Pitzer (around April 14 versus around April 24) and Obeidi and the CIA (May 17 versus June 1).

The stories seem to offer differing claims for how long Obeidi was imprisoned, a day or two weeks.

The stories differ about whether Obeidi, Albright, or the CIA first contacted CNN with Obeidi's story.

The stories differ about how long and whether Obeidi tried to contact US authorities before contacting Pitzer. Furthermore, only Obeidi's book reveals some soldiers came to his house, but he didn't tell them of his centrifuge.

The stories differ about whether Obeidi dug up his centrifuge alone or in the presence of Americans.

Problems with the Materials Turned Over

Hussein Kamel, who met with Obeidi just before Kamel defected, mentioned some remaining plans to the IAEA. But he said the remaining blueprints were on microfiche, not paper.

Obeidi's own description of the blueprints say the production notes were in Arabic, but the blueprints shown have production notes in English--one even has two rubber stamps in English, suggesting the end-user of the blueprint was working in English.

Obeidi says he turned over four components. But the CNN picture by itself shows more than four components (at least seven), and neither picture shows components that seem to correlate exactly with the four Obeidi claims to have turned over.

A former CIA Counter-Proliferation agent claims there were Iraqi centrifuge components available on (presumably) the black market. But the CIA buried this intelligence. The agent claims he was later framed and fired as a result of his complaints that his intelligence was buried.

Kurt Pitzer's Actions

Only about 15 articles appear under Kurt Pitzer's byline in Lexis-Nexis since 1994, when Pitzer contributed regularly to the LAT for a year.

Several of Pitzer's stories describe how US-allied opposition groups spin their stories to develop international support for their causes.

Just before the Iraq war Pitzer was in Iran with Molly Bingham, "on the trail of the heroin smuggling trade that helps fund al Qaeda." But he didn't write any stories from that trip.

Pitzer claims to have been embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division, which did some of the most heroic fighting in Iraq, but he did not submit a single story from his embed period.

Pitzer appears to have spent days and weeks helping Obeidi, which is all very nice, but remarkable for a free-lance journalist trying to write and sell stories.

Pitzer submits only one story (in addition to cowriting Obeidi's book) for the entire time he is in Iraq; yet outfitting a journalist for Iraq cost tens of thousands of dollars. Pitzer often has reported from similarly expensive war zones--but has only ever produced a few stories from them.

David Albright doesn't seem to consider Kurt Pitzer as a possible journalistic outlet for the Obeidi story; effectively Pitzer allows CNN to scoop him.

The mutual account of Obeidi's career reads like an interrogation report, including details (such as the name of an Italian professor who was instrumental in getting Obeidi plans) that seem dangerous in a book ostensibly about non-proliferation.

Pitzer or Obeidi syllogistically suggested the latter had been involved in espionage when he collected components for the nuclear program.

Obeidi's Actions

No independent witness saw either the meeting with Kamel or Qusay where they told Obeidi to keep the centrifuge.

Saddam issued an order in 1996 for scientists to hand over all materials and blueprints. Obeidi doesn't mention this order at all, and certainly doesn't explain how he decided to ignore the order.

The first accounts provided no explanation for how the blueprints remained intact after 11 years of burial. After many commenters raised questions about how the documents had been preserved, Obeidi explains in his book that he buried the materials inside a 50-gallon drum. But this, too, depends on the remarkable coincidence of having a 50-gallon drum in his shed at the time he buried the materials.

Obeidi's family didn't see him bury the centrifuge, even though he says it displaced 50 gallons of dirt and required a hole 4 feet in depth.

Obeidi claims to have buried the centrifuge at a time when UNSCOM inspectors, who knew Obeidi had an involvement in the nuclear program, were in Baghdad.

Obeidi's family learn of the centrifuge only after the fall of Baghdad.

Obeidi claims to have buried the centrifuge alone, although this would have stretched the limits of one man's physical ability (burying a 50-gallon drum holding 2 to 3 feet of paper alone).

The Duelfer report uses the caveat "reportedly" several times when describing Obeidi's stash, suggesting the CIA cannot or will not verify the story of the buried centrifuge.

The first Pitzer-Obeidi meeting almost certainly took place after Obeidi met a sympathetic officer who would have been a more logical choice to reveal his story to.

A Suspicious WaPo Article

Obeidi claims to be afraid of Saddam's totalitarianism, but he claims to have kept a WaPo article that would almost certainly have been considered evidence of intent to defect.

The WaPo article relies heavily on Khidir Hamza, an INC defector, which suggests the INC might have had a role in getting him the article.

If Obeidi called David Albright because the WaPo article reminded him he knew someone with the technical expertise in DC to help him, he logically would have called Khidir Hamza also, which increases the chance that INC was somehow involved in this story.

CIA Interference in the Story

CIA ask CNN to hold Obeidi's story for a week after they got the story. I actually think this may not be nefarious; I think they may have wanted to wait until Obeidi was taken to Kuwait. But it is remarkable that, as a result of the delay, CNN broke the story on the eve of Tenet having to testify to Congress on pre-war intelligence.

David Kay and "Joe" deliberately misrepresent what Obeidi told them for the first CNN story.

The CIA first claimed Obeidi had kept the centrifuge as part of an organized program; the Duelfer report drops this claim.

The CIA keeps Obeidi in Kuwait for the summer of 2003, trying to get him to confess that the aluminum tubes were intended for a nuclear program. "Joe" is apparently personally involved in Obeidi's interrogation and kept looking for ways to "refresh Obeidi's memory."

A Note on Timing

We may be able to fine tune the timing of Obeidi's and Pitzer's first meeting further than I have in past posts. Obeidi mentions a photographer named Molly whom he met in connection with Pitzer.

"Excuse me, are you a journalist?"

She stopped and seemed to take note of the fact that I was dressed in a coat and tie, differentiating me from the rest of the crowd.

"I am Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, one Saddam's nuclear scientists," I said, "I would like to speak to a journalist."

The woman introduced herself as Molly. I showed her a worn printout of the Washington Post article, to identify who I was. She said she would put me in touch with a colleague inside the Palestine Hotel. (208)

Pitzer's colleague at World Picture News mentions that Molly Bingham was with Kurt Pitzer in Iran in the time leading up to the invasion.

In the middle of it all, we put together some truly inspiring story packages and photo features from Korea, Iraq and South Africa, as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran, where Kurt spent a month, along with photographer Molly Bingham, on the trail of the heroin smuggling trade that helps fund al Qaeda.

It is highly likely that Molly Bingham is the same Molly who first met Mahdi Obeidi. She's a photographer, she covered Iraq, and it would be highly unlikely that Pitzer would have more than one colleague and close friend in Baghdad named Molly.

Only thing is, Molly was arrested and imprisoned by the Iraqis early in the war. She was arrested on March 25, released on April 1 or 2, and she then returned to the US. She did not go back to Iraq until 18 or 19 days later, so around April 20. So either Molly wasn't at the first meeting, it occurred before Baghdad fell, or Pitzer and Obeidi did not first meet until April 21 at the earliest--much later than Pitzer's claimed "a few days after the fall of Baghdad."

Evidence to Support the Story

All of this evidence, plus the inconsistencies between the stories (even between Obeidi's and Pitzer's accounts!) makes me severely doubt the story. There are, however, two outstanding reasons I think the story may be true.

First, why call David Albright? Let's assume, for a second, that you're the US government trying to stage some proof that Iraq was prepared to restart its nuclear program as soon as sanctions end. You've got a scientist who is willing to claim he kept materials from the nuclear program as a kick start. You want to stage his revelation of these materials such that it would be believable to the American press. If that's the plan, then why do you have him--or let him--call David Albright, an independent scientist in the US? And for that matter, why do you let him retain a satellite phone while he's undergoing interrogation in Kuwait (although, there is some dispute about this fact)? I think Albright's involvement may be the biggest reason Obeidi was granted asylum without having to confirm "Joe's" hooey story about the aluminum tubes.

There are plausible answers. Albright was the most vocal public opponent of the aluminum tube story (based partly on the confidential information intelligence professionals had shared with him). So, if you're staging a story that might confirm the aluminum tube story (but that will, at the very least, reveal the centrifuges), you might want to co-opt your biggest critic to lend credibility to the story.

There's one detail from Albright's own account that might support such a conclusion:

After Baghdad fell to US troops, many Iraqis could be interviewed for the first time without being under threat from Saddam Hussein’s regime. One key group comprised former members of Iraq’s pre-1991 gas centrifuge program.

In April 2003, ISIS sought out these Iraqis as part of a project to contact former members of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. Working with members of the media in Baghdad, we were successful in locating and interviewing several key Iraqis.

While searching for former members of Iraq’s gas centrifuge program, I was contacted by Mahdi Obeidi, the former head of Iraq’s pre-1991 gas centrifuge program.

Albright's group was already working with journalists in Baghdad. But they hadn't found Obeidi. At precisely the same time, Obeidi contacted Albright himself.

Now, given that Albright himself has depicted Obeidi as central to the centrifuge program, I'm curious why he--or the journalists working for him--didn't find Obeidi? And did the military know about such efforts and play to them?

The second, perhaps related, reason I think Obeidi's story has merit. As is probably clear, I'm suspicious of Kurt Pitzer's role in this story, mostly because he doesn't appear to exhibit the behaviors typical of a reporter. But if Pitzer in some way helped to stage this story, then why present the story with the spin it has? The anti-proliferation spin of the book, however half-hearted, I understand. But the Mojo article is openly critical of the government. Pitzer describes how Defense undermined the effort of Anne Harrington, from State Department's Non-Proliferation Department (perhaps not coincidentally, a department that then reported to Bolton and has recently been totally politicized by Bolton's replacement, Robert Joseph). He describes Obeidi's frustration that the US wasn't more forthcoming with asylum. And he voices honest skepticism:

I didn't have an answer. Just weeks earlier, before the invasion, President Bush had railed against Saddam for intimidating his WMD scientists and hiding them from inspectors. Colin Powell had appeared before the United Nations Security Council and warned that Obeidi's centrifuge program posed a threat to the world. It was hard to explain why, having gone to war ostensibly to get control of Iraq's dangerous knowledge, the United States was now doing so little to follow through.

I'm not entirely convinced that Pitzer's article isn't intended to fear monger rather than raise legitimate concerns. For example, Pitzer says,

But a source close to one of those agencies recently said that of the 200-some scientists at the top of its nuclear list, all but three remain unaccounted for.

I can account for three scientists immediately, using open sources. There's Obeidi, living outside of DC. There's Jafar Dhia Jafar, who got himself out of Iraq and now lives in Paris. There's Saad Tawfiq, who worked on the EMIS program. Tawfiq's sister is Sawsan Alhaddad, the woman described in James Risen's book whom the CIA recruited to visit her brother to gather information about the Iraqi program. Tawfiq is directly quoted in the book, so presumably he survived the war and spoke, at some point, to Risen.

In other words, the only way to support the claim that 197 nuclear scientists have gone missing is to discount those held--or once held--by the US government. Everyone assumes the US government still has scientists in custody (indeed, they only released some of the women scientists in December). So how can you say they "remain unaccounted for" when they're in custody?

And there's always the possibility that Pitzer is critical precisely because it offers the best cover. Critical journalist writing for the way-lefty MoJo? No way he would have helped stage the revelation of WMDs with the Administration.

One more explanation for why Pitzer might have presented the story skeptically. There was a squabble between DIA and CIA (and possibly Chalabi) over who would manage Obeidi's story. It's possible that Pitzer had to present his story in the way he did to accomplish bureaucratic objectives (for example, to complain about interference with Harrington's NP program) or because he was unable to control the details he had planned to control from the start.

In any case, I think these two reasons are fairly compelling. With them in mind that I've come up with two possible scenarios for what really occurred. (With all due warnings about speculation.)

Scenario One

I think it possible that Obeidi really did have something to turn in and he really did stumble upon Kurt Pitzer and he really did struggle to reach out to Americans for over a month but once he reached them, the CIA fluffed up his evidence to make the most out of it. So, for example, Obeidi may have had the original prototypes and the blueprints the Germans first sold him (which might explain the English), or he had blueprints on microfiche and a few of the random centrifuge parts put aside in 2001. Which was enough to seed the story. But when CIA told the story, they presented it as a working centrifuge. So they substituted the second set of pictures (the ones that were removed) to make the centrifuge look more real, until someone realized those pictures didn't correlate. Rather than admit Obeidi had this stuff in his garage for 12 years (which is where he first put it, until Qusay told him to hide it), they invented the colorful story about the rose bush.

The timeline would work much as the published timelines do: after two weeks of attempts, Obeidi stumbles upon Pitzer around April 25 (after Molly returns to Baghdad). Pitzer calls Albright on the 25th, then they call together on the 26th. Albright starts calling on May 1, finally finds the right contact at the CIA on May 7, but they wait a few days to arrange their plan. The CIA meets with Obeidi, and fight over what he'll say he turned over. He finally agrees to say he turned over the centrifuge, but they arrest him because he refused to lie about how extensive his cache was (or because Rummy's goons want to have custody of him so they can make even crazier claims). After Obeidi is imprisoned, he agrees to do the interview with CNN, including the erroneous information Kay and "Joe" were spouting. Once he gets that much publicity, it becomes difficult to disappear him entirely, but they do spend an entire summer trying to convince him to confirm the aluminum tubes, too. Somehow, they come to a final agreement, and bring Obeidi to the US and grant him asylum.

This scenario feels entirely plausible and consistent with the Administration's prior lies about WMDs.

Scenario Two

But I still have suspicions that there is something more. Given Pitzer's sketchy past, I wonder whether he isn't an operative of some sort (my guess would be MI6, because it would skirt restrictions on using journalists as spies, while still having close ties to the CIA. Also, Pitzer's affiliate WpN was located in London until just before the Iraq war. Given the prominence of the WaPo article, though, it's possible Pitzer is tied to Chalabi in some way. Of note, one of Pitzer's stories from Kosovo features waving American and European flags prominently; big displays of waving flags are a well-known Rendon Group specialty, so perhaps Pitzer works for the Rendon Group).

In this scenario, Pitzer or an associate contacts Obeidi, perhaps well before fall of Baghdad. They probably send Obeidi an email (Huda Ammash and Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, two top Iraqi WMD scientists, were contacted numerous times in the early days of the war) encouraging him to defect. Maybe they send the WaPo article along with their email, as some kind of sign he can give operatives he will meet in Baghdad.

In this scenario, Chalabi does meet Pitzer early (heck, perhaps he even meets Pitzer before Molly is arrested on March 25). What ensues is the beginning of Obeidi's interrogation. Which makes sense, given that Obeidi and Pitzer's book really reads like the debriefing you'd do for counter-proliferation purposes (in that it's a catalog of all those who aided the Iraqi effort), rather than a book to discourage proliferation. And if the book arose out of protracted interrogation, it would also explain why the book might refer to Obeidi's actions as espionage.

In addition to the debriefing, Pitzer's job is to prep Obeidi for the staged turnover of the centrifuge. Those daily meetings in Obeidi's garden? They're rehearsals of the story, to make sure it's convincing to those (like the ISG) who aren't in on the secret. They invent an entire pre-story, about secret meetings between Obeidi and Hussein Kamel and later Qusay Hussein, where they order Obeidi to keep the centrifuge. They invent the flourishes, like the burial under the rose bush.

And there doesn't even need to be a centrifuge, in this scenario, at least not in Baghdad. The centrifuge components the CIA shows to CNN appear to be as random as those Obeidi describes as having been turned over to UNSCOM. Or they could have been purchased on the black market, as were reportedly available. The picture that was removed seems more appropriate--it includes two of the pieces Obeidi said were most difficult to develop. That and the English-language blueprints may have come from CIA's own Counter-Proliferation experts. Or perhaps they recycled materials they had from another Counter-Proliferation effort; let's just say that both the Iraqi and the Pakistani centrifuge use the Urenco approach, and Pakistani blueprints (particularly those sold to, say, the now-cooperative Libya) would be much more likely to be in English than Iraqi blueprints that Obeidi has said were in Arabic. Whatever the source, the CIA just digs out some pieces parts and some blueprints (conveniently stamped "Copy 4" in English, so "Joe" can continue to peddle his aluminum tube story), and says that's what Obeidi turned over.

If either of these scenarios are true, it begins to answer one of the questions often asked. Why didn't they fake evidence of Saddam's WMDs? Obeidi's story suggests they did fake evidence, but did so on a smaller scale, thinking they'd get away with smaller lies.

But really, Obeidi's story reeks of fakery. They couldn't even handle the small lies. They would have been caught in the big lies, as certainly as they were caught lying to get us into war.

Comments

[John Forde]

EW How do you do it? You are amazing!

[emptywheel]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm convincing myself that, if Pitzer is an operative of some kind, it's for Rendon. They've got big offices in London (perhaps for just the reason I said, to skirt restrictions on journalist and intelligence).

[lukery]

great work ew.

like you, i'm not quite convinced one way or other

i presume it would be too much to hope for that there might be a link to Pamela Pitzer Willeford?

[emptywheel]

You mean Kurt Pitzer? I've been trying to figure that out. I can't get much biographical stuff on Pitzer. Though I did discover that someone named Kurt Pitzer wrote for hunting guidebooks. Don't know if it's the same guy, though it would fit his adventurer MO.

[emptywheel]

Just to clarify: which is as much to say about Pitzer and Pitzer Willeford, I doubt it.

[emptywheel]

To clarify further. A reader has done some research, and the Pitzers are not related apparently. Kurt is from CA, Pamela (obviously) is from TX. They just both like hunting and republican thuggery.

[peanutgallery]

Molly was arrested? What's up with that?

[emptywheel]

pg

Email me for more details, if you want. emptywheel at earthlink dot net.

[lukery]

sorry EW - yeah, i meant kurt and pamela - i was mostly joking. i was trying to do some quick research into your rendon theory and pamela's name cropped up.

[emptywheel]

Yeah, I was never pursuing it that seriously either. But I did find it weird that Kurt Pitzer's name came up while I was googling Willeford's hunting exploits the other day.

Small world, even though there is no connection.