Saddam and the CIA

Saddam and the CIA: 44 successful years of fighting the Iraqi left 
 
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*Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot*

By Richard Sale

UPI Intelligence Correspondent

From the International Desk 


Published 4/10/2003 7:30 PM


U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi 
dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. 
intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him 
as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. 
intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. 
diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to 
piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the 
report.

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. 
intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, 
his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was 
part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then 
Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former 
U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible 
orgy of bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition 
of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset 
in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, 
Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend 
the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime 
until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that 
"freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State 
Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the 
Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions 
of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of 
the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq 
was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the 
CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it 
had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader 
Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former 
National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, 
saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist 
Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, 
while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of 
Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in 
Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's 
Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said 
the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's 
CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian 
intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.

Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the 
assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the 
apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. 
officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely 
botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 
22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing 
Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish 
told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun 
and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his 
coat.

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. 
But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, 
whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to 
Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. 
government officials said.

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian 
intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior 
CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's 
apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA 
officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said 
that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a 
cutthroat."

In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class 
neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana 
Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, 
according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.

One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went 
to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very 
upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your 
basic dive."

But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American 
Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station 
chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. 
intelligence officials said.

Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers 
to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian 
officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to 
Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at 
the time.

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed 
recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by 
President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official 
strongly denied this.

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the 
hell had happened," this official said.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party 
was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine 
gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists 
who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according 
to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the 
executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. 
Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took 
place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were 
frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You 
have to get kidding. This was serious business."

A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious 
killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to 
power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."

British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes 
Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying 
the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great 
victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and 
friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't 
sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."

Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret 
intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified 
after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the 
war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield 
intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the 
effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA 
official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.

This former official said that he personally had signed off on a 
document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran 
in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I 
thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI.

A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three 
senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to 
meet with the Americans.

According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to 
Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the 
al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.

The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 
a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, 
invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its 
bitterest enemy.

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