Saddam key in early CIA plot

[Linda Wetherby]

>From Doug Zabel....LW



Story was published on April 10th....
>
Saddam key in early CIA plot
>
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
>
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 attache 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
Cafe, 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 Cafe 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.<FON
>
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 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
be 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.