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Hussein Tapes Reveal Effort to Conceal WMD Information From International Inspectors
A former top aide to deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said in August 1995 that Iraqi officials were withholding information about weapons of mass destruction from U.N. inspectors, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Feb. 8). Hussein Kamel, a Hussein son-in-law in charge of Iraq’s WMD effort at the time, explained in taped conversations between Hussein and members of his Cabinet how Baghdad eluded inspectors. “We did not reveal all that we have,” Kamel said in the tapes obtained by ABC News. “We did not reveal the volume of chemical weapons we had produced.” Iraqi officials also failed to disclose “the type of weapons … [and] the volume of the materials we imported,” he added. Kamel later defected to Jordan, and was killed after returning to Iraq in February 1996. Charles Duelfer, the former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said the tapes indicate Hussein’s intent to reconstitute his WMD programs. They are not proof that such weapons existed when the United States and its allies invaded in March 2003, he said. The tapes “support the conclusion in the report which we made in the last couple of years, that the regime had the intention of building and rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, when circumstances permitted,” Duelfer said. Hussein is also recorded telling his advisers that the United States could suffer a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction, though not from his regime. “Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans,” Hussein said. “In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?” he said. “This story is coming, but not from Iraq,” Hussein said. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, however, is recorded telling Hussein that an individual could perpetrate a biological weapons attack. A “biological (attack) is very easy to make. It’s so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000,” he said. “This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it,” Aziz said (Gerald Nadler, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16). U.S. Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said the tapes suggest Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to the U.S.-led invasion, television station WZZM reported yesterday. “From reading some of the transcripts you would think it’s pretty likely there were WMD that were hidden or moved out of the country,” Hoekstra said. Hoekstra added that there are still some 35,000 boxes of unexamined official Iraqi tapes and documents seized by U.S. forces during the conflict (Phil Dawson, WZZM13.com, Feb. 15).
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