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After the first few debriefing sessions, Bruce came to me and asked me if I would take the lead in asking the questions. Whereas before we were both asking them, now I would be the sole questioner and Bruce’s role would be simply to keep things going if Saddam looked like he was getting ready to cut off cooperation. With his limited knowledge of Saddam, he thought he had run out of provocative things to ask. By this time we had developed a regular routine for our debriefings. I said I would be happy to, even though I was feeling pretty exhausted after three months in Iraq. I’m a pretty sturdy guy, but poor eating, poor sleeping, and a grinding interview schedule of one or two sessions per day had taken a toll. I was feeling frustrated too. We had very little time to do research, and when we did, our computer bandwidth was so limited that it was impossible to delve into things that might have produced interesting answers. I suppose we could have simply gone through the motions of asking our questions and dutifully writing his answers down for the White House to read. But we were professionals, and this was the biggest thing going on in Iraq. I knew that it was unlikely I would ever get an opportunity like this again in my career. It was also unfamiliar territory for the Agency. Aside from the questioning of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in 1989, U.S. government officials had not detained and questioned a former head of state since the end of World War II, when the U.S. interrogated Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s chosen successor in the final days of the Third Reich.
Every morning we met with our military colleagues and were filled in on how Saddam was doing since we’d last seen him. I gave a brief rundown on what topics I planned to raise that day. Then we went to the debriefing cell and waited for him to be brought in. It had become clear that the FBI was not going to be taking over from us until after the New Year. When I asked the Bureau’s representative in Baghdad why the FBI was taking so long, he just sort of shrugged his shoulders and said, “I guess they are just waiting for the holidays to be over.” I figured the Bureau was still trying to put a team together and get up to speed on Saddam, who was not a run-of-the-mill FBI suspect. We were told the FBI was sending an Arabic-speaking special agent to be its team leader.
I looked at the list of topics we had already discussed and decided to bring the conversation back to something that Saddam had refused at first to discuss in detail. The chemical attack against Halabja, carried out in March 1988, was in retaliation for the Kurds’ support of Iran and killed nearly five thousand people. The campaign was under the overall command of Saddam’s paternal cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid. Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, authors of one of the better early biographies of Saddam, wrote: “Near the end of the Iran-Iraq war . . . more than half the villages and numerous towns in Kurdistan had been razed and their populations deported. Some half a million were placed in easily controllable settlements or in concentration camps in the south-western Iraqi desert.” The specter of a major Iranian breakthrough in Kurdistan drove Hussein to employ gas on an unprecedented scale against the Kurdish town of Halabja. “As the thick cloud of gas spread by the Iraqi planes evaporated into the clear sky, television crews were rushed into the town by the Iranians and the world discovered the full extent of this horrendous massacre.”*
Saddam didn’t want to talk about Halabja, not only because it was classified as genocide but also because of his professed love for the Kurds. When I brought it up again, he got an angry look on his face and said, “Go ask Nizar al-Khazraji,” the commanding officer on the ground at Halabja. When I told Saddam that Khazraji was not here but that Saddam was and that’s why I was asking, he complained that this was interrogation and he would not submit to interrogation. I was disappointed because a discussion of Halabja could have told us a lot about Saddam, such as what he hoped to achieve and whether he fully understood the gravity of such a course of action, to name just two. I was determined to get him to talk about it. The gassing of the Kurds amounted to a crime against humanity—and was proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was willing to use them, even against fellow Iraqis.
In an effort to lower the temperature as I searched for another way to talk about Halabja, I changed the subject to the Revolutionary Command Council, the top governing political structure in Iraq. Saddam had been chairman of the RCC since 1979 and, while he was also president of the country, the RCC chairmanship was really the locus of power in the Ba’athist government. He responded that the RCC was the highest office constitutionally but then digressed into his usual observations that the National Assembly would make laws that sometimes would override the RCC. He said he wanted to encourage the proliferation of political parties in Iraq. This was a theme that Saddam harped on. He wanted to convince us that he was a true Iraqi democrat and that his efforts to bring plurality to Iraqi politics had been curtailed by the U.S. invasion. After another hour of conversation, I finally got Saddam to tell me that he was head of the Revolutionary Command Council and that his orders were necessary for RCC decisions to be approved.
This gave me the opening I had been looking for. I asked Saddam if the decision to use chemical weapons in Halabja originated in the RCC or somewhere else. Saddam was visibly furious. I had maneuvered him into a corner, and he was faced with either admitting that he had approved the attack or that he wasn’t in complete control as he had just claimed. “What is your question?” he demanded. I replied, “Tell me about the decision to use chemical weapons at Halabja. Was this discussed at the RCC?” By this time, Saddam was so worked up that he was breathing heavily. Then he exploded: “When we heard about Halabja, we thought the reports were Iranian propaganda. Therefore we did not discuss it in the RCC. We were always concerned about liberating our lands. You are saying that this was a decision made by Baghdad? If I choose to make this decision, then I will make that decision and I am not afraid of you or your president. I will do what I have to do to defend my country!”
He folded his arms to signal that the topic was closed, but then turned to me and sneered, “But I did not make that decision.” At this point, we decided to close the briefing for the day, and as usual we tried to end it on an uncontentious note. I asked Saddam about some innocuous matter, but he was too angry to even try to reply. We called the guard, and as Saddam left the room, he glared at me, angrily put the hood over his head, and then jerked his arm up for the soldier to hold and guide him back to the cell. My boss was thrilled. We had finally gotten under Saddam’s skin.
I have pissed off quite a few people in my life, but no one ever looked at me with such murderous loathing as Saddam did that day. He was under lock and key, but it was frightening even so. At the same time, something nagged at me about the exchange. I turned it over in my mind for months afterward. The more I thought about it, the more my gut told me that there was some truth in what Saddam had said. ***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Apparently Saddam had ceded control of chemical weapons to his commanders. Saddam first heard about the attack from his brother-in-law, Minister of Defense Adnan Khayrallah. Saddam was incensed. Not because his officers had used the weapons, but because they had used the weapons in territory held by Iranian sympathizers, and thus Iraq would not be able to control the news, while Iran would have a propaganda field day. I am not suggesting that Saddam was a softhearted, misunderstood leader. He made the decision to let his battlefield commanders use these weapons if they saw fit. He had already used chemical weapons to devastating effect against Iranian “human wave” attacks—something the U.S. government had turned a blind eye to because it was supporting Iraq. Saddam was not sorry about what had happened in Halabja. He showed no remorse. It was another example of what our government did not know—or chose not to know—as it built its case for his removal from power.
Abuse of human rights was a red line for Saddam. Once we brought it up, he would stiffen and prepare to do battle. I was usually the one who would raise the subject, and his eyes would narrow and he would try to deflect me any way he could. When I asked him about the discovery of mass graves, he leaned forward with a menacing look and said, “I explained that all before today when I explained about the governorates. I said that in circumstances like this it is not strange to find twenty here or forty there.” (By this Saddam meant that he had lost control of fourteen of Iraq’s eighteen governorates after the 1991 U.S. invasion and that he was not responsible for atrocities committed in territories that he did not control.) I then asked him about graves found in Basra, and he countered by demanding to know exactly where in Basra. When I told him they were found outside the city, he said, “Who are these people? What are their names?” I said I didn’t have their names and Saddam threw his hands up in exasperation. If I didn’t know their names, he said, then who was to say that these weren’t the graves of Iranian soldiers? We went around and around on this for over an hour.
Saddam often tried to put a rosy gloss on what the world saw as acts of brutality. A case in point was his treatment of the Marsh Arabs, who were mostly Shiites. Saddam diverted the Tigris and Euphrates away from the marshes in retaliation for the Shia uprising after the Gulf War. The wetlands became desert, and nearly 150,000 Marsh Arabs were displaced. An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 fled to Iranian refugee camps, with the rest scattering elsewhere in Iraq. Saddam claimed he drained the marshes for their own good. “How can a person live on water?” he said with a mixture of incredulity and exasperation, despite being a man who supposedly loved water. “The land there is very fertile. I wanted to expand the agricultural land. Did you see how these people live? I lived with them for weeks, so I knew all the details. So I did the right thing for people and for strategic reasons . . . We built schools and clinics. We established electricity. Before that, it was like they were living three hundred years ago.” He also said the marshes were drained to prevent Iranians from infiltrating into Iraq. Saddam drew a picture of the marshes and commented that Iraq was in the shape of a woman. The marsh areas crowded around Highway 1, connecting the southern areas of Iraq with Baghdad. The Iranians tried to cut off this road during the Iran-Iraq War.
One day I asked Saddam about his Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and we had a long and illuminating talk about how he operated bureaucratically. In 1998, he rotated diplomats and brought many ambassadors home to Baghdad. I asked him why he made the changes. He told me that there was no particular reason. He just thought it was time for some of the diplomats who had been out of the country for many years to return to Iraq. When I tried to tease out whether he had an ulterior motive, Saddam dismissed the idea. “I think you think that I have more power than I did.” I asked in particular about the recall of Nizar Hamdun, who was his former representative to the United Nations and his most effective spokesman in the West. I said Hamdun understood the international system and the United States and knew how to use the media to get his message in front of the American public in a way few diplomats from the region could. Saddam agreed, but said Hamdun had cancer. “America is the best country for treating cancer, but we had issued a decree in the command that we won’t send anyone from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs abroad for medical reasons. Personally, I was embarrassed, and the president can send people for treatment. So, since he was considered an old and loyal Ba’athist from before the revolution of July 1968, and was part of the group of people in which I had personal trust and knowledge, I sent him. So I . . . gave him five thousand dollars for the treatment. It was a personal gift to supplement his entitlement. He was not a friend. I did not have a large group of friends in the government. Having friendships with government personalities has problems and obligations. On the other hand, I considered all comrades and brothers if they were loyal and trustworthy. If you wanted to look into the human side of Saddam Hussein and how he treated his comrades, you could fill volumes.” The five thousand dollars was a paltry sum, possibly because Saddam had no idea what cancer treatment cost in the United States, or more probably because he had soured on Hamdun after the diplomat had developed numerous close contacts in the U.S. government over the years.
Much has been made of the growing sectarian conflict in Iraq since the fall of Saddam. Indeed, Iraqi sectarianism has served as a template for the region. Under his regime, Saddam bragged repeatedly, there was no sectarianism. “Do you know if Saddam Hussein is Sunni or Shia? In front of the law they are both equal. In 1959, the secretary [of the Ba’ath Party] was a Shia from Nasiriyah. I found out years later and said I did not know that. In 1960–61 the secretary was a Kurdish Shia named Abd al-Karim al-Shaikhly. In 1965 the secretary was a Christian named Kildani. You talk of bodies found. They were not judged on being Sunni or Shia, but as those who would stand against the law.”
Saddam was very proud of his leadership of the Ba’ath Party. “This is part of my nation. It calls for social justice, Arabic unity, freedom, and democracy. So as a young man, I found these goals were worth fighting for. All of my family members were in the party, except my uncle Khayrallah because he was very old.” When asked if he’d ever felt lonely at the top, Saddam replied, “I am a commander but I visited the front and ate with the soldiers. I visited the front, so I never felt lonely.” Saddam said he never envisioned ruling Iraq for long. “I thought that after the success of the 1968 revolution I could retire and leave the command on 30 July after the party took control. The RCC refused strongly and said, ‘You had the revolution, so now you leave us stuck with it?’ Again I wanted to retire in 1974 but my request was denied . . . Retirement meant abandoning principles, abandoning the people, and I stopped trying to retire after that.”
I asked if the cult of personality surrounding him had hurt his ability to lead. Saddam replied, “I didn’t tell them to put up my picture everywhere . . . Iraq was important before Saddam Hussein, and before Saddam Hussein’s father, and before Saddam Hussein’s grandfather. Iraq taught the world how to write, taught the world art, painting, and industry . . . So how could Saddam Hussein be more important than Iraq?”
When asked about his proudest accomplishments, Saddam said, “Building Iraq . . . from a country where people walked barefoot, illiteracy was 73 percent, small incomes, until the stage where we were so developed that the U.S. considered us a threat. Schools everywhere, hospitals everywhere, and personal income was very high before the war with Iran. Before 1991 electricity was in every village, and we built many roads . . . Even Americans who entered Iraq were impressed by the development. We served the people sincerely and we received Allah.” After all this development, wasn’t Saddam to blame for Iraq’s decline? “Is it my responsibility to fight? Yes, it was my decision—Iran did not offer us peace. If Khomeini [had stopped at the border, instead of trying to grab portions of Iraqi territory], he would have won most of Iraqi public opinion . . . But he turned and showed his true colors and said his goal was to reach Karbala, not the border . . . But Kuwait was the nail in Iraq’s foot. Iraq broke its horns in Kuwait.” When asked where he saw Iraq in one hundred years, Saddam said, “It is in Allah’s hands. I see Iraq liberated from the Americans in five years.”
I spent my last session with Saddam talking about the history of Iraq. It was the shortest session I had with him, only twenty-five minutes. The real purpose was to tell him I was leaving and to introduce my replacement. We were concerned that Saddam might be upset by a new face and stop cooperating. We shouldn’t have worried. Although Saddam had begun to tire of me, he hadn’t tired of the process. That would come later. I spoke very warmly about our sessions and told Saddam how much I had enjoyed meeting him. Bruce told Saddam that Mr. Steve had to go back to the United States, and Mr. Bill would be my replacement. Saddam threw his hands in the air, vexed by having another interlocutor. “You mean I am going to have to answer the same questions all over again,” he said. We told him that my replacement had read through all the reports and was well versed in what had been discussed so far. I then offered a short valedictory: “I want to thank you for engaging with us in our conversations about history. While there have been times we have disagreed on certain things, I appreciate your willingness to discuss them with us. I am sorry we had to meet under such circumstances. However, now that we have met, I feel that I understand you and your country better than I did. And for that, I thank you.”
I stood and offered my hand to Saddam. What happened next really caught me by surprise. Saddam reached out, grabbed hold of my hand, and wouldn’t let go. He then offered his parting statement to me: “I want you to know that I have enjoyed our time together as well. The reason you and I have disagreed is that you are where you are and I am here [Saddam motioned to his prison surroundings]. I am not some politician who goes around saying things for the sake of saying them. But I want you to listen to me when I say, as you go back to Washington and perform your very important work, I want you to remember to be just and fair. These are the noblest qualities that any human being possesses.”
Saddam urged me to use my wisdom for good causes. I have a hard time remembering exactly what he said after that because I was in his grip and, for the first time since meeting him, I couldn’t take notes. I was locked in his hard vise for the next five minutes or so. He was a politician and he was using his political skills on me as he said good-bye. People have asked me why he did this. Bruce and my replacement, Bill, both told me that Saddam barely acknowledged their departure and that was it. What made me special? Part of Saddam’s send-off was an Arab custom to make guests feel that their stay was too short and their departure was causing pain. He clung to the idea that Iraq was his country and that we were only guests, and uninvited guests at that. Part of it, I think, was that Saddam had some measure of respect for me because I had spent years studying him before we ever met. He had learned that he needed to be on his guard with me and that I would challenge him if he took liberties with the facts. And part of it was probably relief. The pesky guy who kept bringing up massacres and human rights abuse was finally going away.
After I left Baghdad, Saddam became markedly more upbeat. He took an instant liking to Mr. Bill, my replacement. That was probably because Bill was also someone with a wealth of knowledge about Iraq that made the discussions lively and interesting for Saddam. Bill also had another attribute that Saddam liked: He didn’t need to bring up human rights abuse or security-related issues because they had been thoroughly explored. That is not to say they didn’t have their disagreements and moments of tension. They did. But their sessions were less confrontational.
Bill also had the advantage of not racing against the clock with headquarters breathing down his neck. When my team started debriefing Saddam, we were told for the first week or so that the FBI was going to arrive any moment and each session might be our last. As a result, we didn’t have time to put Saddam at ease to possibly get him to speak more freely. We had to ask the tough questions right away. This forced us, especially me as the Iraq expert, to raise matters that upset him. After a while, this aggressiveness made me less effective. Because I had angered him with my questions about Halabja, Saddam became wary of me and constantly asked me why I wanted to know about a particular subject. The day after our Halabja conversation, when I tried to revisit some more questions about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he interrupted me and said, “Stop beating around the bush. Come to the point—what is it you want to know?” Our Halabja conversation had clearly struck a chord with Saddam and now his guard was way up and almost impossible to penetrate.
Soon after I left, the U.S. military asked Saddam to make a statement calling on Iraqi insurgents to lay down their arms. Admiral McRaven filled us in on the plan at my last morning meeting. We wished him luck but said we thought it unlikely that Saddam would agree. On January 13, 2004, McRaven approached Saddam as one senior commander speaking to another. McRaven’s request carried no threat of execution, veiled or otherwise. But Saddam refused to sign or even read the statement. “My dignity does not allow me to read it,” he said.
Later on, Saddam expanded on his refusal to Bill, my replacement: “I think that the military authorities didn’t understand Iraq or Saddam Hussein or any of the people involved in this matter. This military commander . . . introduced himself as a historian and talked about Napoleon and Mussolini . . . But, you know, Napoleon’s story is not our story; it’s a different story. I understood that what he meant was just like Mussolini, I was to sign the letter or I would be executed. But, how old am I? So, how much longer am I going to live? You know, this method should not be used with Saddam Hussein. I should not be threatened; we should have a dialogue. When I speak of a dialogue, it’s because I believe in dialogue, not because I am a prisoner. So the way to stop the bloodshed is dialogue—dialogue with me or with other members of the command who are captured. But the occupier who comes across the Tigris to our country and asks the occupied to stop fighting—that is not logical. We will say, ‘If you want to stop the bloodshed, you should leave.’ You will be losing nothing by leaving, but we will be losing everything if we stop fighting.”*