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- SeethisPass, on 10/10/2007, -11/+30Saddam Hussein was our employee since 1959 when we used him to assasinate several high power individuals. Here is the rather longish UPI report that they have now scrubbed from the net.
Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
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.
Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International
 - thatchimp, on 10/10/2007, -3/+17"Hussein saw himself as the Mahdi" -- really? You could be right, but I've certainly never heard that before... I was under the impression that he was relatively secular
- gn0stik, on 10/10/2007, -3/+16You're right. My Bad. Not the Mahdi. He considered himself a modern day Saladin. I got confused. Still can't edit posts on digg. :)
- quakerorts, on 10/10/2007, -16/+27This story briefly surfaced a couple years ago. I guess the neocons didn't want to be denied their war and their war profits.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10How many times is this gonna get posted?
- shortarabguy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Remember the days when the biggest thing on our minds was our president getting a blowjob?
- Achaean, on 10/10/2007, -3/+9already in the top ten?
http://www.digg.com/world_news/Saddam_to_Bush_1bn_ ... - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8It is great in hindsight to look at it as a deal, but if the public were to catch wind of the Bush administration paying their enemy a billion dollar bribe after all that Iraq/Al-Qaeda hype, people would have gone *****.
- lib24, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9$1,000,000,000 and infomation WMD's to fund and supply terrorists.... Answer: No.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7This article is currently #1 on the front page... way to self-police, Digg
- JonnyTrombone, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7This story briefly surfaced in the Digg Top ten a couple of... Oh, wait, it's still there!
- paranoidbrick, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5We don't negotiate with terrorists let alone evil dictators. A billion dollars and information about weapons of mass destruction could only be wanted for one purpose: to make weapons of mass destruction!
Don't you think Hussein would have killed thousands of civilians with that technology? - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5"Less than a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein signaled that he was willing to go into exile as long as he could take with him $1 billion and information on weapons of mass destruction, according to a report of a Feb. 22, 2003, meeting between President Bush and his Spanish counterpart published by a Spanish newspaper yesterday. "
B-B-But there were no WMDs in Iraq. /liberal mode off - gn0stik, on 10/10/2007, -15/+19Not to give any credit to the NeoCons, I'm no fan, and if you seen any of my other posts you'd know that.. But If you remember correctly, they didn't want to create another Osama. Hussein saw himself as the Mahdi. Give him a billion dollars, and info on where to get arms, and we've got some seriously bad JuJu..
- geekee, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4That's funny that Bush is blamed directly for anything that happens in Iraq, but you're going to give Saddam pass when the Kurds were gassed, because "he didn't know".
- CMaff24, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6A billion dollars and info on WMDs for a tyrannical murderer? Yeah, and all Hitler wanted was the Rhineland and Gdansk...
I dont support the war in Iraq, but I'm sure that most people before the 2003 invasion wouldn't have necessarily been willing to let such a war criminal escape with a cash reward and information to create problems elsewhere. Additionally, what would we have expected to happen in Iraq politically after he was gone? - AntBing, on 10/10/2007, -4/+7Bush didn't want him exiled. He wanted him dead. Why leave a dethroned leader alive to constantly remind you (and the world) he talked his way out of punishment for past indiscretions. That, and Haliburton stood to make a ton more cash from the "liberation" of Iraq, so I'm sure Dick added his two cents.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3It would have been the most idiotic solution. Which is why an idiot like yourself thinks that it would be a good idea.
- ZenMojo, on 10/10/2007, -4/+7Remember the old days when Christians and Jews could openly worship in Iraq...?
- SeethisPass, on 10/10/2007, -6/+9Iraq was smeared totally. Show me a claim and I'll show you it is *****.
This for instance.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/ips/suri3.html - gregm11, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I'm sure he'd settle for less than a billion now.
- Ajajadude, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Don't tell people that. Diggers don't like it when the obvious is pointed out to them.
- calinazaret, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Yeah, even though the war was an obvious mistake, giving Saddam a bunch of money and info on weapons sounds like it would have been pretty bad.
- gernblansted, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4"God told me to attack Iraq, and I did."
- G.W. Bush - facewarts, on 10/10/2007, -4/+7Got it !
Bush evil ... Saddam all around real nice guy ! - DreadPirate, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3And that is exactly the facts that Liberals can't handle - they think war must be avoided at all costs, Saddam on his own with $1 billion and WMD information is just a bad idea. This war hasn't been handled nearly as good as it could have been, but that would have been worse.
- geekee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Tell that to the million dead people Saddam killed. Oh wait, you can't because they're dead.
- Judasmac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Alternative headline: "Report: Hussein Confirmed Iraqi WMDs before War"
- icegoddess13, on 10/10/2007, -4/+6buried for already being on the Top 10
- Gunshotlullaby, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5I am really starting to wonder if people actually check the top stories on digg before posting it again..several times...in the same day....
- geekee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Isn't this the third time this unsubstantiated story got posted on Digg's front page. Meanwhile dead monks in Burma isn't news here.
- barkingmoonbat, on 10/10/2007, -5/+7How many times does this have to hit the front page.
Also, you're out of date. The accurate transcript has now been released and it doesn't provide nearly as much ammo to bash Bush as the original article. - 21chrisp, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Let's kill the entire planet before they get nuclear weapons. Preemptively killing everybody will guarantee that no one will get killed by them.
- DreadPirate, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2is a nuke going off anywhere in the world that hard to comprehend?
- DreadPirate, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Very very true - no matter what was done, the democrats would have blamed bush.
- AkatsukiNoTobi, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4This is so huge, and I turn on CNN to see if its covering this story. The headline news is about Britney Spears and her abuse of drugs....
- zanzzz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I guess you hate us for our freedom also.
- DopplerDuck, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1And what is the average rate of Iraqis dead per day under Bush vs under Saddam? Oh wait, you know no maths.
- bamapachyderm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Forget it, p0s3r. You know that's not acceptable speech at digg--you're supposed to be praising Saddam and bashing Bush, not the other way around!
- bamapachyderm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Do you actually know any stock brokers or cops, or just what you see in the movies that portray them as the bad guys?
- bobzibub, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2No, only those that killed more than 1.2M civilians are worse than Bush/Cheney.
The rest are better.
Ahmadinejad hasn't killed that many. Suppressed many to be sure, but he doesn't compete.
Kim Jong-Il probably has killed more, so he's worse.
Osama? Not even close; don't waste my time. - bamapachyderm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yes, because "liberals" (I use the term loosely) find it impossible to believe that anyone BUT Americans (specifically, conservatives) could possibly have evil intent. Evil doesn't exist to them, except in the GOP (and in Christianity, at least at digg). Everyone else is rainbows, unicorns, and fluffy kittens!
- Bilabrin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1This guy has a history of making comments which are quite effective at being offensive. I first noticed a really offensive comment from another story and as I read them I almost became amused. Comical in their consistency,negativity and focus on insulting the poster. I wonder what he does in real life. I'm betting stock broker or cop.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1No, for some reason I don't think he's too concerned about money right now.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Did you ever think it was unreasonable? What would a former dictator do with $1 billion and information on arms? Probably go find a new country to rule with an iron fist.
- ninjakoala, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Is that why the US refused the conditional surrender from Japan, dropped a couple of nukes killing thousands of civilians and then letting the emperor get the exact terms he requested in the first place?
Doesn't sound like defense to me - more like revenge. In this day and age I suppose the counter-attacks would equal terrorism as it was definitely not a military target. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Yeah, that means HE is the idiot. Sure.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2So? It is not as if Saddam offered a solution that ANY reasonable human being would think was acceptable.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4Yeah, World War 2 was about the oil. It wasn't about getting the crap blown out of us during Pearl Harbor. We just wanted to appease the military industrial complex and not, say, defend ourselves.
- bamapachyderm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Flippant? Pot, meet kettle.
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