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A senior Iraqi scientist tells how Saddam Hussein, in a decades-long quest for the bomb, systematically hoodwinked the IAEA.
In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein, then Iraq's vice president and vice chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Council, ordered the development of a clandestine nuclear weapons program. I was one of those who initiated the program.
The plan's long-range objective was to produce nuclear weapons, but the immediate objective was to acquire nuclear technology. To achieve that goal, the manipulation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was key. The elaborate plan of deception that gradually evolved included the signing of nuclear cooperation treaties with friendly states and the invention of bogus projects.
Iraq had impeccable credentials for receiving nuclear assistance. It had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 and ratified it in 1969. That made our nuclear-power cover stories internationally acceptable and justified our major nuclear purchases with the full backing of the IAEA.
Over the years, I had many roles. I was chief of the fuel division in the 1970s, head of the theoretical division of the enrichment program in the 1980s, scientific adviser to the chairman of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (mEC) in the mid-1980s, andfor a brief period in 1987-director of weaponization.
It was never smooth sailing, and after the Persian Gulf War, I grew disenchanted with the regime. In 1994 I decided to leave Iraq. Not allowed to leave legally, I had to follow a circuitous route that led through several countries. And for reasons that are still unclear, in April 1995 the Sunday Times of London published an erroneous story reporting that I had been killed by the Iraqi intelligence service after sneaking out secret documents exposing Iraq's reconstituted nuclear weapon program.
After that report appeared, I moved to the United States, where I now live. I write this now to highlight the long history of Iraq's nuclear weapon program and my past involvement in that program, and to describe how Iraq hoodwinked the IAEA during the 1970s and 1980s.
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