- The book "Saddam's Bombmaker," recently published
by Khidhir Hamza, recounted the author's 22 years of experience with the
Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). Hamza exaggerated to a great extent
his own role in the nuclear weapon program. As I personally know the author
and have worked with him during these two decades, I wish to clarify the
following untruths and misinformation that has been postulated by him in
his book.
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- There is a huge difference between those who worked with
the government for scientific and professional reasons despite being under
the sharp sword of government security agencies, and those who try to hide
their fear with a fig leaf. A few scientists who believed in their work
realized the slippery road they were treading and tried to leave before
and after the 1991 Gulf War. While some were able to flee Iraq, others,
such as Dr. Al Shahrastsani (who was also charged with other offenses),
ceased his work despite the penalty of death given to such rebellious actions.
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- But when the bells of fear first started to ring in Hamza's
mind in 1974, when he prepared the first nuclear weapons project report
at the request of the government, he decided to stay in Iraq until it was
convenient for him to go abroad. In the '70s and '80s, it would have been
much easier and less risky to leave, yet he wallowed in Iraq in nice Mercedes
cars while attending scientific conventions with lavish stipends. He kept
deluding himself, as he naively mentions in his book, that the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE) or the CIA would contact him and magically
whisk him out of Iraq as if on a flying carpet.
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- Even though he was the head of the physics department
in the nuclear research center for ten years during the seventies, his
deep inner fear of radiation prevented him from ever entering the reactor
hall or touching any scientific gadgets, probably due to his continual
fear of an electric jolt that he experienced as a child, as his book mentions.
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- Hamza's aversion to scientific experimentation drove
him to insist on working solely on the highly theoretical three-body-problem
during the seventies, far removed from any of the initial work on fission
that was carried on during that period at the Iraqi Nuclear Research Center.
He did not, even remotely, get involved in any scientific research, except
for journalistic articles, dealing with the fission bomb, its components
or its effects. The testimony to this is the recorded archive of the IAEC
for the seventies that point to the efforts of others in this field, and
none to the self-proclaimed "bombmaker."
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- At the end of the seventies, he completely refused to
take any responsibility in the Iraqi purchased French research reactor,
and left that task to the great Egyptian scientist, Dr. Yehya El Meshad,
who was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad in Paris in 1980.
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- After he again withdrew from any leadership responsibility
for the nuclear weapon project which started in earnest in 1980 in direct
response to the Israeli attack on the OSIRAK reactor, leaving it to one
of Iraq's great physicists, Hamza was merely assigned the gaseous diffusion
project. He did, in fact, spend some effort in buying the fine filters
needed for that project, but his fear of entering the project hall was
a cause of many hilarious puns.
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- In the mid eighties, Hamza was asked by Hussain Kamil
to write a report on the progress of the weapon program to present to the
government. In response to this report, the whole program was put under
the control and guidance of Hussain Kamil himself in 1987. The pace of
work accelerated immensely until 1991. However, during that time, the "bombmaker"
was kicked out of the program at the end of 1987 for stealing a few air
conditioning units from the building assigned to his project. This he conveniently
omitted to mention in his book, but cited frequent travels abroad to garner
assistance and equipment, while in fact he was an outcast to the project
and did not attend any seminar or brainstorming sessions during that intense
period.
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- The "bombmaker" did make a great deal in his
book of his role in building the Al Atheer weapon manufacturing center
during the late eighties, while in fact he was going in circles doing nothing
at the Tuwaitha Research Center, as a mere has-been, and did not even have
an office space in Al Atheer. He was, in fact, assigned the peripheral
job of writing a report on the American Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
project and spent his time collecting whatever information was available
in the library from newspapers and scientific journals. He spent all his
time during these critical years in the library and, in 1989, was made
a sort of consultant, still loosely attached to the IAEA, but also taught
at a university two days a week, far removed from any bomb making.
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- In addition, he was thoroughly annoyed and bitter regarding
the rejection by the CIA of his appeal for them to take him, through the
auspices of the Iraqi National Congress representative in the north of
Iraq, where he fled alone, leaving his family behind, in 1994. He pathetically
thought that the CIA was not aware of his miniscule role in the bomb making,
especially after the weapon program's scientific report fell in the hands
of the IAEA inspectors in 1991. He claimed to be the container of secrets
while in fact he was only regurgitating them. Worse than that, he claims
in his book that the CIA, in 1995, fabricated a story published in an English
newspaper of his submitting a report on the supposed continued Iraqi nuclear
program just to ferret him out of his hiding place. Being a teacher at
that time in a Libyan University is not a place to hide, to say the least.
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- The extent of his fear climaxed when the Iraqi government
sent his son to Libya to persuade him to return. He repulsed his son's
appeals and again scrambled to Europe, knocking desperately at the doors
of the IAEA and the CIA, who again gave him the cold shoulder. But then,
it is most probable, the CIA reconsidered his case in the light of the
escape of Hussain Kamil to Jordan and his revelation of yet more hidden
technical reports at his chicken farm in Iraq. The CIA thus hoped that
Hamza might fill in some small gaps on information and took him under their
wings, helping him and his family to settle in the U.S. under their protection
and strings.
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- I can only recall the image of "the bombmaker"
straggling for two decades during the seventies, eighties and early nineties
with his tail between his legs, looking over his shoulders and running
to whomever gave him a piece of bone with some meat on it, to then suddenly
springing from his cocoon at the end of the nineties as a Don Quixote with
an American mask. Brandishing his wooden sword in the small arena afforded
to him by the CIA, he counted on the silence of his colleagues, either
out of fear of the Iraqi security agencies or the blind cruelty of the
American ones, to not expose his phony claims in his book, which may be
rendered as a repayment to the CIA for their services to him. His appearances
on the weekly American talk shows are truly a reflection of his present
allegiances.
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- The reader might question the motive of my writing on
this sensitive subject and the personal tack apparent in it. All I can
say is that even if silence is gold, then not speaking out at this time
against such fallacies is a stigma of cowards.
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- Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University
of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from
the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the
Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. He was able to leave
Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network
administrator in Toronto, Canada.
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- Imad Khadduri encourages your comments: imad.khadduri@rogers.com
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- See related article that provides more information on
Khidhir Hamza: http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=888
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