Global Beat Syndicate: Making Asia a Priority, Not a Threat

Don't dismiss Saddam Hussein's ability to strike poisonous blows against the U.S.

By Jeff Stein

Sept. 26, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Much has been made of Osama Bin Laden's suspected connections with Iraq in the two weeks since suicide pilots flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. They rest primarily on reported meetings here and there between Iraqi agents and bin Laden's operatives -- important evidence, but hardly conclusive.

Having recently authored a book with the chief designer of Saddam's nuclear bomb, however, and having reported on this and related issues for a number of years, I think I can add a few more clues to the growing pile.

First of all, Saddam is a master of indirection. He will rarely make a mistake that might threaten his own survival. He demurred from putting chemical or biological warheads on the missiles he hurled at Israel during Desert Storm, certain that he'd get a nuclear response. Likewise he heeded Washington's warning in 1991 not to use weapons of mass destruction on Allied troops.

And he would avoid being directly involved in a terrorism spectacular on American soil that would ensure a devastating response from President Bush.

Thus, barring disclosures from another defector from Saddam's inner circle in coming weeks, it's unlikely that proof of direct Iraqi ties to the plot will soon be found.

On the other hand, there's a natural synergy between Saddam and bin Laden. The Saudi terrorist provides a handy cat's paw for Saddam to wreak havoc against the U.S. without directly challenging Washington, while bin Laden can exploit Iraq's long experience with clandestine operations for his own anti-American goals.

One of the ways Saddam and bin Laden could work together is in organizing an attack against the United States using chemical or biological weapons. New revelations about a secret operation in Iraq by Khidhir Hamza, the chief of Saddam's nuclear weapon's program who defected to the United States in 1994, may provide yet another clue to Saddam's ties to bin Laden, as well as bin Laden's need for Saddam.

Hamza, whose memoirs I co-authored, says that as part of his plan to defect, he had bought a country house about 40 miles north of Baghdad, along the road leading to the No-Fly Zone enforced by U.S. and British warplanes.

Hamza says that one day a man in his mid-30s came by an introduced himself. It turned out he was a Palestinian in charge of a commando training camp.

Abu-Khalid, as he called himself, confided to Hamza that he was sending his budding commandos into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on training missions -- with mock chemical and biological weapons.

According to Hamza, Abu-Khalid told him that each trainee carried a device which they were required to plant at their targets, including "major water reservoirs and food storage areas." He added that "on some missions, we even wear gas masks and special protective suits."

Hamza says Abu-Khalid was coy about divulging further details, beyond saying the trainees were required to bring back a picture of the device on the target with "a special camera." But Hamza says Abu-Khalid clearly meant to imply that his commandos were training to plant chemical or biological weapons abroad.

Over the months, Hamza says, Abu-Khalid led him to believe there were many groups like his. A constant stream of recruits passed through his camp en route to tactical training camps elsewhere, he said. There they fired weapons and ate only what they could forage or capture.

It was classic commando training, but for what?

Hamza, keeping a low profile for his own escape, had no way to judge Abu-Khalid's story, nor interest in asking questions that would arouse suspicion.

But developments in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks raise the possibility that training camps in Iraq had designs whose outlines we may be discovering only now.

The first was news that Arab operatives here had looked into learning how to fly crop dusters. Since none of the suspects are farmers, they could have had only one other purpose in mind: a chemical or biological attack on a U.S. target.

The second unnerving news was that two Iraqi operatives had been arrested in Kuwait last Sunday. It's tempting to draw a line between that and Abu Khalid's commando training camp, which could only operate under Saddam's personal purview. Intelligence operations are his obsession.

Another dotted line between Saddam and Osama bin Laden can be drawn from the fact that Iraq is the only Arab regime that has used chemical and biological weapons on humans -- and not just on a battlefield.

The tests began in 1984, when about 100 Shiite prisoners were shipped to a West German-built pesticide factory at Samara and subjected to chemical agents, according to Dr. Hamza. None returned.

In 1985, another group of about 50 prisoners was taken to a major weapons facility at Salmon Pak for biological experiments. None returned from there, either.

Prisoners in other experiments were given vaccines upon release and were monitored as they fell with flu-like symptoms and eventually died. Other Shiite prisoners were trucked to trenches where Iraqi aircraft dropped chemical canisters on them.

Chemical weapons were then deemed ready for use on Iranian human-wave assaults in the waning months of the Iran-Iraq War.

In March 1988, Saddam dropped nerve gas on the Kurdish village of Halabjah, a name that became as infamous as Guernica and My Lai when pictures of some 5,000 corpses, some of them of mothers holding their infants, were published in the West.

Less well known is that Saddam tested biological weapons on Kurdish villagers. In 1987 typhoid spores were dumped into the water supplies of villages around the city of Sulimaniya, in the remotest part of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Deaths were estimated to number between 100 and 400 people, calculated from the testimony of victims who showed up at Turkish hospitals with a particular strain of the disease.

In the same year, a gas attack was unleashed on Kurdish villages near Arbil, capital of the Kurdish north. This time survivors were gunned down by Iraqi troops.

The point here is that not just anyone can mix up a batch of chemical or biological weapons, much less employ them efficiently on a target. That takes a reliable supplier, at least one skilled scientist, and practice -- preferably on living subjects in well-hidden, wide open spaces -- especially if one's target is an American town or city.

Do the Taliban have all these? Not likely. Does Osama Bin Laden? Also not likely. The best suspect to have them all is Iraq.

Jeff Stein is a special correspondent on terrorism for the San Francisco Chronicle. He has written frequently on national security issues for a wide range of publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, GQ, Esquire, Talk and Salon. Last year, he coauthored Saddam's Bombmaker with Khidhir Hamza, father of the Iraqi nuclear program, which has just been issued in a new paperback by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster.