Saddam's Sexy Side
washingtonpost.com
For ABC's Claire Shipman, interviewing Saddam Hussein's mistress was nothing like chasing the Monica Lewinsky story.
"We're not in Clinton territory here," Shipman says -- even if the interview with Parisoula Lampsos did include her claim that the Iraqi leader uses Viagra. And that Hussein could be romantic, though he had four other mistresses.
Shipman and producer Chris Vlasto say they spent months verifying Lampsos's account with U.S. and European intelligence officials and other Iraqi defectors (without a blue dress, they had to work hard). But even more interesting is how they tracked down the 54-year-old woman for Thursday's "PrimeTime Live."
Vlasto, working with the opposition Iraqi National Congress, waited for days in a Middle East country he declines to name until two Iraqis drove him at high speed to a safe house. There he conversed with Lampsos through an Arabic translator, learning only later that she speaks limited English. The fact that both are of Greek descent didn't hurt.
"What made her credible is she actually said nice things about Saddam," Vlasto says. "That and the level of detail convinced me to go back to ABC and say, 'We've got to do this woman!' "
Shipman met with Lampsos in May at a safe house outside Beirut. The Iraqi dissidents "thought it would be easier for Parisoula to talk to a woman, that it was hard to explain why she was the mistress of a dictator," she says.
Vlasto, who helped break some of the Lewinsky scoops, says Lampsos agreed to show her face because the dissidents believe that going public will make retaliation by Hussein's forces less likely. "Unlike Lewinsky, it was life and death. She's risking her life to do this interview," he says.
The two days of discussions ranged from Hussein's sex life to his hiding of chemical weapons to what Lampsos describes as his fondness for watching videotapes of his enemies being tortured. "This may be the hardest interview I've ever done," Shipman says. "It was exhausting. She was so emotional and so scared." |
