Ken Pollack writes about the effects of Hussein Kamel's defection to Jordan in August 1995 (The Threatening Storm pp 76-77):
As the moving force behind Iraq's WMD programs since the end of the Iran-Iraq War and a member of Qusayy's concealment committee, Hussein Kamel also knew all about Saddam's shell game with the U.N. inspectors. The regime decided to try to deflect blame onto Hussein Kamel himself and suddenly told Rolf Ekeus that it had "discovered" that Hussein Kamel had been secretly hiding vast amounts of information about Iraq's WMD programs on his chicken farm near Habbaniyah. When UNSCOM officials were taken there, the found 650,000 pages of text, photos, videos, microfilm, and microfiche relating to Iraq's WMD program in forty crates that had unmistakably been moved there within the last few days. Later, Hussein Kamel would himself provide considerable information to the inspectors. As a result, the inspectors realized for the first time that they had been duped. Iraq had been much further along in all of its WMD programs than they had realized, and it still possessed considerable equipment, documentation, and even weapons. For instance, the inspectors learned not only that Iraq had an offensive BW program, but also that it had weaponized biological agents and had loaded them into 166 bombs and 25 missile warheads for use during the Gulf War if the coalition marched on Baghdad. They also learned that in August 1990, Saddam had ordered a crash program to enrich enough uranium to produce one nuclear weapon, which he planned to load onto a missile and fire at Tel Aviv if the coalition moved to depose him (The program failed to produce either the uranium or a device that could be mounted on a missile) For the inspectors, and for Ekeus personally, the information provided by Hussein Kamel and contained in the documents that Iraq hastily surrendered were a revelation. Before, Ekeus and most of the inspectors had believed their job was essentially done, and they had resented American pressure and claims that Iraq was still hiding proscribed materials. Ekeus and the inspectors would never trust the Iraqis again. |
