Khidhir Hamza, Blowing the Whistle on Saddam Hussein
By Richard Leiby, Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page C01
washingtonpost.com
Married 32 years, the nuclear physicist and his wife share
a typical brick-and-siding home in Northern Virginia, with
a big-screen TV in the family room and a bowl of cashews
beckoning on the coffee table. A photomontage shows their
three sons, dark-haired, handsome and grown. Here's the
family on a vacation at Luray Caverns.
Something's missing, though. Where are the wedding
pictures? The cute childhood photographs?
All left behind in Baghdad, says Khidhir Hamza, the highest-
ranking government scientist to escape from Iraq and live
to tell the tale. To take a family album risks being found
out as a defector, and death: "You must bring along nothing
that could implicate you," he says.
Hamza, 64, has only old passports to document his previous
life. One bears a treasured date stamp: Sept. 15, 1995, the
day he made it to the United States.
Anybody who wonders why Iraqi scientists have not been
cooperating with United Nations inspectors, or how
instrumental they are in concealing banned weapons
programs, need only consult Hamza. For nearly 20 years he
worked to arm the Iraqi regime with atomic weapons, while
Hussein denied to the world that he wanted the Bomb. Two
years ago he published a book about the Faustian bargain he
struck as Hussein's "personal nuclear adviser."
Its title is "Saddam's Bombmaker," and Hamza says on the
opening page, "I am lucky to be alive."
[...]
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, coupled with his demand for
a "crash program" aimed at nuking Israel, ultimately pushed
Hamza over the edge.
"That told us we were really working in a lunatic asylum,"
he says.
He eased himself out of the nuclear program, took a
university job, and grew rich as an insider in Iraq's stock
market. He escaped alone, leaving his family vulnerable for
several months, but eventually a CIA "exfiltration" team
helped to smuggle them into the Kurdish-ruled north.
"My tortuous journey had a happy ending," Hamza
writes. "But I left behind scores of unhappy Iraqi
scientists. . . . Most of them, I am sure, would like to
get out. It is the civilized world's urgent duty to help
them."
[...] |
