10Jan04-Gordon Prather-Saddam's son-in-law told the truth
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Posted: January 10, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A year ago, some of what Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamal – director of Iraq's nuke, chem-bio and missile programs – had revealed when he defected to Jordan in 1995 was revealed to us.
Kamal had been interviewed in Jordan by Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq and Chief Inspector Maurizio Zifferero of the International Atomic Energy Agency. And by the CIA.
A year ago, Newsweek obtained a copy of the U.N. interview.
It seems that immediately after the Gulf War cease-fire, Kamal had ordered the destruction of all Iraqi chem-bio weapons – and the makings thereof – and the missiles to deliver them. Of course, Iraq had no nukes – or the makings thereof – to destroy.
Kamal had been "a gold mine of information. He had a good memory and, piece by piece, he laid out the main personnel, sites and progress of each WMD program." A military aide who defected with Kamal supported Kamal's assertions. Furthermore, Kamal had brought thousands of supporting documents with him.
By 1995, of course, UNSCOM and the IAEA had already concluded that virtually all Iraqi WMD had been destroyed, but they couldn't be sure that Kamal was telling them the whole truth.
So, according to Newsweek, Kamal's revelations were kept secret all these years in hopes that Saddam – uncertain as to exactly what Kamal had revealed – could be "bluffed" into providing them the whole truth.
But Saddam – even on the eve of invasion – never added anything to what the U.N. and CIA already knew.
Now comes Barton Gellman, investigative journalist for the Washington Post, with a stunning revelation. Gellman has obtained what appears to be a contemporary Iraqi "damage control" document, written just after Kamal's defection. According to Gellman, the handwritten report, written five days after Kamal's defection, suggests that Kamal had – in fact – told the "whole" truth about Iraqi WMD programs way back in 1995.
The author of that contemporary document is Hossam Amin, then – and until his arrest last year – the head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, responsible for providing information and logistical support to the U.N. inspectors. Gellman says the experienced Iraqi, U.S. and U.N. investigators who analyzed the Amin document for the Post believe it is authentic.
Markings on the letter say that Qusay Hussein read it, summarized it for his father and filed it with presidential secretary Abed Hamid Mahmoud.
Amin had listed "the matters that are known to the traitor and not declared" to U.N. inspectors.
Inspectors knew Iraq tried to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon, but not about the "crash program" to fabricate a bomb with French reactor fuel by 1991.
They knew Iraq made biological toxins, but not that it put them in Scud missile warheads.
There were major facilities – Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Institute, a centrifuge factory in Rashdiya, and the Al Atheer bomb-fabrication plant – whose true purposes were unacknowledged to inspectors.
Actually, by then, the "traitor" had told the U.N. inspectors – and the CIA – about all WMD activities – declared and undeclared – but, until now, there was a suspicion that Kamal might not have told the U.N. and the CIA everything.
Now, Gellman reports that Ali Shukri, a Jordanian military officer who debriefed Kamal on behalf of the late King Hussein, read Amin's letter in silence and then reread it.
"Shukri looked up and said Kamal had held back nothing."
The most significant point in Amin's letter – according to U.S. and European experts – is his unambiguous report that Iraq destroyed its entire inventory of biological weapons in the summer of 1991, confirming what Kamal had claimed.
But almost as significant is what Amin's letter didn't say.
For example, the Iraqis – inclulding Kamal – have always claimed that they were never able to "weaponize" anthrax, never able to disperse it as a lethal aerosol over the target. Had they been, that would have been among Iraqi's most important WMD secrets. According to Gellman, Amin's letter didn't mention it as a matter known to the "traitor" but not declared.
Similarly, although the Iraqis never came close to producing kilogram quantities of weapons-grade uranium, there had been "intelligence" that the Iraqis had a design for an "implosion" system for a nuke and had been testing it. According to Gellman, there was nothing in Amin's letter to suggest Iraq had been conducting such tests.
Bottom line? Kamal was telling the truth.
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Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
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