How west helped Saddam gain power and decimate the Iraqi elite
By Mohamoud A Shaikh
Iraqis have always suspected that the 1963 military coup that set Saddam Husain on the road to absolute power had been masterminded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). New evidence just published reveals that the agency not only engineered the putsch but also supplied the list of people to be eliminated once power was secured - a monstrous stratagem that led to the decimation of Iraq's professional class.
The overthrow of president Abdul Karim Kassim on February 8, 1963 was not, of course, the first intervention in the region by the agency, but it was the bloodiest - far bloodier than the coup it orchestrated in 1953 to restore the shah of Iran to power. Just how gory, and how deep the CIA's involvement in it, is demonstrated in a new book by Said Aburish, a writer on Arab political affairs.
The book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (1997), sets out the details not only of how the CIA closely controlled the planning stages but also how it played a central role in the subsequent purge of suspected leftists after the coup.
The author reckons that 5,000 were killed, giving the names of 600 of them - including many doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors who formed Iraq's educated elite. The massacre was carried out on the basis of death lists provided by the CIA.
The lists were compiled in CIA stations throughout the Middle East with the assistance of Iraqi exiles like Saddam, who was based in Egypt. An Egyptian intelligence officer, who obtained a good deal of his information from Saddam, helped the Cairo CIA station draw up its list. According to Aburish, however, the American agent who produced the longest list was William McHale, who operated under the cover of a news correspondent for the Beirut bureau of Time magazine.
The butchery began as soon as the lists reached Baghdad. No-one was spared. Even pregnant women and elderly men were killed. Some were tortured in front of their children. According to the author, Saddam who 'had rushed back to Iraq from exile in Cairo to join the victors, was personally involved in the torture of leftists in the separate detention centres for fellaheen [peasants] and the Muthaqafeen or educated classes.'
King Hussain of Jordan, who maintained close links with the CIA, says the death lists were relayed by radio to Baghdad from Kuwait, the foreign base for the Iraqi coup. According to him, a secret radio broadcast was made from Kuwait on the day of the coup, February 8, 'that relayed to those carrying out the coup the names and addresses of communists there, so they could be seized and executed.'
The CIA's royal collaborator also gives an insight into how closely the Ba'athist party and American intelligence operators worked together during the planning stages. 'Many meetings were held between the Ba'ath party and American intelligence - the most critical ones in Kuwait,' he says.
At the time the Ba'ath party was a small nationalist movement with only 850 members. But the CIA decided to use it because of its close relations with the army. One of its members tried to assassinate Kassim as early as 1959. Saddam, then 22, was wounded in the leg, later fleeing the country.
According to Aburish, the Ba'ath party leaders - in return for CIA support - agreed to 'undertake a cleansing programme to get rid of the communists and their leftist allies.' Hani Fkaiki, a Ba'ath party leader, says that the party's contact man who orchestrated the coup was William Lakeland, the US assistant military attache in Baghdad.
One of the coup leaders, colonel Saleh Mahdi Ammash, former Iraqi assistant military attache in Washington, was in fact arrested for being in touch with Lakeland in Baghdad. His arrest caused the conspirators to move earlier than they had planned.
Aburish's book shows that the Ba'ath leaders did not deny plotting with the CIA ro overthrow Kassim. When Syrian Ba'ath party officials demanded to know why they were in cahoots with the US agency, the Iraqis tried to justify it in terms of ideology comparing their collusion to 'Lenin arriving in a German train to carry out his revolution.' Ali Saleh, the minister of interior of the regime which had replaced Kassim, said: 'We came to power on a CIA train.'
It should not come as a surprise that the Americans were so eager to overthrow Kassim or so willing to cause such a blood bath to achieve their objective. At the height of the cold war, they were causing similar mayhem in Latin America and Indo-China overthrowing any leaders that dared show the slighest degree of independence.
Kassim was a prime target for US aggression and arrogance. After taking power in 1958, he took Iraq out of the Baghdad Pact, the US-backed anti-Soviet alliance in the Middle East, and in 1961 he dared nationalise part of the concession of the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum company and resurrected a long-standing Iraqi claim to Kuwait ( the regime which succeeded him immediately dropped the claim to Kuwait).
But the cold war does not by itself explain Uncle Sam's propensity to violence. When president George Bush bombed Iraq to smithereens, killing thousands of civilians, the cold war was over. Clinton cannot cite the cold war for insisting that the brutal regime of sanctions imposed on the country should stay.
In fact the brutal, blood-stained nature of Uncle Sam goes back all the way to the so-called 'Founding Fathers,' who made no attempt to conceal it. As long ago as 1818, John Quincy Adams hailed the 'salutary efficacy' of terror in dealing with 'mingled hordes of lawless Indians and negroes.' He was defending Andrew Jackson's frenzied operations in Florida which virtually wiped out the indigenous population and left the Spanish province under US control. Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues were not above professing to be impressed by the wisdom of his words.
Muslimedia: August 16-31, 1997
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Here again is the age-old story of the U.S. being willing to back all manner of bloody thugs as long as they were anti-communist....
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 4/10/2003 7:30 PM
Source: upi.com
U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and
low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past
Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a
bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their
instrument for more than 40 years, according to former
U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
United Press International has interviewed almost a
dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and
former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together
the following account. The CIA declined to comment on
the report.
While many have thought that Saddam first became
involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start
of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts
with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part
of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with
assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-
Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy
in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be
identified, described as "a horrible orgy of
bloodshed."
According to current and former U.S. officials, who
spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded
as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War
with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s,
Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact
which was to defend the region and whose members
included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and
conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to
withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked
everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State
Department official.
Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to
buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic
communists into ministry positions of "real power,"
according to this official. The domestic instability of
the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say
publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the
world."
In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA
operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties"
with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close
connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian
leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement,
Roger Morris, a former National Security Council
staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that
the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist
Baath Party "as its instrument."
According to another former senior State Department
official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a
part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to
this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in
Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's
office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe
Qasim's movements.
Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy
Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge
of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi
dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S.
officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel
Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the
Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his
own personal account. Three former senior U.S.
officials have confirmed that this is accurate.
The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was
completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA
official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his
nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver
and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm.
Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets
that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand
grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.
"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S.
intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the
floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf
had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped
to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence
agents, several U.S. government officials said.
Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by
Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to
Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam
was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and
put him through a brief training course, former CIA
officials said. The agency then helped him get to
Cairo, they said.
One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at
the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as
having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."
In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the
upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time
playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by
CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to
Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.
One former senior U.S. government official said: "In
Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine
Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class.
Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was
your basic dive."
But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits
to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as
Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger
were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S.
intelligence officials said.
Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his
Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a
gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since
they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to
Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S.
diplomat in Egypt at the time.
In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party
coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind
the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F.
Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly
denied this.
"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around
asking what the hell had happened," this official said.
But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that
the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the
CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National
Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were
then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down,
according to former U.S. intelligence officials with
intimate knowledge of the executions.
Many suspected communists were killed outright, these
sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings,
presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat,
literally, the Palace of the End.
A former senior U.S. State Department official told
UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask
that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding.
This was serious business."
A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like
the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after
Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of
his communists suddenly got killed."
British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King
of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior
Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of
Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great
victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence
operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an
old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the
communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."
Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-
Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath
Party.
The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with
Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war
in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly
sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield
intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance
aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed
forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a
U.S. interagency intelligence group.
This former official said that he personally had signed
off on a document that shared U.S. satellite
intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to
produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I
thought I was losing my mind," the former official told
UPI.
A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a
top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat,
Iraq's military intelligence, to meet with the
Americans.
According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military
assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault
on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by
blinding Iranian radars for three days.
The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience
came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000
Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its
neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become
its bitterest enemy.
Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Is this what spreading "democracy" is supposed to be about?
Let's break this cycle
with Impeachment.
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