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The Last Iraqi WMD Prisoner: The Scientist Who Tried to Reveal on March 2, 2003 He Destroyed the CW/BW

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The 10th anniversary of the Iraq War has refocused attention on the Iraqis who warned America before the war that Iraq had no WMD.

Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had “virtually nothing” in terms of WMD.

[snip]

Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002.

But as far as I can tell, there has been no significant media discussion of what happened with Mahmud Faraj Bilal al Samarrai, the Iraqi who, in 1991, destroyed Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons.

Following a particularly invasive IAEA inspection in late-June 1991, Saddam ordered Dr. Mahmud Faraj Bilal, former deputy of the CW program, to destroy all hidden CW and BW materials, according to an interview with Bilal after OIF.

[snip]

ISG interviewed Dr. Mahmud Firaj Bilal, the Iraqi scientist who supervised the destruction of Iraq’s undeclared chemical munitions, along with a number of Iraqi higher officials who were knowledgeable of the weapons destruction. Although other sources have corroborated parts of Dr. Bilal’s account, ISG’s understanding of Iraq’s chemical and biological warfare agent unilateral destruction is heavily dependent on Dr. Bilal’s information, which is a weakness in our analysis. Nevertheless, as with Iraq’s long range missiles, we obtained a reasonably coherent account of the disposition of the CW munitions, though we were not able physically to verify the story. The UN has, however, verified some of it.

When Bilal was finally released last year (according to his lawyer, the very last scientist in custody to be released) Charles Duelfer reported his statements–the statements describing the destruction of the CW/BW we started a war to find–were mostly credible.

Bilal was interviewed at length by UN inspectors and Iraq Survey Group inspectors. His statements have not been found to be in great error. Yet he spent 9 years in jail. His superior in the Iraq CW program, General Faiz Abdullah Shahine (head of the infamous CW research and production facility known as the al Muthanna State Establishment) was never even detained and has reportedly lived a very successful business life–as he did during the Saddam regime.

Yet Duelfer, who has a piece today insisting the intelligence wasn’t cooked, professed last year to have no idea why Bilal was held so long.

Why? Bilal, must have been asking himself this question for a long time. I suspect “Why?” is a question many Iraqis ask themselves every day…

Maybe this is why:

In a letter to the CIA in 2006, made public by his lawyer, the former head of research and development at the military industries ministry recalled that he had given himself up to the CIA on March 2, 2003.

The guy who destroyed Saddam’s CW/BW stocks 12 years before Bush started a war because of those WMD tried to turn himself in to the CIA more than two weeks before Bush started the Iraq War. And yet that guy — who has never been anything but cooperative, even according to Charles Duelfer, but who tried to avert the war — is the guy our allies in Iraq kept locked up for 9 years.

Scientist Who Destroyed Iraq’s Chemical Weapons the Last To Be Freed

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In a little noticed piece (best as I can tell, only NYPost picked it up in the US), AFP reports that the last Iraqi WMD scientist still held in prison, Mahmud Faraj Bilal Al Samarrai, is set to be released.

“The judicial authorities have decided to free Mahmud Faraj Bilal al Samarrai,” he said.

That’s welcome news for Bilal al Samarrai, I’m sure. But here’s the detail that ought to interest American taxpayers even more:

In a letter to the CIA in 2006, made public by his lawyer, the former head of research and development at the military industries ministry recalled that he had given himself up to the CIA on March 2, 2003.

[snip]

Samarrai said his immediate superior, General Faez Abdullah Shahin, was never jailed and Saddam scientific adviser General Hammudi al Saadi was freed in 2005, as was deputy premier and military industries minister Abdel Tawab Mullah Hawaish.

The AFP provides the evidence of the bombshell there, but doesn’t make it explicit. This guy “gave himself up” to the CIA on March 2, 2003, more that two weeks before the war started.

Which is all the more troubling paired with the Iraq Survey Group report, which makes clear Bilal al Samarrai (whom they refer to as Bilal) is the guy who destroyed undeclared chemical weapons in response to IAEA inspections in 1991.

Following a particularly invasive IAEA inspection in late-June 1991, Saddam ordered Dr. Mahmud Faraj Bilal, former deputy of the CW program, to destroy all hidden CW and BW materials, according to an interview with Bilal after OIF

[snip]

A senior Iraqi scientist who directed the destruction of chemical and biological munitions contends that the decision to destroy the hidden materials was made at the end of June 1991. David Kay’s inspection and the ensuing controversy prompted Iraqi concerns about renewed war with the United States, according to Dr. Mahmud Firaj Bilal. Amir Rashid contacted Dr. Bilal and ordered that all hidden chemical and biological munitions be destroyed within 48 hours. When Bilal responded that this was impossible, Rashid directed that Bilal use the resources of the Iraqi Air Force and the surface-to-surface missile force to accomplish the task. Dr. Bilal gathered his colleagues from Al Muthanna State Establishment, went to the locations of the stored munitions, and began the destruction.

[snip]

ISG interviewed Dr. Mahmud Firaj Bilal, the Iraqi scientist who supervised the destruction of Iraq’s undeclared chemical munitions, along with a number of Iraqi higher officials who were knowledgeable of the weapons destruction. Although other sources have corroborated parts of Dr. Bilal’s account, ISG’s understanding of Iraq’s chemical and biological warfare agent unilateral destruction is heavily dependent on Dr. Bilal’s information, which is a weakness in our analysis. Nevertheless, as with Iraq’s long range missiles, we obtained a reasonably coherent account of the disposition of the CW munitions, though we were not able physically to verify the story. The UN has, however, verified some of it.

  • Iraq likely destroyed all 20 concealed CW Al Husayn missile warheads in the summer of 1991, according to Dr. Bilal based on UN-sponsored excavations. All were “binary” GB/GF nerve agent warheads filled with a mixture of isopropanol and cyclohexanol and MPF. Read more →

Taking Out Iraq's Future Leaders

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Chalabi

Laura linked to this story on Charles Duelfer’s new book. And boy did my hackles rise up when I read this passage:

After he left the United Nations in 2000, Duelfer went to a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he began working informally with a unit in the CIA’s Near East division, the Iraq Operations Group, which was tasked with regime change.

Duelfer assembled a list of more than 40 high-level officials who could help run Iraq following an invasion. He cultivated old contacts in the oil industry and the Iraqi government, meeting secretly with a top Iraqi official at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He traveled to Vienna for OPEC meetings that included key Iraqi oil officials. But the plan to put together a team that would form the basis of a future government was shelved.

"Once U.S. forces were in Iraq, they used the lists as targets," he writes. "Those named would find their homes raided, and they would be thrown in jail. . . . We continued to make more enemies." [my emphasis]

Basically, the CIA worked with Duelfer to pull together a list of top Iraqis who could take over the country. And–this story doesn’t say directly, but suggests–once DOD took over in Iraq, those on the list were targeted for harassment and arrest. 

I couldn’t help but think of something I noted when reporting on Judy Miller’s work in Iraq. She was writing, recall, at a time when DOD was undercutting State’s efforts to set up a broad-based Iraqi government, incorporating representatives of all constituencies in Iraq. DOD did so by carting Ahmed Chalabi and his band of would-be warriors around Iraq, always pre-empting State’s efforts. At precisely that time, Judy may have outed her first CIA spy, revealed in the name of de-Baathification, just 6 weeks before Valerie Wilson would be outed as a spy.

First, Judy writes an article for Chalabi that tries to discredit Saad Janabi by highlighting his ties to the CIA. As I mentioned in Part Three, as part of Judy’s coverage of Chalabi’s case for de-Baathification, Judy included the following passage:

Mr. Chalabi declined to name names, but other representatives of the Iraqi National Congress, said that the Central Intelligence Agency had retained Saad Janabi as a key adviser. Read more →