Hussein Kamel was a high level
Iraqi official who defected to the
United States in 1995. 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 Iraq’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 (the head of
UNSCOM) that it had “discovered” that Hussein Kamel had been secretly hiding vast amounts of information about
Iraq’s
WMD program on his chicken farm near
Habbaniyah.
When
UNSCOM officials were taken there, they 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 himself would provide considerable information to the
inspectors. As a result, the inspectors realised for the first time that they had been
duped. The
inspectors learned not only that
Iraq had an offensive
BW program, but also had
weaponized biological agents and loaded them into 166 bombs and 25 missile warheads for use during the
Gulf War if the coalition marched into
Baghdad.
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 his
inspectors would never
trust the
Iraqis again.
Sources:
Pollack, Kenneth.
The Threatening Storm. New York: Random House Books, 2002.