August 8, 2003
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

Is Iraqi Intel Still Being Manipulated?

by Michael Hirsh

His story seemed, in the beginning, a godsend for the Bush administration. . . .

True, Obeidi said he'd buried the centrifuge equipment, as he'd been ordered to do in 1991 by Saddam's son Qusay Hussein and son-in-law Hussein Kamel. But he also insisted to the CIA that, in effect, that was that: Saddam had never reconstituted his centrifuge program afterward, in large part because of the Iraqi tyrant's fear of being discovered under the U.N. sanctions-and-inspections regime. If true, this was a terribly inconvenient fact for the Bush administration, . . .

Soon, not only was Obeidi no longer a marquee name for the Bush team, he was incommunicado. Whisked off to a safe house in Kuwait, with no access to phones or the Internet, he waited in vain for what he thought had been offered to him: asylum in the United States and green cards granting permanent residency to him and his eight-member family.

The treatment of Obeidi has in turn raised questions about whether even fresh intelligence from Iraq is being manipulated in advance of the report being prepared by David Kay, which is intended as the definitive account of Iraq's WMD program.

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David Kay holds a BA degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master's in International Affairs and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University.

[The main goal of the Zionists is sowing discord among Muslims--"U.S. Backed Mossad Agents Involved in Hakim's Assassination to Flee Iraq," Tehran Times, September 9, 2003]