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Senior Iraqi Officials Attempted to Avert War
In the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, several senior Iraqi officials tried to invite U.S. officials to conduct their own WMD searches in Iraq in an effort to avoid war — an offer that was ultimately refused, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Nov. 5). The senior Iraqi officials, including the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, relayed their offer to the United States through Lebanese-American businessman Imad Hage, according to the Times. As part of their offer, the Iraqis said their country did not possess weapons of mass destruction and offered to allow U.S. troops and experts to come to Iraq to verify the claim. Hassan al-Obeidi, chief of foreign operations in the Iraqi Intelligence Service, said the “Americans could send 2,000 FBI agents to look wherever they wanted,” according to Hage. The Iraqi officials also offered to provide the United States with a man accused of involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was being held in Iraq, Hage said. He added that Iraq was apparently intimidated by the growing U.S. military threat. “The Iraqis were finally taking it seriously … and they wanted to talk, and they offered things they never would have offered if the buildup hadn’t occurred,” Hage said. The Iraqi officials’ messages were first passed in February to an analyst in the office of U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith in an apparent attempt to open backdoor communications, according to people involved. Iraqi officials indicated that their efforts had the approval of then-President Saddam Hussein. While the offer was rebuffed by the United States, it raised the interest of Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, who agreed in March to meet in London with Hage, the Times reported. During that meeting, Hage detailed the Iraqis’ position to Perle and relayed their request for a direct meeting with either him or another U.S. representative, according to the Times. “I was dubious that this would work … but I agreed to talk to people in Washington,” Perle said. Perle said he attempted to obtain CIA authorization to meet with the Iraqi officials, but agency officials said they did not want to pursue this option and were already engaged in separate contacts with Baghdad. “The message was, ‘Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad,’” Perle said. A senior U.S. intelligence official described the Iraqi offer as one of several contacts with either Iraqi officials or people claiming to be acting on Baghdad’s behalf. “These signals came via a broad range of foreign intelligence services, other governments, third parties, charlatans and independent actors,” the official said. “Every lead that was at all plausible, and some that weren’t, were followed up,” the official added (James Risen, New York Times, Nov. 6).
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