Like Lord Hutton’s inquiry earlier in the year, thunderous accusations have been of another “whitewash.” One man, who would have enlightened Butler’s committee had they requested to speak to him—but who was never interviewed—was just a phone call away.

Imad Khadduri is a real “bomb maker.” He worked for the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 to 1998. Holding an MS in physics from the University of Michigan and a PhD in reactor technology from the University of Birmingham, he rose to be one of the most senior officials in Iraq’s nuclear program, working on the Russian research reactor in the 1960s, the French research reactor in the 1970s, and the weapons program and Russian reactor in the 1980s, and with the weapons inspectors in the 1990s.

Khadduri makes no secret of his pride in  Iraq’s scientific achievements; he gives a compelling account of the collapse of the country’s aspirations. At the height of the nuclear program, he was in charge of scientific planning, documentation, records, and purchasing.

With Butler’s remit widened to include allegations that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger—“a key element in his [the Prime Minister’s] justification for the invasion,” according to the Observer’s Anthony Barnett—Khadduri’s assertions should at least bring a blush to the faces of obvious suspects in Whitehall and Washington (no breath holding please).

According to Khadduri, Iraq’s key facilities were Tarmiyah and Al-Fajr (the dawn), near the ancient city of Al-Sharqat in northern Iraq. Al-Fajr was designed to house cauldron separators—similar to those used in the US Manhattan project. “The most important plant for design was Al-Atheer. The first UNSCOM head, David Kaye, found many documents, reports, and plans from there in 1991. The first two plants were totally destroyed in the [first] Gulf War, and UNSCOM destroyed Al-Atheer.”

When the northern plants were bombed, he and his family, “along with most of the prominent nuclear scientists and top management, were in the nearby housing complex.” They survived the bombing; the program died. “The first day of the war, the Iraqi nuclear weapons program stopped dead in its tracks and was never rejuvenated.”

“After the war, all scientific expertise was transferred to rebuilding basic infrastructure—oil facilities, telecommunications, water, sanitation, and electricity.” Subsequently, “many scientists and engineers became unemployed, scratching a living, trying to survive the ongoing consequences of allied bombings, intrusions of
the weapons inspection teams, infrastructure demolition. Nuclear hopes were in the rubble.”

The behavior of the weapons inspectors was as hard to endure as the sanctions, deprivation, destruction and continual illegal bombing by the US and UK. Arrogance and humiliation were heaped on highly educated and proud experts. Inspectors who knew neither the culture nor the language compounded the problem. Crèches, convents, churches, mosques, orphanages, schools, and soukhs (markets) were intrusively searched.

Much was made of the science lab at Baghdad University. In fact, the UNSCOM video shows the inspectors laughing at its pathetic postwar state then slinging out the few remaining books.

One inspector implied that the problem was that the scientific expertise was still around. One scientist retorted, “What do you want us to do? Commit suicide?” Khadduri asserts that, ironically, far from being told to conceal, scientists were made (by Saddam’s regime) to sign a declaration that they had to tell UNSCOM anything they wanted to know; failure would result in imprisonment, or even death. The regime did not want another blitz on its wounded nation.

In 1994, senior inspectors returned to Baghdad, angrily inquiring about an undeclared Iraqi report indicating that Iraqis were still manufacturing a nuclear bomb. Bewildered, Khadduri looked through it, then pointed out that it was well done, but the phraseology was Iranian, not Iraqi Arabic. After checking with an Iranian-Arabic dictionary, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) never referred to the report again.

Accusations continued, and in 1998, Khadduri quietly left his home, homeland and life’s belongings with his family for Canada, his residency request enhanced by references from his former professors at Birmingham University, who held him in high esteem. He decided to embrace academia and a quiet, normal life.

Then in August 2002, President Bush claimed that Iraq was harboring a rejuvenated nuclear program. The war drums were banging again and Khadduri could not bear it. He “embarked on a lonely six-month battle to counter the disinformation campaign.” He wrote, requested airtime, and contacted the Iraq team at the IAEA. For weeks no one responded to the man who really knew. “And suddenly my computer kept crashing.”

Khadduri, however, persevered, finally disproving allegations coming thick and fast. In December, he received confirmation from the IAEA that they agreed with him. In January 2003, Khadduri’s IAEA contact told him that “US and UK intelligence had provided twenty five new sites—on ultra hush. These had been visited and absolutely no evidence found of any nuclear ... program.” Yet in his report to the Security Council on January 27, Hans Blix never mentioned the lack of findings. “He did mention a program, which was terminated in 1988, as new evidence,” Khadduri remarks. His IAEA contact said in despair, “I guess no one is really serious about preventing a war. I have tried to be technically rigorous. I guess we got swallowed up by the politicians.”

So what about the Niger uranium? “In the 1980s we were determined to be self-sufficient. I was given a team of fifty and we traveled Iraq looking for deposits.” They found them in the north, where there were significant amounts. “We found numerous items of rusted, drilling equipment.” They asked nearby villagers about its origins. “They said it was when the British were prospecting there in the 1950s.” What about the five tonnes of yellowcake at the Tuwaitha facility sealed by the IAEA Inspectors and allowed by US soldiers to be looted at the time of the invasion? “It came from a site in the western desert,” Khadduri replied without hesitation. Further, why would Iraq buy uranium at the end of the 1990s? “Electricity, communications, scientific infrastructure, buildings were all gone. How could they use it? I truly question the intelligence of the Intelligence.”

Iraq’s last gargantuan effort to prove the state of its non-existent program was an 11,000-page document, delivered to the new inspection team office in the United Nations at the end of 2002. 

US officials—in what numerous diplomats described as an unprecedented occurrence—took the document and returned it to the Security Council delegates with 8000 pages missing. The remaining 3000 pages were so heavily and extensively blacked out that they became “incomprehensible”; the deletions rendered what remained mostly nonsensical, one UN ambassador told this writer.  Iraq  had again “failed to comply.”

The CIA bleats of global intelligence failures and not having intelligence on the ground. They had and were being told the truth by many all along. Informed Western visitors to  Iraq, politicians, analysts, streetwise NGOs, and journalists were dismissed as “dupes of Saddam.” There are none so deaf as those who wish not to hear.  Washington and Whitehall put their faith in Armani clad warriors, such as Ahmed Chalabi, and are paying the price: a deficit of intelligence indeed.

Beware of politicians bearing dossiers.

Imad Khadduri's book Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage, in English and Arabic, can be purchased from: Springhead@rogers.com

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited Iraq on numerous occasions since the 1991Gulf War. She has written and broadcast widely on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also Senior Researcher for John Pilger's award-winning documentary Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq.