Sunday Telegraph Revealed: the Iraqi colonel who told MI6 that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes By Con Coughlin December 7, 2003
An Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq has revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes. Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, 40, who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of last year. He said they were to be used by Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitaries and units of the Special Republican Guard when the war with coalition troops reached "a critical stage". The containers, which came from a number of factories on the outskirts of Baghdad, were delivered to the army by the Fedayeen and were distributed to the front-line units under cover of darkness. In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Col al-Dabbagh said that he believed he was the source of the British Government's controversial claim, published in September last year in the intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes. "I am the one responsible for providing this information," said the colonel, who is now working as an adviser to Iraq's Governing Council. He also insisted that the information contained in the dossier relating to Saddam's battlefield WMD capability was correct. "It is 100 per cent accurate," he said after reading the relevant passage. The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as "the secret weapon", were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. They could also have been launched sooner than the 45-minutes claimed in the dossier. "Forget 45 minutes," said Col al-Dabbagh "we could have fired these within half-an-hour." Local commanders were told that they could use the weapons only on the personal orders of Saddam. "We were told that when the war came we would only have a short time to use everything we had to defend ourselves, including the secret weapon," he said. The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. "The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," he said. "If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences." Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq's air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. "Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons," he said. During the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, said that the information contained in the intelligence dossier relating to the 45-minute claim had come from a single "established and reliable" source serving in the Iraqi armed forces. Privately British intelligence officers have claimed that they believe the original source was killed during the war. Dr Kelly killed himself last July after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC radio report claiming that the Labour Government had included the 45-minute claim against the wishes of MI6 to "sex up" the intelligence dossier. Col al-Dabbagh, who spied for the Iraqi National Accord (INA), a London-based exile group, for several years before the war, said, however, that he provided several reports to British intelligence on Saddam's plans to deploy WMD from early 2002 onwards. The INA, which was made up of retired and serving Iraqi officers and Ba'ath party officials, is known to have enjoyed a close relationship with MI6 and America's Central Intelligence Agency. Dr Ayad Allawi, the head of the INA who is now a prominent member of the Gov erning Council in Baghdad, confirmed that he had passed Col al-Dabbagh's reports on Saddam's WMD to both British and American intelligence officers "sometime in the spring and summer of 2002". Apart from providing intelligence on Saddam's WMD programme, Col al-Dabbagh also provided details of Iraq's troop and air defence deployments before the war. Although he gave details of Iraq's battlefield WMD capability, he said that he had no knowledge of any plans by Saddam to use missiles to attack British bases in Cyprus and other Nato targets. In the build-up to the conflict, Tony Blair was criticised by intelligence officials for giving the impression that Saddam had developed ballistic missiles that could carry WMD warheads and hit targets such as Israel and Britain's military bases in Cyprus. But Col al-Dabbagh said that he doubted that Iraq under Saddam had this capability. "I know nothing about this. My information was only about what we could do on the battlefield." Col al-Dabbagh, who received two death threats from Saddam loyalists days after his interview with the Telegraph, said that he was willing to travel to London to give evidence to the Hutton inquiry. "I was there and I knew what Saddam was doing before the war," he said. An official close to the Hutton inquiry said: "What Mr Dabbagh has to say sounds very interesting and it is certainly new evidence that we will want to look at."
