-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- April 2 2000 MIDDLE EAST Revealed: CIA's bungled Iraqi coup Marie Colvin AN attempt backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to overthrow Saddam Hussein degenerated into a farce that ended with an Iraqi security officer using the agency's satellite telephone to tell American agents to "go back to Langley". An inner circle of about 12 dissident Iraqi military officers, including the three sons of the chief plotter, were imprisoned and most are believed to have been executed. Another 160 people were arrested. The coup was crushed four years ago, but Iraqis close to the operation have only just agreed to reveal details. They have virtually given up hope the Americans will mount another operation against Saddam. "The CIA went against Saddam and lost everything," an Iraqi source said. The plan was bold. According to Iraqi sources, in 1995 the CIA infiltrated Saddam's inner circle for the first time since the Gulf war in 1991. The plot represented Washington's "dream scenario": a palace coup that would remove the Iraqi president but leave the regime intact and the country stable. The plan was hatched in talks between the CIA and Brigadier General Muhammed Abdullah Shahwani, an ethnic Turkoman from Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, who had retired from the army but retained Saddam's favour. Shahwani was running an import-export business between Jordan and Iraq when he was recruited by Steve Richter, then CIA chief in Amman, the Jordanian capital. The wealthy general agreed to recruit his three sons, all based in Baghdad with senior positions in the Iraqi special forces. One was a general in the Amn al-Khass, the security organisation responsible for Saddam's safety. The Americans alerted the Jordanians and a special unit was set up in Jordan's mukhabarat, the domestic security agency, to assist the coup effort. It was isolated from other Jordanian forces because many officers and soldiers were sympathetic to Saddam. But the plot went disastrously wrong. The CIA in Amman asked an Egyptian go-between to deliver communications equipment to Shahwani's sons. The Egyptian delivered walkie talkies and a satellite telephone programmed to dial only a CIA number. But he secretly denounced his contacts to the Iraqi mukhabarat. Saddam appears to have played with the CIA for months, using the general as a conduit for disinformation, before rounding up the plotters. He was aware of the plot by November 1995. A member of his security force who had secretly supplied information to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a leading opposition group then based in Kurdistan, warned his INC contact: "Get out and tell your friends to escape. Pull out quickly." It was the first the INC had heard of the coup attempt. The officer also said Saddam had intercepted CIA communications equipment. The INC passed the warning to the Americans, but nothing was done. In March 1996, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC leader, met John Deutch, then head of the CIA, and Richter, who was now running the Middle East division of the agency's directorate of operations in Washington. Chalabi is said to have told them the coup plotters were known to Saddam, but again, the CIA took no action. Yesterday, Chalabi refused to comment. The CIA offices in the US embassy in Amman subsequently received a fax from Baghdad, sent on the satellite phone that had been delivered to the rebels. The fax began with verses from the Koran and ended with a message: "Go back to Langley." Up to 80 military officers who were arrested and interrogated may have been executed. Shahwani, who was in Amman, survived. The CIA sent him to Britain for debriefing, and has since moved him to a safe haven. The CIA's bungling had wide-ranging repercussions. Emboldened by his success, Saddam sent tanks into Kurdistan two months later, almost overrunning a CIA base in the city of Arbil. The CIA withdrew scores of people who had been working with the agency but Baghdad's forces killed hundreds of others. The disaster may help to explain Washington's moribund policy toward Iraq, which now consists of rhetoric and a few symbolic airstrikes a month. Of $97m in funds, training and military materials voted by the US Congress for the Iraqi opposition, only $250,000 has been released. Sources in Baghdad say Saddam is counting the days before he can crow about having outlasted another American president. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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