Washington Targets Chirac and ElBaradai (Iraqi documents)(DEBKA)

The Americans are sitting tight on the extremely valuable Iraqi intelligence archives discovered at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad and at sub-departments of Saddam’s clandestine machine never before known to exist. The only data released are a few leaks to the British media calculated to help prime minister Tony Blair stand up to anti-war campaigners at home and around Europe.

From this treasure trove, America has distributed to its war allies some materials relevant to their national security. But no decision has been taken as to the disposition of documents attesting to the clandestine ties of collaboration maintained with the Saddam regime by a whole range of foreign government and public office-holders, academics, media figures, financiers and industrialists the world over, many deeply involved in sanctions-busting. By and large, Washington is not inclined to bare these secrets or make use of them at the moment, except in some notable cases. One is French president Jacques Chirac; another is the head of the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna, Dr. Mohammed ElBaradai, who led the nuclear weapons inspection in Iraq before the war.

In addition, the administration has secretly handed over to various Middle East and Persian Gulf governments the names of ministers and public figures who were handsomely rewarded by Saddam Hussein for supporting his case in deliberations at the United Nations, other international bodies and inter-Arab forums. Washington was given to understand that these public officials would be held to account by their governments. This process has started quietly in Qatar and Jordan, where our intelligence sources expect overnight resignations of senior cabinet members.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly has been reliably informed that the nature of the relationships the French president and members of his family wove with Saddam Hussein and members of his regime is due to be revealed quite soon, drawing on the materials in the secret Iraqi files. Some sources say that the ties linking the two families were deep and ramified. Their exposure is likely to raise a storm.

As for Dr. ElBaradai, our sources report that, even before the Iraqi archives were examined, Washington had compiled a dossier on the chief nuclear inspector from discoveries made in the course of crises over the North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs.

US officials are holding to the public position that more time is needed to turn up Saddam’s arsenal of forbidden weapons. However, last week, Syria handed over two key scientists who ran Iraq’s bio weapons programs, Dr Hudah Salih Mahdi Ammash, the anthrax expert and Dr. RihabTaha – “Dr. Germ”, as well as her husband the “Missile Man”, Gen. Amir Muhammed Rasheed. These scoops must have given the Americans much of the information they were after on the nature and locations of the weapons of mass destruction. However, Washington is now waiting for President Bashar Assad to respond to the ultimatum secretary of state Colin Powell slapped down last Saturday in Damascus. He was put on notice to report on the arsenal’s whereabouts in Lebanon after he removed this hot potato from Syria. Only then, will the Bush administration decide how to handle the information accumulated.

In the meantime, US officials believe they have sufficient grounds for demanding Dr. ElBaradai’s removal and have already set this process in motion. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington sources, their preferred candidate for his replacement in Vienna is Prince Hassan of Jordan, brother and former crown prince of King Hussein and uncle of King Abdullah. We have learned that senior representatives of the Bush administration have interviewed the prince in London and Amman and obtained his consent to the appointment, which has also been endorsed by the king.

The Hashemite prince lacks scientific qualifications for the job, but the Bush administration have concluded that scientists, however eminent, are not much use for stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons – a shortcoming manifested in the last two years in the cases of North Korea and Iran. Washington is ready to try out an experienced statesman before the spread of dangerous nuclear capabilities gets out of hand. Action against nuclear proliferation has risen to the top of the Bush administration’s order of priorities.

The new director’s first task will be to disperse the IAEA’s ruling council which is held responsible for obstructing rather than advancing inspection mechanisms. Hassan’s appointment will undoubtedly strengthen Washington’s control over the commission. It will also enhance the kingdom’s international standing, its reward for unreservedly supporting and taking part in the American war against the Saddam regime in Iraq.

SOMEBODY is leaking some of them to Bill Gertz .

Now that you mention it, I read that the France Embassy in Syria was giving passports to the fleeing Saddam "inside group" at Debka some time ago, as long as a week or more ago, before anyone else said a peep about it. I really think Debka is getting a bum rap.

Thanks for mentioning the Gertz article. Here it is:

May 7, 2003
Search for Iraqis focuses on Europe
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030507-18959030.htm

U.S. intelligence agencies are intensifying the search in Europe for officials of Saddam Hussein's government who fled Iraq with the help of French passports, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The search efforts were strengthened after intelligence sources reported that France's government secretly provided fleeing Iraqi officials with European Union travel documents in Syria that allowed them to escape to other countries, said U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Washington Times first reported yesterday that U.S. intelligence officials said the French government provided an unknown number of Iraqis in Syria with passports that allowed them to travel to Western Europe in late March and early April.

Several U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said yesterday that they could not confirm the report, but the matter would be further investigated. Mr. Powell told reporters, "It's one press report, and I have just started my day, and I have not looked into it. I don't know the source. I don't know if it's accurate or not." He said he had not talked to French officials and would look into the allegations.

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "I think the French will have to explain what they did or did not do."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said he was not aware of the intelligence reports on which The Times story was based. He said the State Department accepts the French government denial that it provided passports to fleeing Iraqis.

"I think, first of all, the French government has spoken about this — I believe will speak again — and says it's not true," Mr. Boucher said. "We have nothing that would lead us to doubt that at this point. At this point, we're not able to corroborate the reports."

Other U.S. officials said the French passports had made it difficult to track down fleeing Iraqis because they had allowed Saddam's officials to travel freely in 12 EU countries.

Defense and intelligence officials said they have been frustrated by the failure to capture senior Iraqi leaders since the fall of Baghdad on April 9.

Officials said they do not know yet whether the failure to capture high-ranking Iraqis is linked to the issuance of the French passports.

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies are increasing their focus on Western Europe as a location for former Iraqi regime officials who are now in hiding, the officials said.

So far, 19 Iraqis on a list of 55 most-wanted officials have been captured by coalition forces.

Only one of the captured officials is regarded as among the most-wanted 10.

The French Embassy in Washington denied the report again yesterday, calling the allegations of U.S. intelligence sources "totally false and scandalous."

Said spokeswoman Nathalie Loiseau: "There's no basis to it. There is not one Iraqi official in Europe thanks to France."

Here is another interesting one, which has some corraborations from Rumsfeld's comments immplying we KNOW that at least some of Saddam's WMD made it to Syria:

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=482

Powell Confronts, Assad Prevaricates

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 107

May 4, 2003, 12:21 AM (GMT+02:00)

Syria is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources as having secretly disposed of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction by moving them into eastern Lebanon for burial in the Beqaa Valley. Iraq’s biological weapons may be there too. They were interred deep under the heroin poppy and cotton fields in two of the most fertile regions of Lebanon: the valley stretching between Jabal Akroum, the town of al Qbayyat and the Syrian border, and the land lying between the towns of Al Hirmil and al Labwah between the Orontes River and the Syrian frontier.

On February 14, about a month before the start of the war in Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 97 ran an article captioned “Is Iraq’s WMD cache in Lebanon available to Al Qaeda?”

Now, our intelligence sources can disclose exclusively that the relocation of Iraq’s WMD systems took place between January 10 and March 10 and was completed just 10 days before the US-led offensive was launched against Iraq. The banned arsenal, hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Bekaa Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort, was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. They were sealed and planted over with new seedlings. Nonetheless, their location is known and detectable with the right instruments. Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein’s forbidden weapons disappear.

Before US secretary of state Colin Powell arrived in Damascus on Saturday, May 3, the Syrians made the placatory gesture to Washington of speeding and upgrading the handover of Iraqi fugitives from the Saddam regime sheltering in Syria

DEBKA-Net-Weekly has learned from its most exclusive sources that on Monday, April 28, Dr. RihabTaha, a microbiologist known as Dr. Germ, was turned over to the Americans in Iraq. She had directed Iraq’s biological weapons program. Also turned over was Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, who headed Iraq’s anthrax project. No announcement was made of their capture. However, the surrender 24 hours later of Taha’s husband, General Amir Muhammed Rasheed, director of Iraq’s missile development program and best known by his nickname “The Missile Man”, was announced.

The United States is therefore fully apprised of the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of unconventional weapons and has taken custody of the scientists who developed them.

But DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources say Washington was nevertheless far from placated and Powell’s meeting with the Syrian president Saturday was a confrontation. The secretary of state laid down the following demands:

1. A map with the coordinates of the pits holding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

2. Surrender of Saddam’s most senior insiders who fled to Aleppo and Latakiya. After DEBKAfile blew the whistle on April 3, the group staying at the Cote D’Azur De Cham Resort in Latakia was whisked away leaving their families comfortably ensconced there.

3. Handover of the two senior Al Qaeda members now in Damascus. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources say their names and whereabouts were uncovered by US intelligence units in Iraq.

4. An explanation of Syrian motives in allowing two British terrorists, Assif Hanif, who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on April 30, and Omar Khan Sharif, who ran away, to transit Damascus en route to Israel. (One of the duo spent four months of preparation in the Syrian capital with the Hamas operations officer and associate of Hizballah Imad al-Alami, as reported exclusively by DEBKAfile.)

5. An immediate stop to the military-terrorist activities of the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Syria and Lebanon. Failure to do so, Powell explained, will result in a painful tightening of economic pressure on Syria, after the loss of $1b in oil revenues from Baghdad.

Powell suggested that Assad invite Abu Mazen, the new Palestinian prime minister, to Damascus. This step would further underline Yasser Arafat’s state of isolation in view of his never having been received in Damascus. It could lead to an invitation from the Bush administration to invite the leaders of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq’s new regime and the Palestinians to a regional conference that would set the stage for Syrian and Palestinian peace negotiations with Israel.

Powell told Assad bluntly to choose between confrontation and negotiations.

At the same time, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Middle East experts stress that Powell’s stance was tough yet exploratory. The Bush administration is still in option-weighing mode, pondering how best to proceed in the post Iraq war era to achieve its two main objectives: One is to advance America’s long-range strategic goals in the Middle East. The second is to get Bush re-elected as President in November 2004.

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