From the article
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/14/opinion/a-tyrant-40-years-in-the-making.html
“According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.”
He was an assassin by 1958, and he was working for the CIA by 1962-3.
If you read on:
“According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq’s educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated.”
So he is said to have continued his career as a killer as he began colluding with the CIA in 1962-3.
I did not assert that the first person he killed would be the leader of Iraq and that he would then take power himself. Assassins are never the people who take power, they’re low level flunkies paid to clear the way for someone else to take power.
“He was an assassin by 1958, and he was working for the CIA by 1962-3.”
So who did “CIA assassin” Saddam Hussein kill in 1958? The natural target would have to be Abd al-Karim Qasim who somehow managed to live unscathed until 1963.
You have been conflating the coup of 1958 and that of 1963 in order to create the impression that the CIA hired Saddam Hussein to be an assassin. Your own source makes no mention of CIA involvement with the Ba’ath party prior to 1963.
The Ba’ath party did stage the coup in 1963 and they did execute Qasim/Kessem, but since they broadcast his execution and there’s no indication that Saddam was the shooter that isn’t going to help your story.
But your story runs into more trouble because after staging the coup the Baath party couldn’t gain control of Iraq. The military and the Arab Socialist Union ran it until 1968.