Los Angeles Times
October 4, 2004
WASHINGTON — On most days now, Mahdi Obeidi rides his new mountain bike,
plays with his grandkids and works on getting a U.S. patent for technology he
originally developed to build a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein.
Obeidi,
who headed Hussein's uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991,
is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the
United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his
family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining
apartments in a leafy Virginia suburb close to downtown Washington.
But it is far less clear what happened to most of the 500 other scientists U.S.
officials considered to be at the core of Hussein's programs to build missiles
and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
U.S. officials have
intercepted offers from Iran in recent months to hire several former Iraqi
nuclear and missile scientists. None are known to have gone to Tehran, which
Washingt on believes is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
But U.S.
officials are also concerned about the danger that remains inside Iraq. "The
immediate fear is the proximity of these scientists to the insurgents and
terrorists in Iraq," a U.S. official who travels frequently to Baghdad said,
speaking on condition of anonymity. "That has become a compelling issue for
us."
And Obeidi is speaking out now to warn how easy it would be for
someone to build a nuclear weapon.
The search for Iraqi scientists, and
evidence of programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, will take center
stage Wednesday when Charles A. Duelfer, head of the CIA-run Iraq Survey Group,
appears before the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees to present
his final 1,500-page report on Iraq's long-defunct efforts to produce chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons.
Duelfer's report is likely to spark
renewed debate in the presidential campaign as President Bush and challenger
Sen. John F. Kerry trad e charges over whether the U.S. needed to go to war
in Iraq.
Duelfer has found no evidence that Baghdad resumed its nuclear
arms program or produced any chemical or germ agents for military weapons after
1991, officials said. Nor has Duelfer found evidence of ongoing efforts to
develop such weapons before the 2003 war.
But Duelfer also has told
colleagues that evidence indicated that Hussein intended to mobilize his
scientists to resume production of illicit arms if Iraq ever were free of U.N.
inspections, trade sanctions and other international oversight. He found
evidence of small clandestine laboratories, procurement of banned materials
overseas, and work on illegal missiles and drones.
Up to eight of the
500 weapons scientists remain in custody in Iraq and about 70 others work in two
programs in Baghdad that the State Department set up to hire out-of-work weapons
experts. Others are teaching, working for Iraqi industries or government
ministries, or have moved to other Arab nation s.
Many others —
including Obeidi's two former top deputies — have simply vanished.
Obeidi, who met Hussein three times, said there was "no question" that the
former Iraqi president wanted to revive his illicit weapons programs, but added
that it wasn't clear whether the dictator knew his regime had no active programs
to build them. Obeidi said Hussein was a "lunatic" whose grip on reality was
increasingly unstable in the years before the war.
"He lived in a
world of hallucination," Obeidi, a dapper man of 60, said over lunch. "You
could see he was deceiving himself. But he not only fooled himself. He fooled
the world."
Obeidi also fooled the world. He holds a master's degree
from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo., and a doctorate from the
University College of Swansea in Wales. During the 1980s, he traveled across
the United States and Europe to buy nuclear components, computer programs and
research by lying about his plans.
In July 1987, Hu ssein's top deputy
ordered Obeidi to direct a covert crash program to enrich uranium. By the time
the Persian Gulf War began in January 1991, he had built a prototype centrifuge
system capable of turning Iraq's small stockpile of enriched uranium into
weapons-grade fuel for a crude atomic bomb. Obeidi suspects that Hussein would
have used it against Israel.
"We were so close to getting a bomb,"
Obeidi said. "We were so close to getting tens or hundreds of bombs. To us,
the sky was the limit…. Looking back, the world was lucky."
So
was Obeidi. When Iraq shuttered its nuclear program after the cease-fire that
ended the 1991 war, Obeidi buried his centrifuge designs and several key
components in a 50-gallon barrel under a lotus tree in his backyard.
Over the next few years, under strict Iraqi orders to conceal himself and all
signs of his mothballed program, he repeatedly lied to United Nations
inspectors, disguised and destroyed evidence, and once ran out the back door and
hid for hours behind a wall to evade a surprise U.N. raid.
But the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, unraveled
the centrifuge program by 1995. Inspectors removed the stockpiles of enriched
uranium and exposed Iraq's global network of suppliers. They dismantled or
destroyed all of Iraq's nuclear infrastructure and material by 1998, and Iraqi
officials never tried to revive it.
After the war began last year, U.S.
officials published a list of 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials, starting with
Hussein, and put their names and faces on playing cards. Obeidi was No. 66 on
a longer, classified list of 200 most-wanted Iraqis.
Fearful of arrest
amid the post-invasion chaos, he reached out by satellite phone to David
Albright, a former IAEA inspector now in Washington. With his help, Obeidi
ultimately bartered his buried barrel of nuclear documents and components
— the only known remnants of Iraq's nuclear program — for
CIA-sponsored sanctuary.
Albr ight, who now heads the nonprofit
Institute for Science and International Security, said Obeidi was "everybody's
nightmare" because he was able to avoid detection while buying crucial nuclear
parts and research directly from universities and companies around the
world.
But Albright said Obeidi never realized that he could have built
a crude bomb with the 66 pounds of enriched uranium that Iraq possessed in the
1980s.
Beyond that, Obeidi would have needed to build more than 1,000
centrifuges — not just the 50 he planned — to enrich Iraq's supply
of low-grade uranium to bomb-grade quality.
"Iraq was still many years
from operating a centrifuge program," Albright said. Still, "if a terrorist had
the capability that Iraq had in 1991, you'd be deeply, deeply scared."
Obeidi has co-written a book, "The Bomb in My Garden," about his career. He
hopes to find a job to resume research on nanotechnology, the science of
building materials and systems at the molecular or atomic level. He is trying
to get a U.S. patent for research in nanotechnology that he conducted early in
his quest to build a nuclear bomb, he said.
And he warned that it was
probably easier to build a nuclear bomb today than when he tried — and
nearly succeeded.
"The danger is really imminent," he said. "Someone
today could be more clever than I was. The black market is still open. The
technology is more efficient and more accessible. My work can be repeated, or
accelerated. That is the horror."
A CIA spokesman declined to comment
on the case. Obeidi, who signed an agreement with the CIA that prohibits him
from discussing the agency's role, said he was relying on funds he brought from
Iraq while he looked for work.
Obeidi described himself as "a high-rev
engine," a scientist of incessant curiosity and intense energy. His dark eyes
and mouth twitched nervously as he spoke. He was proud of his work, repeatedly
calling himself "Saddam's nuclear mastermind," and expressing no r egrets or
remorse.
"It never crossed my mind to take the other path and be a
nobody."