Saddam's Secrets Read online

  But Saddam lifted his head slightly and sniffed the air, and he asked me, “Didn’t you smell something in this collection of officers and commanders in the army and air force? Did you smell that these Muslawis might have a plan to start a rebellion against us?”

  “No, sir,” I said very seriously. “I’ve never heard of anything like that at all.”

  That was the substance of our conversation that day. Fortunately, he didn’t ask me about the loyalty or the love life of Adnan Khairallah. And he didn’t ask about my research on the war. So the general’s strong words to me about keeping our conversation a secret were never put to the test.

  But what did happen was that shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam ordered a large number of his top commanders, all of them from Mosul and the north, to be hanged. And when those executions were actually carried out, there were two pilots among them: Gen. Salem, the deputy air force commander and Gen. Hassan, who was director of operations for the air force. These were both good and honest men, even though I didn’t agree with them on many things. But, once again, Saddam thought nothing of killing innocent men if it served his purposes.

  When it came to protecting his own power, Saddam was ruthless. If he thought there was the slightest chance that someone might be conspiring against him, it didn’t matter whether he was Sunni or Shia, he would finish him off without batting an eye. Part of this, of course, was because Saddam was not religious. He was from a Sunni tribe, but Saddam’s only religion was Saddam, and his personal glory was the only higher power he recognized. Toward the end of his regime, when he was trying to convince the Iraqi people that he was a good Muslim, Saddam had photographers come in and take photographs of him kneeling on his prayer rug, praying toward Mecca. But everyone knew it was all an act. He couldn’t have cared less about Islam. Religion, like everything else, was merely a tool he could use whenever it suited his purposes.

  Saddam’s Demons

  If you pursue this line of thought, you soon realize that Saddam was no more loyal to the Baath Party than he was to Islam. He was no more loyal to the army than he was to the party or his religion. He never actually served in the army. When he became president, he declared himself a five-star general—to make himself equal to Gen. Eisenhower, who was the highest-ranking allied commander in World War II.

  Whenever Saddam wanted to confer an honor on one of his hand-picked favorites, he would give them a high rank in the military or any other title he could think of. He did this most conspicuously, perhaps, for a man named Izzat Al-Douri, when he raised him to the rank of four-star general. To understand the significance of that, you should know that before being appointed a four-star general, Izzat was the ice seller in the village of Dour, which is just across the river from Tikrit where Saddam was born.

  At Saddam’s whim, Izzat was put in charge of several divisions of Iraqi soldiers. At last report, Izzat the ice seller was very ill, suffering from leukemia. Some have suggested that he may have been a leader of the insurgency in Iraq, helping to plan attacks on Americans and to destabilize the new government. In reality, he’s not smart enough to lead anyone in battle. But he was incredibly loyal to Saddam who had trusted him enough to put him in such a lofty position.

  During our meeting, I did my best to assure Saddam that nothing was happening. There was no plot and no plotters. There was no rebellion in the military at that time, but apparently I wasn’t able to convince him. The truth is, if there had been a plot or some sort of secret plan to overthrow Saddam, the plotters would never have told me. As a Christian, I was an outsider, and I also had a reputation for telling the truth. That’s why Saddam had called me in the first place, because both he and Gen. Khairallah knew I was an honest man. But, to the best of my knowledge, there was no plot at that time.

  This was simply another example of the personality of Saddam. He was paranoid and he wouldn’t think twice about cutting off heads if he felt that a certain person was against him. This was especially true if the person he suspected was a high-ranking officer or a cabinet minister who might pose a legitimate challenge to his authority. And Saddam had thousands of ways of killing his enemies.

  One of the most tragic examples of this was a story I know well because it affected me very deeply. There was a brilliant medical officer named Dr. Raji al-Tikriti, and we became very good friends. He was a specialist in spinal injuries and he advised the air force on the design of ejection seats in our fighters and other things of that nature. He earned his degree in neurosurgery in England, so he was not only a highly skilled physician, but he eventually became commanding general of the medical branch of the Iraqi Army.

  All through my military career, I was a fighter pilot. I flew and tested all the supersonic aircraft in the air force. But flying aircraft of this type is stressful on the body, so you need to be strong, and you need to be very well conditioned physically. But one time when I was doing a lot of high-G flying, I found that I was having discomfort and cramping in my back, so I went to see Dr. Raji and I asked if he could help me find out what was going on.

  He, of course, agreed, and after the examination he told me that I have an unusual torso. From my shoulders to my waist, I have the build of a man who ought to be three or four inches taller than I am. My legs and my upper body, he said, were disproportionate, which is a common characteristic of people who live in the mountains of Iraq. As an Assyrian, I was raised in that part of the country, in the mountains, so this made perfect sense to me.

  When I fly an aircraft, the first thing I have to do is to adjust the seat and put it all the way down. If I don’t do that, my helmet will hit the canopy. There are people taller than I am who put the seat higher, but my proportions are unusual. So this was my problem. Anyone with an extended spine like mine has to endure more stress when the aircraft is experiencing heavy gravitational pressures, which we call G-force. Dr. Raji diagnosed my problem, and gave me a combination of medication and instructions on how to reduce the stress on my spine, and after that I never had any more problems.

  The Mind of a Sadist

  I really respected and admired Dr. Raji. Like me, he was not a member of the Baath Party, which meant that there was a limit to how far he could advance in his career. But despite the limitations, he managed to become commander of the medical corps. Then one day he was sitting with a group of doctors, and he apparently made some disparaging remark about Saddam. He said, “Who is Saddam Hussein? He grew up in the streets of Tikrit. He’s uneducated, and he only became president because he’ll stop at nothing.”

  Unfortunately, in Saddam’s Iraq it was unwise to speak so openly, and someone who had been sitting nearby that day let it be known what Dr. Raji had said. A few weeks later, Dr. Raji was traveling in Jordan on some sort of military business, and he happened to be sitting with the ambassador to Jordan, Nouri Al-Weis, who was also a Tikriti. They were at the Iraqi Embassy in Amman when a call came from the palace in Baghdad. When the ambassador took the call, he was surprised to be speaking with Saddam himself. They spoke informally for a few minutes, and then Saddam said, “I understand that Dr. Raji al-Tikriti is in Jordan. Have you seen him?”

  The ambassador said, “Why, yes, sir. He’s sitting here with me now.” So Saddam said, “Nouri, whatever you do, don’t let him leave. I want you to give him your car and send him to me as soon as possible. I need to see him urgently.” Nouri was surprised by that, but as soon as he hung up he said, “Raji, you have to go back to Baghdad right away. The president needs to see you urgently.”

  So Raji told him, “Yes, of course. I’ll get my bags and return immediately.” And that’s what he did. He didn’t think anything about it. If there was an emergency involving someone at the palace, he would be glad to go there and help. Perhaps he thought it was something simpler than that. But, in any event, the ambassador drove Dr. Raji straight back to Baghdad in his own car that night.

  When he got to the palace, Saddam didn’t greet him, and he soon discovered there was
no medical emergency. Instead, he was taken to a large room in the basement where the president’s elite guards had their headquarters. He was surrounded by perhaps fifty or sixty of the biggest, most muscular guards in the army, and each of them was in their uniform which included large, heavy boots.

  Off to one side, Saddam was just sitting in a chair with his legs crossed. He took out a big Havana cigar and lit it, and he said to the soldiers, “Okay, do it.” At that, one of the soldiers reached out and knocked Dr. Raji to the ground. The others immediately moved in and started stomping him with their hob-nail boots, pounding, jumping, kicking, and crushing him to death right there on that floor. And while this was going on, Saddam just sat there, smoking his cigar.

  When the soldiers finished the grisly business, a guard opened the door of a kennel and unleashed a pack of dogs that had been starved for days. Those dogs consumed that poor man’s body completely and licked up his blood from the floor. He was a medical doctor, a general, a Tikriti from Saddam’s own city, and a Muslim, but Saddam ordered that horrendous act of brutality and murder simply because Dr. Raji had dared to utter some unkind words about him.

  That was the real Saddam Hussein. And you have to wonder what kind of human being this could be. But he also had two sons, Uday and Qusay, and they were worse than Saddam, a hundred times over. It was one of those sons, Qusay, the younger of the two, who came to me on January 24, 1991, and told me that the coalition pilots we had captured during the Gulf War and now held as POWs were to be executed. When I tell you that story in another chapter, I hope you’ll understand the kind of brutality and violence we lived with under Saddam.

  Settling Old Scores

  The Russian-made bomber nicknamed “Blinder” is a supersonic aircraft made to carry heavy nuclear weapons. When it was given to Iraq, it was only equipped for conventional weapons, but it was a large aircraft with long-range capabilities, and Saddam knew that one day it would be very useful to him.

  In the spring of 1980, a group called Al Dawah for Islam, made up mostly of Shias with links to Iran, tried to assassinate Tariq Aziz when he came to speak at the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The grenade attack killed one young woman named Ferial and wounded several others, but Tariq Aziz escaped with only minor injuries. When he heard about this, Saddam was very angry because he realized that this was the same group that tried to assassinate the minister of culture and information, Latif Nsayif Jasim, the year before.

  His first response was to send the Republican Guard to round up the supporters of Al Dawah in Iraq, and he had thousands of them deported to Iran. Later that year, Saddam ordered the executions of the Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr and his sister, Amina, who had Al Dawah connections as well. When the war started between Iraq and Iran, he decided this was the right time to make an even bigger statement. So he called the air chief and told him he wanted a good pilot to take the TU-22, which carried up to nine tons of bombs, and destroy the University of Tehran, in the capital of Iran, on a day when all the students would be in class.

  Do you know how he explained it? In traditional Arab culture, the father of the bride will demand a dowry from the family of the groom. This is called the mahar in Arabic, and it can be paid in gold, currency, livestock, or whatever is most appropriate. So Saddam said, “The mahar of Ferial must be very high!” The Iranians had tried to kill his deputy, he said, and somebody would have to pay. And that’s why he decided to target university students. The perversity of such a criminal mind is impossible to understand.

  When I saw what actually happened, I was sure it was an act of God. They set the date, loaded the bomb bays with nine tons of ordnance, and the pilot took off to carry out his mission. I knew that pilot. He was a lieutenant colonel and a former fighter pilot who had converted to the TU-22 because they needed highly skilled people to fly this model. But as he was flying toward Iran, the plane suddenly developed what’s called “longitudinal vibration,” meaning that it began shaking so badly it couldn’t be flown. The stabilizers were useless, so the procedure then was to put the plane on autopilot, because this would often correct an anomaly of that sort.

  But after only a few minutes he realized the autopilot had no effect on the vibration and the plane was shaking uncontrollably. He thought about ejecting, which was the only option he had left, but he also knew that if he escaped alive he would have to answer to Saddam. And he knew that would be very bad news. Not least because the pilot, the navigator, and the bombardier were all Shias, and since they were going to bomb a Shia city in Iran, they knew that Saddam would accuse them of treason. But it was too late to worry about that, and at the last minute they ejected.

  A Comedy of Errors

  What happened next is one for the record books. When the three men ejected, the canopies that had covered them were released and fell away. And as soon as that happened, the plane suddenly became stable and continued to fly for more than an hour with no one on board. Someone called me from air headquarters and said, “Georges, come quickly!” I said, “Why? What’s happening?” And they told me, “One of our TU-22s is flying without pilots, and it’s loaded with bombs headed for Tehran.”

  I raced immediately to the operations center, and for the next hour we tracked that plane. It flew east toward Tehran, and then it must have run into strong winds from the mountains because it turned and circled back and flew straight over Baghdad. It didn’t fall on Baghdad, thank God, but it kept going and was headed toward Ramadi. So I told the air chief, “Sir, you’ve got to call Saddam and tell him what’s happening.” When I said that, he looked at me like I’d lost my mind. His eyes were as big as saucers, and he said, “Georges, no! I can’t do that!”

  I told him, “Look, you don’t know where this plane is going to fall, and just imagine what Saddam will do to you if you don’t call and tell him about it before something happens.” They understood that, so they called the palace and, predictably, Saddam was livid. He said, “What!? The airplane is flying without pilots?” They said, “Yes, sir, but we called General Sada and he has everything under control.” So Saddam said, “Is he there now?” They said, “Yes, sir,” and they quickly handed the phone to me.

  I took it and spoke to Saddam, and he asked me, “Georges, what are you doing about this?” I said, “Sir, there’s only one thing to do in this case, and I’ve scrambled two of our best pilots. Each one is carrying four guided missiles and I’ve told them to shoot down the TU-22 as soon as they can, but to make sure it’s over an unpopulated area if possible.” Well, he was glad to hear that, so I went back to the radio room to check on the fighter pilots, but they told me the target was now flying at more than twenty-two thousand feet and there was a lightning storm in the area, and they couldn’t get in position to lock on with their weapons and shoot the plane down.

  It would have been funny if the situation wasn’t so serious, but eventually the problem solved itself, because the TU-22 crashed in a totally uninhabited part of the western desert. Since the bombs in the bomb bay had never been armed, there was no risk of an explosion, but everything was lost. And when the salvage crews got there, they found nothing but junk and twisted metal. It was a total loss, but it was an object lesson I hoped Saddam would never forget.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely over because I got a call a couple of days later saying that the pilots who had ejected were in custody and there was a court of inquiry under way, and, again, it was clear they were intent on hanging all three of them. I said, “A court of inquiry? How can that be? I’m the director of flight safety and I handle all the investigations. These things have to go through me, and only if I believe there’s evidence of some sort of criminal intent can there be a court of inquiry!”

  So I took the telephone and called the president, and I said, “Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s something wrong with this investigation. There must not be a court of inquiry until the safety director has determined that this was not a mechanical problem. If I find that it wasn’t a problem with t
he aircraft, or that there was a deliberate attempt to disobey orders, then we will turn it over to the court of inquiry.”

  Saddam said, “Okay, Georges. You’re right. Finish your investigation and let me know what you find out.” So I said, “Thank you, sir,” and I hung up the phone and told them to stop the court of inquiry immediately. So I went to work and, once again, I found that there was a Russian officer at the headquarters. He was an expert in the airframe of the TU-22, so I asked to have him included on my team.

  When we went through the process, we found that longitudinal vibration was one of the known structural flaws in the TU-22, and it had been reported on many occasions by other pilots. We were able to refer to the specific page and paragraph of the flight manual which said that pilots who confronted this problem were to first try the autopilot, and if that wasn’t effective, then they were to eject, just as our pilots had done. I had the authority to make the final decisions in cases like this, and I’d been given permission to speak directly to the president, using a special telephone number, whenever there was a crash of this nature. I concluded that the pilots were innocent so I said they should be released.

  I wrote a quick report and sent it to the president, and he agreed and told the security officers to let the pilots go free. But, once again, all three were released from the service and retired. Later they came and thanked me for saving their lives, and I told them I only did what duty required. But, I’m sad to say, there were really very few people in the military in those days who would have gone to Saddam in time of war merely to save a life.