Reply #2: SECTION THREE

[WilliamPitt]

PITT: Let's talk about the 'bomb-making defector.'

RITTER: Khidre Hamza.

PITT: Who is he?

RITTER: He claims to be Saddam's bomb-maker, responsible for the design of the Iraqi nuclear weapon and the brain behind the whole nuclear program. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe him. He testified before the U.S. Senate recently, and no one challenged his credentials. He repeatedly gets on American television.

The reality is that he was involved with the Iraqi nuclear program back in the mid-1980s as a mid-level functionary. He's an incredibly greedy man, incredibly corrupt. He used to work with Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who ran the military industrial commission and used it not only to produce weapons of mass destruction for the president but also to enrich himself through kickback programs whereby anyone who wanted to do business with Iraq had to give him a cut. Hamza was brought into the Special Security organization to run the kickback program. That was his job. He didn't design nuclear weapons. He might, on occasion, have provided Hussein Kamal with the ability to review documents coming in from nuclear weapons designers to see if they were lying, and he also reviewed documents to see if the procurement requirements were legitimate. But his main job was kickback management, and because of this he became incredibly wealthy.

Hamza kept pushing for more money, and finally was fired. He defected in 1994, and the CIA rejected him--the entire intelligence community rejected him -- because they knew he wasn't who he said he was. Keep in mind that the CIA had very good defectors from the nuclear weapons program who left in 1991, who had been able to help the CIA identify the totality of the nuclear weapons program and help lead UNSCOM to capturing nuclear archives, including all the personnel records, all the operational design work, and so on. Neither Hamza's name nor any of his claimed aliases ever appear in these documents. He wasn't a designer, and he cerainly he wasn't the head of the program. The head of the program was Jafar al Jafar.

Investigating Iraq's nuclear program and how the country may be concealing it was one of my prime responsibilities. I've interviewed all of the primary people who worked on it, from Jafar al Jafar on down. I worked very closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency to review all documentation. Hamza is not who he says he is. He's a fraud, a liar. Yet he has been embraced by the American media.

PITT: What about the Hamza's "smoking gun" document showing that Iraq was developing a nuclear bomb?

RITTER: Hussein Kamal defected in 1995. When we showed him the document, he immediately said it was a forgery, and pointed out everything that was wrong with it. And remember that when Hussein Kamal defected, part of his purpose was to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He wanted to hurt Saddam's credibility, so it was not in his interest to pan a document that would help generate international support to take out Saddam's regime. But he couldn't support something he saw as a crude forgery. When he asked who produced the document, Hamza's name was mentioned. Hussein Kamal described him physically, then said, "He used to work for me. All he wanted was more and more money. I fired him. He knows nothing."

Again and again I have offered to debate Khidre Hamza. He refuses to appear with me. He's scared of me, because he knows I've got a file that exposes his lies.

PITT: Another person you've challenged to debate is Richard Butler.

RITTER: I have a standing invitation for Richard Butler. I'll debate him anytime, anyplace.

PITT: Who is Butler?

RITTER: He's an Australian diplomat who comes from a political background. He was heavily involved in Australian politics, and parlayed that political involvement into a diplomatic career that touched upon arms control. He spent time in Vienna as Australia's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. He played a role in the non-proliferation treaty. As the Australian ambassador to the United Nations, he has continued to dabble in arms control. He's very telegenic, very well-spoken, highly educated. So, when Rolf Ekeus, the first head of UNSCOM from 1991 to June of 1997, resigned, Richard Butler was tapped by the Secretary General to come in and take Ekeus' place.

PITT: And Butler now says publicly you don't know what you're talking about. . . .

RITTER: He doesn't agree with what I'm saying. The problem for Richard is that I can document everything I say, and he can't document anything. In fact, if you dig into the documentation, you find that Richard has an unbroken record of lying about Iraq and about what he did while Executive Chairman. He no longer has any credibility when it comes to Iraq. But because of the politics of the time, it's convenient to have someone like Richard Butler, with his resume, on national TV blasting Saddam. Unfortunately, media outlets continue to provide him with a forum.

I've repeatedly challenged Richard Butler to debate me in front of a camera and a live audience. He won't do it. He won't appear on the same TV program with me. We were both invited to give testimony before the Canadian Parliament, and Richard Butler failed to show up. I'm almost positive Richard Butler has made it known that if I were invited to testify before the Senate, he wouldn't be there. He's running away from the kind of debate he should be encouraging.

I put Butler in a slightly different category than Hamza. I think Butler believes what he's saying, and is convinced he can dispel what I've been saying. But he can't.

PITT: What is Butler's motivation for this? Hamza is looking to get paid. . . .

RITTER: So is Richard. It's all about money for Richard. Ultimately, we have to put him back in the same pot with Hamza. Remember, Richard Butler is the equivalent of a Navy Captain of an aircraft carrier when it ran aground. He destroyed UNSCOM. UNSCOM no longer functions because of Richard Butler. So he's doing everything he can to rewrite history to give himself a more positive legacy, and then translate that into an ongoing career in the field of disarmament. But if people found out just how little he knows about disarmament, how he disgraced the United Nations Security Council mandate he was charged with implementing, how he became a stooge of the United States intelligence services – if this reality comes out-- then Richard Butler won't have the kind of distinguished career potential he is hoping for.

PITT: How did he run UNSCOM into the ground? Wasn't it infiltrated by the CIA?

RITTER: I don't know if I'd call it infiltration. There was certainly CIA involvement, a lot of which was legitimate. But the question becomes: who's calling the shots? It's one thing to build a team that incorporates CIA elements, which I did all the time – every one of my teams had CIA members in it. I needed them. They're good. They provided tremendous capabilities required if you're going to take on the Iraqis in the game I was playing.

As long as all of the activities inside Iraq are consistent with the UN mandate – looking for weapons of mass destruction – you don't have a problem. The second you start allowing inspections to be used to gather intelligence information unrelated to the mandate, you've discredited the entire inspection regime. Richard Butler allowed several programs – most importantly, a signals intelligence program I designed and ran from 1996 to 1998 –to be taken over by the CIA for the sole purpose of spying on Saddam. This was wrong, and I said so on numerous occasions. Richard Butler's refusal to terminate that relationship was one of the main reasons I resigned in 1998.

PITT: Why were the UNSCOM inspectors pulled out in 1998?

RITTER: In August of that year, Richard Butler took a delegation to Baghdad for discussions. The Iraqis were fed up with what they felt to be foot-dragging and deliberately provocations. They felt the inspectors were probing inappropriately into areas that dealt with the sovereignty and dignity of Iraq, and its national security. They wanted to clarify these issues. Richard Butler came in with a very aggressive program, and the Iraqis announced they weren't going to deal with him anymore. They felt he was no longer a fair and objective implementer of Security Council policy, that he was little more than a stooge for the U.S. Butler withdrew, and the Iraqis said they weren't going to deal with UNSCOM. This led to Richard Butler ordering the inspectors out in October.

Actually, the Iraqis had said from the beginning they weren't going to deal with American inspectors. Then they relented, but said they wouldn't let Americans do anything other than ongoing monitoring. At that point, Richard Butler pulled out all of the inspectors.

The US prepared to bomb Iraq. The bombers were in the air. Then the Secretary General's office was able to get the Iraqis to agree to have the inspectors return without precondition, and the bombers were called back. But the Pentagon and White House felt they were being jerked around by the UN, so a decision was made to bomb anyway.

On November 30th of 1998, Richard Butler met with Sandy Berger, the National Security Advisor, at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in what they call 'The Bubble,' the secret room where you can have protected conversations. Berger told Butler the US was going to bomb, and laid out the timeline. The bombing campaign had to coincide with inspection: the inspections were to be used as the trigger. So Richard Butler was encouraged to develop an inspection plan of action that met U.S. strike timelines.

Based on these conversations, Richard Butler decided to send in inspectors to carry out very sensitive inspections that had nothing to do with disarmament but had everything to do with provoking the Iraqis.

Now, Iraq had already come up with a protocol for conducting what are called "sensitive site inspections," after several inspection teams I was involved in tried to get into special Republican Guard and other sensitive facilities around Baghdad. The Iraqis had said, reasonably enough, that they didn't want forty intelligence officers running around these sites. Rolf Ekeus flew to Iraq in June of 1996 and worked out an agreement called the 'Modalities for Sensitive Site Inspections.' When inspectors came to a site that the Iraqis declared to be sensitive, the Iraqis had to facilitate the immediate entry of a four-man inspection element that would ascertain whether this site had anything to do with weapons of mass destruction, or whether it was indeed sensitive. If it was sensitive, the inspection was over.

These 'Sensitive Site Modalities' were accepted by the Security Council, and became part and parcel of the framework of the operating instructions. And they worked, not perfectly, but well enough to enable us to do our jobs from 1996 to 1998.

After talking with Sandy Berger, Richard Butler, working in close coordination with the United States, said that when the inspectors went in to Iraq that December, they were to make null and void the Sensitive Site Modalities. He did this without coordinating with the Security Council. The only nation he coordinated with was the United States.

The inspectors went in to Iraq, and to a Ba'ath Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad. The Iraqis said it was a sensitive site but the four-person team was welcome to come in. The inspectors unilaterally made null and void the Sensitive Site Modalities, and said the entire inspection team was going to come in. The Iraqis compromised by allowing a six-man element to inspect. The element found nothing. Still the chief inspector, under orders from Richard Butler, demanded a much larger team be given access. The Iraqis responded that only under the Sensitive Site Modalities would they allow a team back in. The inspectors withdrew and reported to Richard Butler. Butler cited this as an egregious violation of the Security Council mandate.

Under orders from the United States, he withdrew the inspections teams. He did this in direct violation of a promise he had given to the other members of the Security Council: that he would never again withdraw inspectors unilaterally, that if they were to be withdrawn, he would go through the Security Council, inform them, and get their permission. The inspectors work for the Council. But Richard Butler took a telephone call from Peter Burleigh, deputy U.S. ambassador, executed his marching orders, withdrew the inspectors, and two days later the bombing campaign started, using Richard Butler's report to the Security Council as justification – his report saying, of course, that the inspectors weren't being allowed to do their jobs by the Iraqis.

PITT: All of this will make it very difficult to get American inspectors back inside Iraq.

RITTER: This will make it difficult to get any inspectors back in. The Iraqis will need to be guaranteed inspectors won't again be used in such a non-sanctioned manner.

PITT: Those who want to go to war with Iraq often talk about "bringing democracy to Iraq." Could you talk about that?

RITTER: It's ludicrous for Donald Rumsfeld and others to talk about democracy in Iraq. The western democratic model is based on majority rule. But in Iraq, 60% of the population are Shi'a Muslims, theocratically aligned with Iran. Iran is, of course, a hotbed of anti-American Islamic fundamentalism. Iraq is a nation with the second-largest proven reserve of oil. The idea of a democracy in Iraq where the Shi'a take control -- meaning that these two large oil producers are theocratically aligned -- is something not many people want. Not many in the region would support that. We really don't want democracy in Iraq, because we don't want the Shi'a to have control.

The second largest group is the Kurds, around 23% of the population. And the truth is that we don't want the Kurds to have independence anymore than the Turks do. And the Turks have been fighting a long and bloody war to prevent an independent Kurdistan. The United States has no interest in democratically empowering that 23% of the population.

This means we're really talking about the remaining 17%: the Sunnis. Saddam is a Sunni. The Sunni tribes have always dominated Iraqi politics. They've dominated the military, they've dominated the governing class. But even amongst the Sunnis we're not talking about democracy.

PITT: You've described Sunni governance in terms of the movie, 'The Godfather.'

RITTER: There's a scene where Don Corleone calls the Families together. If you walked in on that scene, you'd say, "My God, these Italian families get along famously." The reality is they don't. They war against each other, they connive, they lie, they steal, they dissolve and remake alliances until one family emerges dominant.

That's what has happened in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's family, the Abu Nassir, are 20,000 strong and control a nation of over 20 million. They do it because their family has emerged dominant, they can dominate the Sunnis. And then the Sunnis in turn dominate the Kurds and the Shi'a.

That's the reality. If you replace Saddam Hussein, it's probably going to be with another Sunni, which means the Sunni tribal hierarchy will kick in and you'll end up with a regime that rules in same manner as Saddam Hussein's.

It's all absurd anyway. You can't impose democracy from the outside. That doesn't work. Iraq has to make that transition internally, and that takes decades. The only way that can happen, the only way there can be a birth of democracy, is to lift economic sanctions and allow Iraq to reconstruct itself economically. The development of a viable middle class that cuts across religious, ethnic, and tribal lines is the only thing that can give birth to democracy.

PITT: When the United States went into Afghanistan, it used the Northern Alliance as proxy warriors, fighters on the ground. There's been a lot of talk about using the Kurds similarly if the US invades Iraq. Is that a viable option?

RITTER: No. First, the Kurds war among themselves, too much in-fighting. Second, the Turks would never allow the Kurds to achieve that kind of dominance. Third, the Kurds themselves don't seem too keen on this role. Recently there was a meeting in Washington D.C. of all the Iraqi opposition groups. The largest Kurdish group in Iraq, the Kurdish Democratic Party, boycotted it. They said, "What guarantees can you give us? When you start building up for war, Saddam's not going to sit there. He's going to lash out, and he's going to lash out at Kurdistan. He'll crush us. What will you do to stop it? You can't do anything to stop it, because you're building up to take him out. If you intervene to keep him from crushing us, you divert your resources. This is a lose-lose situation for the Kurds, so we're not participating."