The Politics of Truth_Inside the Lies That Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity

by Joseph Wilson

  By July, it was clear that the Iraqis and Kuwaitis were on a collision course, though the Kuwaitis feigned blissful calm. On July 17, 1990, in an address commemorating the anniversary of the Baath Party takeover in Iraq, Saddam excoriated those Arabs who he believed had conspired with the Americans and Israelis to sabotage Arab development. His attack was highly personal, as he accused leaders in the region of being bought off with gleaming villas and Mercedes-Benz luxury cars and failing to stand up to Western efforts to thwart Arab ambitions. By this time, it should be noted, Iraqi debt amounted to about $80 billion, or 150 percent of its GDP—much of it in short-term notes owed to Japan, the United States, and European countries. Saddam also claimed that low oil prices, the result of overproduction by a couple of countries, namely Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, were a “poisoned dagger” in Iraq’s back. The message to the region was clear: pay me off or else. When three days later, on July 20, the British military attaché shared with the embassy evidence of a large movement of Iraqi troops into the south again, it underscored the idea that Saddam meant business.

  With an OPEC pricing meeting scheduled for July 26 in Vienna, the Kuwaitis finally awakened to Saddam’s intention to drive the price of petroleum from $14 a barrel to $25 and to do it immediately, risking international economic turmoil because he needed to raise cash to meet his obligations. If Kuwaiti overproduction didn’t stop, he clearly was willing to threaten military action to stop it.

  On July 25, April Glaspie went to the Iraqi foreign ministry to deliver to Tariq Aziz a copy of a statement made earlier in the week by the State Department spokesperson, Margaret Tutwiler. The statement had noted that although the United States did not have a mutual defense pact with Kuwait, “Iraq and others know that there is no place for coercion and intimidation in the civilized world.” April went alone, which was not unusual for these meetings. As an embassy, we were understaffed and overworked, and a routine meeting did not require a second person just to take notes. Ambassador Glaspie was blessed with a keen mind and a profound understanding of the issues, and was also an inveterate note taker. Shortly after she returned from the meeting with Aziz—during which she emphasized her desire that the information she was sharing be transmitted to Saddam—she was summoned back to the foreign ministry, put into an Iraqi government car, and driven to meet Saddam himself. This was unprecedented. During the two years she had been ambassador, Saddam had never held a private meeting with her, delegating all contact to Aziz or other underlings. It was only when she had escorted visitors from Washington that she had been part of meetings with Saddam, and then as a bystander, not as a principal.

  The one-on-one meeting with Saddam was fateful for Ambassador Glaspie. Out of it emerged the charge that she had not been tough enough with him and had somehow given him a green light to invade Kuwait. Nothing could be further from the truth; Glaspie has been made a convenient scapegoat for a more complicated and complex failure of foreign policy. I was with her immediately after the meeting and had several discussions in the few days between the meeting and her departure from the country on a long-planned leave. Her explanation of American policy toward Arab disputes did not waver from our standing instructions. The United States did not take positions on the merits of such quarrels between Arab nations, although the policy was to, in the strongest terms, urge that the parties to a dispute resolve it diplomatically or through international mediation, and not via military threats or action.

  During the meeting, Saddam made clear to Ambassador Glaspie that Iraq had no intention of taking any military action against Kuwait, so long as there was an ongoing negotiation process. The meeting was interrupted when Saddam took a call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak had been very active in mediating the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait, even engaging in some secret shuttle diplomacy, traveling from capital to capital in the region in quest of a peaceful solution. At the conclusion of the call from Mubarak, Saddam returned to Glaspie and informed her that he had just told the Egyptian president the same thing—that he would not invade Kuwait so long as there was a negotiation process. (It was later reported that Saddam had asked Mubarak not to share with the Kuwaitis what he had told him, in order to keep his bluff alive.) The Egyptian president must have honored Saddam’s request, for the attack was a complete surprise to the Kuwaitis, with the royal family barely fleeing with their lives. The double-cross may also explain Mubarak’s anger at Saddam in the aftermath of the invasion.

  Though Ambassador Glaspie was frequently criticized after the invasion of Kuwait and after the release of the Iraqi transcript of the meeting for not having been tougher on Saddam—for supposedly failing to give him a red light—the Iraqis themselves have, in fact, stated that they understood perfectly what she had said in defining American policy. Even Tariq Aziz has publicly acknowledged this to be true.

  Much more recently, on April 2, 2003, I met for lunch with Nizar Hamdun, the former foreign ministry undersecretary, once Tariq Aziz’s right-hand man and present at the meeting between Glaspie and Saddam. I had not seen or spoken to Nizar since January 11, 1991, the eve of my departure from Baghdad before Desert Storm began. We had occasionally exchanged personal messages through third parties, and I often received a Christmas card from my Muslim friend. But direct personal contact had been out of the question while I was still a government official. Despite the intervening years with little direct contact, we met as old friends, once having shared the profound responsibility of trying to avert war. In fact, Trudy Rubin, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, had written in early 1991 about our relationship, saying that if war should be avoided, credit would have to go to the two of us for our efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

  When Nizar arrived at the midtown New York City restaurant a few minutes after I sat down, I was dismayed by his appearance. He was clearly dying; for the third time in twenty years, he had been obliged to submit to chemotherapy for lymphoma. He was under no illusions about his chances of survival, and when I asked him point-blank if he was going to make it, he flatly acknowledged that he did not think so. He was most worried, however, about his wife and daughters, who were still in Baghdad, where the second Gulf War had begun two weeks earlier. He had recently had only intermittent contact with them, on the occasions when sympathetic journalists would arrange a call on a satellite phone. Nizar had made a lot of friends in his life, and they were always happy to accommodate him in his personal needs.

  He died on July 4, 2003, knowing that his family had survived the “shock and awe” bombing campaign but still worried about their safety in post-Saddam Iraq. He had left an extensive set of personal notes with a friend and instructions not to share them with anyone until it was certain that his widow and daughters were out of harm’s way. To my knowledge, as of this writing, his family is still in Iraq.

  Nizar and I compared notes on our experiences in Baghdad before the first Gulf War. I even suggested that we consider writing a book together, examining those issues we had once confronted from our separate points of view. For health reasons, he demurred, and because of the danger to which he feared it could expose his family. He also declined an invitation to sit for an interview with the History Channel. (I was then appearing weekly as a commentator on the 2003 war.) Looking back at the events of 1990, I brought up the Saddam-Glaspie meeting and shared with him my recollections that the position she had put forward to Saddam had been consistent with U.S. policy and was in no way tacit permission for Iraqi action. Nizar was emphatic: April’s comments had not deviated from what was known U.S. policy, and she had not encouraged Saddam to invade Kuwait. The Iraqi leadership had not come away thinking she had tacitly indicated that the United States condoned the use of force. On the contrary, he knew exactly what the American position was—opposition to Iraqi military action, under any and all circumstances.

  Therefore, Nizar continued, the Iraqis had been startled by the positive tone of a letter from President Bush, delivered a couple
of days later by Glaspie, just before she left the country. That letter was far too conciliatory, Nizar had felt at the time, and left the impression that the American desire for good relations with Iraq might override its concerns about Iraqi aggression. He thought that the president’s note had sent the wrong signal to Saddam by not explicitly warning him against taking any military action, and not threatening harsh retaliation if he did. He intimated that Saddam had concluded from the positive tone of the letter that the U.S. would not react militarily and that he could survive the political criticism resulting from the aggressive action he was considering toward Kuwait. This letter, much more than any other United States statement, appears to have influenced Saddam’s thinking. Nizar’s memory in this regard was vivid and unflinchingly critical of the letter.

  President Bush’s letter to Saddam, in fact, followed the same approach that we had been using for some time, to try to extract good behavior with as many carrots as sticks, particularly in our highest-level exchanges. The letter itself contained language that was conciliatory, but it also reconfirmed our interest in a peaceful resolution of the Iraq-Kuwait dispute. However, it did not, nor did Glaspie’s oral presentation, nor did even my own remarks to Saddam four days after the invasion, contain threats of U.S. military action should he fail to heed our entreaties not to invade Kuwait.

  The operative passage in the president’s letter went as follows:I was pleased to learn of the agreement between Iraq and Kuwait to begin negotiations in Jeddah to find a peaceful solution to the current tensions between you. The United States and Iraq both have a strong interest in preserving the peace and stability of the Middle East. For this reason, we believe that differences are best resolved by peaceful means and not by threats involving military force or conflict. I also welcome your statement that Iraq desires friendship rather than confrontation with the United States. Let me reassure you, as my ambassador, Senator Dole and others have done, that my administration continues to desire better relations with Iraq. We will also continue to support our friends in the region with whom we have had long-standing ties. We see no necessary inconsistency between these two objectives. As you know, we still have certain fundamental concerns about certain Iraqi policies and activities, and we will continue to raise these concerns with you, in a spirit of friendship and candor. . . . Both our governments must maintain open channels of communication to avoid misunderstandings and in order to build a more durable foundation for improving our relations.

  When all is said and done, American influence with Saddam was limited. To him, U.S. government actions in investigating and ultimately suspending the one economic program we had with Iraq—the Agriculture Commodity Credit program—along with hostile Voice of America editorials, and congressional efforts to toughen the policy, all contradicted any professions of friendship. Saddam’s view of the world was limited and heavily influenced by his relations with his neighbors and his ambitions to be the regional power. Long infatuated by the idea of dominating the Arab world, his emergence from the Iran-Iraq war with a large battle-tested military machine gave him the means to flex his muscles. His dire economic straits and the continuing reluctance on the part of his neighbors to submit to his strong-arm tactics provided him the rationale for doing so.

  Kuwait was not a country popular among many Arabs, who saw it as an artificial creation of British colonial officials doodling on a map over a glass of port one afternoon in 1922. Iraq was a leading proponent of this position, long claiming Kuwait as a province cleaved off by the British to weaken Iraq by denying it significant access to the Persian Gulf. Saddam reasoned that if Israel could get away with repeated invasions and occupation of Palestinian territories in flagrant disregard of U.N. Security Council resolutions, why could not Iraq restore Kuwait to its “historic status” as a province of Iraq? Such an outcome would alleviate Iraq’s debt problem, provide it greater access to the Gulf, and punish the sclerotic royal family in Kuwait for its bad behavior toward Iraq.

  On July 31, State Department Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly appeared before an open session of the House International Relations Committee, chaired by Congressman Lee Hamilton, an expert on Middle East affairs. Hamilton asked Kelly a question point-blank to which he must already have known the answer: did the United States have a mutual defense pact with Kuwait that would necessitate an automatic American response should Iraq invade? The State Department spokesman had already addressed the question several weeks previously, but Hamilton asked it anyway. John Kelly gave the correct answer, the only answer that he could give: “We don’t have any defense treaty with the Gulf States. That’s clear. We support the independence and security of all friendly states in the region. Since the Truman administration, we’ve maintained naval forces in the area because its stability is in our interest. We call for a peaceful solution to all disputes, and we think that the sovereignty of every state in the Gulf must be respected.”

  For me, sweating it out in Iraq, that was a defining moment. A senior administration official had testified in open session to our Congress that we did not have a defense pact that would lead us to come to the defense of Kuwait. Within minutes, Kelly’s testimony was transmitted to Iraq. Despite the qualifiers that Kelly put into place about America’s preference for peaceful solutions to disputes, the only thing the Iraqi regime heard was that we had no legal obligation or even any mechanism to react to an invasion. That had far more effect than anything that April Glaspie may or may not have said in her meeting with Saddam Hussein. It substantiated that she was in no position to threaten Saddam, nor that if Kuwait was invaded would we bring the B52s over and bomb Iraq back into the Stone Age. There was no legal or political basis before the invasion to make that threat, and Glaspie was never going to so grossly exceed her instructions. She could not in fact have gone any further in her response to Saddam than she had actually gone.

  In the region, Saddam agreed to a negotiating session with Kuwait brokered by Mubarak’s intense efforts, set for August 1 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

  The members of the Iraqi delegation were formidable thugs with nary a diplomatically inclined bone in their collective bodies. They were enforcers, pure and simple, and the Kuwaitis clearly had miscalculated when they assumed a negotiated settlement could be achieved. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the nominal number two in the Iraqi regime, headed up their contingent, with Taha Yassin Ramadan, another hard case given to wearing pearl-handled pistols backwards in twin holsters in order to effect the cross-handed draw of an Old West gunslinger in the event of a shootout. They were accompanied by Ali Hassan al-Majid, the infamous “Chemical Ali,” who had earned his nickname as the Butcher of Kurdistan during the gassing of the Kurds in the north of Iraq; he would later reign as the temporary governor of post-invasion Kuwait, where he pursued his murderous ways and became known as the Butcher of Kuwait. There were no Americans, or any other third party, at the negotiations, and the Kuwaitis should have understood that the Iraqis were there only to deliver an ultimatum.

  During this period, most of the leaders in the region continued to urge us to do nothing, simply because they feared that anything we might do would provoke Saddam into the very actions we wished to avoid. They claimed he was bluffing and that they would solve the problem with Arab-led diplomacy. Even the United Arab Emirates, who had asked us to undertake a quick military exercise with them, criticized us for making the joint exercise public, concerned that it might bring a negative Iraqi reaction.

  On July 31, Ambassador Glaspie left Iraq for her long-planned home leave and to participate in consultations in Washington. Most of the other ambassadors assigned to Baghdad now also made their way out of the city during the infernally hot months of July and August, as was customary. At the time of the invasion of Kuwait, almost all were out of town, having left their embassies in the hands of their deputies, my direct counterparts. This left me the most senior official at the American Embassy in Baghdad.

  Chapter Five

  How to Shake Hand
s with a Dictator

  IN THE DAYS BEFORE THE INVASION of Kuwait, our embassy military attaché reported regularly on the massing of Iraqi troops in the south, the logistical support that was moving forward, and the establishment of supply lines. But to most of the analysts in Washington, indicators from the field did not lead to definitive proof of an impending invasion. By the time it was completely plain what was in the offing, it was too late to do anything to forestall it.

  On the evening of August 1, about six hours before the invasion was launched, I was the dinner guest of an Iraqi national whose principal residence was Paris, where he served as Iraq’s arms procurement liaison officer. He was quite likely the one responsible for the purchase by Iraq of the French-made Exocet missiles that Iraq had used to strike the USS Stark in a 1987 incident in the Persian Gulf that resulted in the deaths of thirty-seven American sailors. It was one of the hottest days of the summer, probably close to 120 degrees outside. Pulling up to his opulent home on the banks of the Tigris River, I could see the air shimmering just beyond my windshield. The front door opened, and I was ushered in to a living room that by contrast seemed to be chilled to sweater temperatures. It felt to me, just coming in from the heat of the day, like 45 or 50 degrees, but it was probably 65 or 70. There was a fire roaring in the fireplace, while just beyond were floor-to-ceiling windows opening to a backyard on the river. It made for quite a surreal scene. Adding to the ambiance, in one corner of the living room a mustachioed gentleman, looking more like a gangster than a concert pianist, was playing a sonata on a white baby grand piano.