No, they sure seemed like hostages to me, and I urged the administration to let us confront the Iraq government on this issue. I called Washington and spoke with Bob Kimmit, the undersecretary for Political Affairs. Bob was reluctant to call them hostages until their situation had been more fully clarified, and I learned that this was the administration’s position too. Their reasoning was that if we started referring to them as hostages, we might give Saddam the idea that holding on to them as hostages would be a good idea. The situation at that point was so fluid, said Kimmit, that we should wait to cross this rhetorical divide. It was possible that Saddam was holding them only until the conquest of Kuwait was fully achieved, after which he would release them. In those first days, though, the Iraqis released only the twelve-year-old girl to our custody, and no one else.
By August 5, with the international phone service at the embassy back up, American television reporters and anchors began to arrive. Forrest Sawyer, then with CBS, was the first of the big-name news-casters, followed shortly by ABC’s Nightline host, Ted Koppel. Dan Rather, the CBS Evening News anchor, was not far behind. Unaccustomed to hosting news professionals, we permitted the first wave to sit in our executive offices and work around us. It soon became clear, however, that we needed to be able work away from the inquiring gaze of the press, and retain our privacy. So we quickly converted the United States Information Service (USIS) Cultural Center across the street into a filing center for both the American and the international press, thereby getting them out of our hair and still giving them the advantage of being able to file without impediments using our direct connections.
It was a mutually beneficial relationship since, from the beginning, we thought it important that the story be covered as fully and as openly as possible from Iraq. For the same reason, I made myself available to the press almost every morning for a background briefing to discuss the issues we were concerned about and to try to answer questions.
On August 6, when I arrived at the office, I was told that I was expected at the foreign ministry at 10:30, ostensibly to meet with Foreign Minister Aziz. I took the embassy political officer, Nancy Johnson, with me to serve as note taker. By this time, I had gone four days straight with virtually no sleep. My mood was a bit surly, and I was ready to unload on Tariq. When we got to his office, however, we discovered, to our great surprise, Saddam himself, decked out in his Baath Party uniform complete with the characteristic pistol on his hip. Less than two weeks after his unusual meeting with April Glaspie, Saddam was again sitting down with an officer of the U.S. government for a substantive meeting.
With cameras whirring to record the handshake and the introductions, we were ushered into Tariq’s outer office, where Saddam was standing in front of heavy drawn curtains and an Iraqi flag. Along the wall to his left were several senior officials from the foreign ministry, including, in addition to Tariq Aziz, Nizar Hamdun; Wissam al-Zahawi, the other undersecretary at the foreign ministry; and Riyad al-Qaysy, the foreign ministry’s chief lawyer and formerly ambassador to the U.N. They were motionless, at attention.
Over the two years I had been in Baghdad, I had had many opportunities to observe and participate in these greeting ceremonies, and I had always noticed that Saddam did everything he possibly could to intimidate his guests and create a pose in which his guest would be photographed bowing to him. Typically, he approached his guest and stopped closer than normal, breaking the social space and automatically putting his guest on edge. The handshake would not take place until after preliminary courtesies were exchanged through the simultaneous translator, while Saddam fixed the visitor with an unblinking stare. Some have described it as a snake hypnotizing his prey. I was actually reminded of the many games of “Who is going to blink first” that I used to play with my twins. There may have been many things I could not do, but one thing I could do is go for minutes without blinking. I thought: “If Saddam thinks he’s going to outstare me, he is sadly mistaken.” Finally, when the time came for the handshake, I knew that Saddam’s practice was to hold his hand low, forcing his guest to look down to take it, lest his visitor grab some other, less socially appropriate part of Saddam’s anatomy. When my moment came to take Saddam’s hand, I continued to stare directly into his eyes, kept my back ramrod-straight, and groped blindly for his hand, which, thankfully, I found. No cameras were going to catch me “bowing” to the dictator.
Months later, back in Washington, seated in the office of Tom Foley, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in the rotunda, I recounted the story of the handshake. After I explained about groping for Saddam’s hand, Tom leaned forward in his cordovan leather wingback chair and said: “You mean to tell me that you were this close to having Saddam Hussein by the short hairs and you didn’t go for it? Instead, we had to send Norm Schwarzkopf and five hundred thousand of America’s finest soldiers to finish the job?”
The cameras were still going when Saddam and I sat down, with him adjusting the gun, still on his hip. “Well, what’s the news?” he began. I was angry. We were four days into the crisis, during which I had hardly slept; there were the remains of a deceased colleague to ship home; there was an ambassador in Kuwait worrying every night about possible Iraqi attacks on the embassy there; there were American citizens being held hostage in Kuwait and in Iraq. I could well have shown how I really felt, but I chose, instead, to make a little joke.
I said, “Look, if you want to know what’s new, you really ought to address that question to your foreign minister and not me, because your foreign minister has a satellite dish that allows him to get American news stations such as CNN. I’ve been fighting with him for two years now to try and get a satellite dish for our embassy, with no success. So if you want to know what’s new, ask him, not me.” Saddam laughed heartily. He no doubt knew of our failed efforts to import satellite dishes for the embassy. Given to appreciating my own jokes, I almost joined Saddam in his laughter. I started to lean back and smile when I remembered that the cameras were still there. I caught myself and straightened up, trying to look as stern as possible.
My meeting with Saddam ran well over an hour. During much of the time Saddam attempted to justify the invasion in historical terms and also ranted against the Kuwaiti royal family for its callous disregard of Iraq’s needs. While he did not reveal what he intended to do with Kuwait, Saddam at one point made a comment that his interpreter had trouble translating. Tariq Aziz interrupted from his seat against the wall, saying, “The al-Sabah family is history.” It was the only time that any other Iraqi spoke. Whatever Saddam had in mind for the future of his neighbor, apparently it did not include the return of that particular royal family.
It soon became clear that the purpose of the meeting was to allow Saddam to outline the deal he wanted to make with the United States. If the United States were to refrain from interfering with whatever Iraq was going to do with Kuwait, Saddam would guarantee uninterrupted supplies of oil for a reasonable price, and as the dominant power in the Gulf, Iraq would assume responsibility for policing it. He also promised that he would take no action against Saudi Arabia—a country with which Iraq had a mutual defense pact—unless the Saudi rulers allowed their country to be used as a platform to launch efforts to destabilize the Iraqi regime. If, on the other hand, the United States reacted militarily to the Iraqi invasion, Saddam scoffed that we had neither the tenacity to remain engaged as long as it would take to drive Iraq from Kuwait, nor the political will to sustain the “spilling of the blood of ten thousand soldiers in the Arabian desert.” There it was then, the carrot of cheap oil coupled with the stick of dead American soldiers.
When it was my turn to speak, I began by commenting on the roiling of international oil markets occasioned by the invasion. This prompted a spirited interruption by Saddam condemning the Kuwaitis for their refusal to accommodate reasonable Iraqi demands, while they also undermined international petroleum prices by their overproduction. Saddam was clearly agitated, claiming now that the Kuwaitis w
ere to blame for everything.
I returned to what I thought I might achieve in the meeting, arguing that the invasion of Kuwait was a violation of Iraq’s international obligations. I also expressed our concerns about Iraqi troops looting American diplomatic properties in Kuwait, as well as threatening our personnel at the embassy there. There was also the closing of Iraq’s international borders, which, contrary to the Geneva and Vienna Conventions, prevented Americans and other foreigners from leaving Iraq.
“Are you talking about just Americans?” Saddam now asked, and I responded, “Well, I’m only empowered to speak on behalf of Americans, but I would think that, more broadly, you ought to open your border so that all foreigners can leave.” He then asked me, “Why? Do you know something that I don’t know about a potential American response?” I replied, “Well, Mr. President, I can assure you that if I knew something about American intentions, I would not share it with you, but what I will tell you is that I intend to be here so long as there is a role for diplomats to play in resolving this situation peacefully.” Saddam’s question made it clear that he was fishing for clues as to whether the United States might intend a unilateral military response to his actions.
It was a tough meeting. Shortly after I began to speak, Saddam reached down for his gun. I could not help but wonder if I had said something to provoke him, as I watched in slow motion while he moved toward the weapon. He must have noticed my consternation, for now, as he removed the gun belt and holster from around his waist and placed them on the table next to him, he commented on how uncomfortable it was to sit while wearing it. The cameramen had by now left and the weapon was evidently no longer necessary as a prop. It offered me quite a telling window into Saddam’s pretensions and his choice of symbols for projecting power and manhood.
After the meeting was over and we were walking out together, Saddam relaxed noticeably, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, with a smile, “That was a good meeting.” I was still preoccupied with the plight of Americans in Kuwait and Iraq and in no mood to humor the dictator or help him feel good about our exchange. On reflection, the notion that Saddam needed me to reassure him about our conversation is bizarre.
In the years since those meetings—first with Ambassador Glaspie, and then with me—I have come to the conclusion that Saddam was worried about the possible American response to his actions and may have concluded that the confusing statements coming from different parts of the U.S. government meant there would be no consensus to respond militarily to his invasion of Kuwait. I believe that he met with Glaspie for the express purpose of deceiving us about his intentions, as he did with Egypt’s President Mubarak at the same time. In this way he maintained the element of surprise. His meeting with me, then, was to try to insure there would be no military response by the U.S.
I have also often thought that whatever one concludes about Saddam’s sanity—and he was clearly a sociopath—the invasion of Kuwait, given the circumstances, was a rational, if high-risk, act. After all, a successful invasion of Kuwait, leading to its annexation, would have eliminated many of his strategic and financial problems. And if he were able to avoid a military counterattack, he could engage in endless international negotiations while he flooded Kuwait with Iraqis to change the demographics and ensure himself a favorable outcome in a future ballot of some kind. His own experience with international organizations had shown him that he stood to win in a prolonged showdown: the two U.N. resolutions dealing with Iraq’s use of chemical weapons had been toothless, and even the resolutions concerning Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory had not resulted in Israeli withdrawal for the previous twenty years. Absent an American military response, Saddam might well have concluded that a lengthy occupation of Kuwait, followed by a rigged referendum, would succeed. That is why when dealing with such a determined leader, diplomacy be backed by both sustained international will and the credible threat of force when necessary.
Whatever Saddam’s thinking, he was clearly going to attain his financial and strategic objectives at Kuwait’s expense one way or another, either by threat or military action. The timing of the decision to invade Kuwait, however, may well have been an emotional response to the tone of the failed negotiations in Jeddah. Patrick Theros, our deputy chief of mission in Jordan, was called to King Hussein’s palace the night before the invasion, because the king had just gotten off the phone with Saddam, whom he described as furious with the Kuwaitis. He told Theros that he had no idea what Saddam might do but that his anger had made the Iraqi dictator irrational. Nizar Hamdun later told a close friend of mine that when the Iraqis were pressing for financial relief, the Kuwaitis responded that if Iraq needed money, it should do what it had always done—“put its women on the streets,” an unspeakable insult to the proud Iraqis.
Back at the office after the meeting, Nancy Johnson and I wrote three cables for Washington. She took responsibility for writing the formal memorandum of the conversation between Saddam and myself, while I composed a short message outlining the main points of the meeting and then a slightly longer memo that included my analysis and commentary. Washington was anxious to have these cables as soon as possible and kept interrupting our drafting of them to ask when they were going to be transmitted. It turned out that at the same time we were drafting the cables—early in the afternoon, Baghdad time—the National Security Council, with President Bush as chair, was ready to convene an early morning meeting. But they were waiting until our cables arrived. We rushed what we had onto the wires, hastily written and only lightly edited, so the NSC meeting could begin. They were highly classified, sent “Secret NODIS Babylon.” NODIS is the acronym that means no distribution beyond those officials within our government directly involved in managing the issue. Babylon was the code word used to identify the Gulf crisis, or Desert Shield.
Notwithstanding our best efforts to protect the security of our communications, within two days of my meeting with Saddam, the text of Nancy’s long memorandum was reproduced in the New York Times, including many of the editorial errors that we had overlooked in our haste to get the information to Washington. It had no doubt been leaked by a senior official in our government. At the same time, one reporter asked President Bush if he had received the message from Saddam, to which the President replied “no.”
The Iraqis were furious—and not about the editorial oversights. Nizar Hamdun called me in to complain, vociferously, “You put a confidential message from my president to yours on the front page of the New York Times, but you don’t bother to give it to the president himself.” After he had let off steam, Nizar reminded me that the Iraqis were still waiting for President Bush’s reply.
Licking my wounds and very unhappy with Washington, I called John Kelly’s deputy, Edward “Skip” Gnehm, to complain that I had been undermined by the leak and to urge a prompt reply from the White House. Skip glossed over my irritation, telling me, quite appropriately, to suck it up, and instructed me to go back to Nizar with the message that the president had indeed seen Saddam’s message and that if the Iraqis wanted to know his response, they needed only to turn on CNN.
I went over to the foreign ministry and was ushered into Nizar’s office, where I delivered Washington’s message. When I finished, we both turned our eyes to the television monitor in the corner of Nizar’s office. On the screen was CNN televising U.S. Air Force transport planes taking off from bases all around the country. Every few seconds, another of the huge C5s took to the air filled with military equipment destined for Saudi Arabia. The American deployment had begun.
Now Saddam had his answer, and it was not lost on Nizar. Although I met with him several times a week from then until my departure on January 12, 1991, the only other time I was invited into his private office with the television was the day I delivered the diplomatic note announcing that the United States was suspending diplomatic relations with Iraq, the day before I left the country.
Between those two occasions, my access to news on television wa
s limited to the daily Iraqi English language propaganda broadcast every evening at eight o’clock. Without satellite dishes my colleagues and I had no means of receiving the blow-by-blow coverage. Of course, we were living it instead.
While I was meeting with Saddam, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney was in Saudi Arabia showing the rulers of the kingdom satellite photos of the Iraqi troop deployment throughout Kuwait, close to its southern border with Saudi Arabia and not far from the fabulously lucrative eastern Saudi oil fields.
President Bush had drawn his “line in the sand,” the line being between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and he had declared that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait “would not stand.” Our immediate objective, however, remained the protection of Saudi Arabia. When King Fahd, the Saudi monarch, invited us to deploy our troops in the kingdom after Cheney’s presentation, the armada was launched.
On August 8, Saddam announced that Iraq had annexed Kuwait, making it Iraq’s nineteenth province.
Our primary concern at the embassy continued to be the welfare and whereabouts of our citizens, as well as their safe evacuation from the region. We had succeeded in rounding up close to a hundred Americans in Baghdad and offering them refuge in embassy quarters. Most of them were employees of the American firm Bechtel, in Iraq to work on major construction projects. We were in a grim race against the Iraqis, who now had taken about 115 Americans hostage and were putting them in what they considered “strategic sites” that American forces might bomb in the first hours of a military conflict. In Kuwait, where the Iraqi army was terrorizing the population, about 2,000 Americans were still in hiding or behind the walls of our embassy there. The situation was grim.
The Politics of Truth_Inside the Lies That Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity Page 13