Saddam worked for the CIA

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Richard Sale, UPI Intelligence Correspondent, wrote about Saddam and the CIA on 4/10/2003.

According to Sale, British scholars and former U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials say that Saddam Hussein was used by the U.S. intelligences services for over 40 years.

In 1959, Saddam was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad trying to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

CIA operative Miles Copeland told UPI the CIA had had "close ties" with Iraq's Baath Party, and with the Egyptian intelligence service. Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer, confirmed that the CIA had chosen the Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam was in his early 20s, when he became a part of the U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.

The 1959 assassination was botched. Qasim escaped death, and Saddam escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.

Saddam then moved to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. In Beirut, the CIA put Saddam through a training course, former CIA officials said.

Saddam then moved to Cairo. According to former U.S. intelligence officials, Saddam made frequent visits to the American Embassy.

In 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed that the CIA was behind the coup.

The CIA provided the Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then murdered, according to former U.S. intelligence officials.

Middle East expert Adel Darwish told UPI that Saddam presided over the mass killings.

A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."

Saddam became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence service of the Baath Party.

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency connection with Saddam continued.

According to a former DIA official, the U.S. shared satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in an attempt to produce a military stalemate.