Saddam’s FM spied for CIA - Report

Saddam Hussein’s former foreign minister Naji Sabri spied for the CIA in return for cash before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, a U.S. television station reported.

In September 2002, Sabri provided the CIA with information on Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction in return for a 100,000 dollar payment in a deal brokered by the French, NBC reported, citing unidentified U.S. intelligence officials.

Sabri may have thought he was cooperating with the French, but some American intelligence officials believe that he was fully aware that he was working with the CIA, NBC said.

According to the sources, Sabri told the CIA middleman that Saddam had no significant weapons program, and that the toppled leader wanted to build an atomic weapon but needed much more time than the CIA estimate of several months to a year.

Weapons of Mass Destruction were the main justification for President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam three years. No such weapons have been found.

Quoting intelligence officials, NBC said that Sabri ended his relations with the CIA after he refused to defect to the United States, and publicly renounce Saddam.

After the U.S. invasion, Sabri wasn’t arrested or included in the U.S. military’s most-wanted list of 55 Iraqi suspects.

Sabri, who is now teaching journalism at a university in the Middle East, refused to comment on the report, NBC said. A CIA representative also declined to be interviewed.

In a separate development, U.S. government translations of audio and videotapes of top-level Iraqi meetings held in the 1990s proved that Saddam didn’t possess WMD.

The transcripts showed that Saddam was frustrated that no one believed Iraq had given up banned weapons.

At one meeting with top lieutenants in 1996, Saddam wondered if UN inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years,” in a pointless hunt for WMD, asking “When is this going to end?''

The transcripts also showed that Saddam and his aides repeatedly said that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down the nuclear-bomb program. At one point, Saddam exclaimed, "We don't have anything hidden!"