Backstabbing for Beginners: Read online

  Unbeknownst to all of us in the room, the compromise we had reached over how to redraft a report would set in motion a chain of events that would change the course of history—and affect our individual lives in a most dramatic way.

  But all we saw, all that really mattered to us that morning, was that Denis Halliday had taken a wild stab at Pasha’s back and missed. His followers had deserted him at the last moment and renewed their allegiance to Pasha. “Denis the Menace” (as Pasha now nicknamed him) had no choice but to fall back into rank. For now.

  CHAPTER 6

  Coffee With Criminals

  Before they became faces on a deck of cards, Saddam Hussein’s cronies were powerful men, feared throughout Iraq and the Middle East and treated with utmost respect by much of the international community. I did not look forward to shaking their hands. But sitting down with them was part of our job as the liaisons between the Iraqi government and the rest of the world.

  Before our meetings with the Iraqi ministers, I tried my best to feed Pasha the contents of the briefing notes my colleagues had prepared for him at headquarters. But every time I whipped them out, Pasha would roll his eyes and plead to do it later. As a result, Pasha met with several Iraqi ministers without much in the way of a prior briefing. This didn’t matter so much with the ministers of agriculture or education, for the nature of our discussions was technical, but when it came to the minister of foreign affairs and the vice president, I had to make sure Pasha brought up certain points or my colleagues back at headquarters would strangle me upon my return. So on the day of our first meeting with the foreign minister, I decided to ambush Pasha at breakfast.

  Strangely, the Al-Rasheed Hotel cafeteria was teeming with Asians—I assumed they were North Koreans, since Iraq maintained excellent relations with that country. There were about a hundred of them. We had no idea what they were doing there. They weren’t there for tourism, I figured, for they had not brought any wives. Still, they added an unexpected, almost festive ambiance to the cafeteria, and they completely filled up the buffet area. I looked around and saw Pasha sitting down over coffee, sticking out like an elephant in a birdcage.

  He saw me approach with my briefing notes in hand, rolled his eyes, and asked me for a cigarette. I asked him how the food was, and he explained that he hadn’t had an opportunity to sample it because of “all these facking people.” I volunteered to get some food for us, and eventually, over eggs that tasted like they had been cooked in Jiffy Lube oil, we went through Pasha’s talking points in a somewhat orderly fashion. After a few mouthfuls, we looked at each other with a grimace. We were literally having oil for food.

  The Al-Rasheed Hotel was once the pride of Baghdad. Now they couldn’t scramble together enough butter to cook eggs. That fact alone spoke volumes more than our briefing notes. With little more than black coffee in our stomachs, we set off to meet with some of Saddam’s top henchmen.

  By order of the Iraqi dictator, the cabinet ministers were required to wear their green military fatigues and black berets every time there was a crisis, and this was one of those times. Most of them were long past fighting age and looked rather awkward dressed like would-be commandos. Especially when wearing Gucci shoes instead of boots.

  The minister of foreign affairs at the time was Mohammed Said al-Sahaf, the man who would draw something of a cult following a few years later in his capacity as Saddam’s spokesman during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sahaf was a fantastic liar. Minutes before making his final escape in April 2003, he gave TV interviews denying that U.S. troops had taken Saddam International Airport in Baghdad and arguing that Iraq was winning the war—all with that signature winning smile of his, which was strangely absent from his face when he was picked up by U.S. forces a few days later.

  The staff in the Foreign Ministry looked tense. They had good reason to be. The news that day made it appear as if U.S. bombings were imminent.

  We were led into a red meeting room adjacent to the minister’s office, which looked like the only well-kept space in the building. After a few minutes, Sahaf came in to greet us. Short, square-framed, and thick-necked, he gave the impression of a bulldog with glasses. He sat down, invited Pasha to speak, and lit up the first of a dozen Marlboro Reds. He seemed agitated, like someone itching to go to the bathroom. He almost jumped up from his seat when one of his aides suddenly walked in with a printout.

  Pasha and I looked at each other as the foreign minister read the dispatch. Something was happening. I grabbed on to my bag. I had argued that we should fax Pasha’s itinerary over to the Pentagon, to avoid being in the line of fire in any initial strike, but no one thought it would be a good idea to display any level of cooperation between the UN and the Pentagon, lest we be seen as vassals of the United States. One day, after the fall of the Iraqi regime, that same attitude would cost us many lives.

  Politics aside, it struck me that sitting in an Iraqi government building at the onset of a U.S. bombing campaign might be a terribly bad idea. Would we have to make a run for it if we heard sirens? After a few tense beats Sahaf looked up at us with a smile. The United States had announced that it would postpone any immediate military action against Iraq.

  The news cleared the air of palpable tension. Pasha wiped his forehead, and I rubbed my sweaty palms on the pants of my suit. Sahaf sat back and ordered some coffee for us all. Then, pointing to the ceiling, the minister said, “They know we are meeting.” By “they” he meant the Americans. Since most of his contacts with America had come in the form of bombs raining down from above, it was perhaps not surprising that he would point to the ceiling when referring to the United States. In fact, the following year, when America finally launched Operation Desert Fox, Sahaf and several other members of Saddam’s Revolutionary Command Council narrowly escaped certain death when they rushed out of the Social Affairs Ministry, in which they had taken refuge, seconds before a Tomahawk cruise missile slammed into it.

  Sahaf, like other Iraqi ministers, lived in a world where every word he uttered was liable to make its way to Saddam Hussein’s ear—and, on occasion, to a translator at the U.S. National Security Agency. So he wasn’t only talking to us. He was talking to the walls as well. Saddam would get a full report on this meeting. It was like having him in the room.

  The rest of the meeting proceeded in a more relaxed atmosphere. Once Sahaf was done criticizing the United States and its lackeys (as was customary in any meeting), he began to complain about something he called “the chock points.” Pasha wasn’t sure what the minister meant by “chock points,” and so by way of explanation, Sahaf squeezed his fist as if he had just caught a little tweety bird and was choking it, after which we understood that he meant to say “choke,” not “chock.” He was referring to the choke points, the hurdles that were holding up the importation of civilian goods into Iraq under the Oil-for-Food program.

  Here is how the system worked. Iraq would sign a contract for the sale of oil and send the contract to the UN in New York, where a UN “oil overseer” would check that the price corresponded to the market rate, which ranged from $18 a barrel to about $40 throughout the period. Oddly enough, prices would rise higher and higher even as more Iraqi oil was made available to the market. After the UN approved the price of oil, a tanker would show up at the loading dock of the Iraqi port Mina al-Bakr and fill up with Iraqi crude. A UN inspector would be present to make sure that the quantity of oil that was loaded corresponded to the amount that the buyer had paid for. The payment would be made in U.S. dollars into a UN-controlled account in the New York branch of the Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP), a French bank that had been selected in consultation with the Iraqi government. One-third of the proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil would go toward compensation for the destruction Iraq had created during the Gulf War, and the remaining two-thirds would pay for humanitarian goods.

  In order to buy food, medicine, and other goods, Iraq had to sign contracts with foreign suppliers, then send those contracts to the UN in New Yo
rk, where they would be scrutinized by our office—again, to check if the price was market rate and to avoid a situation in which the Iraqi government could get kickbacks from the business it offered foreign companies. After our office checked the contract, we would forward it to the UN sanctions committee, a subsidiary of the UN Security Council also known as the 661 Committee, in reference to Resolution 661, which imposed sanctions on Iraq four days after Saddam invaded Kuwait. The 661 Committee had ultimate authority to approve or block any Iraqi contract. If it was approved, the seller would be authorized to export goods to Iraq. At the Iraqi border, a UN inspector would check the shipment and, with a copy of the bill of lading, send a message to the UN in New York to authorize payment to the foreign company out of the UN’s BNP account. Once the goods were inside Iraq, the UN was in charge of observing their distribution. For food, the UN had the World Food Program set up a network of distribution points throughout the country. For medicine, we relied on observations from the World Health Organization. For construction equipment, Habitat was in charge. And so on. The job of these UN agencies was to make sure the goods went to the people and were not just hoarded by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

  On paper, it was an airtight system. On the ground, it was a logistical nightmare.

  The mechanism for the importation of goods into Iraq was indeed inefficient, which, as far as the United States and Britain were concerned, was the whole point. Iraqis were familiar with bureaucracy, as their own totalitarian system of controls carried its cumbersome paper flow, too. Nonetheless, the rules set out in the UN resolutions drove them mad. For every piece of equipment they wanted to import—including, say, a water pump—they had to fill out an application stating where and how they intended to use it. It was like asking a grocery shopper which department of his fridge he intended to store a given piece of produce in, and when he intended to eat it, before letting him buy it.

  Understandably, the Iraqis were irritated by the system and often failed to fill out their applications thoroughly enough for the U.S. diplomats sitting in New York, who then put their application “on hold pending further information.” This made the Iraqis even more frustrated. Since they did not have any direct contact with the United States, their only opportunity to blow off steam was with the UN. They rarely missed their chance, and in the case of Sahaf, the steam came accompanied with spit-filled cigarette breath, which made him particularly unpleasant to sit across from.

  In response, Pasha did his job, which consisted of giving his counterpart the runaround. At this, Pasha was a Jedi master. He had honed his technique over many years, and his incomprehensible accent came in surprisingly handy. First, he made a very convincing show of empathy for Sahaf ’s point of view, which had the Iraqi minister glimmering with hope that he could turn the UN diplomat to his cause. Then, Pasha embarked on a long mumble about the UN rules and regulations, taking the Iraqi foreign minister through the detailed procedures outlined on the following page.

  At the end of Pasha’s explanation, the Iraqi minister had the same look on his face as a traveler who’s been standing far too long before a luggage conveyor belt.

  I rather enjoyed seeing this paranoid bully being so completely disoriented by Pasha’s bureaucratic mumble. But when it came to the effectiveness of our rules, Sahaf and his friends would have the last laugh. They had yet to find a way around them, but they would. It was just a matter of time before every one of the “choke points” Sahaf was referring to would be lubricated by the lure of profit. So far, the system was at a test-run stage, and most of the participants involved were still in the process of figuring out how to tinker with it.

  When he understood there was no way around Pasha’s mumbo jumbo, Sahaf changed the subject. Determined to get something out of us before the meeting ended, he brought up the issue of the “snake.”

  Apparently, a snake had infiltrated the United Nations. It took Pasha and me a moment to understand what he was talking about, but when the minister eventually mentioned that the “snake” was an “Englishman” it became obvious that he was talking about Trevor, or Spooky, as Pasha now called him. The minister wanted Spooky fired. Pasha said he was in control of his staff and that if there was a snake among them, it would always be possible to “defang” it. The minister clearly didn’t know what the term “defang” meant, so SCR 1409 - 986 APPLICATIONS PROCESSING CHART PAGE 1

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  Pasha felt obliged to make a wild gesture to illustrate his point. The minister was a bit startled by Pasha’s sudden arm movement, but he appeared satisfied that the snake had a nasty thing coming its way.

  When I eventually told Spooky about this episode, he beamed with pride. Having the foreign minister of Iraq call him a snake was like a medal of honor for him. I didn’t mention that Pasha had told the Iraqi minister he intended to have the snake defanged, though, because I assumed Pasha had not been serious. Assumptions were really all I had to work with when it came to Pasha.

  Before leaving, Pasha raised the issue of our Danish colleague, who sat in our UN compound awaiting possible trial in a Baghdad court. “Please, Mr. Foreign Minister. Let me take him home with me when I leave the country.” He pleaded. I was relieved that he had finally brought up the subject I had been pestering him with for days.

  “The Danish citizen is now in Iraq,” said Sahaf, “and he will have to be tried according to Iraqi law.”

  Iraqi law. Right.

  That evening, upon returning to headquarters, I saw the Danish guard waiting for us in the cafeteria. He came toward us, and I quickly made a sign saying, “Not now.” I didn’t want Halliday, who was right there, to see us talking. He walked over to the bathroom, and a minute later, I excused myself to join him. I found him there washing his hands, waiting for an Iraqi driver to exit. I decided to wash my hands too, should someone else walk in on us. I told him in whispers what had happened. He stood no chance of getting out of Iraq without a trial. At least not with the approval of the Iraqi government. His face dropped.

  “Do you have a plan B?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But it’s dangerous.”

  “How would it work?”

  “We have other Danish guys up north. They can drive down, hide me in their car, and smuggle me past the checkpoints. We can’t go out through Jordan, but if we can make it up to the Kurdish mountains, I can cross over to Turkey.”

  “All right, buddy. My advice is to go for plan B,” I said.

  “Shit.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll have to organize it,” he said. “I can’t communicate with them from here. Our lines are bugged!”

  I had assumed they would be. But what had surprised me was that even our fax and copy room was manned by an Iraqi national. Every fax and every report we ever handled went through this room, and the Iraqi guy in charge could easily make doubles of everything.

  “I’m going up to Kurdistan with my boss in a few days. There I will make contact with the Danish guards and explain your situation. I can then take a message back to you.”

  “Why don’t you guys just take me with you to Kurdistan?”

  “Our drivers are Iraqis. We’d have to convince Pasha or Halliday to hide you.”

  “Too dangerous.”

  “I agree. Halliday doesn’t like you for some reason.”

  “He thinks I’m crazy! I’d like to see his face if he had to do jail time in Iraq!”

  “I’ll talk to the Danes. We’ll make it work.”

  We looked into each other’s eyes for a beat, then he shook my hand firmly, holding me to my promise.

  “Only talk to the Danes. Nobody else.”

  “Got it. We’ll talk when I get back.”

  The vice president of Iraq, Taha Yassin Ramadan, was next on our schedule. The meeting was to take place at one of the presidential palaces to which the arms inspectors had been refused access when they searched for weapons of mass destruction.

&nbs
p; The contention that economic sanctions would somehow lead to the overthrow of the Iraqi regime crumbled in front of my eyes as we drove into the palace. The level of security was staggering. Our convoy of white vehicles was stopped twice by heavily armed guards—these elite troops looked nothing like the soldiers we could see manning roadblocks around Baghdad. They bore no resemblance to the famished, shoeless troops who had given themselves up in droves as U.S.-led forces pushed into Iraq and Kuwait in 1990. They were extremely well equipped and moved with fierce discipline. Two separate rows of guarded fences separated the palace grounds from the outside world, with heavy weaponry positioned throughout.

  Had a group of hungry, fed-up Iraqis tried to storm such a place, they would have been mowed down mercilessly in a matter of seconds, and that’s only if they were lucky. Prison and torture were far worse prospects for Iraqis suspected of rebellious activity. I had read up on how Saddam’s regime dealt with its political opponents.

  A 2001 Amnesty International report specifically noted that “victims of torture in Iraq [were] subjected to a wide range of forms of torture, including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings and electric shocks. . . . Some victims have died as a result and many have been left with permanent physical and psychological damage.” The total number of torture subjects may never be available, but the terror these methods spread reached all strata of the Iraqi population, including members of Saddam’s own family, forty of whom were killed by the Iraqi dictator.