SADDAM'S CIA COUP

By Kevin Fedarko

On Ain Kawa street in Erbil, just beyond the green arch bearing the inscription FREE KURDISTAN, there stands a gray house, No. 23-7. Everyone in this Christian suburb whispers about the six "unknown Americans" in their fancy white Landcruiser who used to visit No. 23-7 regularly. They were CIA case officers, and until they fled on Aug. 31, just as the Iraqi army was rolling into the Kurdish city, this was their base in Erbil. When they departed--driving fast, well before dawn-- they left three things behind. The first was the rent, four months' worth paid in advance. Second was hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of computers, scramblers and satellite phones, as well as equipment used by a TV-radio station that beamed anti-Saddam propaganda into Iraq 11 hours each day. Finally, they also left behind 1,500 members of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group based in Erbil, to whom the CIA had given financing, arms and--the I.N.C. now claims--an implicit understanding that if anything went wrong, these U.S. allies would not be abandoned to fend for themselves.

CIA officials say the agency offered no such guarantee. But in any case, as the Americans raced their Landcruiser toward the Turkish border and Iraqi troops began flooding the streets of Erbil, senior I.N.C. military officer Colonel Mukkadam Abu Khadim and his men were busy trying to stay alive. "The Mukhabarat [Iraq's secret police] had names and addresses," says Abu Khadim. "Those who didn't get away were seized." Of the 100 employees who worked for the rebel TV station, only 12 survived. Between 97 and 100 I.N.C. members were also killed on the spot; Abu Khadim says he interviewed an eyewitness who watched the execution of 30. "The Iraqis arrived at 4 p.m., interrogated his comrades, then blindfolded them and shot them at 5 p.m." Meanwhile Abu Khadim and 250 comrades fled to the mountain town of Salahuddin, a stronghold of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, the very man who had invited Saddam Hussein into northern Iraq. Asked if they felt betrayed by the CIA, an Abu Khadim aide shook his head in disbelief and replied, "I was astonished that the U.S. Air Force did not come to our rescue."

For five years, the CIA has been running a modest mission to bind diverse factions of Kurdish and Iraqi dissidents into an opposition against Saddam Hussein. With Baghdad's re-entry into northern Iraq, that mission was obliterated. "Saddam has knocked out many of America's eyes and ears, and your good name was tarnished," says Professor Amatzia Baram of Israel's Haifa University, a leading Iraq expert. "U.S. credibility and reputation for protecting its friends has suffered a terrible blow." Even as the U.S. deploys F-117 Stealth fighter-bombers to temper Saddam's erratic outbursts, the CIA must rebuild its Iraqi operation from the bottom up.

When the U.S. and its allies established a safe haven for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the Gulf War, one goal was to use the territory as a base from which opposition groups could confront Saddam. The U.S. refused to support an all-out guerrilla war, but the White House and Congress did allow the CIA to spend between $10 million and $15 million a year running two clandestine operations. The smaller but more promising one was a paramilitary organization known as Wifaq (Iraqi National Accord), based in Jordan. Wifaq's 80 to 100 members included several prominent former Iraqi army officers and onetime officials of Saddam's regime. Its objective was to penetrate Saddam's elite Republican Guard, but the group was infiltrated by his agents. Last June, Saddam got wind of a Wifaq coup plan and ordered organization members seized in Baghdad. By July, at least several dozen plotters had been executed, and as many as 2,000 suspects were held and presumably tortured before some were released.

The second CIA-sponsored effort in Iraq involved the I.N.C. An Erbil-based umbrella group founded in 1992, the congress included 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations. "The CIA financed the group but did not direct its activities," says an agency official. The I.N.C.'s main tasks were to gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents. Two years ago, it published a fake issue of Babil, the daily newspaper owned by Saddam's eldest son Uday. The expertly counterfeited copy, distributed for one day in Baghdad, exposed many of Saddam's atrocities. The tactic backfired, however, because readers were more frightened than infuriated by the revelations.

The CIA's aim was to help prepare the I.N.C. to form the basis of a new political system once Saddam was removed from power, by whatever means. I.N.C. representatives received plenty of U.S. diplomatic backing, with I.N.C. delegations meeting Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Vice President Al Gore and, as recently as April, U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. But the symbolic support was never backed by significant cash infusions. One opposition figure calls the funds for the I.N.C. a "joke," less than 5% of what he says it needed to overthrow Saddam.

For its part, the CIA was in a quandary: it wanted the I.N.C. to pressure Saddam but seems to have viewed the group as a bad bet. The agency knew, for example, that the Kurds were woefully unsophisticated spies. In one instance, they called into Saddam's regime on open phone lines, and their networks were easily penetrated. Worse, they could not stop fighting among themselves. The I.N.C. failed completely in its mission to serve as an arbiter between the two main Kurdish factions, led by Barzani and his rival, Jalal Talabani.

As relations between Barzani and Talabani worsened, the CIA seems to have been unaware of the alliance that formed between Barzani and Saddam. "I have to conclude that the CIA was taken by surprise, because otherwise they would have evacuated every piece of equipment and looked after the I.N.C. and other friendly Kurds," says Baram. "The CIA isn't irresponsible; it just didn't have good information on what was happening inside Saddam's palace or in Barzani's headquarters." This assessment appears to be confirmed by Abu Khadim, who said both the CIA agents and the I.N.C. soldiers in Erbil were completely astonished by the attack at 4 a.m. on Aug. 31. "We never thought they would be actively involved," said the colonel. "We thought they would just shell us, as they have done in the past."

When Saddam's army rolled north, CIA officials claim, they were able to extract everyone with whom the agency had a close association, meaning about two dozen security guards and their families, plus several paid informants. Even so, the CIA is viewed as having abandoned several hundred congress members. As for their mission, it no longer exists. "Our entire covert action program has gone to hell," says a U.S. official.

The impression that working for the CIA can amount to a kiss of death is unlikely to be mitigated by the news that the Clinton Administration will evacuate some 2,500 aid workers, clerks, drivers and translators employed with U.S. military and relief operations who fled to the Turkish border in northern Iraq. As for Abu Khadim and his men, they are still waiting in Salahuddin. "We are in great danger," he said. "The CIA couldn't help us; we are soldiers and had to fight. But now we are asking them to do something for us as soon as possible: evacuation."

After the Kurdish debacle, the CIA will probably find it increasingly difficult to persuade the U.S. Congress to fund similar operations in Iraq and all but impossible to recruit new operatives. "The CIA has fled and abandoned a large number of people," says Rend Rahim Francke, director of the anti-Saddam Iraq Foundation in Washington. "All Iraqis--all those in the opposition--feel extremely let down by the U.S." The damage may also spill into the CIA's semicovert operation, aimed at moderating the regime in Iran. "It's going to give pause to anyone wanting to work with us on Iran," says a knowledgeable official.

Because covert operations are usually kept secret, it is unlikely that any public hearing will ever be held to determine how many CIA associates were killed in Iraq. But this much is clear: the agency's reputation has been demolished. "It may be that the CIA actually made tremendous efforts to protect its people," says Baram. "But the perception among Iraqis is that having anything to do with Americans is dangerous to your health." The rout will make the CIA's future tasks in the Middle East--and perhaps the rest of the world--harder still to achieve.

--Reported by Scott MacLeod/Tehran, Elaine Shannon and Lewis M. Simons/Washington and James Wilde/Erbil

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With reporting by SCOTT MACLEOD/TEHRAN, ELAINE SHANNON AND LEWIS M. SIMONS/WASHINGTON AND JAMES WILDE/ERBIL