http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9509/iraq_defector/CNN exclusive interview with Hussein Kamel Hussein
Airtime - CNN at 8:30 p.m. EDT (5:30 p.m. PDT) Thursday (0030 GMT Friday)
September 21, 1995
Web posted at: 10:50 p.m. EDT (1450 GMT)
AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Until his defection to Jordan last month, Hussein Kamel Hussein was supposedly one of Iraq's elite. A son-in-law of President Saddam Hussein, he sat at the Iraqi leader's right hand, had close contact with the president's son, Uday, and played a pivotal role in military operations. Accordingly, Hussein Kamel stunned the world when he fled Baghdad with his brother, Saddam Kamel, and their two wives, daughters of Saddam Hussein. Now he is speaking out in a CNN exclusive with Brent Sadler.
In his first television interview since the defection, Hussein Kamel unveiled some of the mystery shrouding Iraqi military practices. The Former minister of defense, he detailed earlier plans for nuclear weapons in Iraq, but said that Baghdad no longer has any weapons of mass destruction. Hussein Kamel also told tales of torture.
Here are excerpts from Sadler's interview. This historic discussion will be shown on CNN at 8:30 p.m. EDT (5:30 p.m. PDT) Thursday (0030 GMT Friday).
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SADLER: Can you state here and now, does Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction left?
HUSSEIN KAMEL: No, Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.
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http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.htmlStar Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed
Bombshell revelation from a defector cited by White House and press
February 27, 2003
On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis. In a revelation that "raises questions about whether the WMD
stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist," the magazine's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims.
Until now, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who was killed shortly after returning to Iraq in 1996, was best known for his role in exposing Iraq's deceptions about how far its pre-Gulf War biological weapons programs had advanced. But Newsweek's John Barry-- who has covered Iraqi weapons inspections for more than a decade-- obtained the transcript of Kamel's 1995 debriefing by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. inspections team known as UNSCOM.
Inspectors were told "that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them," Barry wrote. All that remained ere "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches" and production molds. The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Barry reported, and "a military aide who defected with Kamel... backed Kamel's assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks."
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