Saddam's Man in Niger
A series of recent investigative articles in Slate by Christopher Hitchens has us wondering: Why did Wissam al-Zahawie, while ostensibly Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican, visit Niger on February 8, 1999?
It's a good question that is getting too little attention--which is to say, none, other than from Hitchens--in the American press. Here is a hint: Zahawie was "Iraq's top negotiator on nuclear weapons issues," according to former chief United Nations weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus. In that capacity, Zahawie represented Saddam Hussein's regime at the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference; he served as liaison between the Iraqi regime and the U.N. inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s; and he was a delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference in the 1980s.
A few additional facts: Niger was Iraq's chief supplier of uranium ore throughout the 1980s. Uranium has long been Niger's main (practically only) export. The Nigerien economy, according to a CIA report on the country, is built on "some of the world's largest uranium deposits."
Is it possible, then, that when Wissam al-Zahawie traveled to Niger in February 1999, he "didn't know that Niger produced uranium at all?" That seems, well, "unlikely," as Hitchens recently pointed out. But that is what Zahawie told Time magazine in October 2003.
It gets curiouser. Zahawie told Time that he was sent to Niger (and three other African countries) from his diplomatic posting at the Holy See in order to invite their leaders to visit Iraq as a protest against U.N. sanctions. "I took it to be a routine assignment," he said.
A routine mission, and yet according to that same Time account, Zahawie claims he "stopped in his tracks" when he heard President George W. Bush claim in his State of the Union speech on January 28, 2003, that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. Zahawie was worried that Bush was talking about him.
It is an odd reaction for an Iraqi diplomat who had conducted what he claims was a routine mission to a poor African country, unaware that it was a major uranium exporter. No?
Or maybe he didn't really stop in his tracks at all. When Zahawie first told his story to a Western journalist, the Sunday Independent's Raymond Whitaker in August 2003, he claimed that he had "thought no more about [his Niger trip] until February," two weeks after Bush's speech. "On 10 February I received an urgent call from the Iraqi embassy in Amman, informing me that the foreign ministry wanted me back in Baghdad as soon as possible." Zahawie says he was interviewed in Baghdad by the IAEA as part of their investigation into claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger to use in a nuclear weapons program. His name was reportedly on documents purporting to show an Iraq-Niger uranium deal that were later shown to be forgeries.
Two unanswered questions: Why exactly was Iraq's top nuclear negotiator in Niger in February 1999? And why has he made so many curious--and implausible--claims about his trip in the years since?
It is now clear that senior Iraqi officials had not one but two suspicious contacts with the Nigerien government. The first was Zahawie's trip in February 1999. The second was a meeting between Nigerien prime minister Ibrahim Mayaki and a man he would later identify as Iraq's minister of foreign affairs, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf. The Iraqi told his Nigerien counterpart that Saddam Hussein was interested in "expanding commercial relations" with Niger. Because Niger produces little other than uranium, Mayaki took the overture to mean that the Iraqis were seeking uranium from Niger.
It's no wonder that Britain's Butler Report called President Bush's State of the Union claim "well-founded." That claim, of course, was also at the heart of the liberal accusation that Bush "lied" us into the Iraq war. So it's no wonder, too, that Hitchens's digging into the Zahawie contradictions has been so diligently ignored.
The Real Corliss Lamont
I n our cover story on the Connecticut Democratic primary race between Sen. Joseph Lieberman and his challenger Ned Lamont ("Kiss of Death?" July 17), we referred in passing to the nutroots hero's "great-uncle, Corliss Lamont" as "an outspoken pacifist and Socialist." Our contributor Stephen Schwartz notes that this fails to give the old Stalinist his due. After all, he was "once called the man with the most Soviet affiliations in America." Lamont, indeed, was a defender of Stalin's purges. The New York Times reported in 1938 that "Corliss Lamont, chairman of the American Friends of the Soviet Union, charged yesterday that the [John] Dewey commission, which recently requested postponement of the current [purge] trial in Moscow, had 'abandoned even the pretense of impartiality.'" And here is a nice March 30, 1944, headline from the Times: "DEFENDS RUSSIA ON POLAND; Corliss Lamont Says Moscow Had Backing of Churchill." Our apologies to the memory of Corliss Lamont for describing him as a pacifist.
On the Take in Long Branch
Readers may remember the eminent domain struggles in the town of Long Branch, New Jersey, chronicled in these pages by Jonathan V. Last several months ago ("Razing New Jersey," February 13, 2006). The city was working with the company Applied Development and using its eminent domain power to redevelop a 135-acre swath along the beachfront--razing middle-class neighborhoods in the process. One group of neighborhoods known as MTOTSA (Marine and Ocean terraces, and Seaview Avenue) took the town to court.
On June 22, New Jersey Superior Court judge Lawrence Lawson issued a 60-page opinion finding in favor of the city on all counts. For example, when residents produced a diagram of the city's plan, which showed that their neighborhood would be spared the bulldozers and not redeveloped into condos, the city explained that "drawings in the plan which may show infill, were and are for illustrative purposes only." That was good enough for Judge Lawson, who noted in his decision that since the MTOTSA neighborhood was included in the redevelopment plan in 1996, "absent a showing that it was improper at that time, the court must defer to the governing body's expertise and judgment," meaning that "the condemnees' current contention that the area is not in need of redevelopment is irrelevant." MTOTSA will appeal the decision.
There was more news from Long Branch on July 20, when the Asbury Park Press reported that city councilman John "Fazz" Zambrano "pleaded guilty to accepting a $1,000 bribe to help facilitate demolition contracts in the city." Zambrano accepted the bribe on November 19, 2003. Coincidentally, at a city council meeting in November 2003, council president Mary Jane Celli told MTOTSA residents, "It's not easy to lose your home, and we don't want anyone to think we don't have a heart, but we made a commitment to redevelopment in May 1996 and cannot go back on that now."
The Asbury Park Press further reports that Zambrano "had been negotiating his plea agreement during the course of the campaign" that culminated in his reelection on May 9. Zambrano's brother, Paul, was arrested last year for taking similar bribes in West Long Branch, where he was the former mayor.
Fazz Zambrano will be the second figure in the Long Branch redevelopment scheme to go to jail. The first was Applied Development president Joseph Barry, who was caught making more than $100,000 in payoffs to a neighboring county executive in North Jersey.
Oh, one last thing: Judge Lawson found there were no conflicts of interest present anywhere in the Long Branch redevelopment process.