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--- a/META/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/META/CHANGELOG.md
@ -1,3 +1,37 @@
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Richard Babayan]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Richard Babayan]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Osirak bombing]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Zafar Iqbal]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Saddam Hussein]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Korean War]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Yom Kippur War]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Korean War]]
 - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Yom Kippur War]]
 - 2026-10-07T1857 · [[Saddam Hussein]]
 - 2026-10-07T1857 · [[Zafar Iqbal]]
 - 2026-10-07T1855 · [[_QUEUE]]
 - 2026-10-07T1855 · [[_WAVE_C_REPORT]]
 - 2026-10-07T1853 · [[_REVIEW_C5]]
 - 2026-10-07T1851 · [[_REVIEW_C6]]
 - 2026-10-07T1850 · [[Osirak bombing]]
 - 2026-10-07T1849 · [[_REVIEW_C4]]
 - 2026-10-07T1846 · [[_REVIEW_C2]]
 - 2026-10-07T1845 · [[_REVIEW_C3]]
 - 2026-10-07T1842 · [[_NOTES_C6]]
 - 2026-10-07T1839 · [[_FOIA_C4]]
 - 2026-10-07T1839 · [[_NOTES_C4]]
 - 2026-10-07T1838 · [[_RULES]]
 - 2026-10-07T1837 · [[_FOIA_C5]]
 - 2026-10-07T1837 · [[_NOTES_C5]]
 - 2026-10-07T1836 · [[_REVIEW_C1]]
 - 2026-10-07T1835 · [[_FOIA_C2]]
 - 2026-10-07T1835 · [[_FOIA_C6]]
 - 2026-10-07T1835 · [[_NOTES_C2]]
 - 2026-10-07T1834 · [[_FOIA_C3]]
 - 2026-10-07T1833 · [[_NOTES_C3]]
 - 2026-10-07T1831 · [[_FOIA_C1]]
 - 2026-10-07T1831 · [[_NOTES_C1]]
 - 2026-10-07T1815 · [[_RULES_2026-10-05_backup]]
 - 2026-10-07T1810 · [[_PENDING_1975_newspapers]]
 - 2026-10-07T1810 · [[Philip Arthur Thompson]]
 - 2026-10-07T1810 · [[_LIVE_PAGE_backup]]
@ -64,37 +98,3 @@
 - 2026-10-05T2149 · [[Rohan Rane]]
 - 2026-10-05T2149 · [[CVLT]]
 - 2026-10-05T2148 · [[Clint Borge]]
 - 2026-10-05T2147 · [[_NOTES_K2]]
 - 2026-10-05T2147 · [[_DELTA_Rohan Rane_K2]]
 - 2026-10-05T2147 · [[_DELTA_Kami Feld_K2]]
 - 2026-10-05T2147 · [[_DELTA_CVLT_K2]]
 - 2026-10-05T2147 · [[_DELTA_United States v. Rane et al. (2-25-cr-00040)_K2]]
 - 2026-10-05T2131 · [[Yegor Krasnov]]
 - 2026-10-05T2125 · [[Maniac Murder Cult]]
 - 2026-10-05T2125 · [[No Lives Matter]]
 - 2026-10-05T2125 · [[Michail Chkhikvishvili]]
 - 2026-10-05T2125 · [[Yegor Krasnov]]
 - 2026-10-05T2123 · [[_NOTES_K1]]
 - 2026-10-05T2123 · [[_DELTA_No Lives Matter_K1]]
 - 2026-10-05T2123 · [[_DELTA_Michail Chkhikvishvili_K1]]
 - 2026-10-05T2123 · [[_DELTA_Maniac Murder Cult_K1]]
 - 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Stanford Research Institute]]
 - 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Media FBI Office Break-In]]
 - 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Project Azorian]]
 - 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Pat Price]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Stanford University]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Los Angeles Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Miami Herald]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Washington Post]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[New York Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[_NOTES_B5]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[New York Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Miami Herald]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Stanford University]]
 - 2026-10-05T1820 · [[Los Angeles Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1820 · [[Washington Post]]
 - 2026-10-05T1817 · [[_FOIA_B5]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Rafi]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Mossad]]
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Richard
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Richard
@ -1,30 +1,89 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - Richard Babayan
  - Babayan
 category: "Arms Dealers & Brokers"
 tags:
  - Person
  - CIA
  - PROMIS
  - Inslaw
  - OctoberSurprise
  - IranArms
  - Arms
-summary: "Richard Babayan was a CIA contract operative and arms broker who received a reported $6 million from Earl Brian on behalf of Hadron, Inc. and who appeared in overlapping accounts of the PROMIS software scandal and Robert Maxwell's Australian operations."
+summary: "Richard Babayan is an Iranian national, arms broker and INSLAW affiant whose 1992 testimony on 1980 meetings between William Casey and Iranian officials the House October Surprise Task Force rejected."
 created: 2026-05-14
-updated: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-10-07
 location: "Florida"
 relations:
  - type: investigated
    with: "[[October Surprise Task Force]]"
    start: 1992
    end: 1993
    role: "deposed witness whose Madrid and Zurich testimony the task force rejected"
    reverse: true
    fn: 2
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Inslaw]]"
    start: 1991
    role: "affiant in INSLAW's 1991 bankruptcy court discovery filing (Exhibit 3: PROMIS acquisitions by Libya, Iraq and South Korea)"
    fn: 11
 ---
-Richard Babayan was a former arms broker and [[Central Intelligence Agency]] contract operative whose name appears across several of the major scandals investigated in the 1980s and early 1990s.
+Richard Babayan is a former arms broker whom the journalist [[Ryan Gallagher]] described in 2011 as a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] "contract operative."[^1] He was an [[Iran|Iranian]] national who testified in 1992 that he had been told of 1980 meetings between [[William Casey]] and Iranian officials, and the [[October Surprise Task Force]] of the [[House of Representatives]] rejected that testimony.[^2] His name also appears in the [[Inslaw]] litigation over the [[PROMIS]] software and in the accounts of [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] concerning arms and software sales.
-### Hadron and PROMIS
+### October Surprise testimony
-Babayan was identified as a recipient of financial transfers from [[Earl Brian]], head of the government consultancy firm [[Hadron]], Inc. According to accounts assembled by researchers into the [[PROMIS]] scandal, Brian acted on behalf of Hadron - described as a CIA proprietary or cutout - in distributing a modified version of the PROMIS case-management software to foreign governments. Babayan reportedly received a check for approximately $6 million from Brian, an amount investigators connected to the commercialization of the PROMIS program.[^1]
+The task force met with Babayan among the living proponents of the allegations, and [[Craig Unger]]'s October 1991 article drew on interviews with him. [^3] In depositions dated September 18 and 19, 1992, Babayan testified that [[Mohsen Baranriz]], whom he identified as an Iranian intelligence official, visited him in [[Paris]] in early August 1980 and told him of meetings that had just concluded in [[Madrid]] at the end of July 1980 involving Casey and Iranian officials. [^4] Babayan said he knew in advance that Baranriz was traveling to Europe for meetings, although he "did not know the nature of these meetings." According to Babayan, Baranriz said that Casey told the Iranians the incoming Reagan administration would resume United States arms shipments to Iran in return for delaying the release of the hostages. Baranriz telephoned him three or four days after leaving Paris to report a second set of meetings involving Casey. [^4] Babayan also testified that he had knowledge that [[Mehdi Karrubi]] and Hassan Karrubi were members of the Iranian delegation to Madrid, and that Baranriz told him he had come to Paris "to brief us on what he had seen" and then had to fly straight back to Madrid for further meetings in August 1980. [^4]
-Babayan later stated that Brian played a central role in marketing PROMIS to the governments of Iraq, Libya, and Korea.[^1]
+Babayan also testified under oath that he was aware of a September 1980 meeting at the [[Hotel Baur au Lac]] in [[Zurich]], [[Switzerland]], between Iranians and Americans. He named Baranriz, [[Sadegh Tabatabai]] and a "close person to [[Ruhollah Khomeini|Khomeini]]," whom he declined to name, as attending for Iran. He could not identify the Americans present, whom he said had expertise in military material because the meeting concerned Iran's need for spare parts. The task force located Tabatabai, who denied any knowledge of such a meeting, and found "no factual basis" for Babayan's allegations. [^5]
-The report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General (March 1993) stated that there was no credible evidence that Hadron had tried to acquire Inslaw or PROMIS, apart from claims by William Hamilton, and declined to pursue Ari Ben-Menashe's allegations of foreign distribution.[^2]
+Unger reported in [[Esquire]] in October 1991 that Babayan, whom Unger described as an Iranian who began working for the CIA in the 1970s, knew that an agreement had been reached among the parties to ship United States-made weapons to Iran. The task force states that Unger relied on Babayan's claims to that effect. [^6]
-### Maxwell and Australian Connection
+### Task force findings
-[[Ari Ben-Menashe]] alleged that in 1987 the flow of funds from PROMIS sales extended to [[Robert Maxwell]]'s Australian business operations. According to Ari Ben-Menashe's account, a contribution to the West Australian Labor Party passed through one of Maxwell's Australian companies and was deposited by the Pergamon Press Trust Fund in Moscow, with Babayan and Earl Brian acting on behalf of Hadron in facilitating the transaction.[^3]
+The task force found that the only affirmative evidence for the alleged Madrid meetings was hotel records and the testimony of Ben-Menashe and Babayan. Of five people alleged to have independent knowledge of the Madrid meetings, three, [[Ahmed Madani]], [[Arif Durrani]] and [[Heinrich Rupp]], testified under oath that they had no knowledge of them. The task force found the testimony of Babayan and Ben-Menashe "wholly lacking of any credibility," and concluded that there was "wholly insufficient credible evidence of any communications by or on behalf of the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] Presidential campaign with any persons representing or connected with the Iranian government or with those holding American hostages during 1979-1981." [^7]
 The task force gave three reasons for finding Babayan not credible. First, no one other than Babayan had named Baranriz in connection with the Madrid meetings, he declined to name other participants or to identify his sources for later Zurich meetings, and the task force found that his testimony about Casey's presence in Madrid was discredited by evidence that Casey was in the United States during the relevant period. Second, Babayan said he had been associated with a CIA "front company" in Switzerland called "Diwan," operated by an alleged CIA asset named "M.K. Moss." The task force determined that neither Babayan nor Moss had ever worked for the CIA, directly or indirectly. Babayan testified that he did not know who Casey was when Baranriz named him, and recognized him only when Moss, his "CIA contact" in Switzerland, showed him a large photograph; on seeing it, he testified, he remembered having seen Casey in Paris several weeks earlier, in June, walking with [[Albert Jobs]]. The task force recorded that when asked whether the Paris sighting could have taken place in July 1980, Babayan "maintained his position that it had occurred in July." The task force believed he was trying to "bootstrap" onto published reports of a trip by Casey, Jobs and [[Richard Allen]] to France and England in early July 1980. The task force also recorded that Babayan could not say where in Madrid the meetings took place, testifying that Baranriz "may have told me but I don't remember," and that, except for Casey, Baranriz gave him no names of other participants at the Madrid meetings. Third, the task force received reliable information from law enforcement that Babayan "has an extensive criminal record, including a history of engaging in criminally fraudulent behavior." [^8]
 The [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee|Senate Foreign Relations]] subcommittee ran a parallel inquiry. Its special counsel, [[Reid Weingarten]], released a 156-page report on November 23, 1992, which he described as his preliminary conclusions. It found the evidence insufficient to support the allegation of a secret Reagan-Bush deal with Iran, found that the prime sources had proven wholly unreliable, and found that Casey had been intensely involved in the hostage crisis. [^9]
 ### Prosecutions
 The task force described Babayan as "an Iranian national presently in jail in [[Florida]] on securities fraud charges" at the time of his September 1992 testimony. [^2] A letter of October 27, 1992, from [[Terry O'Connor]], inspector in charge of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]], to Representative [[Lee Hamilton]] forwarded a criminal record check that the task force summarized as evidencing arrests in Florida for crimes "ranging from insufficient funds to grand larceny, racketeering, securities fraud, and misrepresentation to acquire narcotics." [^10]
 The INSLAW filing discussed below described Babayan as "currently awaiting trial in [[Palm Beach]], Florida, state court on criminal charges." It stated, on information and belief, that he had worked on behalf of the [[Department of Justice]] in a "sting" operation against local politicians in [[Miami]] during the 1980s. [^11]
 ### INSLAW and PROMIS
 Babayan entered the INSLAW litigation as an affiant. The Third Supplemental Submission described him as "an Iranian arms dealer" and, in its account of his affidavit (its Exhibit 3), stated that he recounted information about the alleged acquisition and implementation of PROMIS by the governments of Libya, Iraq and South Korea; about the alleged involvement of [[Earl Brian]] in at least the Iraqi and South Korean acquisitions; about the alleged involvement in the Iraqi acquisition of former United States general [[Richard Secord]]; and about an alleged meeting between Brian and [[Robert Gates]] in [[Santiago]], Chile. INSLAW stated, on information and belief, that Gates was then Deputy National Security Advisor and had been Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1988, when the meeting with Brian was alleged to have occurred. [^11] INSLAW's Third Supplemental Submission in Support of Its Motion to Take Limited Discovery, filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia (Case No. 85-00070, Adversary Proceeding No. 86-0069), stated that a telefaxed copy of a notarized Babayan affidavit was then available to counsel, and that the original would be filed when received from Babayan's counsel. [^11] The same submission refers to a claim made in February 1991 by [[Michael Riconosciuto]]. [^11]
 The special counsel's report of [[Nicholas J. Bua]] to the Attorney General, dated March 1993, addressed the claims about Brian and [[Hadron]]. It concluded: "In short, there is no credible evidence that Hadron ever tried to acquire Inslaw or PROMIS, except for [[William Hamilton|Hamilton]]'s claim about his conversation with [[Dominic Laiti]] and his claims that [[Ben Cnaan]] told him about a meeting with a businessman with 'ties at the highest level of the Reagan Administration' ..." [^12]
 On the claimed international distribution of PROMIS, the Bua report stated that its investigation "has not proceeded past the preliminary stages. We do not believe that it needs to." It added: "We were not disposed to conduct an international search of foreign governments and intelligence operatives on the basis of Ben-Menashe's allegations." [^12]
 The Bua report describes two affidavits by Ben-Menashe, dated February 17, 1991 and March 21, 1991, in which he implicated Brian in the international distribution of PROMIS. In the first, Ben-Menashe said Brian stated at a meeting that he owned the rights to PROMIS and had allowed the CIA, the [[National Security Agency|NSA]], the Justice Department and the "Israeli intelligence communities" to use it since 1982, and that in 1987 Brian consummated a sale of PROMIS to the [[Israel|Israeli]] government "for internal use as well." Ben-Menashe also claimed that in 1989, in [[Chile]], [[Carlos Cardoen]] told him that Cardoen had brokered a sale of PROMIS by Brian to a representative of [[Iraqi Military Intelligence]]. [^12] The Bua report states that by 1991, apparently on information supplied by Riconosciuto, Inslaw had adopted the claim that Brian was "given" the right to sell the software. [^12]
 According to Gallagher, Babayan said that Brian was instrumental in selling PROMIS to the governments of [[Iraq]], [[Libya]] and [[South Korea|Korea]]. [^1]
 The Justice Department release of September 27, 1994, reported that it found no credible evidence that Department officials conspired to steal INSLAW's software, rejected the claim that the company was owed further government payments, concurred with the [[Martinsburg, West Virginia]], police that [[Danny Casolaro]]'s death was a suicide, and recommended that the affair be closed. [^13]
 ### Maxwell and the Australian contribution
 Ben-Menashe alleged that in 1987 the flow of funds from PROMIS sales extended to [[Robert Maxwell]]'s Australian business operations. According to his account, a contribution to the [[West Australian Labor Party]] passed through one of Maxwell's Australian companies and was deposited by the [[Pergamon Press Trust Fund]] in [[Moscow]], with Babayan and Earl Brian acting on behalf of Hadron in facilitating the transaction. [^14]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: "Dirtier than Watergate," *New Statesman,* April 2011. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2011/04/promis-government-inslaw
+[^1]: Gallagher, Ryan. "Dirtier than Watergate," *New Statesman*, April 2011. Mirror: https://rjgallagher.co.uk/2011/04/inslaw-case-dirtier-than-watergate.html. Original: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2011/04/promis-government-inslaw. Sole source for the characterization of Babayan as a former arms broker and CIA contract operative, and for the passage on PROMIS sales to Iraq, Libya and Korea.
-[^2]: Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc., March 1993, https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993
+[^2]: Joint Report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980 ("October Surprise Task Force"), 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, House Calendar No. 634, January 3, 1993, section "(v) Richard Babayan," pp. 76 and 99 (table of contents). https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
-[^3]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* TrineDay, 1992.
+[^3]: Joint Report, introductory section (task force met with Hashemi, Madani, Durrani, Rupp, Ben-Menashe and Babayan) and notes 62 to 66 (Unger, Esquire, October 1991, at 92). https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
 [^4]: Joint Report, section "(v) Richard Babayan," notes 68 to 74, citing the Richard Babayan deposition of September 18 and 19, 1992 (Babayan Dep. at 13 to 16, 25). https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
 [^5]: Joint Report, Zurich section, notes 535 to 538, citing Babayan Dep. at 32 and 33 and the Sadegh Tabatabai interview at 14. https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
 [^6]: Joint Report, notes 62 and 66, citing C. Unger, "October Surprise," *Esquire*, October 1991, at 92. https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
 [^7]: Joint Report, introductory findings on the alleged Madrid meetings. https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
 [^8]: Joint Report, section "(v) Richard Babayan," pp. 99 and following, notes 408 to 415, citing Babayan Dep. at 5, 7, 15 to 18, 27 to 31. https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
 [^9]: Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 24, 1992, report on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee special counsel's preliminary conclusions (reprinted by American Cybercasting). https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/net/user/tytso/usenet/americast/wpost/1645
 [^10]: Joint Report, note 415, citing letter from Terry O'Connor, inspector in charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, to Hon. Lee Hamilton, October 27, 1992, and App. at 574 to 580. https://archive.org/details/6199732-Joint-Report-of-the-October-Surprise-Task-Force
 [^11]: INSLAW, Inc., Third Supplemental Submission of INSLAW in Support of Its Motion to Take Limited Discovery, United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 85-00070 (Chapter 11), Adversary Proceeding No. 86-0069, undated, footnote on page 7 (affidavit and Palm Beach passage). Refers to February 1991 events. https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInBriefSupportingDocs. Pages 6 and 7 and footnote 1 on page 7. Sole source for the affidavit summary, the Palm Beach charges and the Miami sting allegation.
 [^12]: Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc., March 1993, conclusions on Hadron and international distribution, Ben-Menashe affidavits, and the Michael Riconosciuto section (begins p. 42). https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993
 [^13]: "New Report Finds No Credible Basis for INSLAW Case," Department of Justice release, September 27, 1994. https://irp.fas.org/news/1994/940927-555.htm
 [^14]: Ari Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network* (TrineDay, 1992). Sole source for the passages so cited.
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Saddam
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Saddam
@ -5,45 +5,168 @@ tags:
  - Person
  - Iraq
  - CIA
-  - Ba'ath
+  - BaathParty
-summary: "President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, whose Ba'ath Party took power in a 1963 coup the CIA welcomed, and whose regime received U.S. intelligence during the Iran-Iraq War."
+  - IranIraqWar
  - BNL
  - Cardoen
  - IranContra
  - Osirak
 aliases:
  - Saddam Hussein
  - Saddam
  - Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti
  - Saddam Husayn
  - Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti
  - Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid
 summary: "President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, whose government borrowed billions through the Atlanta branch of the BNL and received American export licenses, credit and intelligence during the Iran-Iraq War."
 created: 2026-05-14
-updated: 2026-05-14
+updated: 2026-10-07
 born: 1937-04-28
 died: 2006-12-30
 location: "Al-Awja, Iraq"
 relations:
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Iraq]]"
    start: 1979-07-16
    end: 2003-04-09
    role: "President"
    fn: 1
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[Ba'ath Party]]"
    start: 1957
    fn: 1
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Iran-Iraq War]]"
    start: 1980-09-22
    end: 1988
    fn: 1
  - type: relative_of
    with: "[[Hussein Kamel]]"
    role: "son-in-law"
    fn: 17
 ---
-Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on April 28, 1937, near the town of Tikrit in central [[Iraq]], the son of a peasant family. He joined the [[Ba'ath Party]] in 1957. On October 7, 1959 Prime Minister [[Abd al-Karim Qassem]] was wounded in the shoulder in an assassination attempt.[^1] The journalist Richard Sale reported in 2003, citing unnamed former U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officials and the writer Adel Darwish, that Saddam Hussein was part of a "CIA-authorized six-man squad" tasked with killing Qasim and was later paid and trained by the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] in Beirut and watched over in Cairo, in [[Egypt]]; the CIA declined to comment, and the historian Bryan Gibson has cited declassified records showing that on October 1, 1959 [[Allen Dulles]] told the National Security Council only that an attempt might be made in the next two months.[^2]
+Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on April 28, 1937, near the town of [[Tikrit]] in central [[Iraq]], to a landless family, and held the presidency from July 16, 1979 until the [[Iraq War]] of 2003.[^1] He joined the [[Ba'ath Party]] in 1957.[^1]
-### CIA and Ba'ath Rise to Power
+### The 1959 attempt on Qassim
-A Defense Department memorandum of February 8, 1963 quoted White House aide Robert Komer's note to President [[John F. Kennedy]] that the Iraqi coup was "almost certainly a net gain for our side," and the State Department asked on February 9 for authority to recognize the new regime.[^3] Historians disagree about a CIA role in the coup: Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt cites "compelling evidence of an American role," while Bryan Gibson concludes the preponderance of evidence shows the CIA was not behind it.[^4] King Hussein of Jordan was reported in September 1963 as saying that a secret radio beamed to Iraq on February 8 supplied the coup plotters with the names and addresses of Communists, and Richard Sale reported in 2003, citing unnamed former U.S. intelligence officials, that the CIA gave Iraqi National Guardsmen lists of suspected communists; the same report quotes a former very senior CIA official as saying the Agency was "absolutely stunned" by the coup, and the CIA declined to comment.[^2][^4]
+At a [[National Security Council]] meeting on October 1, 1959, [[Allen Dulles]] said that [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]] "had urged the assassination plotters not to move too fast" and that, although rumors were generally wrong, "it was possible an attempt would be made on Kassem's life in the next two months."[^2] On October 7, 1959 Prime Minister [[Abd al-Karim Qassem]] was wounded in the shoulder in an assassination attempt, and the Director of Intelligence and Research, [[Hugh Cumming]], suggested to Secretary of State [[Christian Herter]] that it might be the beginning of the coup about which the United States had been picking up rumors.[^2] A [[Central Intelligence Agency]] memorandum on the attempt dated October 13, 1959 is printed in the same volume with its text not declassified.[^2]
-The Ba'ath Party was ousted from government in the same year and returned to power in a 1968 coup. Saddam served as deputy to President [[Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr]] and was the de facto strongman of the regime through the 1970s. He forced al-Bakr to resign on July 16, 1979, formally assuming the presidency. Within days he convened a party congress at which he personally identified and had arrested dozens of alleged conspirators; hundreds of senior Ba'athists were executed in the following weeks.[^5]
+On April 10, 2003 the journalist [[Richard Sale]] reported in [[United Press International]], citing almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials, that Saddam Hussein was part of a "CIA-authorized six-man squad" tasked with assassinating Qasim. Sale wrote that a former senior State Department official said Saddam, in his early twenties, was installed in an apartment opposite Qasim's office to observe him, and that the writer [[Adel Darwish]] said the CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for the CIA and Egyptian intelligence. According to the report the attempt was "completely botched," Saddam escaped to Tikrit and then crossed into [[Syria]], and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence to [[Beirut]], where "the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course," after which the agency "helped him get to" [[Cairo]], where he was "watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives." The report quotes [[Roger Morris]], a former NSC staff member, as saying the CIA chose the Ba'ath Party "as its instrument," and says the CIA veteran [[Miles Copeland]] told UPI in the mid-1980s that the agency had "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Ba'ath Party. The report states that the CIA declined to comment.[^3]
-### Iran-Iraq War and Western Support
+### The 1963 coup
-In September 1980, Saddam launched an invasion of [[Iran]] following the instability created by the [[Iranian Revolution]]. The eight-year [[Iran-Iraq War]] (1980-1988) killed an estimated half million to one million people. A State Department memorandum of October 7, 1983 assumed that the United States was already providing tactical intelligence to Iraq, and on November 29, 1984 Secretary of State [[George Shultz]] told Tariq Aziz that superior intelligence must be an important factor in Iraq's defense.[^6] According to a January 31, 1995 affidavit by former National Security Council staff member Howard Teicher, Director of Central Intelligence [[William Casey]] led efforts to ensure that Iraq received weapons, financial credits, intelligence and strategic military advice.[^6] The administration meanwhile ran the secret arms-for-hostages pipeline to Iran that became the [[Iran-Contra Affair]].
+A [[Department of Defense]] memorandum of February 8, 1963 from Stephen O. Fuqua reported that the "consensus of members of State and CIA is that if the coup is successful, relations between the U.S. and Iraq will be considerably improved." A footnote to the memorandum quotes [[Robert W. Komer]]'s note to President [[John F. Kennedy]] of the same date that the Iraqi revolution "is almost certainly a net gain for our side" and that the United States "ought to recognize as soon as we're sure these guys are firmly in the saddle."[^4] On February 9 Secretary of State [[Dean Rusk]] asked Kennedy for contingency authority to recognize the new regime, writing that "it would appear to be in our interest to grant early recognition."[^4]
-[[Donald Rumsfeld]] visited Saddam in December 1983 as a special envoy for President [[Ronald Reagan]], cementing the relationship at a moment when U.S. intelligence knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iranian forces.[^6] The arms and technology transfers to Iraq during the 1980s, including chemical and biological precursors, were later examined in congressional investigations and linked to the [[BNL scandal]] involving the [[Atlanta]] branch of [[Banca Nazionale del Lavoro]].[^7]
+[[Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt]] wrote that [[Eric Jacobsen]]'s article in *Diplomatic History* shows that American officials "were indeed in close contact with Iraqi Baathists before, during, and after their 1963 putsch," and that the CIA assisted the Ba'ath in "a systematic purge of Iraqi communists" in the days after February 8; the review quotes [[Peter L. Hahn]] as having written that declassified documents "offer no evidence" of Ba'ath contacts with American officials before the coup.[^5] The historian [[Bryan Gibson]] told [[Rudaw]] in 2015 that "there is enough evidence available today to question whether the US was behind the coup," while stating that U.S. policy from 1958 to 1975 led to "covert operations to support groups inside Iraq that were opposed to Moscow's imperial designs, like the Baath Party in the early 1960s."[^6]
-### Arms Procurement Networks
+King Hussein of [[Jordan]] told [[Mohamed Hassanein Heikal]], editor of *[[Al-Ahram]]*, in a conversation published on September 27, 1963 that "what happened in Iraq on 8 February had the support of American Intelligence" and that "on 8 February a secret radio beamed to Iraq was supplying the men who pulled the coup with the names and addresses of the Communists there."[^7] The historian [[Hanna Batatu]] wrote that arrests after the coup "were made in accordance with lists prepared beforehand" and that "it cannot be unerringly established where these lists came from or who compiled them"; he gave a Communist reckoning of no fewer than 5,000 killed from February 8 to 10, a figure of 340 Communists from a source in Iraq's Directorate of Security, and about 1,500 from a foreign diplomatic observer.[^7] Sale reported in 2003 that, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA gave Iraqi National Guardsmen lists of suspected communists who were then "jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down." The same report quotes a former very senior CIA official who denied the CIA was behind the coup ("We were absolutely stunned"), and quotes the writer [[Con Coughlin]] as saying that [[James Critchfield]], then a senior CIA Middle East official, regarded the killing of Qasim and the communists "as a great victory."[^3]
-Iraq's weapons procurement during the 1980s passed through several networks that intersect with vault subjects. [[Carlos Cardoen]], a Chilean arms manufacturer with CIA connections, supplied cluster bombs to Iraq.[^6] Iraqi procurement agents operated through front companies in Europe, the United States, and the [[United Kingdom]], the exposure of which became known as the [[Arms-to-Iraq affair]] in Britain.[^7]
+### The Ba'ath return and the presidency
-[[PROMIS]] software was among the products allegedly sold to Iraqi intelligence. [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] and other sources placed Iraq on the list of recipients of the Israeli-distributed, backdoor-equipped version of the software.[^8]
+The Ba'athist government of 1963 was overthrown the same year, and a Ba'athist coup in 1968 put [[Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr]] in power. Saddam Hussein replaced al-Bakr as president on July 16, 1979. A few days later he purged party and armed forces members he considered a threat, and "hundreds were shot by firing squads."[^1]
-### Gulf War and Fall
+### Osirak
-Saddam invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. The resulting [[Gulf War]] saw a U.S.-led coalition expel Iraqi forces in February 1991. The regime survived until the 2003 [[Iraq War]], during which U.S. and coalition forces invaded and captured Baghdad in April 2003. Saddam was captured in December 2003, tried by an Iraqi tribunal, and executed by hanging on December 30, 2006.[^5]
+On June 7, 1981 aircraft of [[Israel]] attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor at [[Osirak bombing|Osirak]] near [[Baghdad]], which was under the government of Saddam Hussein.[^8] The [[United Nations Security Council]] adopted Resolution 487 on June 19, 1981. Its first operative paragraph "strongly condemns the military attack by Israel in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct." Paragraph 5 "calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards," and paragraph 6 "considers that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered, responsibility for which has been acknowledged by Israel."[^8]
 ### The Iran-Iraq War and the American tilt
 On September 22, 1980 Iraq launched an offensive against [[Iran]], and the [[Iran-Iraq War]] ended in 1988 in a stalemate.[^1] A State Department information memorandum of October 7, 1983, from [[Nicholas Veliotes]] and [[Jonathan Howe]] to Under Secretary [[Lawrence Eagleburger]], analyzed a "possible U.S. shift from position of strict neutrality" in the war and set out financial, diplomatic and military options for a "tilt toward Iraq." The memorandum found that financial relief from international institutions was "so meager as not to provide significant relief," and it described Iraq as "the bulwark against Khomeinism," four years after the [[Iranian Revolution]]. It stated that the policy of strict neutrality "has already been modified, except for arms sales, since Iran's forces crossed into Iraq in the summer of 1982."[^9]
 On December 7, 1983 the State Department instructed the [[United States Interests Section]] in Baghdad that [[Donald Rumsfeld]] wished to visit, and that he "probably will be carrying a presidential message for Saddam."[^10] On December 20, 1983 Rumsfeld met Saddam Hussein for 90 minutes and presented a letter from [[Ronald Reagan]]. [[Tariq Aziz]] attended on the Iraqi side. The embassy in London reported that Saddam said the United States was "urging other states to curtail arms sales to Iran," and that Rumsfeld told him the two countries had "shared interests in preventing Iranian and Syrian expansion."[^11]
 On March 24, 1984 the State Department circulated briefing notes for a second Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad. The notes said relations had been "sharply set back" by "our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW use."[^12]
 On November 26, 1984 [[George Shultz]] met Aziz in Washington. In the memorandum of conversation Aziz says that Iraq's "superiority in weaponry now assures its defense," and Shultz remarks that "superior intelligence also must be an important factor in Iraq's defense," which Aziz acknowledges "may be true." Shultz told Aziz that the United States would maintain its opposition to "both the use and production of chemical weapons," a position he said "is not directed specifically at Iraq."[^13]
 Sale reported in 2003, citing a former [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] official, that during the war the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS aircraft, and that the same official said he had signed a document sharing U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran "in an attempt to produce a military stalemate." The report also quotes Darwish as saying the CIA and DIA helped the February 1988 assault on the al-Faw peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.[^3]
 ### The Teicher declaration
 [[Howard Teicher]], a former National Security Council staff member, signed a declaration on January 31, 1995 in *United States v. Carlos Cardoen et al.*, Case No. 93-241-CR-HIGHSMITH, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida. The caption lists as defendants Carlos Cardoen, Industrias Cardoen Limitada, [[Teledyne Industries]] doing business as Teledyne Wah Chang Albany, Edward A. Johnson, Ronald W. Griffin and others.[^14] Teicher states that he served in the United States government from 1977 to 1987 and on its staff from early 1982 to 1987, with responsibility for the Middle East and political-military affairs, and that he had regular contact with Director of Central Intelligence [[William J. Casey]] and Deputy Director [[Robert Gates]].[^14]
 Teicher states that in the spring of 1982 Iraq "teetered on the brink of losing its war with Iran," that Iran found a gap in the Iraqi defenses between Baghdad and Basra, and that "United States intelligence, including satellite imagery," detected both the gap and the Iranian massing of troops opposite it. He states that Reagan decided in June 1982 that the United States "could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran," and that Reagan formalized the policy in a National Security Decision Directive that Teicher co-authored with another NSC staff member, Geoff Kemp, which Teicher says is classified "even its identifying number."[^14]
 Teicher states that Casey "personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war," and that the United States supplied Iraq with "billions of dollars of credits," provided "U.S. military intelligence and advice," and acted "by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq." He states that in 1986 Reagan sent a secret message to Saddam Hussein that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran, delivered by Vice President [[George H. W. Bush]] to Egyptian President [[Hosni Mubarak]], who passed it to Saddam, and that Teicher wrote Bush's talking points for the meeting with Mubarak.[^14] He states that he attended meetings in which Casey or Gates "noted the need for Iraq to have certain weapons such as cluster bombs and anti-armor penetrators," that Casey was "adamant that cluster bombs were a perfect 'force multiplier,'" and that "the CIA knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq."[^14]
 Teicher also states that one of the reasons the United States refused to license or sell U.S.-origin weapons to Iraq was that non-U.S. supply "was sufficient to meet Iraq's needs," and that under Casey and Gates the CIA "made sure that non-U.S. manufacturers manufactured and sold to Iraq the weapons needed by Iraq." He states that "the highest levels of the United States government" decided in certain instances to make a key weapon component available to Iraq directly or indirectly, and that the provision of anti-armor penetrators was "a case in point."[^14] He describes a CIA program known as "Bear Spares," under which the United States made sure that spare parts and ammunition for Soviet-style weaponry were available to countries seeking to reduce their dependence on the Soviets, with Israel transferring captured stocks "to third countries or insurgent movements (such as the Afghan rebels and the Contras)" and [[Egypt]] manufacturing Soviet-design weapons and spare parts for Iraq and other countries, which Teicher states the United States "approved, assisted and encouraged."[^14]
 In the same declaration Teicher describes a 1984 Israeli approach, made in a meeting in [[Jerusalem]] that he attended with Rumsfeld, in which Israeli Foreign Minister [[Yitzhak Shamir]] asked Rumsfeld whether the United States would deliver a secret offer of Israeli assistance to Iraq. Teicher states that the United States agreed, that he traveled with Rumsfeld to Baghdad and was present when Rumsfeld told Aziz of the offer, and that Aziz "refused even to accept the Israelis' letter to Hussein," because Aziz told them "he would be executed on the spot by Hussein if he did so."[^14]
 Teicher states that his National Security Council files are held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Archives in [[Simi Valley, California]], and that they contain his notes and memoranda from meetings with Casey or Gates.[^14] In the case, Teledyne Wah Chang Albany was charged with illegally providing zirconium to Cardoen Industries and to Iraq.[^14]
 ### Cardoen and the cluster bombs
 According to Teicher, the Chilean manufacturer [[Carlos Cardoen]] supplied cluster bombs to Iraq. Teicher states that "the mere request to a third party to carry out an action did not constitute a 'covert action,' and, accordingly, required no Presidential Finding or reporting to Congress," and that the supply of Cardoen cluster bombs, "which were fitted for use on Soviet, French and NATO aircraft," was "a mere extension of the United States policy of assisting Iraq through all legal means in order to avoid an Iranian victory." He states that under Casey and Gates "the CIA authorized, approved and assisted Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of cluster bombs and other munitions to Iraq."[^14]
 Teicher states that the highest levels of the United States government, including the NSC staff and the CIA, "were well aware of Cardoen's arrest in 1983 in Miami in a sting operation relating to the smuggling of night vision goggles to Cuba and Libya," and of the arrest and conviction of two Cardoen employees and Industrias Cardoen. He also states that Casey "directed the Secretaries of State and Commerce Departments that the necessary licenses required by Cardoen were not to be denied."[^14]
 The former Israeli intelligence officer [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] wrote in *Profits of War* that Cardoen was introduced in 1982 through a person at the South African arms company [[ARMSCOR]] to the Iraqi deputy chief of the General Staff for Procurement, that by early 1985 Cardoen was selling arms to Iraq "with the support of certain people connected with the U.S. government," among them [[Alan Sanders]], "who had links to the CIA," and that Cardoen was producing cluster bombs "with a covert U.S. license." Ben-Menashe wrote that in August 1988 Prime Minister Shamir convened a task force headed by [[Avi Pazner]] to halt the flow of chemical weapons, missiles and nuclear technology to Iraq from the West, with Cardoen Industries the focus of the group's attention.[^15]
 ### Commerce Department licenses and the 1994 Riegle hearing
 On May 25, 1994 the [[Senate Banking Committee]] held a hearing printed as S. Hrg. 103-900, *United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of the Persian Gulf War Veterans*, on "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War."[^16] The committee chairman, [[Donald Riegle]], told the witnesses of a hearing in late fall 1992 at which the committee "found that some licenses had been granted by our own Commerce Department to ship certain dual-use items over there," and that "some of them had been shipped directly to Iraqi military installations."[^16]
 [[Gordon C. Oehler]], Director of the CIA's Nonproliferation Center, testified for the Intelligence Community that before 1991 "there were four instances in which the Department of Commerce sought information on Iraqi export license applications, all dated in 1986." He said that Commerce asked for review "primarily when the licenses had significance to intelligence collection equities," and that the concern "was not so much Iraq, but whether there was a possibility the equipment would be diverted to the Soviet Union or other communist countries." His prepared statement says Iraqi procurement officers, "knowing full well the licensing thresholds, requested items that fell just under the denial thresholds."[^16] A committee report printed in the same volume lists biological materials provided by the [[American Type Culture Collection]] that were exported to agencies of the government of Iraq under export licenses issued by the Department of Commerce.[^16]
 ### Banca Nazionale del Lavoro
 On August 10, 1992 the chairman of the House Banking Committee, [[Henry B. Gonzalez]], delivered a special order on the House floor, printed in the Congressional Record under the heading "Details on Iraq's Procurement Network." He said that the [[Banca Nazionale del Lavoro]] branch in [[Atlanta]] "loan[ed] over $4 billion to Iraq between 1986 and 1990 without reporting the loans to bank regulators or the bank's headquarters in Rome," and that "over $2 billion of the BNL loans went to Iraq's [[Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization]] otherwise known as MIMI."[^17]
 Gonzalez stated that "our Government knew about the network, and as I have shown before, decided to tolerate its activity," and that "the policy was designed to see if Saddam Hussein could be turned into a reliable ally, according to the President, Secretary of State, and other officialdom of this Government." He said that "the Bush administration approved dozens of export licenses that allowed United States and foreign firms to ship sophisticated U.S. dual-use equipment to MIMI-controlled weapons factories." He also said that Saddam had entrusted MIMI to his son-in-law, [[Hussein Kamel]], in 1988, and that the CIA believed Kamil was "probably the second most powerful man in Iraq."[^17]
 In the [[BNL Scandal|BNL]] prosecution, the Atlanta branch's manager, [[Christopher Drogoul]], was charged in the Northern District of Georgia with wire fraud, conspiracy and making false statements to government agencies, on the government's allegation that he concealed unauthorized loans and credit extensions totaling several billion dollars to agencies and instrumentalities of Iraq. He pleaded guilty in June 1992 to sixty counts of a 347-count indictment, and the district court allowed him to withdraw the plea on October 1, 1992. On September 2, 1993 the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit]] reversed the district court's denial of the government's motion to take depositions of Italian nationals in Rome.[^18]
 ### Gerald Bull and Project Babylon
 On April 10, 1990 [[HM Customs and Excise]] officers at [[Teesport]] detained eight large steel tubes destined for Iraq. In a statement to the [[House of Commons]] on April 18, 1990 Trade and Industry Secretary [[Nicholas Ridley]] said Ministry of Defence experts advised that the tubes were components of a large-calibre armament, that the goods were "consistent with what is known of Dr. Bull's design" (referring to "the late Dr. Gerald Bull"), and that in 1988 the Department of Trade and Industry had been asked by Walter Somers and Sheffield Forgemasters whether licences were needed and had decided they were not.[^19] The engineer [[Gerald Bull]]'s large gun was the basis of the [[Project Babylon]] program for Iraq.
 On April 27, 1990 [[Gordon Brown]] asked in written questions in the House of Commons when the trade department had first been made aware "that Iraq was acquiring export material for a major gun or launcher," and what information it held on "non-military research done by the Space Research Corporation." Ridley answered that, "in the light of charges laid against an individual on 25 April, and in the light of the continuing investigation by Customs and Excise, it would be inappropriate to give any further information."[^20]
 ### Matrix Churchill and the Scott Inquiry
 Gonzalez told the House on August 10, 1992 that [[Matrix Churchill]] Corporation of [[Cleveland, Ohio]] was the United States base of the Al-Arabi Trading Company network, which he described as the mechanism MIMI used to acquire other front companies, and that through the London holding companies Technology Development Group and Technology Engineering Group Iraq controlled more than a dozen [[United Kingdom]] firms including TMG Engineering and Matrix-Churchill Ltd.[^17]
 On November 10, 1992 Attorney General Sir [[Nicholas Lyell]] told the House of Commons that prosecution counsel in the Matrix Churchill case had informed the court that, in light of the evidence given by [[Alan Clark]] in cross-examination, it would no longer be right to seek a conviction, and that Lord Justice [[Richard Scott]] had agreed to conduct an independent inquiry.[^21] The [[Scott Inquiry]] into the [[Arms-to-Iraq|export of defence equipment and dual-use goods to Iraq]] reported in February 1996. In the House of Commons debate of February 26, 1996 Trade Secretary [[Ian Lang]] said the Government welcomed "the central conclusions of the report: that there was no plot secretly to arm Saddam Hussein, and no attempt to suppress documents that could have led to a miscarriage of justice." [[Menzies Campbell]] asked whether the Government accepted the report's central conclusion that policy was changed and that the change was deliberately kept from Parliament, and Lang answered: "No, I do not; there is a difference between the Government and Sir Richard on that matter."[^22]
 ### Bank of Credit and Commerce International
 The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report]], published as Senate Print 102-140 in December 1992, states that the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] "also made loans to Iraq, although of a substantially smaller nature" than those of BNL. The report says BNL "was, according to federal indictments, a significant financial conduit for weapons to Iraq." Its appendix lists the relationship among matters for further investigation, which "could produce further understanding of Saddam Hussein's international network for acquiring weapons."[^23]
 ### PROMIS
 The former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe wrote in *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network* (1992) that he believed he was arrested in 1989 on an arms charge because he had threatened, on behalf of the Israeli government, to expose "what the Americans were doing with Promis if they continued their support of chemical weapons being supplied to Saddam Hussein's Iraq."[^15] In an affidavit of February 17, 1991 in the [[Inslaw]] litigation, Ben-Menashe stated that in 1989 in Chile Carlos Cardoen told him that Cardoen had brokered a sale of [[PROMIS Software Scandal|PROMIS]] by [[Earl Brian]] to a representative of Iraqi Military Intelligence, as summarized in the report of the [[Department of Justice]] special counsel [[Nicholas Bua]].[^24] The same report, dated March 1993, rejected "conclusively" Inslaw's assertion that Ben-Menashe had personal knowledge of Brian's distribution of Inslaw's software, and stated that Ben-Menashe "makes a number of extraordinary claims, most of which are not subject to corroboration" and that the program he described was a different software said to have been developed by the [[National Security Agency]].[^24]
 ### Gulf War, Iraq War and execution
 On August 2, 1990 the Security Council adopted Resolution 660 on the invasion of [[Kuwait]] by Iraq.[^25] In the [[Gulf War]] a U.S.-led military campaign forced Iraq to withdraw in February 1991, and a U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 toppled his government.[^1] Saddam was captured on December 13, 2003 at ad-Dawr, south of Tikrit, and [[L. Paul Bremer]] announced the capture on December 14.[^26] On November 5, 2006 an Iraqi court sentenced him to death after a trial over the killing of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s, and he was hanged in northern Baghdad on December 30, 2006.[^27]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, vol. XII, Near East Region; Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula, document 205 (editorial note on the October 7, 1959 attempt) and document 206 (CIA memorandum of October 13, 1959). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12
+[^1]: "Hussein, Saddam," Gale reference entry reproduced at Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/middle-eastern-history-biographies/saddam-hussein (birth April 28, 1937; Ba'ath Party membership in 1957; July 16, 1979 replacement of Bakr; purge and firing squads; offensive on September 22, 1980); BBC News, "Timeline: Iraq," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/737483.stm (1963 and 1968 coups; 1979 takeover; 1980 to 1988 war; June 1981 Osirak raid; 1990 invasion of Kuwait and February 1991 withdrawal; March 2003 invasion).
-[^2]: Richard Sale, "Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot," United Press International, April 10, 2003, https://www.upi.com/Exclusive-Saddam-key-in-early-CIA-plot/65571050017416/ ; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, vol. XII, document 204 (NSC 420th meeting, October 1, 1959); Bryan R. Gibson, *Covert Relationship: American Foreign Policy, Intelligence, and the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1989* (Praeger, 2010).
+[^2]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, vol. XII, Near East Region; Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula, document 204 (memorandum of discussion at the 420th NSC meeting, October 1, 1959), document 205 (editorial note on the October 7, 1959 attempt) and document 206 (CIA memorandum of October 13, 1959, text not declassified). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12/d204 and https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12/d205
-[^3]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. XVIII, Near East, 1962-1963, documents 153 (memorandum from Stephen O. Fuqua to Sloan, "Iraqi Coup," February 8, 1963) and 154 (Rusk to Kennedy, February 9, 1963). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v18
+[^3]: Richard Sale, "Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot," United Press International, April 10, 2003, https://www.upi.com/Exclusive-Saddam-key-in-early-CIA-plot/65571050017416/ (read at https://web.archive.org/web/2003/https://www.upi.com/Exclusive-Saddam-key-in-early-CIA-plot/65571050017416/). Sole source for the passages so cited.
-[^4]: Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, "Embracing Regime Change in Iraq: American Foreign Policy and the 1963 Coup d'Etat in Baghdad," *Diplomatic History* 35, no. 1 (2011); Bryan R. Gibson, *Covert Relationship* (Praeger, 2010); King Hussein's remarks as published in Al-Ahram, September 27, 1963.
+[^4]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. XVIII, Near East, 1962-1963, document 153 (memorandum from Stephen O. Fuqua to Sloan, "Iraqi Coup," February 8, 1963, with footnote 2 quoting Komer's memorandum to Kennedy) and document 154 (Rusk to Kennedy, February 9, 1963, "Request for Contingency Authority to Recognize the New Iraqi Regime"). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v18/d153 and https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v18/d154
-[^5]: "Saddam Hussein," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saddam-Hussein
+[^5]: Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, review of Eric Jacobsen, "A Coincidence of Interests: Kennedy, U.S. Assistance, and the 1963 Iraqi Ba'th Regime," *Diplomatic History* 37, no. 5 (2013): 1029-59, H-Diplo Article Review (quoting Peter L. Hahn, *Missions Accomplished? The United States and Iraq since World War I*, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 48). https://issforum.org/reviews/PDF/AR455.pdf Wolfe-Hunnicutt's own article is "Embracing Regime Change in Iraq: American Foreign Policy and the 1963 Coup d'Etat in Baghdad," *Diplomatic History* 39, no. 1 (2015): 98-125, DOI 10.1093/dh/dht121.
-[^6]: Joyce Battle, ed., "Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, February 25, 2003, documents 22, 24, 26, 29, 31, 53, 60 and 61 (document 61 is the affidavit of Howard Teicher, United States v. Cardoen, S.D. Fla., January 31, 1995). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
+[^6]: "Scholar: US more supportive of Kurds than was previously believed," Rudaw, April 29, 2015 (interview with Bryan Gibson on his book *Sold Out? US Foreign Policy, Iraq, the Kurds, and the Cold War*). https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/290420151 Gibson's earlier book is *Covert Relationship: American Foreign Policy, Intelligence, and the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988* (Praeger, 2010).
-[^7]: Friedman, Alan. *Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq.* Bantam Books, 1993.
+[^7]: Hanna Batatu, *The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq* (Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 985-987, quoting the conversation of King Hussein of Jordan with Muhammad Hasanein Haikal, *Al-Ahram*, September 27, 1963 (excerpt reproduced at https://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/ope/archive/0305/0019.html). Sole source for the King Hussein quotations.
-[^8]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* TrineDay, 1992.
+[^8]: United Nations Security Council, Resolution 487 (1981), adopted at the 2288th meeting, June 19, 1981, preamble and operative paragraphs 1, 2, 5 and 6. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-177213
 [^9]: Department of State, information memorandum from Nicholas A. Veliotes and Jonathan T. Howe to Lawrence S. Eagleburger, "Iran-Iraq War: Analysis of Possible U.S. Shift from Position of Strict Neutrality," October 7, 1983, pp. 1-3, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, document 22 (the quotation on the modification of neutrality is from the briefing book's description of the document). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq22.pdf
 [^10]: Department of State cable State 346516, "Rumsfeld Visit to Iraq," December 7, 1983, secret, paragraph 2, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, document 27. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq27.pdf
 [^11]: U.S. Embassy London to Department of State, London 27572, "Rumsfeld Mission: December 20 Meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein," December 21, 1983, secret, paragraphs 2 and 3, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, document 31. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq31.pdf
 [^12]: Department of State cable State 086663, Shultz to Embassy Khartoum, "Briefing Notes for Rumsfeld Visit to Baghdad," March 24, 1984, secret, paragraph 2, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, document 48. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq48.pdf
 [^13]: Department of State cable State 352124, memorandum of conversation, "Secretary's Meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, November 26, 1984," secret, paragraphs 3, 4 and 10 (transmitted November 29, 1984), National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, document 60. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq60.pdf
 [^14]: Declaration of Howard Teicher, *United States v. Carlos Cardoen et al.*, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, Case No. 93-241-CR-HIGHSMITH, executed January 31, 1995, caption and paragraphs 1 to 18 (paragraph 1 service; 3 and 4 spring 1982; 6 June 1982 decision and NSDD; 7 Casey, credits, 1986 message; 8 cluster bombs; 9 non-U.S. weapons; 10 Israeli offer; 11 non-U.S. manufacturers; 13 Bear Spares; 14 Cardoen cluster bombs; 15 NSC files; 16 Cardoen and the CIA; 17 and 18 Cardoen arrest and licenses), National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, document 61 (the briefing book's description of the case appears in its document list). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf Sole source for the passages so cited; a sworn declaration of a witness, not an adjudicated finding.
 [^15]: Ari Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network* (Sheridan Square Press, 1992; reprinted by TrineDay, 2015), chapter 9, "Promis," and chapter 17, "Agricultural Project." Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^16]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, *United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of the Persian Gulf War Veterans*, hearing of May 25, 1994, S. Hrg. 103-900 (subtitle: *United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War*), including the testimony and prepared statement of Dr. Gordon C. Oehler, the chairman's remarks, and the May 25, 1994 committee report. https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesdual00unit
 [^17]: Henry B. Gonzalez, "Details on Iraq's Procurement Network," Special Order, *Congressional Record,* House, August 10, 1992, pp. H7871-H7881 (loans and the "tolerate its activity" passage at H7871; export licenses and Hussein Kamil at H7872; Matrix-Churchill and the holding companies at H7873 and H7875). https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/1992_cr/h920810g.htm (the host page is titled "US Armed Iraq Through BNL").
 [^18]: *United States v. Drogoul*, 1 F.3d 1546 (11th Cir. 1993) (No. 93-8964, decided September 2, 1993). https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F3/001/1.F3d.1546.93-8964.html
 [^19]: House of Commons, "Gun Components (Iraq)," statement by Nicholas Ridley, HC Deb, April 18, 1990, vol. 170, cc1425-32. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1990/apr/18/gun-components-iraq
 [^20]: House of Commons, written answers, "Iraq (Arms Component Exports)," HC Deb, April 27, 1990, vol. 171, cc352-3W. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written_answers/1990/apr/27/iraq-arms-component-exports
 [^21]: House of Commons, "Matrix Churchill," statement by Sir Nicholas Lyell, HC Deb, November 10, 1992, vol. 213, cc743-58. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1992/nov/10/matrix-churchill
 [^22]: House of Commons, "Scott Report," HC Deb, February 26, 1996, vol. 272, cc589-694 (Lang's opening statement and the exchange with Menzies Campbell at c590). https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1996/feb/26/scott-report The report is Sir Richard Scott, *Report of the Inquiry into the Export of Defence Equipment and Dual-Use Goods to Iraq and Related Prosecutions* (HMSO, HC 115, 1995-96).
 [^23]: John Kerry and Hank Brown, *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate,* Senate Print 102-140, December 1992, ch. 24, "Appendix: Matters for Further Investigation." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm
 [^24]: U.S. Department of Justice, *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, section on Ari Ben-Menashe, including the summary of his affidavit of February 17, 1991 (p. 73). Sole source for the Iraq passages cited to Ben-Menashe.
 [^25]: United Nations Security Council, Resolution 660 (1990), adopted at the 2932nd meeting, August 2, 1990. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/94220
 [^26]: Kathleen Ridolfo, "Saddam Hussein Captured near Tikrit," *RFE/RL Iraq Report* 6, no. 52, December 15, 2003. https://www.rferl.org/a/1343152.html
 [^27]: "Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq," BBC News, December 30, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6218485.stm
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Zafar
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Zafar
@ -1,30 +1,170 @@
 ---
 category: "Business & Finance"
 created: 2026-10-07
 updated: 2026-10-07
 tags:
  - Person
  - BCCI
-summary: "Zafar Iqbal took over as head of BCCI in late 1990, after the firing of Agha Hasan Abedi and Swaleh Naqvi."
+  - Banking
  - AbuDhabi
 aliases:
  - Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry
  - Zafar Iqbal Chaudhri
  - Iqbal Chaudhry
  - Iqbal Chaudhri
 summary: "Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry headed BCCI from 1990 to 1991, after Abu Dhabi's shareholders replaced Swaleh Naqvi, and was among those preliminarily charged in Abu Dhabi."
 relations:
  - type: head_of
    with: "Bank of Credit and Commerce Emirates"
    role: "head of the United Arab Emirates branch"
    fn: 1
  - type: head_of
    with: "Bank of Credit and Commerce International"
    start: "1990-04"
    end: "1991-07"
    role: "chief executive"
    fn: 11
  - type: investigated
    with: "Federal Reserve Board"
    reverse: true
    start: "1990-12"
    end: "1991-07"
    fn: 29
  - type: prosecuted
    with: "Abu Dhabi"
    reverse: true
    role: "preliminarily charged with fraudulent activities relating to BCCI"
    fn: 37
  - type: prosecuted
    with: "Abu Dhabi"
    reverse: true
    start: "1994-06"
    role: "convicted with other former BCCI executives"
    fn: 41
  - type: subject_of
    with: "BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report"
    fn: 1
  - type: subject_of
    with: "Bingham Report"
    fn: 2
 ---
-Zafar Iqbal took over as head of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] in late 1990, after the firing of [[Agha Hasan Abedi]] and [[Swaleh Naqvi]].[^1] He was also responsible for inspecting the "dancing girls" for clients.[^2]
+Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry was the chief executive of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] in 1990 and 1991, when the bank's majority shareholders, the ruling family and government of [[Abu Dhabi]], moved its management and operations to Abu Dhabi. Before that he had headed the bank's branch in the United Arab Emirates, the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce Emirates]] (BCCE).[^1]
-### Role at BCCI
+### Abu Dhabi and BCCE
-As head of BCCI, Iqbal was the bank's president when [[William Ryback]] of the [[Federal Reserve]] demanded to see the audit reports.[^3] He was forced by Ryback to agree that the audit would not be brought back to the [[United States]], nor would the [[Bank of England]] allow a copy to be taken.[^4]
+The [[Bingham Report|Bingham inquiry]] describes him in April 1990 as "formerly the manager of BCC Emirates and believed to be close to the Abu Dhabi shareholders."[^2] The Senate report by [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]], the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown report]], says he had "a close personal relationship with important members of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi arising out of his provision of intimate personal services for them in Pakistan and elsewhere."[^3] The same report says that within the bank Iqbal "was not considered to be an expert on much besides pleasing the Abu Dhabi ruling family," and that junior officers knew him as the man who had for years provided "singing and dancing girls" to the ruling family.[^3]
-### Abu Dhabi Management
+The Kerry-Brown report based the "singing and dancing girls" passage on staff interviews with [[Nazir Chinoy]], [[Abdur Sakhia]], [[Akbar Bilgrami]] and [[Masihur Rahman]]. It states that in private BCCI officials described Iqbal's chief role and principal skills as those of a procurer.[^4]
-The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] recorded that after Swaleh Naqvi confessed his errors and resigned as chief executive in March 1990, the new management team "was headed by a long-time Abu Dhabi insider from BCCI itself, Zafar Iqbal, the former head of BCCI's branch in the United Arab Emirates, the Bank of Credit and Commerce Emirates, or BCCE, who had long had a close personal relationship with important members of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi arising out of his provision of intimate personal services for them in Pakistan and elsewhere." It added that within the bank Iqbal "was not considered to be an expert on much besides pleasing the Abu Dhabi ruling family," and that junior officers knew him "as the man who had for years provided 'singing and dancing girls' to the ruling family." Under his management BCCI's operations were moved to [[Abu Dhabi]] without objection from the Bank of England.[^5]
+The journalists [[Jonathan Beaty]] and [[S. C. Gwynne]] wrote that BCCI officers procured girls for their clients in [[Lahore]]'s [[Diamond Market]], "the home of the famous 'dancing girls,'" that the girls were as young as twelve, and that "in the middle 1970s the man in charge of inspecting the girls was Zafar Iqbal, who would later become the chief executive officer of BCCI."[^5]
-### Sentence
+### Appointment and dates
-In June 1994 an Abu Dhabi court convicted Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry, then 54, with other former BCCI executives; with Hasan Mahmood Kazmi and Abdul Hafeez Mohammed Ahmed, he received the longest sentence of those present in court, six years.[^6]
+Beaty and Gwynne's list of principal figures states that Iqbal "took over as head of BCCI in late 1990, after the firing of Abedi and Naqvi," and their text calls him the man who had recently taken over BCCI when [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed]] summarily fired [[Agha Hasan Abedi]] and [[Swaleh Naqvi]] after seeing the October audit report.[^6] In another passage they wrote that Iqbal had "recently been named by Abu Dhabi to head BCCI," and described him as the arch-rival for power within the Emirates of [[Khalfan al-Mazrui]], head of the Karachi office of Sheikh Zayed's Private Department.[^7] They also wrote that, after [[Sami Masri]] had persuaded Beaty that Zayed was unaware of the bank's true nature, "perhaps Zafar Iqbal was keeping this critical knowledge from the sheikh," and that it was just as likely that [[Ghanim Faris al-Mazrui|Ghanim al-Mazrui]] was withholding information.[^7] Beaty and Gwynne quote Masri as saying that in Karachi, in connection with what the book calls the Black Network, "he would talk to Zafar Iqbal and Sani Ahmed."[^8] The Kerry-Brown report gives the following sequence. A series of meetings beginning in March 1990, in Abu Dhabi and [[Luxembourg]], ended with Naqvi confessing his errors and resigning as chief executive, after which a new team was "headed by" Iqbal.[^9] The same report says that Abu Dhabi had been asked to take over the bank, because Sheikh Zayed and the Al Nayhan family had been major depositors.[^9]
 The Kerry-Brown report says that the Abu Dhabi interests took control of BCCI in April 1990, and that Abu Dhabi "immediately removed Naqvi from control of BCCI and replaced him with Zafar Iqbal, then head of the Abu Dhabi operation of BCCI."[^10] The same chapter says that BCCI's operations were moved to Abu Dhabi, along with the bank's most important records, "without objection from the [[Bank of England]]," and that the move of the headquarters from London was made with the encouragement of the [[College of Banking Supervisors|College of Regulators]] so that the majority shareholders could begin to monitor management.[^10]
 Bingham records that Iqbal attended a Luxembourg board meeting on April 20, 1990, for the first time at that level, and that in the days that followed he "appeared to have superseded Naqvi in the day to day management of the group."[^11]
 A memorandum by [[Robert Altman]] to the file, dated July 6, 1990, describes a meeting that day in [[London]] between Altman, Naqvi and a BCCI lawyer, [[Kim Gagne]]. It records that Altman had briefly seen Iqbal at the bank earlier that day, and that Iqbal said he did not know much about the First American issue in [[New York]] because his focus was solely on BCCI's operations. Iqbal also mentioned that BCCI had loans to some First American shareholders, and expressed confidence in [[Clark Clifford]] and Altman.[^12] Altman's memorandum describes the firm of [[Clifford & Warnke]] as general counsel to [[First American Bank]].[^12]
 A memorandum dated July 30, 1990, with the subject "CCAH," is addressed to Naqvi with a copy to Iqbal. It sets out alternative solutions to restrictions on interstate banking, limits on foreign ownership in Virginia and Florida, deposit limits, and the status of the New York operation.[^13]
 Bingham records that on October 3, 1990, when [[Price Waterhouse]] delivered its report to the Bank of England, the plans to remove Naqvi and Abedi, appoint Iqbal as acting chief executive officer, and establish an investigating committee were disclosed.[^14]
 A report by [[Norton Rose]] to the creditors' committee of BCCI SA, dated May 1, 1992, states that Naqvi, "who had taken over as chief executive from Mr. Abedi in 1988, was replaced by Mr Zafar Iqbal (formerly managing director of the Emirates Division)."[^15]
 [[Al Sayegh]], who testified for Abu Dhabi, said he did not know who made the decision to install Iqbal as head of BCCI in April 1990.[^16]
 ### Federal Reserve review, December 1990
 The [[Federal Reserve Board]] reviewed a Price Waterhouse report on loans secured by shares of [[Credit and Commerce American Holdings|CCAH]] at BCCI's London office on December 10, 1990. The Kerry-Brown report says the auditor's report and a conversation that day "with the new chief executive officer of BCCI [Zafar Iqbal]" showed substantial loans outstanding secured by CCAH stock.[^17]
 A statement by the majority shareholders, printed in the Senate hearings, gives December 3, 1990, as the date of a London meeting at which "Zafar Iqbal, the acting chief executive officer of BCCI, met with the Board official ... and allowed him to read the Price Waterhouse report."[^18]
 A memo by [[Thomas McQueeney]] reports that [[William Ryback]] had met Iqbal "last week," and that Ryback "was very impressed with Iqbal, who offered to open the books of BCCI to us."[^19] The same memo states that Ryback "feels that BCCI has been lying to us for years," and that he did not take a copy of the Price Waterhouse report, for fear that the New York District Attorney's office would subpoena it. The memo is dated December 18, 1990 in the House hearing record and December 11, 1990 in a newspaper article reprinted in the Senate hearings, which describes McQueeney as an assistant chief examiner at the [[Federal Reserve Bank of New York]] and reports that a Fed spokesman, verifying the authenticity of the memo, said it inaccurately characterised what was happening inside the Fed.[^20]
 Beaty and Gwynne's account of the same meeting calls Iqbal BCCI's president and says that [[J. Virgil Mattingly|Virgil Mattingly]], the Fed's general counsel, recalled Ryback saying "We demand to see this." They write that Ryback, reading the audit in BCCI's London offices, found more than $1 billion in loans to an entity coded "XYZ Corp.," asked Iqbal whether XYZ was really First American, and that "Iqbal told him he was right." They quote the McQueeney memo, which they date December 18, 1990, and state that "Though Ryback had seen the evidence, he was forced by Iqbal to agree that he would not bring it back home," and that the Bank of England, which possessed the audit, would not let him take a copy.[^21]
 A chronology in the House hearings lists a letter of December 13, 1990, from Iqbal, as chief executive, to [[Middleton Martin]] of [[Patton Boggs & Blow]], confirming that BCCI had decided to end its banking business in the [[United States]].[^22]
 ### Price Waterhouse and the deposits
 Bingham records that on October 23, 1990, Iqbal confirmed that Abu Dhabi had been ruled out as a place of incorporation for the group, and suggested that the three banks in London, Abu Dhabi and [[Hong Kong]] be free-standing with no holding company. On November 26, 1990, the Bank of England told him it wished to put this three-bank proposal to the majority shareholders.[^23]
 On December 17, 1990, Iqbal met Price Waterhouse. Bingham reports that he said his knowledge of the problems had "only come to his knowledge since 18 April 1990," and listed the means used to solve them, including loans made in the names of individuals who were unaware of them, a $600 million loan portfolio among them, and loans on terms under which the borrower had no obligation to repay.[^24]
 On January 4, 1991, Iqbal told the Bank of England that the bank's deposits might be understated by some $580 million, which the government would make good once the customers' claims were verified. Bingham records seven customers, the largest of whom, later code-named "Tumbleweed," was thought to have deposited between $350 million and $575 million for Islamic commodity transactions.[^25]
 [[Allen & Overy]] and Price Waterhouse were "extremely disturbed" that Iqbal had not disclosed these deposits earlier. Bingham reports that Iqbal had assured a Price Waterhouse partner in September 1990 that he had disclosed everything, and that in reply to their complaint Iqbal denied that he had known of the unrecorded deposits in April 1990.[^26]
 Bingham's summary of the Price Waterhouse work names Iqbal, Chaudhry and Chowdry among those "suspected of questionable conduct."[^27] Bingham's account of Price Waterhouse's questioning of [[Basheer Chowdry]] records that Iqbal had also been involved in the presentation to the shareholders in April 1990 and had been aware of the facts. [[Hasan Mahmood Kazmi]] gave a different explanation.[^28]
 ### Removal and charges
 The Kerry-Brown report says that Federal Reserve investigators worked in the spring of 1991 to have BCCI's top management removed, including Iqbal, who "had close ties to the Abu Dhabi shareholders." It adds that the Bank of England advised Abu Dhabi that Iqbal had to be removed, which led to a temporary stalemate over the restructuring. The stalemate ended with the Bank of England's order closing BCCI on July 5, 1991.[^29]
 The report's Abu Dhabi chapter says that by late spring 1991 both United States and [[United Kingdom]] regulators insisted on Iqbal's removal, and that Al Mazrui, who had worked closely with Iqbal for many years, resisted and temporarily paralysed the restructuring plan.[^30] After the consent orders of March 4, 1991, Senate staff had also raised with the Abu Dhabi lawyers at Patton Boggs & Blow their concern that Iqbal would remain in control of the banks throughout the restructuring. The lawyers acknowledged that they shared the concerns about Iqbal and Naqvi.[^31]
 Bingham records that Iqbal was told, after the College of supervisors meeting in April 1991, that he was not to continue as chief executive officer.[^32]
 The liquidators of [[Credit and Finance Corporation]] (Deloitte Ross Tohmatsu) recorded that the restructuring agreements of May 22, 1991, were signed on behalf of BCCI by Iqbal, with Al Mazrui for Portfolio and an Abu Dhabi official for the government, and were witnessed by Allen & Overy personnel. The same record states that on June 25, 1991, Credit and Finance Corporation wrote to Iqbal, as chief executive officer of the BCCI Group, asking him to press Abu Dhabi to honour its subscription commitment.[^33]
 Testimony by Virgil Mattingly, the Federal Reserve Board's general counsel, given on May 14, 1992, recorded that Federal Reserve investigators had spoken to Iqbal when he was in London but had been unable to reach him since the closure. Mattingly confirmed Senator Kerry's statement that Naqvi and Iqbal were under house arrest in Abu Dhabi.[^34]
 Masihur Rahman testified that [[Mazhar Abbas]], another BCCI executive, threatened him at a meeting in front of Iqbal Chaudhry, whom Rahman described as "the new CEO after all this crisis." Rahman said he had been pleading with the two men against dismissing executives.[^35]
 Iqbal was detained by authorities in Abu Dhabi, along with about thirty other senior BCCI executives.[^36]
 In written answers to Senator Kerry in 1992, Al Sayegh listed "Zafar Iqbal Chaudhri" among the individuals held in Abu Dhabi who were "preliminarily charged with fraudulent activities relating to BCCI."[^37] The majority shareholders' own statement to the subcommittee says that, as a result of their complaint and other evidence accumulated by the Federal Prosecutor, eighteen BCCI officials were preliminarily charged and were subject to detention pending final criminal charges, which the shareholders said they believed would include counts of larceny, fraud and forgery.[^38] Beaty and Gwynne wrote in 1993 that seventeen other senior officials, including Naqvi and Zafar Iqbal, were under house arrest in Abu Dhabi.[^39] In the same period Al Sayegh told the subcommittee that Naqvi and Iqbal "and others" would be made available to Senate staff and Justice Department personnel, and that discussions on the terms were under way.[^40]
 ### Sentencing, 1994
 [[United Press International]] reported on June 14, 1994, that Judge Shehab Abdul-Rehman of the Abu Dhabi Court of the First Instance sentenced twelve former BCCI executives to a total of 56 years in prison and ordered them to pay the former Abu Dhabi majority shareholders civil damages of more than $9.13 billion. Of the ten defendants present, the longest sentences went to two Pakistanis, Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry, 54, and Hasan Mahmood Kazmi, 56, and a Canadian, Abdul Hafeez Mohammed Ahmed, 66, each six years.[^41] UPI reported that Naqvi, then 59, received four sentences totaling eleven years while in United States custody, that Abedi received six years in absentia, and that [[Ziauddin Ali Akbar]] was the third defendant sentenced in absentia. Three-year sentences were given to Imtiaz Ahmed, Ameerul Haq Siddiqui, Fakhir Hussain, Mohammed Azmatullah, Bashir Ahmed Tahir and Nasem Hassan Sheikh, and Iqbal Ahmed Rizvi was acquitted.[^41] In the same report, damages were awarded of $6.56 billion to the president's Private Department, $1.347 billion to the [[Abu Dhabi Investment Authority]] and $1.223 billion to the Finance Department. UPI said some eleven of the accused had been held in detention in Abu Dhabi since their arrest in September 1991, on charges including dissipation of shareholders' funds, forging of bank records and granting fictitious loans, and that all the convicted present said they would appeal.[^41]
 [[MEED]] reported on June 24, 1994, that twelve senior executives were sentenced to a total of 61 years in prison (the UPI figure is 56 years) by an Abu Dhabi court on June 14. It named Abedi, who was in Pakistan, and Naqvi, who was on trial in the United States, among those sentenced, and reported that the court ordered the twelve convicted executives to pay $9,000 million for their part in the losses.[^42]
 ### Footnotes
-
+[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate*. December 1992, ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Stockholders." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
-[^1]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 9.
+[^2]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed October 22, 1992, paras. 2.198, 2.201. https://archive.org/details/InquiryIntoTheSupervisionOfTheBankOfCreditAndCommerceInternational
-[^2]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 174.
+[^3]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 14, as in note 1.
-[^3]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 132.
+[^4]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 14, note 38.
-[^4]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 133.
+[^5]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 143. Sole source for the passages so cited. https://archive.org/details/outlawbank00jona
-[^5]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Stockholders." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
+[^6]: Beaty and Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank*, "Cast of Characters," p. xvi (entry for Zafar Iqbal), and p. 103. Sole source for the passages so cited.
-[^6]: Hussain, Thomas. "UAE jails and fines BCCI executives," United Press International, June 14, 1994. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/06/14/UAE-jails-and-fines-BCCI-executives/7650771566400/
+[^7]: Beaty and Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank*, p. 86. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^8]: Beaty and Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank*, p. 81 (Masri's statement to Beaty; the book's index lists pp. 81, 86, 103, 143 and 354 under Zafar Iqbal). Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^9]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 10, text on the Abu Dhabi takeover, March 1990. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/10accounta.htm
 [^10]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 14, "Attempt At Restructuring 1990 and 1991." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
 [^11]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, paras. 2.198, 2.201.
 [^12]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 13, note 132, "Altman Memorandum to the File, Clifford and Warnke, July 6, 1990," text at ch. 13, "Altman's Assessment of His Conflict of Interest Pertaining To First American and BCCI." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/13clifford.htm. The memorandum's account of the earlier meeting with Iqbal is also reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 6 (archive.org copy).
 [^13]: Memorandum dated July 30, 1990, subject "CCAH," addressed to Swaleh Naqvi with a copy to Zafar Iqbal, reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 3 (archive.org copy). https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheTerrorismNarcoticsAndInternationalOperationsOfTheCommitteeOnForeignRelations
 [^14]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, para. 2.254.
 [^15]: Norton Rose, report to the members of the BCCI SA Creditors' Committee, May 1, 1992, para. 9, printed p. 588, reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 5 (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5). https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheTerrorismNarcoticsAndInternationalOperationsOfTheCommitteeOnForeignRelations
 [^16]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 14, note 65, citing Al-Sayegh testimony, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5, pp. 759-770.
 [^17]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 12, "The Regulators," text and note 33, citing S. Hrg. 102-379, p. 120. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/12reg.htm
 [^18]: Statement of the majority shareholders, section II, "Cooperation by the Majority Shareholders with U.S. Law Enforcement and Regulatory Investigations," reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 5 (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5).
 [^19]: Electronic mail, "BCCI," from Thomas McQueeney, headed December 18, 1990, in *BCCI Hearings before the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs*, House of Representatives, vol. 2. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
 [^20]: Newspaper article quoting the McQueeney memo as dated December 11, 1990, reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 2 (archive.org copy).
 [^21]: Beaty and Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank*, p. 103. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^22]: Chronology, entry for December 13, 1990, in *BCCI Hearings before the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs*, House of Representatives, vol. 1. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
 [^23]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, paras. 2.272, 2.274.
 [^24]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, para. 2.281.
 [^25]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, para. 2.297.
 [^26]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, paras. 2.299-2.300.
 [^27]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, para. 2.443.
 [^28]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, para. 2.354. Chowdry is identified as the official questioned in the same paragraph, which also refers to Kazmi.
 [^29]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 12, text on the spring 1991 removal effort, the Bank of England stalemate, and the order closing BCCI of July 5, 1991. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/12reg.htm
 [^30]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 14, text and note 52 (staff interview with Masihur Rahman, August 26, 1992).
 [^31]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 14, text and note 51 (Winer memorandum, March meeting with Patton, Boggs, and Blow).
 [^32]: *Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International*, paras. 2.360-2.361.
 [^33]: Statement of the liquidators of Credit and Finance Corporation Limited (Ian Wight and Robert Axford of Deloitte Ross Tohmatsu), para. 90 (agreements of May 22, 1991) and para. 68 (letter of June 25, 1991), reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 5 (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5).
 [^34]: Testimony of James Virgil Mattingly, Jr., general counsel of the Federal Reserve Board, May 14, 1992, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5, exchange with Senator Kerry.
 [^35]: Testimony of Masihur Rahman, former chief financial officer, BCCI, London, *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 1 (archive.org copy).
 [^36]: Newspaper article reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 2 (archive.org copy).
 [^37]: Written answers by Al Sayegh, answer to question 46, reprinted in S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5, p. 832.
 [^38]: Statement of the majority shareholders, reprinted in *BCCI Hearings before the Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, vol. 5 (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5), p. 754. Position of the majority shareholders.
 [^39]: Beaty and Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank*, p. 354. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^40]: Kerry and Brown, ch. 14, text and note 70, citing S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5, pp. 756-757.
 [^41]: Hussain, Thomas. "UAE jails and fines BCCI executives," United Press International, June 14, 1994. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/06/14/UAE-jails-and-fines-BCCI-executives/7650771566400/ Sole source for the passages so cited; its twelve-defendant total (56 years) differs from MEED's (61 years).
 [^42]: "BCCI executives sentenced," MEED, June 24, 1994. https://www.meed.com/bcci-executives-sentenced/
--- a/EVENTS/MAJOR_CONFLICTS/Korean
+++ b/EVENTS/MAJOR_CONFLICTS/Korean
@ -1,18 +1,185 @@
 ---
 created: 2025-08-05
 updated: 2026-10-07
 title: Korean War
 aliases:
  - Korean Conflict
 tags:
  - Event
  - Conflict
  - ColdWar
  - Brainwashing
  - BiologicalWarfare
  - CIA
  - POW
  - Bluebird
  - Unit731
 category: "Major Conflict"
-summary: "1950-1953 conflict between North and South Korea that involved U.S. intelligence programs and connections to later covert operations in Southeast Asia."
+summary: "The 1950 to 1953 war in Korea, setting for the brainwashing controversy, bacteriological warfare charges, the 1950 CIA interrogation teams in Japan, and CIA covert operations in Korea and Burma."
 start: 1950
 end: 1953
 location: "Korean Peninsula"
 relations:
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Douglas MacArthur]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "commander of the United Nations Command, recalled April 11, 1951"
    start: 1950
    end: 1951-04-11
    fn: 1
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Charles Willoughby]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "G-2 of the Far East Command, relieved April 11, 1951"
    start: 1950
    end: 1951-04-11
    fn: 1
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Edward Hunter]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "originated the term brainwashing; traveled to Korea"
    start: 1950-09-24
    fn: 2
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Harold Wolff]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "testified on Communist interrogation and indoctrination"
    start: 1956-06
    fn: 6
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Lawrence Hinkle]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "testified on Communist interrogation and indoctrination"
    start: 1956-06
    fn: 6
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Claude Batchelor]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "according to testimony, led the 21 Americans and one Briton who did not return in Big Switch"
    start: 1953-08-05
    fn: 6
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Hans Tofte]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "described in 1966 press coverage as a leader of CIA operations in Korea and Japan during the war"
    start: 1950
    fn: 18
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Morse Allen]]"
    reverse: true
    role: "Office of Security head of BLUEBIRD from the end of 1950, according to Marks"
    start: 1950
    fn: 4
 ---
-The Korean War was a conflict that began in 1950, involving North Korea (supported by China and the Soviet Union) and South Korea (supported by the United Nations, primarily the United States). During this period, the [[United States]] was preoccupied with the war, as well as economic and social conditions in Europe, and the political battle with the [[Soviet Union]].[^1]
+The Korean War was fought from June 25, 1950, until an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, between [[North Korea]], supported by [[China]] and the [[Soviet Union]], and South Korea, defended by [[United Nations]] forces under an American commander. The conflict is the setting for the first American brainwashing controversy, the bacteriological warfare charges of 1952, the 1950 interrogation teams of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] project BLUEBIRD, and the covert operations of the [[Office of Policy Coordination]] and [[Office of Special Operations]].[^1]
-[[Israel]] publicly supported the American position in the Korean War. [[David Ben-Gurion]] even secretly offered to send Israeli troops to fight alongside the [[United Nations]] forces in South Korea, but President [[Harry S. Truman]] declined the offer, reportedly fearing it would lead to a security arrangement with [[Israel]]. Israel's stance on the Korean War, however, angered [[Moscow]] and led to a rupture in diplomatic relations between the two nations.[^1]
+### Captivity and the word brainwashing
 The word "brainwashing" entered print through [[Edward Hunter]], whose article in the [[Miami News]] on September 24, 1950, carried the headline "'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party."[^2] Hunter told the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities]] in a consultation on March 13, 1958, that during the Second World War he went into the [[Office of Strategic Services]] "as a propaganda specialist," serving in the China-Burma-India theater, and that after the war he returned to Asia as roving correspondent for the Cox newspapers. He said the Korean War "began after my discovery of brainwashing," that he wrote his book *Brain-Washing in Red China* before going to Korea, and that in Korea he "heard of American captured personnel broadcasting denunciations of their own country and confessing to a nonexistent germ warfare in a manner and in a language that fit exactly into the brainwashing pattern that I had found in China and the rest of Asia."[^3]
 [[John D. Marks]] wrote in 1979 that Hunter was "a CIA propaganda operator who worked under cover as a journalist." Marks interviewed Hunter shortly before Hunter's death in June 1978.[^4]
 The [[Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations]] of the [[United States Senate]] Committee on Government Operations took up the subject in June 1956, with Hunter among the witnesses.[^5] Its opening statement put the Korean War figures on the record: "some 7,190 Americans were captured by the Communists," approximately one-third of whom "died while in Communist hands," and of the 4,428 who "survived and were repatriated, over 95 percent were subjected to a well-planned and well-organized campaign to destroy their belief in God, their loyalty to the [[United States]] and their faith in the democratic way of life."[^6]
 Testifying the same month, [[Harold Wolff]], professor of medicine at [[Cornell University Medical College]], said of the term that it "originated by Mr. Ed Hunter who interviewed Chinese refugees in [[Hong Kong]], has caught the public fancy and has gained wide acceptance." He added that "many of the public speculations about brainwashing are not supported by the available evidence," but that "the Communists do make an orderly attempt to obtain information from their prisoners." Wolff appeared with [[Lawrence Hinkle]], assistant professor of medicine at Cornell.[^6]
 ### Big Switch and the prisoners who did not return
 The subcommittee heard Captain [[Bert Cumby]] of the [[United States Army]], who had fourteen years of service and described the two exchanges of 1953 as "two intelligence operations in the Far East." The first, [[Operation Little Switch|Little Switch]], exchanged sick and wounded prisoners and was "conceived in the spring of 1953." The second, [[Operation Big Switch|Big Switch]], was the general exchange that followed the armistice; Cumby said it began "on the fifth of August 1953." Cumby testified that he was chief of an interrogation team on Big Switch.[^6]
 Cumby named [[Claude Batchelor]] as the leader the Chinese appointed for "the 21 Americans and 1 British" who did not return, and said Batchelor "brought the group into the neutral zone in North Korea." According to Cumby, Batchelor told him that "if the Soviet Union had wanted to stop the war they could have stopped it, but he said why stop it? There is a purpose behind it."[^6]
 ### The Defense Advisory Committee, 1955
 The Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War recommendation of July 7, 1955, recorded that "In the Korean War, no planned penetration of prisoners of war camps was achieved by the U.S. Armed Forces, and organized evasion-escape operations failed to materialize," that the CIA "possesses limited capability for supporting the organized recovery of prisoners," and that "There is question as to whether present Central Intelligence Agency responsibilities are compatible with its capabilities."[^7]
 On August 18, 1955, Secretary of Defense [[Charles E. Wilson]] wrote to [[Allen Dulles]] that "During the war in Korea no planned penetration of prisoner of war camps was achieved by the United States Armed Forces and organized evasion-escape operations failed to materialize." The letter said that the [[Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War]] had suggested that further action was required, and that "The Central Intelligence Agency has specific responsibilities for certain operations in support of the recovery of prisoners of war, while others are the responsibility of the Military Departments." It requested an early conference.[^7]
 An undated [[Department of Defense|Defense Department]] action memorandum in the CIA's file, which refers to Wilson's letter to the Director of Central Intelligence as dated 15 August 1955, records the resulting meetings among the Defense office, the [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]], and the CIA on "plans for the penetration of prisoner of war camps" and on the recovery of prisoners. The memorandum also records a negotiating position for [[Geneva]] on the accounting of prisoners captured by the [[United Nations Command]].[^7]
 ### BLUEBIRD and the 1950 interrogation teams
 Marks wrote that CIA Director [[Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter]] approved BLUEBIRD on April 20, 1950, and that "three months after" that approval the first team traveled to Japan "to try out behavioral techniques on human subjects, probably suspected double agents." According to Marks, the three men arrived in [[Tokyo]] in July 1950, about a month after the start of the war; the [[Office of Security]] ordered them to conceal their purpose from the American military authorities in Japan, using the cover that they were performing "intensive polygraph" work. Marks wrote that they tried the depressant sodium amytal with the stimulant benzedrine on each of four subjects, the last two of whom also received picrotoxin, and tried to induce amnesia. He wrote that "the CIA documents available on the trip give only the sketchiest outline of what happened," and that around October 1950 the BLUEBIRD team "used 'advanced' techniques on 25 subjects, apparently North Korean prisoners of war." By the end of 1950, Marks wrote, [[Morse Allen]] of the Office of Security had become head of the program.[^4]
 A CIA memorandum of the Inspection and Security Staff, dated June 1950 on the scan, states that the staff was prepared to send a BLUEBIRD team between July 2 and August 1, 1950, that the basic team had just been completed by the addition of a doctor-psychiatrist, and that the circulation of papers on the project should be kept to an eyes-only basis.[^8] A BLUEBIRD team memorandum to the Chief of the Inspection and Security Staff, dated November 27 on the scan, reports that the technique of drug application under cover of the polygraph "was very successful," names oral and intravenous sodium amytal as the drugs of choice, with Coramine or picrotoxin as stimulants, and recommends that the combination be continued.[^9] A memorandum of March 12, 1951, supplementing a report of February 23, 1951, lists the technical problems of the "B Team in the field" and states that the polygraph instrument "was used only as a cover."[^10] None of the three scans names the country in which the team worked.
 The CIA memorandum on a special conference held at headquarters on August 8, 1951, records that its writer attended "under the misunderstanding that the conference was to have been a report on certain polygraph operations in Korea," and that the Agency could not "commit themselves policy wise." The conference concerned a project in Japan and Korea in which the Army had used a polygraph. The memorandum states that the psychiatrists and psychologists on the Korean project did not agree with the polygraph operator on the polygraph's effectiveness.[^11]
 The 1977 Senate hearings on MKULTRA recorded the Select Committee's summary that BLUEBIRD was approved by the Director in 1950, and that "As a result of interrogations conducted overseas during the project, another goal was added, the evaluation of offensive uses of unconventional interrogation techniques, including hypnosis and drugs." The summary described overseas ARTICHOKE interrogations using sodium pentothal and hypnosis after physical and psychiatric examinations of the subjects. It stated of the Navy's [[Project CHATTER]], which began in the fall of 1947, that it "expanded substantially during the Korean War," with overseas experiments conducted as part of the project.[^12] In the same hearing, Senator [[Richard Schweiker]] told [[John Gittinger]] of the CIA that "During the Korean war there was a lot of serious discussion about brainwashing techniques being used by the North Koreans." Gittinger answered that "by 1962 and 1963, the general idea that we were able to come up with is that brainwashing was largely a process of isolating a human being, keeping him out of contact, putting him under long stress in relationship to interviewing and interrogation."[^12]
 In August 1977 an Agency review of the Office of Security archives found eighteen cartons of material on [[Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke|Project ARTICHOKE]] that had not been produced to the [[Rockefeller Commission]] or to the congressional investigations of 1975 and 1976. The cartons held about fourteen linear feet of ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD records. The review reported that it found no information that would "contradict or change the scope" of what had been furnished to the investigating bodies. It dated the project's start to early 1950 and its change of name from BLUEBIRD to ARTICHOKE to August 1951.[^13]
 [[Frank Olson]], a civilian biochemist employed by the Army at [[Fort Detrick]] "in a cooperative effort with the CIA," was dosed with [[LSD]] on November 19, 1953, at a meeting of Fort Detrick and CIA personnel, according to a White House memorandum of July 11, 1975, addressed to [[Donald Rumsfeld]]. The memorandum places the drug program within "a much larger CIA program to study possible means for controlling human behavior," and records that "Great concern over Soviet and North Korean techniques in 'brainwashing' continued to be manifested into the early 1950's."[^14]
 ### Intelligence command in Korea
 The CIA's chronology of its Korean operations records that in early July 1950 Office of Special Operations personnel "assume emergency role as military intelligence officers," and that on July 7, 1950, the United Nations created the United Nations Command under a United States commander. In September 1950, OSO dropped intelligence teams along the northern border of North Korea, and the Office of Policy Coordination opened a station at [[Tongnae]]. OPC placed stay-behind agents above the 38th parallel on October 28, 1950, began an escape and evasion program in November, and opened a guerrilla training camp in December. On April 10, 1951, a plan to combine OSO and OPC units in Korea into one CIA mission began; the units merged on July 2, 1951, into the Agency's first combined Clandestine Services field mission, the Joint Advisory Commission, Korea (JACK). Later entries record the establishment by the United States military of Covert, Clandestine and Related Activities in Korea (CCRAK), the transfer of JACK headquarters to [[Seoul]] with bases in Pusan, Inchon and Seoul, and the closing of the Tongnae base.[^1]
 The same chronology records a G-2 estimate by [[Charles Willoughby]], [[Douglas MacArthur]]'s chief of intelligence, on October 14, 1950, that the Chinese Communists were "bluffing in their threats to enter the war." On April 11, 1951, MacArthur was recalled, and Willoughby was relieved as G-2 of the Far East Command.[^1] In the 1951 Senate hearings on the Far East, [[George C. Marshall]] recalled "a consideration with General Smith of the CIA referring to some difficulty in relation to General Willoughby, General MacArthur's G-2."[^15]
 On April 25, 1951, [[Hans Tofte]] wrote to [[Walter Bedell Smith]], then Director of Central Intelligence. Tofte said that a colleague he had met in [[San Francisco]] was "fed up w[ith] the Far East in general," an attitude that "coincides with that of many other old china-hands," and questioned that colleague's eligibility for "the number one" job in the area. The colleague's name is redacted.[^16] [[Joseph C. Goulden]], the author of *Korea: The Untold Story of the War*, described Tofte in a review of [[Ernest Volkmann]]'s *Warriors of the Night* as "the CIA guerrilla commander."[^17] In August 1966, press coverage of the CIA's suspension of Tofte, a native of [[Denmark]], with pay, after classified documents were found in his [[Georgetown]] home, described him as having been "a leader in CIA operations in Korea and Japan during the" war. [[Radio TV Reports]] carried the story, in which Tofte said that about $19,000 in jewelry had disappeared from the house after the agency removed the documents.[^18]
 ### Operation Paper and the Kuomintang in Burma
 [[Peter Dale Scott]] wrote in 2010 that in November 1950, with Chinese troops entering Korea, President [[Harry S. Truman]] approved a program code-named Operation Paper to prepare remnant [[Kuomintang]] forces in [[Burma]], the so-called 93rd Division under General [[Li Mi]], for a countervailing invasion of Yunnan. Scott wrote that the decision was made by a small group inside the Office of Policy Coordination, notably [[Desmond FitzGerald]] and [[Richard Stilwell]], with former OSS chief [[William J. Donovan]]; that [[Alfred Cox]], the OPC station chief in Hong Kong, directed the supply operation through the CIA proprietaries [[Sea Supply Inc.]] and [[Civil Air Transport]]; and that the OPC records that initiated Operation Paper "are still closed to public view." Scott also wrote that the troops were already involved in drug trafficking.[^19]
 A State Department memorandum of November 18, 1952, from Assistant Secretary [[John M. Allison]] to Under Secretary [[David K. E. Bruce]], recorded that the Kuomintang troops had been in the Burmese province of Kengtung since early 1949, that a portion "was engaged in a highly unsuccessful operation into Yunnan in 1951," and that "Vishinsky accused the United States of aiding the KMT troops in Burma" in the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1951. It noted talk in the Burmese press "concerning alleged support of the KMT activities by U.S. citizens, unofficial and otherwise."[^20] A second memorandum, of January 9, 1953, stated that the troops "were presumably regarded at one time as of potential value either as the nucleus of a guerrilla force which could move into and operate in China," and that "The initial reactions of the CIA and of the Ambassadors at Rangoon and Bangkok and the Chargé at Taipei have been obtained," all concurring in the desirability of helping bring about the troops' departure from Burma to Formosa.[^21]
 ### Bacteriological warfare charges, 1952
 The Central Intelligence Agency's Office of National Estimates issued terms of reference on March 21, 1952, for a special estimate titled "Significance of the Communist Psychological Warfare Campaign Alleging Use of Biological Warfare by the US in Korea."[^22] On January 18, 1952, a B-26 bomber was shot down over An-Ju in Korea. By May 5, 1952, statements from its navigator, Lieutenant K. L. Enoch, and its pilot, Lieutenant John Quinn, admitting participation in bacteriological warfare had been "issued to the world through Peking," according to the [[International Scientific Commission]], which was formed to investigate the charges after [[Kuo Mo-jo]], president of the Chinese People's Committee for World Peace, appealed to the [[World Peace Council]].[^23]
 The Commission's members were [[Andrea Andreen]] of [[Sweden]], [[Jean Malterre]] of [[France]], [[Joseph Needham]] of the [[United Kingdom]], [[Oliviero Olivo]] of [[Italy]], [[Samuel B. Pessoa]] of [[Brazil]], and [[Nicolai Zhukov-Verezhnikov]] of the Soviet Union. They signed the conclusion at [[Beijing|Peking]] on August 31, 1952. The conclusion stated that "The peoples of Korea and China have indeed been the objective of bacteriological weapons. These have been employed by units of the U.S.A. armed forces," and that some of the methods "seem to be developments of those applied by the Japanese army during the [[World War II|second world war]]." The Commission wrote that it reached these conclusions "reluctantly." The same report states that the Commission "was unable to reach a firm conclusion" on an encephalitis epidemic at [[Shenyang]] and [[Anshan]].[^23]
 In 1998 the Japanese newspaper [[Sankei Shimbun]] published Soviet documents copied by hand in the [[Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation]]. The editors of the [[Cold War International History Project]] Bulletin wrote that the documents "have not been authenticated by access to the archival originals (or even photocopies thereof)," and that both commentators believed them genuine on textual analysis.[^24] [[Kathryn Weathersby]] read the documents as showing that the Presidium of the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] ordered the Soviet delegation at the United Nations not "to show interest in discussing this question or even more in 'fanning the flames' of this question," and that "the entire leadership" decided to cease the campaign, "apparently because of the risk of embarrassment to the Soviet Union should the claims be revealed as fabrications." Weathersby wrote that "In short, the sources are credible."[^24] [[Milton Leitenberg]] published a companion analysis in the same Bulletin.[^24]
 The [[National Archives]] holds a 1952 film, *Bacteriological Warfare in Korea*, in records of the [[National Security Council]] and the CIA. It is catalogued as  accusing the U.S. of having engaged in bacteriological warfare against Korea and China in 1952."[^25]
 ### Fort Detrick, Unit 731 and the immunity arrangement
 A report to the Secretary of War by [[George W. Merck]], Special Consultant on Biological Warfare, titled "Origins and Development of a Biological Warfare Program," dates the Army's planning to July 1941, when the Surgeon General of the Army proposed a committee on the subject.[^26]
 "The Report of 'G,'" a translation prepared for the [[Chemical Corps]] Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick, set out data on glanders experiments performed on human subjects by [[Unit 731]] of the Japanese army.[^27]
 The National Archives' 2006 volume *Researching Japanese War Crimes Records*, prepared for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records [[Interagency Working Group]], records that U.S. intelligence authorities located Unit 731's commander, Lieutenant General [[Shiro Ishii]], in January 1946 and interrogated him and other Unit 731 members many times over the next year. It states that Lieutenant Colonel [[Murray Sanders]] completed the first postwar study on November 1, 1945, with no mention of human experimentation, and that Lieutenant Colonel [[Arvo Thompson]] of Fort Detrick, ordered to follow up at the end of December 1945, interviewed Ishii from January to March 1946. In the volume's account, Ishii hinted during the interviews that he would provide more information if granted immunity from war crimes prosecution; the State Department sought to limit the commitment, but "for the most part" U.S. military and intelligence officials "were receptive to a deal with Ishii in which the general would avoid prosecution in return for information about his work." After the Soviet Union began gathering evidence in early 1947, the volume records, the [[State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee]], the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the War Department Civil Affairs Division, the State Department and Douglas MacArthur's headquarters "all attempted, to one degree or another, to shield Ishii and his colleagues from prosecution," and SWNCC allowed Soviet interrogation of Japanese specialists only with an American official present.[^28]
 In the autumn of 1947 two Fort Detrick scientists, [[Edwin Hill]] and [[Joseph Victor]], interviewed Ishii and other Japanese scientists "with the full support of" Willoughby, the same volume records. Their "Summary Report of B.W. Investigations" of December 12, 1947, stated that "no question of immunity guarantee from war crimes prosecution was ever raised during these interviews," while voicing concern that the Japanese were withholding information. The report stated that the evidence "represents data which have been obtained by Japanese scientists at the expenditure of many millions of dollars and years of work," that "Such information could not be obtained in our own laboratories because of scruples attached to human experimentation," that the data "were secured with a total outlay of 250,000 [yen] to date, a mere pittance by comparison with the actual cost of the studies," and that "It is hoped that individuals who voluntarily contributed this information will be spared embarrassment because of it and that every effort will be taken to prevent this information from falling into other hands."[^28] The volume's authors wrote that Ishii "escaped postwar prosecution in exchange, apparently, for supplying the U.S. government with details of his gruesome human experiments," and that Professor [[Sheldon H. Harris]] believed the quid pro quo was approved by Willoughby and MacArthur in Tokyo and by their superiors in Washington. They wrote that several key documents outlining the U.S. acquisition of Unit 731 research data "have not yet been located."[^28]
 The Interagency Working Group's 2007 final report to Congress stated that "in return for information on biological warfare, the United States was lenient with important Japanese war criminals," and recorded that the [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]] lobbied the Attorney General and the Pentagon for the release of documents on "amnesties granted to supervisors of Japan's biological and chemical warfare program in exchange for the data obtained from experiments conducted on humans in the infamous Unit 731." The report also records Harris's allegation, in a letter placed in the Senate record, that documentation at Dugway Proving Ground and Fort Detrick had been moved or destroyed; the Army told the Working Group that its searches "uncovered no evidence in support of the charge."[^29]
 ### Israel and the war
 According to [[Seymour Hersh]], the United States was "preoccupied with the war, as well as economic and social conditions in Europe, and the political battle with the Soviet Union," and [[Israel]] publicly supported the American position in the Korean War. [[David Ben-Gurion]] secretly offered to send Israeli troops to fight alongside United Nations forces in South Korea, Hersh wrote, but Truman declined the offer, reportedly fearing it would lead to a security arrangement with Israel. Hersh also wrote that Israel's stance on the war angered [[Moscow]] and led to a rupture in diplomatic relations between the two nations.[^30]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 2.
+[^1]: CIA, "CIA in Korea 1946-1965, Volume III," July 1973, CIA Reading Room document C06146213, approved for release January 31, 2022 (chronology entries for June 25, 1950, July 1950, September 1950, October 14 and 28, 1950, November and December 1950, April 10 and 11, 1951, and July 2, 1951; later entries on JACK and CCRAK). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06146213
 [^2]: Edward Hunter, "'Brain Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party," *Miami News*, September 24, 1950, p. 2A. https://archive.org/details/hunter-edward-brain-washing-tactics-force-chinese-into-ranks-of-communist-party-
 [^3]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, *Communist Psychological Warfare (Brainwashing): Consultation with Edward Hunter, Author and Foreign Correspondent*, 85th Congress, 2nd session, March 13, 1958 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1958), pp. 5-6 and 14-15. https://archive.org/details/communistpsychol1958unit
 [^4]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control* (Times Books, 1979), chapter 1 ("Cold War on the Mind," pp. 22-24) and chapter 8 (Hunter) with the chapter notes. Sole source for the passages so cited, including the Tokyo location, the October 1950 subjects, and the identification of the subjects as North Korean prisoners.
 [^5]: U.S. Senate, *Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination and Exploitation of American Military and Civilian Prisoners*, hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, 84th Congress, 2nd session, June 19, 20, 26, and 27, 1956 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956), contents list (testimony of Edward Hunter, pp. 66 and 77).
 [^6]: Hearings cited in note 5, opening statement and testimony of Captain Bert Cumby, Dr. Harold G. Wolff and Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr. Cumby's account is sole source for the Batchelor passages. https://archive.org/details/communist_interrogation_indoctrination_and_exploitation_of_the_american_military
 [^7]: Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War, "Committee Recommendations for Action," July 7, 1955; Charles E. Wilson, Secretary of Defense, to Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, letter dated August 18, 1955; and an undated Defense Department action memorandum on the recommendations of the Committee, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP85B00236R000400070013-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp85b00236r000400070013-0
 [^8]: CIA, Inspection and Security Staff memorandum, "Priority Requirement for Bluebird Team," June 1950, CIA CREST document 00148262. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00148262
 [^9]: CIA, Bluebird Team to Chief, Inspection and Security Staff, "Conclusions Concerning the Medical Phase of the Operations," November 27 (1950 per the scan), CIA CREST document 00149590. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00149590
 [^10]: CIA, "Bluebird Activity, Technical Aspects," March 12, 1951, CIA CREST document 00149615. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00149615
 [^11]: CIA, memorandum on the "Special Conference 8 August 1951," CIA CREST document 00144831. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00144831
 [^12]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, *Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification*, joint hearing, 95th Congress, 1st session, August 3, 1977 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1977), the Select Committee's summary of the programs investigated (Project CHATTER; Project BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE) and the question and answer between Senator Schweiker and Dr. Gittinger. https://archive.org/details/jointhearing_project-mkultra_1977
 [^13]: CIA, "Description of Newly Discovered Project ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD Materials," 1977, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP81-00261R000300050005-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp81-00261r000300050005-3
 [^14]: White House memorandum to Donald Rumsfeld, July 11, 1975, concerning the death of Frank Olson (olson_documents.pdf). https://archive.org/details/FrankOlson-CIA-LSD
 [^15]: U.S. Senate, *Military Situation in the Far East*, hearings before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, 1951, testimony of George C. Marshall. https://archive.org/details/militarysituatio01unit
 [^16]: Hans V. Tofte to Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, letter dated April 25, 1951, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP80R01731R003100200043-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80r01731r003100200043-3
 [^17]: Book review of Ernest Volkmann, *Warriors of the Night* (Morrow), sanitized copy, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP90-00965R000302170017-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000302170017-4
 [^18]: Press clipping dated August 3, 1966, "CIA Official Under Probe Reports $19,000 Theft," CIA CREST document CIA-RDP75-00001R000100230005-7; Radio TV Reports, Inc., broadcast transcripts of August 3, 1966 ([[WTOP-TV]], "Tofte Interviewed," and [[WRC Radio]], "Quote Hans Tofte"), CIA CREST documents CIA-RDP75-00001R000400390060-6 and CIA-RDP75-00001R000400390066-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000100230005-7
 [^19]: Peter Dale Scott, "Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand and Burma," *The Asia-Pacific Journal* 8, issue 44, no. 2 (November 1, 2010), chapter 3 of *American War Machine*. Scott's account is sole source for the passages so cited. https://archive.org/details/operation-paper-the-united-states-and-drugs-in-thailand-and-burma
 [^20]: Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Allison) to the Under Secretary of State (Bruce), "KMT Troops in Burma Problem," November 18, 1952, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, East Asia and the Pacific, Volume XII, Part 2*, document 28. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v12p2/d28
 [^21]: Memorandum by Allison to Bruce, "KMT Troops in Burma," January 9, 1953, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, East Asia and the Pacific, Volume XII, Part 2*, document 30. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v12p2/d30
 [^22]: CIA, Office of National Estimates, "Terms of Reference; SIE-4: Significance of the Communist Psychological Warfare Campaign Alleging Use of Biological Warfare by the US in Korea," March 21, 1952, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP79S01011A000600050031-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79s01011a000600050031-5
 [^23]: Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China, Peking, August 31, 1952, conclusion and appendices. https://archive.org/details/isc-full-report-pub-copy
 [^24]: Kathryn Weathersby, "Deceiving the Deceivers: Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and the Allegations of Bacteriological Weapons Use in Korea," and Milton Leitenberg, "New Russian Evidence on the Korean War Biological Warfare Allegations: Background and Analysis," with the editors' note, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (Winter 1998). https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/cwihp-bulletin-11
 [^25]: National Archives catalogue entry for *Bacteriological Warfare in Korea* (1952), NARA ARC 646593, as described in the archive.org copy. https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.646593
 [^26]: George W. Merck, Special Consultant on Biological Warfare, "Origins and Development of a Biological Warfare Program," report to the Secretary of War, National Archives copy. https://archive.org/details/activities-of-the-united-states-in-the-field-of-biological-warfare
 [^27]: "The Report of 'G'," translation of Unit 731 glanders experiments on human subjects, prepared for the Chemical Corps Research and Development Command, Fort Detrick, as described in the archive.org catalogue. https://archive.org/details/fort_detrick-report_of_g
 [^28]: Edward Drea, Greg Bradsher, Robert Hanyok, James Lide, Michael Petersen and Daqing Yang, *Researching Japanese War Crimes Records: Introductory Essays* (Washington: National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, 2006), pp. 96-99 and notes 63-67 (citing NA RG 165, entry 468, "SANACC 351/3," and "Summary Report of B.W. Investigations," December 12, 1947, NA RG 175). The Hill and Victor figure is printed in the volume with an illegible currency symbol, read here as yen. https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf
 [^29]: Interagency Working Group, *Final Report to Congress*, Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act, April 2007, chapters on Japanese war crimes records and the Army's records. https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/reports/final-report-2007.pdf
 [^30]: Seymour M. Hersh, *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* (Random House, 1991), chapter 2. Sole source for the passages so cited.
--- a/EVENTS/MAJOR_CONFLICTS/Osirak
+++ b/EVENTS/MAJOR_CONFLICTS/Osirak
@ -4,28 +4,263 @@ aliases:
  - Osirak bombing
  - Operation Opera
  - Operation Babylon
  - Osirak
  - Osiraq
  - Osirak raid
  - Raid on Osirak
  - Israeli strike on Osirak
  - Tammuz reactor
 created: 2026-05-17
-updated: 2026-05-17
+updated: 2026-10-07
 tags:
  - Event
  - Military
  - Israel
  - Iraq
  - France
  - Iran
  - Nuclear
  - Mossad
  - NuclearProliferation
  - KH11
 category: "Major Conflict"
-summary: "1981 Israeli air strike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak near Baghdad, carried out with U.S.-supplied F-16s and condemned internationally."
+summary: "The June 7, 1981 Israeli strike on Iraq's French-supplied Osirak reactor drew Security Council Resolution 487 and a U.S. suspension of F-16 deliveries to Israel."
 start: 1981-06-07
 location: "Osirak, Iraq"
 relations:
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Menachem Begin]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "ordered and announced the raid"
    fn: 19
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Ilan Ramon]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "F-16 pilot, last aircraft in the formation"
    fn: 20
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Amos Yadlin]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "F-16 pilot in the raid"
    fn: 21
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Yiftach Spektor]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "F-16 pilot in the raid"
    fn: 20
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Aviem Sella]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "air force colonel involved in the raid"
    fn: 22
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Raphael Eitan]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "chief of staff, wrote the order for the strike"
    fn: 20
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[David Ivry]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "commander of the air force, addressee of the order"
    fn: 20
 ---
-Osirak bombing refers to the Israeli air strike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, twelve miles southeast of Baghdad, on June 7, 1981. The raid was carried out by Israeli F-16s, which had been authorized for purchase by [[Israel]] in 1975 for "defensive purposes only."[^1]
+The Osirak bombing (Operation Opera) was the Israeli air strike of June 7, 1981 on the Osirak research reactor at the [[Tuwaitha]] nuclear research center near [[Baghdad]], [[Iraq]], a reactor supplied by [[France]]. A [[State Department]] letter to the Speaker of the [[United States Congress|House of Representatives]] states that the [[Israeli Air Force]] units that took part were reportedly equipped with defense articles furnished by the [[United States]] under the Foreign Military Sales program, including [[F-15 Eagle|F-15]] and [[F-16 Fighting Falcon|F-16]] aircraft.[^1] [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that [[Israel]] had been authorized in 1975 to begin buying seventy-five F-16s "for defensive purposes only," and placed the reactor "twelve miles southeast of Baghdad."[^2]
-Upon learning of the bombing, U.S. President [[Ronald Reagan]] privately expressed delight, remarking, "Well. Boys will be boys." Despite this, the [[State Department]] formally condemned the bombing, and some of Reagan's high command, including [[Caspar Weinberger]] and [[George H.W. Bush]], proposed sanctions against Israel. However, the suspension of F-16 deliveries was lifted two months later.[^1]
+### The French reactor
-Within Israel, the bombing was controversial. [[Yitzhak Hofi]], the director of [[Mossad]], and Major General [[Yehoshua Saguy]], chief of military intelligence, both opposed the attack, primarily because there was no evidence that [[Iraq]] was yet capable of building a bomb. [[Yigael Yadin]], the deputy prime minister, also dissented. Saguy argued that the adverse reaction in [[Washington, D.C.]] would be a more serious national security threat to Israel than the Iraqi reactor. Prime Minister [[Menachem Begin]], however, was buoyed by the success and unilaterally announced the Israeli coup, defending the operation by stating that another Holocaust would have occurred if the reactor had not been destroyed.[^1]
+In 1974 Iraq opened contacts with France on a nuclear cooperation agreement. A State Department cable of June 11, 1981 transmits an Israeli Foreign Ministry briefing paper issued on June 9, which states that Iraq first asked for a 500 megawatt gas-graphite reactor, a type developed in France in the 1950s, primarily for producing hundreds of kilograms of plutonium for military use. France declined, on the ground that production of that reactor type had been discontinued years earlier. Iraq then bought an Osiris-type research reactor, which the Iraqis named Osirak, and a one megawatt training reactor of the ISIS type. Both were in the final stages of completion at Tuwaitha.[^3]
-Begin also made a controversial statement at a British diplomatic reception, claiming that the Israeli planes had destroyed a secret underground facility at Osirak intended for the assembly of Iraqi nuclear bombs. Israeli officials knew this description was not of a facility in Iraq, but rather of a secret underground facility in Israel at [[Dimona]]. They attempted to downplay his remarks by stating he had misspoken and that the facility was only four meters deep.[^1]
+The same paper states that Iraq insisted France supply fuel enriched to 93 percent, and that France undertook to provide about 82 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium for operating the reactors, which it says came from France's military arsenal, the force de frappe.[^3] The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, identified in the cable only as Lavi, said on June 11 that for five years Israel had tried to persuade France not to provide Iraq with a nuclear weapons capability.[^4]
-Following the bombing, [[Ariel Sharon]] concluded that the [[United States]] was not a reliable strategic ally. He then turned to a clandestine Israeli intelligence agency under his defense ministry, which began intercepting intelligence on the [[Middle East]] and [[Soviet Union]] from sensitive American agencies.[^1]
+A [[Central Intelligence Agency]] intelligence assessment of June 1983 lists the French consortium CERBAG as general contractor for the 17 Tammuz project. It states that CERBAG was controlled by [[Technicatome]], the Societe Generale pour les Techniques Nouvelles, Comsip Entreprise, the [[Constructions Navales et Industrielles de la Mediterranee|Constructions Navales et Industrielles de la Mediterranee]] (CNIM) and Bouygues Offshore. The same assessment designates the Osirak reactor as Tammuz-1 and the 800-kilowatt ISIS reactor as Tammuz-2 and states that each reactor was to be fueled with about 12 kilograms of 93-percent-enriched uranium.[^5] Hersh wrote, citing French and Israeli officials he interviewed, that many of the French companies that had built [[Dimona]] in the early 1960s were working under contract for Iraq, with the approval of the French [[Commissariat a l'energie atomique|Atomic Energy Commission]], at the time of the Osirak bombing.[^6]
-### Footnotes
+### Sabotage at Seyne-sur-Mer, 1979
-[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 1.
+In mid-1979 France was reported not to have abandoned its commitment to supply Iraq with two experimental reactors "to replace those mysteriously blown up in April at [[La Seyne-sur-Mer|Seyne-sur-Mer]] shortly before they were to be shipped to Iraq."[^7]
 The Israeli nuclear engineer [[Micky Ron]], a former Dimona scientist, described the operation in his Hebrew memoir "The Quiet Sabra." According to his account, in 1979 Israel launched an operation at La Seyne-sur-Mer, west of [[Toulon]], against warehouses of a company that made parts for nuclear ships and reactors, setting off a series of explosions to destroy tank cores bound for Iraq that were to be loaded on a ship days later. The explosions, in his account, heavily damaged but did not completely destroy the tank, and that an hour after the explosion an anonymous caller told French newspapers that an unknown organization of environmental activists had claimed responsibility. It adds that French intelligence suspected the caller was from the [[Mossad]] psychological warfare and disinformation division.[^8] The CIA assessment of 1983 lists CNIM among the companies controlling CERBAG.[^5]
 The Paris weekly [[L'Express]] reported on October 18, 1980 that Israeli commandos "had already sabotaged the core of the La Seyne reactor near Toulon."[^9]
 ### The killing of Yahia El-Meshad, 1980
 [[Yahya El Mashad|Yahia El-Meshad]], an Egyptian-born nuclear scientist who worked in the Iraqi program, was found dead in a room at the Hotel Meridien in [[Paris]] in June 1980. [[ABC News]] reported in 2010 that French police found him on June 14, 1980, bludgeoned to death, that the body of a prostitute believed to have witnessed the killing was found later, that no one was arrested, and that press accounts said the French suspected Israeli intelligence.[^10] The journalist [[Ronen Bergman]] wrote in [[Newsweek]] in December 2010 that Mossad agents came across El Mashad by chance in the hotel, had orders to kill him on sight, and, lacking their weapons, broke into his room and beat him to death, and that a prostitute who told police she heard what sounded like an argument outside the room died in a hit-and-run shortly after her preliminary statement.[^11] In [[The Christian Science Monitor]] of October 10, 1991, [[Victor Ostrovsky]], a former Mossad officer who wrote a book about the agency, was reported as claiming that Israel's intelligence service killed Vahia al-Mashad, who headed Iraq's nuclear project, during a June 1980 trip to Paris to complete a deal for Iraq; the article states that an Israeli Embassy official in Washington did not respond to requests for comment and that Mashad's widow went to Baghdad, where the Iraqi government supported her family because he "had died in the line of duty."[^12]
 Senator [[Alan Cranston]] told the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] on June 18, 1981 that he had learned from non-[[International Atomic Energy Agency|IAEA]] sources that El-Meshad, "the Egyptian-born scientist who was a principal in the Iraqi program until he was murdered in Paris last year," had unsuccessfully advocated Egyptian production of nuclear weapons through the same course the Iraqis were apparently pursuing. Cranston listed that course as the purchase of a very large high-flux materials test reactor, irradiation of fuel elements and a uranium blanket in the reactor core to produce plutonium, and development of a small-scale reprocessing capability to separate the plutonium from unsafeguarded uranium.[^13]
 ### The Iranian strike of September 30, 1980
 [[Tom Cooper]] and [[Farzad Bishop]] wrote in [[Air Enthusiast]] (March/April 2004) that the Iranian operation against Tuwaitha, which they name Operation Scorch Sword, followed Iraq's invasion of [[Iran]] on September 22, 1980, the start of the [[Iran-Iraq War]]. They wrote that on September 27, 1980 the Israeli military intelligence chief [[Yehoshua Saguy]] publicly expressed surprise that Iran had not yet attempted to bomb the Iraqi reactor under construction, and that the [[Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force|Iranian air force]] planned the strike on an Israeli suggestion that it target the nuclear research laboratories, the reactor control building and the training facilities rather than the reactor itself. According to their account, four [[F-4 Phantom II|F-4E Phantoms]] of the 33rd Tactical Fighter Squadron took off from [[Hamedan]] on September 30, refueled from a [[Boeing 707]] tanker escorted by [[F-14 Tomcat|F-14A Tomcats]], and split into two pairs, one of which struck a power plant south of Baghdad while the other released twelve Mk.82 bombs on the Tuwaitha site in six seconds without drawing fire. They wrote that Western reports regarded the strike as a miss or as causing minor damage, that Iraq and France called it a failure, that repairs were reported finished by the end of November 1980, and that Iraq and France suspected the aircraft had come from Israel. They also wrote that French intelligence services later reported the attack was carried out by "two unidentified Israeli Phantoms," that Israel denied this, and that an Iranian RF-4E reconnaissance flight over Tuwaitha on November 30, 1980 "became so important for the Israelis."[^14]
 The CIA National Intelligence Daily of October 1, 1980 states that a redacted source "has confirmed press reports that two Iranian F-4 fighters damaged the Iraqi nuclear research center in Baghdad," and, in a redacted clause, that "only secondary buildings were hit"; it adds that neither country's military capability had been seriously damaged by the other's air attacks.[^15]
 On October 18, 1980 L'Express reported that the outer concrete dome of the Osirak building showed only limited visible damage, that the 75 French technicians present "when the bombing took place" had been "enjoined to remain silent," and that the project would fall at least a year behind schedule. The article attributed the attack to two Israeli Phantom aircraft that, it said, took the shortest route and flew over southern [[Syria]]. It quoted an unnamed "top French intelligence source" who called the flyers "magnificent pilots," and it reported that Israeli denials on the day after the raid had called the reports "antisemitic slanders."[^9] The same article reported that technicians from the French Atomic Energy Commission had serious misgivings as the date for the reactor's service approached, because the reactor could rapidly give Iraq a nuclear military capability.[^9]
 [[Jack Anderson]], writing with [[Ron McRae]] in a [[Washington Post]] column of June 16, 1981, wrote that he had reported on September 30, 1980 that the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] had warned President [[Jimmy Carter]] that the Israelis were planning to "take out" the Iraqi nuclear plant, and that an unsuccessful air strike against Osirak occurred on the day his column appeared. Because it came in the first days of the Iraqi-Iranian war, he wrote, it was widely supposed to be an Iranian venture. He wrote that the plane involved was an F-4 Phantom, "a jet the United States has supplied to both Iran and Israel," and that some intelligence people suspected an Israeli action although Israel did not claim the attack.[^16] Anderson quoted a Defense Intelligence Agency estimate from about eight months before the raid: "Prudently, we must assume that Israel is considering some sort of action to forestall Iraqi acquisition of a nuclear capability."[^16]
 At the State Department briefing of June 8, 1981, a reporter asked about "the alleged Iranian attack on this same facility" early in the Iran-Iraq War, and whether there had been charges at the time that it might have been an Israeli attack. The spokesman said he was "not confirming or denying or commenting on any possible attack last September." Asked whether the Department's first knowledge that the attack had occurred came from Israel, he answered yes.[^17] A cable reproducing Iraqi statements says that the Iranians had at the time hit the reactor slightly, and reports remarks by [[Saddam Hussein]] that the Iranian attack was useless because the reactor was being installed solely against Israel.[^18]
 ### Planning the raid
 Hersh wrote that the bombing had been debated at the highest levels of the Israeli government since late 1979. He wrote that Mossad director [[Yitzhak Hofi]] and military intelligence chief Saguy opposed the attack, "primarily because there was no evidence that Iraq was as yet capable of building a bomb," and that they were joined in futile dissent by Deputy Prime Minister [[Yigael Yadin]]. He wrote that at a late-1980 planning session Saguy argued that the adverse reaction in [[Washington, D.C.]] would be a more serious threat to Israel than the Iraqi reactor, and that Saguy was not told of the mission until June 4, three days before it was scheduled.[^19] The Cooper and Bishop account of September 1980 quoted above attributes to Saguy a public remark of September 27, 1980 about the Iranian air force and the reactor.[^14]
 In June 2021 the [[Israel Defense Forces]] Archive, as part of a digitization project, published documents on the strike, among them a partially redacted post-operational report that includes the army chief's written order for the strike, a 1980 government decision to plan the operation and deliberations over the date. The release included a note from army chief [[Raphael Eitan|Rafael Eitan]] to air force commander [[David Ivry]] about delaying the strike by a week because of a summit between [[Menachem Begin]] and [[Anwar Sadat]].[^20]
 ### The raid
 Hersh wrote that the mission planners, anxious to avoid international protest, had gone to extremes to mask the operation, that the Israeli planes were unmarked, and that the attack was carried out in two minutes.[^19] The Times of Israel reported, on the basis of the IDF Archive release, that [[Ilan Ramon]], later Israel's first astronaut, flew an F-16A in the last plane of the formation, and that a 2001 video recorded at a 20-year reunion of the mission's participants, hosted by the pilot [[Yiftach Spektor]], shows Ramon saying that his mother was a [[Holocaust]] survivor who was at [[Auschwitz]] and that he expected he might not return. The same report quotes the retired colonel [[Ze'ev Raz]], interviewed in 2016, describing Ramon's stress as the last pilot in the formation and stating that he had not previously dropped a bomb on a live mission.[^20] [[Amos Yadlin]], who flew in the mission, was described by [[Mosaic Magazine]] in February 2023 as Ramon's friend and former flight instructor who flew alongside him in the mission, and as having given an interview about Ramon to [[Menachem Butler]].[^21] Hersh wrote that Air Force Colonel [[Aviem Sella]], who was later the handler of the spy [[Jonathan Pollard]], had been involved in the 1981 bombing and was one of the Israeli Air Force's leading nuclear bombing and targeting experts.[^22]
 ### The attack and its announcement
 Hersh wrote that Begin "stunned his colleagues" by announcing the raid himself on June 8, and on June 9 said that "if the nuclear reactor had not been destroyed, another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people."[^19] A June 21 cable reports that Begin, responding to U.S. criticism, invoked "his familiar Holocaust analogy" and compared the threat of radioactive fallout to the gas used against Jewish children.[^23]
 Two days after the raid, at a British diplomatic reception, Begin said the planes had also destroyed a secret facility at Osirak where Iraqi bombs were to be assembled. Hersh wrote that Begin placed the facility forty meters below the reactor, that he said the Iraqi government had hidden it from the IAEA, and that Israeli government spokesmen said the next day that Begin had misspoken and that the depth was four meters. Hersh wrote that the appalled Israeli officials knew the description fitted a facility at Dimona, that Israeli officials told him Begin had visited the underground facility at Dimona and had been given a detailed memorandum about it in the days before the raid, and that one Israeli said of Begin: "He confused one with the other."[^24] At the State Department briefing of June 12, the spokesman noted that there had been at least one correction from Israel on the depth of the facility.[^25] In a footnote Hersh wrote that American experts concluded Israel had bombed only one of two major targets at the site, destroying the reactor but leaving the nearby reprocessing plant untouched.[^26]
 At the June 12 session of the IAEA Board of Governors, [[India]] asked the agency's director general, [[Sigvard Eklund]], to comment on Begin's statement. Eklund answered that the task of safeguards is to verify that no safeguarded nuclear material is diverted, that the agency is not to search facilities that contain no safeguarded material, and that the agency had not detected such a laboratory.[^27]
 Hersh wrote that about two weeks after the raid, Hofi gave an unprecedented newspaper interview, cited only by title under Israeli censorship, complaining about politicians who compromised secret intelligence.[^24] He wrote that Israeli officials said Iraq had begun moving Soviet-supplied [[Scud]] missiles closer to the Iraq-Jordan border after the raid, and that Israel had ordered the Dimona reactor and reprocessing plant to cease operations well before the bombing, keeping them out of service through the end of the year.[^28]
 Hersh wrote that after the bombing [[Ariel Sharon]] concluded that the United States was not a reliable strategic ally, and turned to a clandestine Israeli intelligence agency under his defense ministry, which began intercepting intelligence on the [[Middle East]] and [[Soviet Union]] from sensitive American agencies.[^29] Hersh later wrote that Sharon, after the September 1981 meetings in Washington, installed [[Rafael Eitan|Rafael (Rafi) Eitan]], a long-time clandestine operative he called a Sharon crony, as head of [[LAKAM]], the Office of Special Tasks, while Eitan kept his post as Begin's special assistant for counterterrorism.[^30]
 ### Washington's response
 Hersh wrote that when [[Richard V. Allen]], the national security adviser, informed [[Ronald Reagan]] of the raid by telephone as the President boarded a helicopter at [[Camp David]], Reagan said: "Well. Boys will be boys." He wrote that at a meeting the next morning [[Caspar Weinberger]] proposed canceling the F-16 sale, that Vice President [[George H.W. Bush]] and Chief of Staff [[James A. Baker III]] agreed some sanctions against Israel were essential, and that Reagan, by Allen's account, made clear with a gesture that he had no intention of taking such a step. He wrote that the State Department that afternoon issued a statement formally condemning the bombing, and that Allen recalled Reagan as "delighted" by the attack.[^2][^31]
 The Department's public line on June 12 was to wait for the Security Council debate. The spokesman said the Department had "no foreknowledge of Israeli plans for a raid," and that it had noted the [[Arab League]] resolution.[^25]
 A [[Tel Aviv]] cable of June 21 summarizes a [[Ha'aretz]] commentary that described an apparent clash between Weinberger and [[Alexander M. Haig, Jr.]] over influence on Reagan's Middle East decisions. The commentary noted Weinberger's former business interests in [[Saudi Arabia]] and his place in what it called the "California group" around the President. The cable's subject line reports that Begin blasted Weinberger but downplayed the tension.[^32]
 ### The United Nations and the IAEA
 The [[United Nations Security Council]] began its debate on June 12. On June 19, 1981 it adopted [[Security Council Resolution 487]], which the U.S. mission reported as adopted unanimously. The text strongly condemns the attack as "in clear violation of the United Nations Charter and the norms of international conduct," calls on Israel to refrain from such acts, and considers the attack "a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime which is the foundation of the [[Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty|NPT]]." It recognizes Iraq's sovereign right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, calls on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, holds that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress, and asks the Secretary-General to keep the Council informed.[^33]
 The U.S. statement by Ambassador [[Jeane Kirkpatrick]] said the United States did "not regard this as a perfect resolution." It noted that the United States had "voted against the resolution in the International Atomic Energy Agency" to which the Security Council text refers, and said that the U.S. judgment that Israeli actions violated the Charter was "based solely on the conviction that Israel failed to exhaust peaceful means for the resolution of this dispute."[^33]
 The IAEA Board of Governors adopted a resolution on June 12 on the "military attack on the Iraq nuclear research centre and its implications for the Agency."[^33] A U.S. summary of the June Board session records that the United States could not support one operative paragraph, because receipt of IAEA assistance "is a right of all IAEA members," and that the draft recommended that the General Conference suspend the exercise by Israel of its privileges.[^34] The French governor on the Board reported that one French citizen had been killed in the attack and that about ten Iraqis had been wounded.[^35]
 Cranston's June 18 statement describes the inspection record. He said he had received four internal documents from American sources within the IAEA, which contained an estimate that Iraq could have produced enough plutonium each year in the Osirak reactor for up to three bombs, and a study conducted for the agency earlier in 1981 concluding that an Osiris-type reactor could produce as much as 24 kilograms of plutonium per year. The most recent inspection in Iraq before the raid, in January 1981, was reportedly conducted with the lights in the facility turned off, was limited to a visual inspection of the fuel, and was carried out by flashlight. Several fuel elements could not be verified because they were locked in a vault and the key could not be located at the time. Cranston also said that since 1976 only Soviet and Hungarian inspectors had visited Iraq, that Iraq had informally exercised a right to object to American inspectors, and that an American inspector at the IAEA in the section responsible for Iraq, [[Roger Richter]], had resigned the previous Tuesday and would testify before the committee.[^13]
 ### F-16 deliveries
 On June 10, 1981 the Washington Post reported that the [[Pentagon]] said Reagan must decide by Friday whether to proceed with the scheduled delivery of four more F-16s to Israel. Haig said that no decisions had been made about the F-16s awaiting shipment, and that a report by the administration on whether Israel had violated U.S. law by using American-supplied aircraft against the Iraqi installation should be ready in 24 to 48 hours.[^36]
 The Secretary of State's letter to Speaker [[Thomas P. O'Neill]] states that a substantial violation of the 1952 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement "may have occurred." The agreement, as the letter quotes it, provides that the equipment "will be used solely to maintain its internal security, its legitimate self-defense, or to permit it to participate in the defense of the area," and that Israel "will not undertake any act of aggression." The letter reports that the President had "directed the suspension for the time being of the immediate shipment of four F-16 aircraft."[^1]
 Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed regret over the suspension and said Israel had acted in self-defense against Iraq, which "declares itself to be in a state of war against Israel since 1948."[^4] A State Department briefing transcript in the same release records that Israel had ordered 75 F-16s, of which 53 had been delivered.[^37] Hersh wrote that the White House announced the suspension of the scheduled delivery of four more F-16s, and that two months later, with little fanfare, the suspension was lifted and the aircraft were delivered without incident.[^31]
 Soviet television commentary of June 14, as summarized in a State Department cable, said that the raid demonstrated that Begin could act with "impunity."[^38]
 ### Satellite and intelligence claims
 A [[Beirut]] cable of June 11, 1981 reports that [[Yasir Arafat]] claimed the Israeli raid had been carried out "with full assistance from American satellites and radar," and that it took place with official American approval.[^39]
 Hersh wrote that a few British intelligence officials immediately suspected that Israel had used high-resolution [[KH-11]] photography to target Osirak and complained to their American counterparts, that high-resolution satellite photographs of the destroyed reactor were on the desks of Washington decision-makers within hours of the mission, and that "the British were right, as a subsequent highly secret investigation showed: Israel had gotten much valuable intelligence from the KH-11." He wrote that [[William J. Casey]], the director of central intelligence, had early in his tenure ordered that Israeli liaison officers be given a private office near CIA headquarters, and that after Osirak he authorized a small ad hoc committee to review the imagery-sharing agreement. According to Hersh, the review found that in little more than two years the Israelis had expanded a limited agreement to the point where they could extract virtually any photograph they wished, including extensive KH-11 coverage of western [[Russia]] and [[Moscow]]; he quoted one military man as saying "The Israelis did everything except task the bird." Hersh wrote that Casey, who had made a first secret trip to Israel as CIA director a few months earlier, had not been told in advance of the attack.[^40] He wrote that it was agreed after the review that photographs would continue to flow to Israel with the 1979 restrictions reinforced, that Allen relayed this to Sharon in the fall of 1981, and that the review group accepted Israel's explanation that it had obtained the imagery of the Soviet Union solely to monitor supply links between Russia and its allies in Syria and Iraq.[^41][^29]
 A [[National Photographic Interpretation Center]] memorandum of June 27, 1981 reports increased defensive measures around the [[Baghdad Nuclear Research Center]], including 23 barrage balloons around the periphery of the center and the movement of more than half of its antiaircraft defenses, ten antiaircraft guns and two ZSU-23/4 self-propelled guns, to new positions atop earthen barricades on the eastern side. It also reports that three small holes had been made in the roof of the underground building north of the Osirak reactor building and that an unidentified piece of equipment may have been drilling a fourth.[^42]
 Anderson's June 16, 1981 column reported that the Pentagon estimated Iraq had enough raw material for as many as four bombs and could have one ready for testing within six months. Anderson wrote that American intelligence analysts feared the raid might have accelerated the nuclear arms race, and that the Soviet-built reactor, which was not hit, could be used to assemble Iraqi bombs.[^16]
 Anderson's June 18, 1981 column quoted a Defense Intelligence Agency report written several months before the raid: "Iraq has certainly developed a nuclear capability, unmatched by its allies, with a potential for threatening Israel which has not existed before."[^43]
 ### Mossad and the uranium reports
 On June 23, 1981 a Tel Aviv cable reported that Israeli media had carried reports that [[Brazil]] had warned Israel relations were under review over reports, allegedly spread by Mossad, that Brazil had supplied eight tons of uranium to Iraq. The cable records that the Israeli newspaper [[Yedioth Ahronoth]] stated it had been made clear to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry that the reports were "a figment of the imagination and totally groundless," and it notes that the Israeli journalist [[Uri Dan]] had written on June 16 that Iraq had procured hundreds of tons of uranium from [[Portugal]], [[Nigeria]], Brazil and elsewhere in addition to French deliveries.[^44]
 On June 25, 1981 a Tel Aviv cable reported that the head of Mossad, who is never publicly identified by name in Israel, had initiated a newspaper interview the previous week with the Ha'aretz military correspondent [[Ze'ev Schiff]]. The cable describes the interview as an "apparently almost desperate attempt to stem the flood of intelligence and related data being announced and published on the Iraqi reactor raid." In it the Mossad head said that damage had already been caused in the intelligence sphere, that sources had been endangered, and that there were risks to their willingness to cooperate "with us." The cable reports that the day after the interview appeared, Begin reportedly reprimanded the head of Mossad, and that a source said Begin had merely called the Mossad director's attention to the unusual nature of the interview.[^45] Hersh wrote that the interview was Hofi's.[^24]
 [^1]: U.S. Department of State, Secretary of State to Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, letter on the Israeli attack and the Arms Export Control Act, 1981. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000101. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, p. 8 (chapter 1, "A Secret Agreement"). Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^3]: U.S. Department of State, Tel Aviv embassy cable 9271, June 11, 1981, "MFA Briefing Paper on Israeli 'Raid' on Iraqi Nuclear Reactor," text of the Foreign Ministry briefing paper of June 9. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000187. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^4]: U.S. Department of State, Tel Aviv embassy cable 9282, June 11, 1981, "Israel 'Regrets' U.S. Decision to Suspend Delivery of F-16s." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000119. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^5]: Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, *The Iraqi Nuclear Program: Progress Despite Setbacks*, intelligence assessment SW 83-10040CX, June 1983 (information as of May 1, 1983). CIA Reading Room document 0000875771. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0000875771
 [^6]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 64, note. Sole source for the passage so cited.
 [^7]: Joint Publications Research Service, Near East/North Africa Report, JPRS L/8560, July 6, 1979 (FOUO 28/79), reprinting a 1979 article copyright IC Magazines Ltd. CIA CREST document cia-rdp82-00850r000100070005-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp82-00850r000100070005-8
 [^8]: "Seeking to thwart Iraq's nuclear programme, Israel bombed French warehouse, book claims," Middle East Monitor, June 14, 2021, summarizing a Ha'aretz article based on Michael (Micky) Ron, *The Quiet Sabra* (Hebrew memoir). Sole source for the passages so cited; the Mossad attribution is Ron's. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210614-seeking-to-thwart-iraqs-nuclear-programme-israel-bombed-french-warehouse-book-claims/
 [^9]: L'Express (Paris), October 18, 1980, p. 125, "Damage to Osirak Dome Reported," reprinted in Joint Publications Research Service, Worldwide Report: Nuclear Development and Proliferation, JPRS L/9433, December 9, 1980, pp. 33-34. CIA CREST document cia-rdp82-00850r000300060014-7. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp82-00850r000300060014-7
 [^10]: Mark Schone, "Israel's Greatest Hits: Before Dubai, a History of Targeted Killing," ABC News, February 2010. https://abcnews.com/Blotter/israels-greatest-hits-dubai-history-targeted-killing-now/story?id=9856671
 [^11]: Ronen Bergman, "Killing the Killers," Newsweek, December 13, 2010. Sole source for the passages so cited. https://www.newsweek.com/killing-killers-69081
 [^12]: Carol Berger, "Iraqi Files Seized By UN Inspectors Seen As Possible 'Hit Lists'," The Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 1991. Sole source for the Ostrovsky claim. https://csmonitor.com/1991/1010/10032.html
 [^13]: Statement of Senator Alan Cranston before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, June 18, 1981, as transmitted in State Department cable STATE 160720 to the Vienna embassy. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000073. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^14]: Cooper, Tom, and Farzad Bishop. "Target: Saddam's Reactor: Israeli and Iranian Operations Against Iraqi Plans to Develop Nuclear Weapons." *Air Enthusiast* 110 (March/April 2004). Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^15]: Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Daily, October 1, 1980 (CO NID 80-231JX), Situation Report, Iraq-Iran, pp. 1-2; released August 2005. https://unredacted.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/iran-iraq1.pdf
 [^16]: Jack Anderson with Ron McRae, "Raid by Israel May Fuel A-Arms Race," Washington Post, June 16, 1981. CIA CREST document cia-rdp90-00965r000100160090-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000100160090-8
 [^17]: U.S. Department of State, press briefing transcript of June 8, 1981, transmitted as cable STATE 149439. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000012. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^18]: State Department cable reproducing Iraqi statements on the reactor. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000088. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^19]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 9-10. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^20]: "40 years after Iraq reactor raid, IDF reveals Ilan Ramon's fears, intel sketches," The Times of Israel, June 22, 2021, reporting an IDF Archive and Defense Ministry release. https://www.timesofisrael.com/40-years-after-iraq-reactor-raid-idf-reveals-ilan-ramons-fears-intel-sketches/
 [^21]: "Remembering Ilan Ramon, Astronaut and Hero," Mosaic Magazine, February 2, 2023 (introduction to an interview of Amos Yadlin by Menachem Butler). https://ideas.tikvah.org/mosaic/picks/remembering-ilan-ramon-astronaut-and-hero
 [^22]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 286. Sole source for the passage so cited.
 [^23]: State Department cable of June 21, 1981 reporting Begin's remarks on U.S. criticism of the raid. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000026. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^24]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 10-11. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^25]: U.S. Department of State, press briefing transcript of June 12, 1981, "Department Press Briefing June 12, 1981." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000098. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^26]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 10, note. Sole source for the passage so cited.
 [^27]: U.S. Mission to Vienna cable 6873, June 12, 1981, "Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Reactor: Further Statement by IAEA Director General," with the text of Sigvard Eklund's statement. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000058. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^28]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 12. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^29]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 16. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^30]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 287-288. Sole source for the passage so cited.
 [^31]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 9. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^32]: Tel Aviv embassy cable of June 21, 1981, "Begin Blasts Weinberger but Downplays Tension," summarizing a Ha'aretz commentary. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000126. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^33]: U.S. Mission to the United Nations cable 2074, June 19, 1981, transmitting the text of Security Council Resolution 487 and the U.S. statement by Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000076. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^34]: U.S. Mission to Vienna cable on the June 1981 IAEA Board session, "IAEA June Board: Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Research Center." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000051. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^35]: U.S. Mission to Vienna cable 6711, June 1981, "IAEA Board of Governors: Israeli Attack." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000008. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^36]: State Department cable STATE 151497, June 10, 1981, "Morning News Summary of Wednesday, June 10, 1981," quoting George C. Wilson and John P. Goshko, Washington Post. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000025. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^37]: State Department press briefing transcript (question on the status of F-16 transfers). FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000090. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^38]: State Department cable 156211, June 15, 1981, "Soviet Media on Israel's Attack," reporting the Moscow embassy's summary of Soviet coverage. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000066. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^39]: Beirut embassy cable, June 11, 1981, "Israeli Raid on Iraq: Claims of U.S. Involvement." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000042. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^40]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 12-14 and p. 13, note. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^41]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 15. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^42]: National Photographic Interpretation Center, "Increased Defensive Measures, Baghdad Nuclear Research Center, Iraq," attachment to memorandum Z-30587/81, June 27, 1981. CIA CREST document cia-rdp81t00618r000100820001-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp81t00618r000100820001-8
 [^43]: Jack Anderson, "Pentagon Pipeline," Washington Post, June 18, 1981, quoting a Defense Intelligence Agency report. CIA CREST document cia-rdp90-00965r000100160089-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000100160089-0
 [^44]: Tel Aviv embassy cable 9921, June 23, 1981, "Israel Denies 'Mossad' Has Spread Allegations That Brazil Supplied Uranium to Iraq." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000143. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
 [^45]: Tel Aviv embassy cable 10019, June 25, 1981, "Mossad Concerned About GOI Intelligence Leaks." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000149. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
--- a/EVENTS/MAJOR_CONFLICTS/Yom
+++ b/EVENTS/MAJOR_CONFLICTS/Yom
@ -1,20 +1,162 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - Yom Kippur War
  - 1973 Yom Kippur War
  - 1973 Arab-Israeli War
  - Arab-Israeli War of 1973
  - October War
  - Ramadan War
  - Yom Kippur
 category: "Major Conflict"
 tags:
  - Event
  - Conflict
  - MiddleEast
-category: "Major Conflict"
+  - IntelligenceFailure
-summary: "1973 Arab-Israeli War that began with coordinated Egyptian and Syrian attacks, leading to a nuclear alert and reshaping regional power dynamics."
+  - NuclearAlert
  - Airlift
  - OilEmbargo
 summary: "The 1973 war in which coordinated Egyptian and Syrian attacks produced an intelligence failure, an Israeli nuclear alert, an American airlift, an oil embargo and a United States DEFCON III alert."
 start: 1973-10-06
 end: 1973-10-25
 location: ["Sinai Peninsula", "Golan Heights"]
 updated: 2026-10-07
 relations:
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Israel]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1973-10-06
    end: 1973-10-25
    role: "belligerent; recipient of the American airlift"
    fn: 2
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Egypt]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1973-10-06
    end: 1973-10-25
    role: "belligerent; attacked across the Suez Canal on October 6"
    fn: 2
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Syria]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1973-10-06
    end: 1973-10-25
    role: "belligerent; attacked the Golan Heights on October 6"
    fn: 2
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Soviet Union]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1973-10-24
    end: 1973-10-25
    role: "sender of the Brezhnev letter of October 24, 1973 that preceded the American DEFCON III alert"
    fn: 14
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Henry A. Kissinger]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1973-10-16
    end: 1973-10-25
    role: "Secretary of State; participant in the Washington Special Actions Group meetings"
    fn: 25
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Richard Nixon]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1973-10-06
    end: 1973-10-25
    role: "President; authorized the airlift on October 12, 1973"
    fn: 15
  - type: investigated
    with: "[[Agranat Commission]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 1974-04-01
    role: "commission of inquiry into the surprise at the outset of the war; interim report April 1, 1974"
    fn: 2
 ---
-The Yom Kippur War, also known as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, began on Saturday, October 6, 1973, when [[Egypt]] attacked across the [[Sinai]] and [[Syria]] invaded the [[Golan Heights]]. The initial days of the war were a stunning rout for [[Israel]], with significant losses in tanks and aircraft. Egyptian forces breached the Bar-Lev defense line in the [[Sinai]], and Syrian forces advanced to the edge of [[Galilee]].[^1]
+The Yom Kippur War, also called the October War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Ramadan War, began on Saturday, October 6, 1973, when [[Egypt]] attacked across the [[Suez Canal]] into the [[Sinai Peninsula]] and [[Syria]] attacked the [[Golan Heights]], both striking [[Israel]] on the Jewish holy day. [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that the first days were "a stunning rout" for Israel, with 500 tanks and 49 aircraft (14 of them F-4 Phantoms) lost in the first three days, that Egyptian forces equipped with missiles and electronic defenses "blasted through the Bar-Lev defense line" along the canal, and that Syrian forces rolled through the Israeli defenses on the Golan and "moved to the edge of Galilee."[^1] The [[Agranat Commission]] recorded that the Egyptians crossed the canal despite the line of Israeli outposts, and that the Syrians attacked with 1,400 tanks against 177 Israeli tanks and advanced almost to the edge of the heights overlooking the [[Sea of Galilee]].[^2]
-In response to the desperate situation, [[Israel]] called its first nuclear alert and began arming its nuclear arsenal. This alert was used to pressure [[Washington, D.C.]] into a major policy change, specifically demanding an emergency airlift of replacement arms and ammunition. The Israeli leadership, including [[Golda Meir]] and [[Moshe Dayan]], resolved to implement three critical decisions: rally collapsing forces for a counterattack, arm and target its nuclear arsenal for the [[Samson Option]] in case of total collapse, and inform [[Washington, D.C.]] of its nuclear action to demand resupply.[^1]
+### The warning
-The initial target list for the nuclear weapons included Egyptian and Syrian military headquarters near [[Cairo]] and [[Damascus]]. While no weapons were targeted on the [[Soviet Union]], it was understood that the Soviets would quickly learn of the nuclear arming. The arming of nuclear weapons also served the purpose of forcing the [[United States]] to begin a massive resupply of the Israeli military, as the Israeli cabinet was enraged by what they perceived as an American strategy of delaying resupply to facilitate land-for-peace bargaining.[^1]
+On October 5, 1973, [[Zvi Zamir]], the head of the [[Mossad]], sent a five-page Hebrew cable to the military secretary of Prime Minister [[Golda Meir]]. The Israel State Archives released it on September 17, 2018. Its first line read, "The Egyptian army and the Syrian army are poised to launch an attack on Israel on Saturday 6.10.73 at dusk." The cable gave the source's assessment as a "99 percent chance" that the attack would be launched on October 6, and suggested that "it may be possible to prevent the outbreak of war by publishing information about it on the radio and in newspapers."[^3] The source was [[Ashraf Marwan]], a son-in-law of [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]] and an aide to [[Anwar Sadat]].[^3][^2]
 A telegram from London reached the Mossad on the night of October 4 and 5, 1973. [[Alfred Eini]], an aide to Zamir, testified to the Agranat Commission that he understood it "to be a warning that there would be a war," and that he telephoned Zamir that night.[^4] At the meeting of the Prime Minister's advisers that opened at 8:05 a.m. on October 6, the Chief of Staff, [[David Elazar]], said that he had read the telegram sent by Marwan to Zamir and that it was "an authentic message, though it is a very short notice for us." Defense Minister [[Moshe Dayan]] opposed a preemptive strike and proposed a smaller call-up of reserves than the 200,000 that Elazar asked for; Golda Meir decided for the larger mobilization.[^2]
 The Agranat Commission, which the Israeli government established on November 21, 1973, held 156 sessions and heard 90 witnesses. Its interim report, presented on April 1, 1974, dealt mainly with the circumstances that produced the surprise and examined the functionality of the prime minister, the defense minister and the heads of the military. A second report followed on July 10, 1974, and a final report of a more general character came after it.[^2]
 The [[Central Intelligence Agency]] conducted its own review. A preliminary post-mortem dated December 20, 1973, titled "The Performance of the Intelligence Community before the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973," concluded that "there was an intelligence failure in the weeks preceding the outbreak of war in the Middle East on 6 October."[^5] The same report stated that the information gathered by the collection elements "was sufficient to prompt such a warning" and was "not conclusive but was plentiful, ominous, and often accurate."[^5] Shortly before the war, the Director of Central Intelligence, [[William Colby]], had initiated a reorganization of the Agency's estimative process.[^5]
 ### Opening days and the nuclear question
 In his 1991 book on the [[Samson Option]], Hersh wrote that Dayan had told the censored press at his daily briefing on Monday, October 8 that "the situation is desperate. Everything is lost. We must withdraw," and had said that "this is the end of the Third Temple."[^1] Hersh wrote that Dayan's pessimism led to an all-night meeting that day in Golda Meir's office in [[Tel Aviv]], attended by Dayan, Meir, Elazar, deputy prime minister [[Yigal Allon]], Meir's military aide [[Yisrael Leor]] and the minister without portfolio [[Israel Galili]]. Hersh wrote that the leadership resolved to rally its collapsing forces, to arm and target its nuclear arsenal in case of total collapse, and to inform [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] of the step and demand an emergency airlift.[^6] He wrote that the launchers at [[Hirbat Zachariah]] would be made operational, along with eight specially marked F-4 aircraft on twenty-four-hour alert at [[Tel Nof]], and that the initial target list included the Egyptian and Syrian military headquarters near [[Cairo]] and [[Damascus]].[^6] Hersh wrote that no weapons were targeted on the [[Soviet Union]] but that "there was little doubt that the Soviets would quickly learn what was going on," because Israeli intelligence was intercepting encoded signals from presumed Soviet operatives inside the country that morning.[^7] He added that Elazar's published diary recorded the night of October 8 only as "Crucial meeting," that a source said some senior officials of the nuclear establishment, though not [[Shalheveth Freier]], accused the senior officials of panicking, and that a separate preliminary briefing by technical experts from [[Dimona]], led by Freier, described the weapons and targets available for immediate assembly.[^7]
 Hersh quoted [[Mohammed Heikal]], the editor of [[Al-Ahram]], as saying that the Soviet Union told the Egyptian leadership early in the war that the "Israelis had three warheads assembled and ready," through a Soviet intelligence officer who passed the message to the Egyptian chief of staff, [[Mohammed Abdel Ghany el-Gamasy]].[^7] Hersh wrote, citing former Israeli government officials, that arming the weapons had a second purpose, to force the [[United States]] into an immediate resupply of the Israeli military, and that "there was widespread rage inside the Israeli cabinet at the Nixon White House," aimed especially at [[Henry A. Kissinger]], "over what was correctly perceived in Israel as an American strategy of delaying the resupply" so that the Arabs would win some territory and open the way to land-for-peace bargaining. He quoted Kissinger telling Defense Secretary [[James R. Schlesinger]] that his goal was to "let Israel come out ahead, but bleed."[^7]
 Hersh described a series of urgent telephone calls from the Israeli ambassador to Washington, [[Simcha Dinitz]], beginning at 1:45 a.m. on Tuesday, October 9, and a meeting at 8:20 a.m. in the White House Map Room, at which, in Kissinger's memoir, Dinitz asked to speak with him alone and said that Meir "was prepared to come to the United States personally for an hour to plead with President Nixon for urgent arms aid." Kissinger wrote that he rejected the proposal "out of hand" and that it "could reflect only either hysteria or blackmail," and that by the evening of October 9 Israel "had been assured that its war losses would be made up." Hersh wrote that "a more complete account of the Dinitz message would undoubtedly show that it was closer to blackmail." He wrote that, according to a former Israeli intelligence official, the Israeli signals intelligence unit [[Unit 8200]] intercepted on the morning of October 9 a Soviet warning to Washington about the Israeli nuclear arming.[^8]
 Hersh cited the recollection of [[Hermann F. Eilts]], the American ambassador to Egypt, that Kissinger spoke to him in November 1973 about Israeli panic on the fourth day of the war with "never a word about nuclear arming," and that in late 1976 Kissinger "threw in that there was concern that the Israelis might go nuclear." Schlesinger told Hersh that "Kissinger just turned around totally" on resupply and that "from where we sat, there was an assumption that Israel had a few nukes"; Colby told him, "We were afraid Israel might go for broke." Hersh wrote that Heikal reported that Anwar Sadat had relayed a remark by an "American," whom Hersh took to be Kissinger, that the airlift was decided to avoid a nuclear escalation, and that "sometime in this period" the American intelligence community got its first look, via the KH-11, at the completed missile launchers at Hirbat Zachariah.[^9]
 The Israel State Archives released protocols of Meir's consultations with her advisers in 2010. In the protocol of the session of October 9, 1973 at 7:30 a.m., Golda Meir raises a "crazy thought" of flying to Washington in secrecy for 24 hours to put the severity of the situation to Nixon directly, and asks that Dinitz bring the idea to Kissinger; Dayan answers, "It is. But it needs to be done." In the same session Elazar asks for permission to target inside Damascus.[^2]
 A 2013 [[CNA]] study by [[Elbridge Colby]], [[Avner Cohen]], William McCants, Bradley Morris and William Rosenau. It concluded that Israel "likely did take some steps associated with the readying of its nuclear weapons and/or nuclear weapons delivery forces" in the early stages of the war, that these steps were "defensive or precautionary in nature," and that the United States very likely observed the activity.[^10] The study judged that Dayan likely proposed a "demonstration" use of nuclear forces on or about October 7, that Meir and the other participants rebuffed the proposal, and that no action followed from it.[^10] The study assessed Hersh's account of a coordinated "blackmail" attempt as "without foundation" and found that the account has "evident inaccuracies."[^10] It located the "blackmail" that Kissinger described in his memoirs in a proposal by Dinitz that Meir visit Washington during the war.[^10]
 A 2002 [[United Press International]] report by [[Richard Sale]] repeated several of Hersh's claims and attributed them to unidentified "knowledgeable" American government sources. It added that the alert lasted three full days and that the Jericho missiles were deployed inside caves at air bases with "huge blast doors."[^11] [[Alistair Horne]] wrote in his Kissinger biography that Kissinger "always hotly denied, and several times to the author, that Israel had ever mentioned this possibility [the use, in extremis, of Israel's nuclear weapon]" to the United States.[^12]
 A [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] paper on Israeli security, "Long-Range Outlook for Israeli Security," was attached to an October 24 memorandum from Vice Admiral V.P. de Poix, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to [[Thomas H. Moorer]]. One option it listed was "a public declaration of Israeli determination to employ nuclear weapons." The paper described an Israeli nuclear threat against "such targets as Arab forces, cities, ports, holy places, and the Aswan High Dam," and stated that the Arabs "might be willing to attack, despite the deterrent threat."[^13]
 ### The airlift
 On October 12, 1973, President [[Richard Nixon]] authorized the emergency airlift known as [[Operation Nickel Grass]]. [[Military Airlift Command]] aircraft were ready to depart less than nine hours after the decision. The fleet consisted of 268 C-141s and 77 C-5As, and [[Paul K. Carlton]] knew that it could sustain a flow of three C-141s every two hours and four C-5s every four hours.[^15] With a single exception, the United States' allies denied landing and overflight rights, and [[Portugal]] allowed flights through [[Lajes Field]].[^15]
 Military Airlift Command aircraft carried 22,325 tons over 32 days, between October 14 and November 14, 1973,, and the airlift slowed after the third cease-fire resolution was implemented on October 24.[^16] The Israeli national airline, [[El Al]], flew eight of its own airliners carrying 5,500 tons.[^15] The Washington Special Actions Group minutes of October 19 record that the airlift was being stepped up to "5 C5As and 18 C141s a day."[^17]
 ### The oil embargo
 On October 17, 1973, the eleven members of the [[Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries]] announced an immediate cut of 5 percent in oil production, with monthly cuts of 5 percent to follow until Israel withdrew to the 1967 frontiers. On the same day the six Persian Gulf members of [[OPEC]] raised the price of oil by 70 percent, from $3.01 to $5.12 a barrel. The Kuwaiti minister of oil and finance told the American ambassador that the cumulative effect of the cuts was intended to produce a "complete embargo on oil to the United States."[^18]
 A CIA paper of October 19 judged that the effect on the United States "would be relatively small" and that the brunt of the cutback would fall on [[Europe]] and [[Japan]].[^18] On October 23, Prince [[Fahd]] of [[Saudi Arabia]] informed Kissinger that the kingdom would maintain a total embargo on oil exports to the United States until Israel withdrew to its pre-June 1967 borders. At the Secretary of State's staff meeting that day, Kissinger said, "We will break it."[^18] Kissinger later wrote that "the true impact of the embargo was psychological."[^18]
 The financial side of the price rise appears in the State Department and CIA papers of the period. A telegram from the embassy at [[Jeddah]] of September 4, 1973, reported that Saudi petrodollars "continue to grow" and that more than 50 percent of current Saudi income was being re-positioned into European or other currencies.[^19] A CIA Office of Economic Research paper of March 5, 1974, stated that OPEC members were "considering many and implementing some schemes to recycle a portion of their burgeoning revenues to the Third World."[^20] A March 29, 1974 paper by an ad hoc group of the [[International Energy Review Group]] addressed "the LDC payments problems related to higher oil prices."[^21]
 Kissinger's "shuttle diplomacy" between Israel and the Arab states followed the fighting.[^22] On October 16, at a Washington Special Actions Group meeting, Kissinger said, "I expect that plane is carrying Kosygin to Cairo," a reference to [[Alexei N. Kosygin]], the Soviet premier.[^23]
 ### The October 24 alert
 On October 24, 1973, [[Leonid Brezhnev]] sent Nixon a letter threatening unilateral Soviet action in the Middle East. The letter prompted the American DEFCON III alert.[^14] Kissinger described it in his memoirs as "one of the most serious challenges to an American President by a Soviet leader."[^24]
 The Washington Special Actions Group principals met in the night of October 24 and 25 and decided to set DEFCON III. Admiral Moorer's record of the meeting lists the actions taken: the carrier [[USS John F. Kennedy]] was moved from west of [[Gibraltar]] into the Mediterranean, the Roosevelt was moved from the vicinity of [[Sicily]], the [[82nd Airborne Division]] was alerted, and 75 B-52s were recalled from [[Guam]].[^25] Kissinger recalled that the group decided DEFCON III would not be noted quickly enough by Soviet decisionmakers, so at 12:20 a.m. the 82nd Airborne was alerted for possible movement and at 12:25 a.m. the carriers were ordered to the Mediterranean.[^26] The alert was leaked at about 3 a.m. on October 25.[^25] At 1:03 a.m. Kissinger told the British ambassador, [[Cromer]], "Well, don't say the Americans have gone crazy."[^25]
 The participants in the rump session were Kissinger, Schlesinger, Moorer, [[Alexander Haig]], [[Brent Scowcroft]] and Colby. Nixon remained upstairs in the White House, and Kissinger conferred with him by telephone before the decision.[^5] The CIA's 2013 history of the episode states that "many questioned, then and later, whether the decision for DEFCON III was based on legitimate alarms or whether it was an overreaction," and that "there has also been speculation that the decision may have been politically motivated" by the needs of a [[Watergate]]-beleaguered White House.[^5] It records the view of [[Ray Cline]] that Kissinger "knew what he wanted to do all along" and that the meeting was "a kind of shell game, a superficial exercise."[^5] Cline's October 26 memorandum to Kissinger, quoted in a footnote to the minutes, stated that "the technical intelligence evidence available in INR did not support such a Soviet intention."[^25]
 A CIA document dated October 30, 1973, titled "Soviet Nuclear Weapons in Egypt?," reported Scud-associated equipment at two locations in Egypt and stated that the confirmation "adds seriousness to the evidence that Moscow introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East."[^5] A December 20, 1973 CIA assessment, "The Impact of the 24 October US Alert on the Soviet Leadership," judged that Brezhnev and his colleagues "appear to have reacted with greater concern and annoyance to President Nixon's statements of 26 October than they did to the alert itself."[^5]
 ### Aftermath
 Marwan died in June 2007 after falling from the balcony of his apartment in [[London]]. A coroner's inquest was held to determine whether he died by suicide, accident or foul play.[^27] Coroner [[William Dolman]] handed down an open verdict on July 14, 2010, and said there was no evidence to support a verdict of either suicide or unlawful killing.[^27] Dolman described claims about the death as belonging to "the murky and secretive world of espionage."[^27] Marwan's widow, [[Mona Nasser]], told the inquest that her husband had never spoken of suicide but had expressed fears that he might be killed.[^27] Historians and intelligence agents have accused Marwan of being an Israeli spy who passed on vital information before the 1973 war, or of being a double agent loyal to Egypt.[^27]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 17.
+[^1]: Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991), pages 222 to 223 (military losses, Bar-Lev line, the Golan, "the end of the Third Temple," Dayan's October 8 briefing). Sole source for the figures so cited.
 [^2]: Agranat Commission, "1973 Agranat Commission: Yom Kippur War," translated by Roni Eshel (Center for Israel Education, December 2010), https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1973-Agranat-Comm-Report-1973-War.pdf. Summary of the Egyptian and Syrian fronts (1,400 Syrian tanks against 177 Israeli tanks); session and witness counts and the interim report of April 1, 1974; the protocol of the meeting of October 6, 1973 at 8:05 a.m. in which the Chief of Staff speaks of the Marwan telegram; the protocol of October 9, 1973 (7:30 a.m.) released by the Israel State Archives.
 [^3]: Judah Ari Gross, "'Odds of war lower than low': Papers highlight intel failures in Yom Kippur War," The Times of Israel, September 17, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/odds-of-war-lower-than-low-papers-highlight-intel-failures-in-yom-kippur-war/, on the cable of Zvi Zamir dated October 5, 1973 released by the Israel State Archives.
 [^4]: Alfred Eini testimony to the Agranat Commission, as reported by ynetnews (Reuters), September 25, 2012, https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4285092,00.html
 [^5]: Central Intelligence Agency, Historical Collections Division, "President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War" (2013), https://cia.gov/static/President-Nixon-and-the-Role-of-Intelligence-in-the-1973-Arab-Israeli-War.pdf. The December 20, 1973 post-mortem, the Cline and Colby passages, the CIA document of October 30, 1973 and the December 20, 1973 assessment appear in the booklet's text and collection list.
 [^6]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 224 to 226 (chapter 17, "Nuclear Blackmail": the meeting of October 8, attendees, the three decisions, Hirbat Zachariah, Tel Nof, target list). Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^7]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 226 to 228 (Soviet interception, Elazar's diary, the objections, the Freier briefing, the Heikal account of the Soviet warning to Cairo, the Israeli cabinet's anger, Kissinger's "let Israel come out ahead, but bleed"). Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^8]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 228 to 229 (the Dinitz calls and Map Room meeting, quoting Kissinger, Years of Upheaval; the account of a former Israeli intelligence official on Detachment 8200 and the October 9 Soviet warning). Sole source for the intelligence official's account.
 [^9]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 229 to 231 (Eilts, Schlesinger and Colby recollections; Heikal on Sadat and Kissinger; the KH-11 imagery of Hirbat Zachariah). Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^10]: Elbridge Colby, Avner Cohen, William McCants, Bradley Morris and William Rosenau, "The Israeli 'Nuclear Alert' of 1973: Deterrence and Signaling in Crisis," CNA, DRM-2013-U-004480-Final (April 2013), https://www.cna.org/reports/2013/DRM-2013-U-004480-Final.pdf
 [^11]: Richard Sale, "Yom Kippur: Israel's 1973 Nuclear Alert," UPI, September 16, 2002, as cited in Colby et al., note 10. Sole source for the passages so cited.
 [^12]: Alistair Horne, biography of Henry Kissinger, as quoted in Colby et al., note 10. Sole source for the passage so cited.
 [^13]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Long-Range Outlook for Israeli Security," enclosure to the October 24, 1973 memorandum from Vice Admiral V.P. de Poix to Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973, Document 265, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^14]: National Security Archive, "The October War and U.S. Policy," Electronic Briefing Book No. 98 (2003), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/index.htm, including document 71, Brezhnev's letter of October 24, 1973.
 [^15]: "Nickel Grass," Air & Space Forces Magazine, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1298nickel/
 [^16]: "Yom Kippur War: Nickel Grass," Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/nickelgrass.html
 [^17]: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, October 19, 1973, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 208, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^18]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 200, editorial note, pages 586 to 587, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^19]: Embassy in Saudi Arabia, telegram 3796 to the Department of State, Jidda, September 4, 1973, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXXVI, Energy Crisis, 1969-1974, Document 200, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v36
 [^20]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Economic Research paper, March 5, 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXXVI, Document 333, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v36
 [^21]: Ad Hoc Group, International Energy Review Group Working Group, "The LDC Payments Problems Related to Higher Oil Prices," March 29, 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXXVI, Document 346, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v36
 [^22]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Preface, identifying Volume XXVI, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1974-1976, for the "shuttle diplomacy," https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^23]: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, October 16, 1973, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 191, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^24]: Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (1982), pages 583 to 584, as quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 268, note 3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^25]: Memorandum for the Record, CJCS Memo M-88-73, NSC/JCS meeting of October 24 and 25, 1973, from the records of Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 269, including notes 11 and 13, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^26]: Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (1982), pages 588 to 589, as quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 269, note 10, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
 [^27]: "Inquest: Egyptian spy suspect's death unexplained," report of the British coroner's ruling of July 14, 2010, reprinted at The Herald (heraldnet.com), https://www.heraldnet.com/?p=177620, and ynetnews, https://www.ynetnews.com/article/3919938