Drawing on his personal experience, Dr. Khidhir Hamza spoke candidly about Iraq's clandestine development of nuclear weapons, and his own crucial part in the program. A nuclear physicist trained in the United States, Dr. Hamza was brought back to Iraq by the Baathist regime, in order to develop a nuclear bomb. A copy of the Manhattan Project report, which he found in an Iraqi library, provided an early blueprint for Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
The effort to acquire nuclear weapons continued, he said, with some success even after the end of the Persian Gulf War. Dr. Hamza fled Iraq in 1994. He strongly believes that Saddam Hussein's quest to dominate the Middle East with the acquisition of nuclear weapons continues undeterred. A team of qualified Iraqi scientists and technicians enables this effort - an indigenous scientific capability that, he says, is absent in Iran.
Transcript of Event - Transcript of Dr. Hamza's presentation, and the question and answer session which followed.
Read about Dr. Hamza in the New York Times Magazine article Saddam's Bomb, 1 October 2000
Additional information on Iraq's
WMD complex from the Carnegie publication, Tracking
Nuclear Proliferation 1998.
Maps
and Charts of Iraq's WMD complex (pdf format, requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
Status of Iraq's aquisition of WMD technology, from the CIA report "Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions," August 2000
Iraq
Resources Page Carnegie Resources page on Iraq WMD programs
News Stories on Dr. Hamza's Presentation at Carnegie
- Iraqi Defector Says Saddam Near to Building A-Bomb (Washington Post)
- Iraqi Atomic Scientist Details Bomb Building (Associated Press)
- Defector Says Iraq Close to Having Nuclear Bomb (CNN)