CIA to try new approach against Saddam Hussein

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Mar 15, 1999 by MATTHEW McALLESTER

Government authorizes agency to help groups wanting to overthrow Iraqi leader.

Newsday

LONDON -- The United States has authorized the CIA to assist disillusioned Iraqi officials who are seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a move that puts the administration on a new track toward the goal of toppling the Iraqi leader. Within the past month, the Clinton administration has persuaded the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to release funds that one intelligence source says are earmarked for use by the Central Intelligence Agency for preliminary training and communication efforts. The approval of the CIA's involvement marks an escalation of the White House's commitment to remove Hussein and a change from the publicly stated policy of using American money to encourage dissidents outside Iraq to challenge Hussein's authority in an armed uprising. Congress has authorized $97 million for the outside groups, but the administration hasn't spent any of it and may never do so. While Congress has advocated this "outside" approach of building up external opposition groups toward a goal of eventually putting their armed fighters on the ground inside Iraq, the administration is pushing an "inside" strategy of supporting any dissidents it can find already inside the Iraqi military or government. "There aren't any outside Iraqi opposition groups that I could say that we could arm today that would march on Baghdad and successfully achieve regime change," Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday. "I do not feel it's wise at this point to speak of providing weapons, creating camps for groups that are not viable." But the Clinton administration acknowledges that even its more narrowly focused objective to foment a coup has only a marginal chance of succeeding. "There are several different approaches to make Saddam go away," said a senior administration official familiar with U.S. planning on Iraq. "There are no good options. But people do have different choices of which bad options to pursue. Congress is focusing on opposition groups (to foment civil war); that's painfully clear." The official said the ongoing air strikes against Iraq are part of a policy to weaken Hussein. Spokesmen for the committee, the State Department, numerous members of Congress, the CIA and the National Security Council declined to confirm or deny the existence of a covert CIA operation to unseat Hussein from inside the country. But administration, intelligence, congressional and Iraqi opposition sources confirm its existence. One Iraqi opposition leader whose group has worked with the CIA in the past and who adheres to the "inside job" approach said there has been "an increase of understanding" by the United States of their approach. The dissident, Dhirgham Jawad Kadhim, is a senior member of the Iraqi National Accord, a group believed to have close ties with senior Iraqi officials. Many in Congress remain skeptical of this approach, believing that the brutality of the regime wouldn't evaporate with the demise of Hussein and that one of his lieutenants would quickly take his place. Opposition groups based in London complain they haven't seen a penny's worth of the $97 million in training and arms made available by the law. The law puts the allocation of the funds at the president's discretion. A leading figure in the Iraqi opposition blasted the administration's view that the groups are weak and fragmented. "The State Department is playing the old game of blame the victim," said Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group that a few years ago safely could call itself an umbrella group of many of the dozens of different feuding factions Iraqi opposition. After a military defeat by Hussein's forces in northern Iraq in 1996, the INC lost its credibility within the Clinton administration and the CIA, which had provided help to the group, according to sources. Nevertheless, the organization is one of seven designated by the administration as eligible for aid from the Iraq Liberation Act.