Volume 1 - Iraq Watch

The Saga of the “Chicken Farm” DocumentsHusayn Kamil Hasan Al Majid and Qusay SaddamHusayn were behind an effort to conceal WMD documentsand strategic materials that only ended afterhe fl ed to Jordan in August 1995. After the fi rst Iraqideclaration in April 1991, Husayn Kamil ordered thatall “know-how” documents, catalogs, and technicaldocuments from the WMD and missile programsshould be gathered and given to the security servicesfor safekeeping. The Director General of eachMilitary Industrialization Commission (MIC) Establishmentwas to gather his organization’s importanttechnical documents, and they were told that thedocuments were so important that the documentswere to be destroyed only by the security services.Establishments were asked to deliver their documentsto MIC security elements, which trucked them to acentral rendezvous point in Baghdad where the truckswere turned over to the Special Security Organization(SSO) and the Special Republican Guard (SRG). Ontwo or three occasions in April and May 1991, MICsecurity offi cers turned over truckloads of programdocuments.A separate effort collected the documents of the PC-3nuclear weapons organization. Security personnel hidthese documents for a time in Duluiyah and Tarmiyah.Some nuclear documents were also loaded intoa railroad car and shuttled between Baghdad andHadithah in western Iraq.The documents were later delivered to a house thatbelonged SRG training offi cer Lt. Col. Sufyan MahirHasan Al Ghudayri in the Ghaziliyah section ofBaghdad. After Sufyan transferred to the RepublicanGuard in 1993, SRG Chief of Staff Col. Walid HamidTawfi q Al Nasiri took control of the documents andmoved them to a new safe house in the Hay at-Tashrisection of Baghdad near the Republican Palace.An SRG element led by Col. Najah Hasan ‘Ali AlNajar was also selected to conceal several truckloadsof metals—aluminum billets and maragingsteel disks—that had been purchased for the uraniumcentrifuge enrichment program. The SRG loaded thismaterial onto civilian trucks and drove them to variouslocations outside of Baghdad to evade inspectors.Col. Walid also managed and coordinated thisactivity.Husayn Kamil’s flight to Jordan raised concerns thathe would tell the UN about the hidden documentsand materials. Qusay summoned Col. Walid to hisoffi ce and quizzed Walid about the documents. Walidexplained to Qusay about the Hay at-Tashri safehouse. Shortly after this meeting, Walid was orderedby his former SRG commander, Kamal Mustafa‘Abdallah, to move the documents out of Baghdad.Walid used seven to nine SRG trucks to haul thedocuments to a farm near ‘Aqarquf, west of Baghdad,where they were stored for a number of days. WhenWalid inquired of Kamal Mustafa what he should dowith the documents, and Kamal Mustafa told him toburn them. After nearly two days of burning, Walidand his crew destroyed approximately a quarter of thedocuments.At that point, Walid was contacted by Khalid Kulayb‘Awan Juma’, the head of the SSO Republican GuardSecurity Directorate, who ordered that the documentsbe moved to Salman Pak and from there to a fi naldestination. Walid and a convoy of trucks carriedthe boxes of documents in the middle of the nightto Salman Pak where they were guided to HusaynKamil’s “chicken farm” near Al Suwayrah. A numberof people in civilian clothes met the convoy when itarrived at the farm and directed the unloading of thevehicles. The boxes of documents were all unloadedat the farm by 7 o’clock in the morning.Walid also reportedly called Col. Najah the samenight and directed Najah to meet his convoy of truckscontaining the aluminum and steel at the SRG offi cein Amiriyah. Col. Walid subsequently led the convoyto Husayn Kamil’s farm where these vehicles werealso unloaded.UNSCOM Executive Chairman Rolf Ekeus andIAEA Action Team leader Mauricio Zifferero were inBaghdad at the invitation of the Iraqi Government.They had conducted several days of talks with theIraqis and were about to depart for Amman, Jordanto talk with Husayn Kamil. Husam Muhammad AminAl Yasin, Director General of the National MonitoringDirectorate (NMD), received a telephone callfrom presidential secretary ‘Abd Hamid Mahmud AlKhatab Al Nasiri explaining that Ekeus and Ziffereroshould view some documents found at HusaynKamil’s farm.50