The tears of Saad Tawfiq
Iraqi scientist gave CIA information that should have prevented war
05/02/08 “Daily Star” – – -AMMAN: When Saad Tawfiq watched then-US Secretary of state Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he shed bitter tears as he realized he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for nothing. As one of Saddam Hussein’s most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in 1995 – and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that.
And yet here was Powell – Tawfiq’s television was able to receive international news through a link pirated from Saddam’s spies next door – waving a vial of white powder and telling the UN Security Council a story about Iraqi germ labs.
“When I saw Colin Powell, I started crying – immediately. I knew I had tried and lost,” Tawfiq told AFP five years later in the Jordanian capital, Amman.</em>
