Dr. Khidhir Hamza
Dr. Khidhir Hamza is an Iraqi dissident who says he once ran Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. He is a nuclear scientist who used to work for Iraq's atomic energy commission. He has testified before a US Congressional committee about his country's weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Hamza was educated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Florida State University. He has degrees in nuclear physics. He spent decades working on Iraq's nuclear weapons program before returning to the United States after the Gulf War. He is now a consultant and author.
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Speaking about where he turned for help when he was directed to begin Iraq's nuclear weapons program, Dr. Hamza recalls, "I found a ... stamped gift from the US Atomic Energy Commission - the Manhattan Project reports [on] how to make the bomb." Dr. Hamza says he found the report on a dusty shelf in a library under a placard that read: "This is a gift from the United States Atomic Energy Commission."
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"So, when Saddam asked us to put down a plan on how to make nuclear weapons, all we had to do is pick up the Manhattan reports and leaf through them and see what choices we have - technology choices."
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Dr. Hamza spoke of the 1950s project "Atoms for Peace," where Western nations would help underdeveloped nations develop nuclear technology. "So, here [the United States] was dangling [nuclear technology] in front of a third world with huge conflicts - like India-Pakistan, like …Arab-Israeli … like Taiwan-China … and the Southern Hemisphere in South America, between Argentina and Brazil, You dangle in front of all these nations the prospect that they can go nuclear, cheaply, by buying the technology."
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"They were not making small-core reactors. All of them were making large-core megawatt reactors. So you buy them in this size. And that's - we're talking about four of five billion dollars. Who doesn't want that?"
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