Between June 3, 2003 and June 17, 2003: Iraqi Nuclear Scientist Tells CIA Analyst Iraq Abandoned Nuclear Program in 1991

Mahdi Obeidi. [Source: CNN]Mahdi Obeidi is taken into custody by US Special Forces. He is released on June 17, 2003. During his detention, Obeidi is interviewed by US authorities seeking to learn more about Saddam’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons. But instead of meeting with a US nuclear physicist as Obeidi expects, he is interviewed by CIA agent Joe T., the main proponent of the theory that the 81mm aluminum tubes Iraq attempted to import in July 2001 (see July 2001) had been meant for a centrifuge program. Joe’s area of expertise, however, is not nuclear physics. His background relates to export controls (see Early 1980s) (see 1999). When asked about Saddam’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Obeidi does not tell Joe T. what he wants to hear. Instead, he tells him that Saddam abandoned the program in 1991 as the Iraqi government had claimed in its December 7 declaration to the UN. He adds that if the program had been restarted, he would have known about it. He also says that the tube shipment confiscated by the CIA in July 2001 was completely unrelated to nuclear weapons. Those tubes—with a diameter of 81mm—could not have been used in the gas centrifuge designed by Obeidi, which specified tubes with a 145mm diameter. “The physics of a centrifuge would not permit a simple substitution of aluminum tubes for the maraging steel and carbon fiber designs used by Obeidi,” the Washington Post will later report. Obeidi and his family will later move to a CIA safe house in Kuwait. [Newsweek, 8/8/2003; Washington Post, 10/26/2003 Sources: David Albright] At the end of the summer, he will receive permission to move to an East Coast suburb on the basis of Public Law 110 , which allows “those who help the United States by providing valuable intelligence information” to resettle in the US. [Central Intelligence Agency, 11/2/2003 Sources: David Kay]