Heroes in Error
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After 9/11, Zubaidi began actively coaching defectors, according to an ex-INC official involved in the INC’s media operations. The official, who met with Mother Jones over the course of several interviews in Baghdad and London, is one of the few former INC operatives to come forward to speak out against the group. As with others in this tale, his true motivation remains unclear. He asked that his name not be used, as he still maintains contacts within the INC, which he claims to have left on amicable terms following the fall of Saddam: “The INC was about toppling Saddam, and the INC is not a regular peacetime political party,” he says. “There was no more reason to stay.” Nonetheless, he said that he wanted to reveal “some of the bullshit we got out there.”
This ex-INC official—for the purpose of clarity, I will refer to him as “Haider”—said the coaching took a number of forms. Some defectors had useful information but had to be taught how to “sell” their story. Others had little valuable information and either embellished their accounts by themselves or were given help by the INC. In some cases, Haider said, the INC handlers simply “gave some of the defectors scripts. They learned the words, and then we handed them over to the American agencies and journalists.”
For the first story following 9/11—the one that would frame the public perception of Saddam’s threat—Zubaidi was asked to come up with something big. He did, in the form of Jamal al-Ghurairy. Zubaidi brought Abu Zainab, chosen from other expatriates for his knowledge of the Iraqi military, from Turkey to a luxury hotel in Beirut, Zubaidi’s operational base. There he was primed on his new identity before returning to Turkey and presenting himself as Ghurairy to American and Turkish intelligence officials. The initial stay in Beirut lasted a month and cost $25,000, a small expense given the millions the INC was receiving courtesy of the Iraq Liberation Act. Abu Zainab was also given an undisclosed fee for his services. Though Abu Zainab had never served with the elite Fedayeen Saddam, his 17 years of service in the Iraqi army helped him sound “convincing with a little training,” says Haider. “It was the perfect hoax,” he adds. “The man was a born liar and knew enough about the military to get by, whilst Saddam’s regime could hardly produce the real Ghurairy without revealing at least some of the truth of the story.” That truth, according to Haider, was that Iraqi special forces were trained in hostage and hijack scenarios, although this training had nothing to do with Al Qaeda operations as the Times story had indicated.
Last year Zubaidi, who parted ways with the INC following an abortive attempt to appoint himself mayor of Baghdad in April 2003, admitted to the Times in a July 9, 2004, story that the INC intentionally exaggerated information it provided journalists. “We all know the defectors had a little information on which they built big stories,” he said. Of Lt. General Ghurairy, Zubaidi was quoted as saying that “he is an opportunist, cheap and manipulative. He has poetic interests and has a vivid imagination in making up stories.” But the story did not indicate that the general was an outright phony, and it quoted INC officials as calling Zubaidi “loony” and “childish.”
Zaab Sethna, a Chalabi aide still with the INC, defends the Ghurairy story: “Those people who accuse us have got a grudge. It’s just lying,” he said, adding that the INC presented defectors to U.S. intelligence agencies only if their accounts sounded “interesting and plausible.”
IN OCTOBER OF LAST YEAR, my Iraqi colleague, Aqil Hussein, and I used tribal records to track down Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy to his family’s hometown of Mahmudiya. His single-story house is a typical country residence of a person of some status or wealth: a garden compound shaded by palm trees; a couple of cars in the driveway. But the interview, arranged by the Mujahideen Shura council, took place in a modest coffee shop in Fallujah, a city the council (a collection of tribal and insurgent leaders) then controlled. The coffee shop opened onto Fallujah’s main street; inside, a couple of rickety chairs and tables were scattered across a dingy marble floor. The general, who wore a gray dishdasha and head scarf, appeared to be about 50; he was thin and finely featured, with dark hair and a neat mustache. He was accompanied by two middle-aged men, who deferentially referred to him as “general,” as if they were junior officers. Though the day was blisteringly hot, all the men drank strong hot tea. During the 20-minute interview, in which he grew increasingly angry and suspicious, Ghurairy said he had been the commandant of the Suwara military base from 1993 to 2000 and had never worked at the Salman Pak military facility. He also said he had never spoken to U.S. intelligence agents or Western journalists: “I have never met these people. I have not left Iraq,” Ghurairy told Mother Jones, adding that he had not been aware that a man claiming to be him had been quoted in U.S. newspapers and on television.
It was not possible to independently verify this Ghurairy’s identity. For one thing, records in Iraq are in considerable disarray, and many people have incentive to conceal the truth about their activities before and after the war—former generals are likely high on that list. The interview was Ghurairy’s first, and he refused to be photographed. But information Ghurairy provided was corroborated by other senior Iraqi army officers, who said that while Iraq’s special forces did train to retake hijacked airplanes at the Salman Pak facility, such training was routine for any elite combat unit. Foreign fighters were housed with the Fedayeen Saddam—whose main headquarters were at the Suwara facility—but only in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, not back in 2001. Still, as Haider suggested, there were enough parallels between the tales of the two Ghurairys to present Iraqi officials difficulty disputing the Times and Frontline accounts.
But the Ghurairy we found in Iraq was adamant: “I have never met these people!” he repeated with considerable agitation. “I have not left Iraq. The people who say this were trying to use my name to make war!”
