Saddam's Bombmaker

Starred review from October 30, 2000
"Behind every closed door in Baghdad is a scientist or an official who would like to leave," writes Hamza, the former head of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, who defected in 1994Dand was initially dismissed by the CIA as an alarmist; to this day, he remains the only member of Saddam's inner circle to escape and survive. Early in his career, Hamza believed the bomb would serve only as "diplomatic leverage" and would never be completed, much less used. However, as Saddam gained greater control, the nuclear program became his obsession and he appointed Hamza as his right-hand man. Hamza's keen sense of pacing (balancing personal memoir with political history) and his clear and vivid writing serve to indict Iraq under Saddam, painting a detailed and convincing portrait of what it's like to live in a country under a violent dictator where there is no viable opposition or independent judiciary. In the West, Saddam became synonymous with terror only after his invasion of Kuwait, but for Iraqis that terror began far earlier. Hamza recalls colleagues who were tortured and killed, and doctors weeping as they told him of being forced to watch the killings of Shiites, whom Saddam feared politically, or the gassing of Kurds, designed both to eliminate this minority and to test biological weapons. Agent, Gail Ross.