A Defector's Secret.(Hussein Kamel)

Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect, told the CIA, British intelligence officers and U.N. inspectors in 1995 that, after the gulf war, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapon stocks and the missiles to deliver them.

Kamel had direct knowledge of what he claimed: for 10 years he had run Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs. Kamel hoped his revelations would trigger Saddam's overthrow, but when he realized the United States would not support his dream of becoming Iraq's ruler, he chose to return to Iraq--where he was killed. Kamel's WMD revelations were hushed up by U.N. inspectors, sources say, for two reasons: the inspectors hoped to bluff Saddam into disclosing still more, and Iraq has never shown the documentation to support Kamel's story. Still, his tale raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist.

Kamel said Iraq had not abandoned its WMD ambitions. The stocks had been destroyed, but Iraq had retained the design and engineering details of these weapons. Kamel talked of hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches and even missile-warhead molds. Why preserve this ...