ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602260041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: AMMAN, JORDAN
SOURCE: The Washington Post
Seven months ago, Hussein Kamel Hassan Majeed, a brutal lieutenant of Saddam Hussein and the chief of Iraq's secret weapons program, was a potential superstar among international defectors.
Friday, in one of the Middle East's remarkable twists of fortune, he was gunned down days after returning to Baghdad, by assailants Iraq described as angry relatives.
Hussein Kamel fled in August with his brother Saddam Kamel Hassan Majeed and their wives, both daughters of the Iraqi president.
Their exit was regarded as a sure sign of rot in Baghdad. American intelligence agents rushed to harvest secrets he brought. Presenting himself as savior of his nation, Hussein Kamel called for Iraqis to revolt.
Three days ago, he re-defected and returned home embittered. His Jordanian hosts had shunned him. The Americans, finding his information unremarkable, dropped him. Iraqi exiles rejected him as a Saddam clone - just as cruel and untrustworthy - and refused to follow his lead.
Hussein Kamel should have known the risk he was taking. Before his defection, he himself was regarded as one of Saddam's cruelest enforcers, overseeing the bloody repression of government opponents.
Iraq said that Saddam had pardoned the returning defectors. But late Friday evening, the Iraqi Interior Ministry announced that Hussein Kamel, his fellow-defector brother, their father and another brother were killed by relatives who attacked the family home in Baghdad. Hussein Kamel's were also killed, along with two of the attackers, the ministry said.
The report was broadcast soon after the government news agency issued an ominous announcement: Saddam's daughters had both divorced the ``failed traitors.''
Hussein Kamel's adventure is an abject tale of how things can go wrong for a defector who is neither valuable enough nor virtuous enough for his new friends to even lead on with promises. Best known for cruelly squashing a Shiite Muslim revolt in southern Iraq, Hussein Kamel was regarded as too onerous a killer for his new friends to consider salvaging. ``Hussein Kamel was always just another killer in a designer suit,'' a Western diplomat who followed his case said coldly.
Jordanian and U.S. officials say Hussein Kamel produced only limited information about Iraq's secret weapon program.
``He was supposed to be a source of intelligence, but he contributed remarkably little,'' said Anthony H. Cordesman, a specialist in Iraqi military affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The major information windfall from his defection came directly from Iraq, Pentagon and State Department officials said. In reaction to Hussein Kamel's arrival in Jordan, Baghdad unexpectedly released more than 100 boxes of information about the Iraqi weapon program that had been withheld. The disclosures in turn made U.N. officials wary of Baghdad's reliability.
``The most important impact of his defection was forcing Iraq to leak those documents that showed Iraq had been lying for four years about its program,'' said a senior State Department official.
``They have only dug the Iraqi hole deeper at the U.N,'' he added.
Hussein Kamel was also a poor magnet for Iraqi dissidents. Major groups refused to meet with him. ``Most of the outside opposition wants nothing to do with Hussein Kamel,'' a senior Pentagon official commented recently. ``The opposition has basically said, ``You used to kill us. Now you're going to be one of us? We don't trust you.' ''
``He meant zero to the opposition. He could not persuade anyone to join or accept him,'' said Rend Francke, executive director of the Iraq Foundation, a forum for the Iraqi opposition in Washington.
Francke said that Hussein Kamel - despite his rank of general -, disappointing both Jordan and the United States. ``He had no credibility. He didn't deliver anything,'' Francke said.
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