Background
Khidir Hamza was born on January 18, 1939 in Iraq.
Khidir Hamza of the Council on Middle Eastern Affairs testifies at a House hearing on nuclear terrorism.
Khidir Hamza testifies during the Senate Foreign Relations hearing.
Khidir Hamza is interviewed during a break in the Senate Foreign Relations hearing.
Khidir Hamza is interviewed by Imad Musa of Al Jazeera Satellite Channel during a break in the Senate Foreign Relations hearing.
Richard Butler, Khidir Hamza, and Anthony Cordesman testify during the Senate Foreign Relations hearing.
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Hamza also attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Master of Science degree in nuclear physics.
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Khidir Hamza studied at Florida State University, obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
In 1960 Khidir received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Baghdad.
Khidir Hamza was born on January 18, 1939 in Iraq.
In 1960 Khidir received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Baghdad. Hamza also attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Master of Science degree in nuclear physics. He later studied at Florida State University, obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Hamza worked for Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme - he designed a bomb using declassified World War II blueprints from the Manhattan Project. As part of his responsibilities, he bought dual use technology from other countries that had a "don’t ask, just sell" policy. According to Hamza, the resulting bomb, although it was insufficient in fissile material, might have been dropped on Israel if it were not for the initiation of Desert Storm.
Following the Gulf War, Hamza fled Iraq and crossed three continents with Iraqi agents at his heels before he finally found asylum at the U.S. embassy in Hungary. U.S. officials finally relocated him and his family to the United States, where he received a job as a consultant in Washington, D.C. He wrote Saddam’s Bombmaker with Jeff Stein, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who writes on national security issues.
In Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda, Hamza provides a profile of Saddam Hussein, a history of the nuclear program in Iraq, and an account of his service under the dictator and his association with Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, who defected and was later murdered.
Hamza claims that Saddam Hussein first used chemical weapons on the Shiites, whom he saw as potential defectors, not on the Kurds, as is commonly believed. In 1984 and 1985, Shiite prisoners were taken to Iraqi Kurdistan to be led into trenches, where canisters of chemicals were dumped over them. According to Hamza, chemical and biological weapons planted in the south and detonated during allied attacks in 1991 are responsible for increased cancers and "Gulf War Syndrome." He claims that both Iraq and the Pentagon are suppressing this information. Hamza writes of Hussein's use of drugs and alcohol, his obsession with germs, and his cruelty, which extends to the killing of his own scientists and military personnel over the slightest infraction. He says that Hussein, who trusts no one, plants his mistresses, in addition to other spies and hidden surveillance equipment, in government offices.
Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was thwarted by the United Nations troops who drove him out in 1991, and although Iraq remained under sanctions, Hussein retained his power. He continued to defy the "no-fly zone" over northern Iraq and expelled United Nations inspection teams from his country. Economic sanctions that caused extraordinary suffering to his people have not swayed him from his intentions to increase his power, nor have past events deterred him from continuing his quest to develop nuclear weapons.