"I have never heard of this George Galloway! I have never even seen a picture!"
Posted on 04/23/2003 4:18:30 PM PDT by MadIvan
Saddam Hussein sought to protect George Galloway by severing the Iraqi intelligence service's contacts with the Labour backbencher, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.
This letter, found in the files of the Iraqi foreign ministry, explained that any disclosure of Mr Galloway's "relationship" with the Mukhabarat, which operated as both secret police and intelligence service, would do great harm to his political career.
A letter from Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam's deputy on the Ba'ath Party's Revolutionary Command Council, dated May 6, 2000 stated that: "It is better not to engage the Mukhabarat in the relationship with George Galloway, as he has been a well known politician since 1990, and discovery of his relationship with the Mukhabarat would damage him very much."
The Ibrahim memorandum emerged from a high-level committee established to examine Mr Galloway's alleged request for more money, conveyed in the Mukhabarat chief's memorandum disclosed in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday.
That suggested that the MP was receiving an annual sum of not less than £375,000 from the regime.
Mr Galloway denies taking money from Saddam's regime and says that any documents purporting to show this are forgeries planted by Western intelligence agencies with the aim of discrediting him.
The latest disclosure appears to confirm that Mr Galloway was working closely with powerful figures at the apex of Saddam's regime.
Four other senior Iraqis sat on the Galloway committee - Taha Yassin Ramadan, the vice-president, Ali Hassan al-Majid, a notorious general widely known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering gas attacks on Kurdish villages, Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, and Mohammed Said al-Sahaf, then foreign minister, later the remorselessly optimistic information minister during the recent war.
In a letter, disclosed in The Daily Telegraph yesterday, Saddam ordered this group to reject Mr Galloway's alleged request for further funds.
But the committee agreed that "cooperation with George Galloway about the oil contracts and other commercial contracts" should continue "according to the rules as they stand now".
According to the Mukhabarat chief's memorandum, on Boxing Day, 1999, Mr Galloway met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Baghdad and laid out his demands for a larger slice of the revenue from the sale of three million barrels of oil every six months.
Mr Galloway's share reportedly stood at between 10 and 15 cents a barrel.
Mr Galloway was also recorded as asking for "exceptional" commercial opportunities with three Iraqi government ministries and the State Electricity Commission.
Saddam rejected these alleged requests for more money, explaining that they were unaffordable.
But apparently mindful of the risks that Mr Galloway would have been running by dealing so closely with his regime, agreed that the Mukhabarat was no longer the best point of contact with the British MP.
Saddam endorsed the suggestion to cut the Mukhabarat out of the circle on May 9, 2000, three days after Mr Ibrahim's report.
A letter from Gen Abid Hamid al-Khattab, the head of the President's Secretariat, conveyed Saddam's endorsement of everything in Mr Ibrahim's earlier message. This letter was copied to Mr Sahaf and filed in the foreign ministry.
It was also copied to the chief of the Mukhabarat, presumably to inform him that his alleged dealings with Mr Galloway would have to end.
The picture given by these documents is of Mr Galloway's affairs being sufficiently important to merit consideration by men at the very pinnacle of Saddam's regime.
Question on who has control over these very interesting files?
Are they in Baghdad or in London?
I am MOST interested to see who in the USA was getting payments, and I am certain there were some.
The Telegraph's circulation should go through the roof with this. I like how a little bit more information comes out each day. Heheheh.
"I have never heard of this George Galloway! I have never even seen a picture!"
Some people are probably having sudden health problems....
D.U. / A.N.S.W.E.R. = Blood money.
LOL, did he receive training from Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf?
Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings....
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