General

The Saddam sex tape that never was

Former CIA officials divulge far-fetched ideas for discrediting former Iraqi dictator

As the U.S. planned its 2003 invasion of Iraq, a special group within the CIA cooked up a few “information warfare” projects intended to discredit Saddam Hussein in the eyes of the Iraqi people. Two former CIA officials tell the Washington Post the Iraq Operations Group thought of flooding Iraq with a fake sex tape showing Hussein caught in flagrante with a teenage boy. “It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” said one of the former officials. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.” A second idea involved getting an actor portraying Hussein to deliver a special news bulletin on Iraqi television announcing he was stepping down to allow his much-reviled son, Uday, to take over. Both projects apparently elicited strong opposition from James Pavitt, then head of the agency’s Operations Division, and neither ever left the ground. Besides, “Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East—nobody cares,” said a third anonymous former CIA official.

Washington Post

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