Gordon Carrera

He knows the CIA is plotting to overthrow him.

He sees these inspectors coming around his palaces.

And his attitude is, well, why help with inspections if the sanctions are not being lifted and there's no sign of them being lifted anyway?

And Jafar, the nuclear scientist, says Saddam basically decides at this point,

that the idea of getting the sanctions lifted through cooperating with inspections isn't working.

So why bother cooperating with inspectors?

Why have them in rooting around your palaces if you're not going to get a clean bill of health anyway and they're just causing trouble?

So he basically decides, well, I'll screw you to the inspectors.

So October 1998, Saddam suspends cooperation with the inspectors.

They're withdrawn.

And then the US and UK carry out airstrikes called Operation Desert Fox, where they bomb and hit some targets.

The inspectors were the closest thing they had to eyes and ears, particularly when it came to WMD.

Now they've lost them after 1998.

And you're right, the source base in Iraq is surprisingly thin.

I mean, the CIA had just two sources reporting from inside Iraq.

One could only communicate by mailing letters to an address in Yemen.

So the information would sometimes be like months out of date.

And the other could only communicate when he comes out of the country every six months.

I mean, it's not a deep source base, is it?

That's right.