The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind - Softcover

Obeidi, Mahdi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0471741272 ISBN 13: 9780471741275

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2005

Synopsis

Acclaim for the Bomb in My Garden

""This one book will tell you more about Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction than all U.S. intelligence on the subject. It is a fascinating and rare glimpse inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq-and inside a tyrant's mind.""
-Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom

""The Bomb in My Garden is important and utterly gripping. The old clich? is true-you start reading, and you don't want to stop. Mahdi Obeidi's story makes clear how hard Saddam Hussein tried to develop a nuclear weapon, and the reasons he fell short. It is also unforgettable as a picture of how honorable people tried to cope with a despot's demands. I enthusiastically recommend this book.""
-James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Monthly

""One of the three or four accounts that anyone remotely interested in the Iraq debate will simply have to read. Apart from its insight into the workings of the Saddam nuclear project, it provides a haunting account of the atmosphere of sheer evil that permeated every crevice of Iraqi life under the old regime.""
-christopher hitchens, Slate

""Mahdi Obeidi describes in jaw-dropping detail how Iraq acquired the means to produce highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient to building a nuclear weapon, by the eve of the first Gulf War. . . . [His book] offers insights into how a determined dictator, backed by sufficient resources, can come within reach of acquiring the world's most horrific weapons.""
-The Washington Post BookWorld

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

No one knows more about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program than Mahdi Obeidi, the man who headed its successful uranium enrichment effort. In the immediate, chaotic aftermath of the 2003 war in Iraq, Obeidi contacted the arms inspectors he had been forced to lie to for so many years, and voluntarily turned over the key plans and parts to U.S. intelligence. Among the revelations reported by the international media at the time: In the early 1990s, under orders to hide the core of the program from UN weapons inspectors, Obeidi had buried in his backyard garden the critical elements necessary to build uranium-enriching gas centrifuges. What he turned over to U.S. intelligence in the summer of 2003 proved to be the entire remains of a program put on hold since the last Gulf War. Now, at last, Obeidi tells all, taking us inside Saddam’s regime and revealing the truth about its quest for nuclear weapons. He captures in nail-biting detail what life was like directly under Saddam’s watchful eye–the intimidation, the paranoia, the impossible deadlines.

In The Bomb in My Garden, Dr. Obeidi reveals how he circumvented the international safeguards specifically intended to bar developing nations from obtaining the knowledge and materials needed to build nuclear weapons. He recounts his many "shopping trips" abroad, during which he inveigled, bribed, and cajoled scientists and engineers at companies throughout the United States and Europe into assisting him. And he details the complex system of front companies and financial institutions he used to pull it all off.

Dr. Obeidi also provides an intimate portrait of unrealized promise and a nation’s decline into madness. In relating his transformation from an idealistic young engineer into a tyrant’s reluctant cat’s-paw, Dr. Obeidi offers a rare glimpse into the workings of Saddam’s inner circle. In chilling detail, he describes the fever dream of intimidation, paranoia, and absurd demands that characterized his years under the thumb of Saddam’s sociopathic son-in-law Hussein Kamel. And he describes the bittersweet sense of triumph he and his team experienced on achieving in a matter of months what, by all objective standards, was a technical near-impossibility.

Written with the pace and drama of a spy thriller, this eye-opening account will serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. At the same time, it provides a powerful reminder of how what is best in a nation and its citizens can become hopelessly perverted when the reins of power are left too long in the hands of self-serving and unscrupulous leaders.

About the Author:

MAHDI OBEIDI oversaw Saddam's top-secret centrifuge program and later became director-general of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization. The few remaining components and plans for the uranium-enriching centrifuge that he voluntarily turned over to the United States during the war still represent the largest collection of evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

KURT PITZER began the Iraq war embedded with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division and jumped his embed when Baghdad fell. He met Obeidi there and helped him turn his secrets over to the United States.

About this edition

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0471741272
• ISBN 13: 9780471741275
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256