U.S. Lawmakers Visited Iraq on Saddam’s Dime
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three American lawmakers during the run-up to the American-led invasion, federal prosecutors said yesterday.
An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, Muthanna al-Hanooti, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.
At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.
The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan, and Mike Thompson of California.
None was charged and Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators “have no information whatsoever” any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.
“Obviously we didn’t know it at the time,” Mr. McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare said yesterday. “The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That’s the only reason we went.”
During the trip, the lawmakers expressed skepticism about the Bush administration’s claims that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
“War is not the answer,” Mr. Bonior, who is no longer in Congress, said at a news conference while on the trip. “There is a way to resolve this.”
Though weapons of mass destruction ultimately were never found, the lawmakers drew criticism for their trip at the time. Senator Nickles of Oklahoma, the second-ranking Senate Republican at the time, said the Democrats “sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government.”
Mr. Hanooti was arrested Tuesday night while returning to America from the Middle East, where he was looking for a job, his attorney, James Thomas, said. Mr. Hanooti pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, illegally purchasing Iraqi oil and lying to authorities. He was being held on $100,000 bail.
