Iraq's 'Nuclear Mastermind' Tells Tale of Ambition, Deceit

Obeidi, who headed Hussein's uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991, is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining apartments in a leafy Virginia suburb close to downtown Washington.

But it is far less clear what happened to most of the 500 other scientists U.S. officials considered to be at the core of Hussein's programs to build missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

U.S. officials have intercepted offers from Iran in recent months to hire several former Iraqi nuclear and missile scientists. None are known to have gone to Tehran, which Washington believes is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

But U.S. officials are also concerned about the danger that remains inside Iraq. "The immediate fear is the proximity of these scientists to the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq," a U.S. official who travels frequently to Baghdad said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "That has become a compelling issue for us."

And Obeidi is speaking out now to warn how easy it would be for someone to build a nuclear weapon.

The search for Iraqi scientists, and evidence of programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, will take center stage Wednesday when Charles A. Duelfer, head of the CIA-run Iraq Survey Group, appears before the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees to present his final 1,500-page report on Iraq's long-defunct efforts to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Duelfer's report is likely to spark renewed debate in the presidential campaign as President Bush and challenger Sen. John F. Kerry trade charges over whether the U.S. needed to go to war in Iraq.

Duelfer has found no evidence that Baghdad resumed its nuclear arms program or produced any chemical or germ agents for military weapons after 1991, officials said. Nor has Duelfer found evidence of ongoing efforts to develop such weapons before the 2003 war.