Would-Be Father of Baghdad's Bomb

His name, Ja'afer Dhaieh Ja'afer, is little known even in scientific circles, but U.S. intelligence sources have identified the Iraqi-born physicist as his country's version of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Ja'afer, a Shi'ite Muslim, is an outspoken human-rights advocate who has been jailed for his protests against Saddam Hussein's oppression. Yet he has been honing his country's nuclear capabilities since the early 1960s. He directed operations at the Osirak reactor until an Israeli raid destroyed it in 1981, and he later served as senior technician for the Tarmiya and Sharqat pilot plants, centerpieces of what U.N. investigators say was an advanced nuclear weapons program. U.S. government sources contend that under Ja'afer's supervision, Saddam's nuclear program got sizable infusions of technology from Beijing.