SADDAM'S CIA COUP

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When the U.S. and its allies established a safe haven for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the Gulf War, one goal was to use the territory as a base from which opposition groups could confront Saddam. The U.S. refused to support an all-out guerrilla war, but the White House and Congress did allow the CIA to spend between $10 million and $15 million a year running two clandestine operations. The smaller but more promising one was a paramilitary organization known as Wifaq (Iraqi National Accord), based in Jordan. Wifaq's 80 to 100 members included several prominent former Iraqi army officers and onetime officials of Saddam's regime. Its objective was to penetrate Saddam's elite Republican Guard, but the group was infiltrated by his agents. Last June, Saddam got wind of a Wifaq coup plan and ordered organization members seized in Baghdad. By July, at least several dozen plotters had been executed, and as many as 2,000 suspects were held and presumably tortured before some were released.

The second CIA-sponsored effort in Iraq involved the I.N.C. An Erbil-based umbrella group founded in 1992, the congress included 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations. "The CIA financed the group but did not direct its activities," says an agency official. The I.N.C.'s main tasks were to gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents. Two years ago, it published a fake issue of Babil, the daily newspaper owned by Saddam's eldest son Uday. The expertly counterfeited copy, distributed for one day in Baghdad, exposed many of Saddam's atrocities. The tactic backfired, however, because readers were more frightened than infuriated by the revelations.

The CIA's aim was to help prepare the I.N.C. to form the basis of a new political system once Saddam was removed from power, by whatever means. I.N.C. representatives received plenty of U.S. diplomatic backing, with I.N.C. delegations meeting Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Vice President Al Gore and, as recently as April, U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. But the symbolic support was never backed by significant cash infusions. One opposition figure calls the funds for the I.N.C. a "joke," less than 5% of what he says it needed to overthrow Saddam.

For its part, the CIA was in a quandary: it wanted the I.N.C. to pressure Saddam but seems to have viewed the group as a bad bet. The agency knew, for example, that the Kurds were woefully unsophisticated spies. In one instance, they called into Saddam's regime on open phone lines, and their networks were easily penetrated. Worse, they could not stop fighting among themselves. The I.N.C. failed completely in its mission to serve as an arbiter between the two main Kurdish factions, led by Barzani and his rival, Jalal Talabani.