Saddam Hussein’s final secrets: CIA vault tapes show Iraqi strongman wanted to be a novelist
March 2, 2024
6,437
70
6
1.18%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
New York Post Episodes Around March 2, 2024
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
1:16Now PlayingSaddam Hussein’s final secrets: CIA vault tapes show Iraqi strongman wanted to be a novelist
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelIn the pantheon of bloodthirsty dictators, Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein has almost been relegated to the dustbin of history.
He’s remembered as part of the now-quaint-seeming “axis of evil,” for having psychopathic sons, Uday and Qusay, and a murderous cousin named “Chemical Ali,” and perhaps most of all for not having weapons of mass destruction.
The March 2003 invasion of Iraq was premised on the claim that Saddam had amassed chemical and biological weapons and was ready to use them.
But there were none and the cavalry charge to Baghdad turned into a decade-long morass that cost more than $728 billion and led to the death of 4,492 US servicemembers.
Now his final secrets are being revealed in a new book based in part on Saddam’s secret tapes which its author fought a legal battle to get.
“The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq,” by Steve Coll, uses details of what Saddam told CIA and FBI interrogators over cigars and the own Nixon-style recordings he made during his 24-year reign, which the CIA retrieved from his ruined palaces in Baghdad.
They reveal the Saddam nobody knew and show how just how much the CIA misunderstood the butcher of Baghdad.
Read more at
#saddamhussein #cia
The New York Post is your source for breaking news, news about New York, sports, business, entertainment, opinion, real estate, culture, fashion, and more.
Subscribe to New York Post Sports
Catch the latest news here
Follow The New York Post on:
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.









