This dates from around the time he was selected to work on Saddam's overthrow

Interview of the week: Aras Kareem by Eli Lake

WASHINGTON, March 3 (UPI) -- As the Bush administration reviews its Iraq
policy, one still unresolved question is whether the United States will
fully support the Iraqi National Congress, the main resistance organization.
In the decade since the Gulf War, U.S. intelligence support for Iraqi
opposition groups has dwindled. Aras Kareem is hoping for enough support to
make the INC a real threat to Saddam Hussein.

Kareem is the INC's chief of operations, and one of the last INC members to
leave Iraq after Saddam Hussein's troops seized the group's base of
operations on Aug. 31, 1996. He taught himself counter-intelligence
techniques by reading books about the CIA. In the early 1990s, he was one of
the greatest assets for U.S. intelligence in Iraq when Washington prosecuted
a more robust campaign to remove Saddam from power. Today, he lives in
London and is still a target for Saddam's assassins. His cousin, Dr. Ali
Karem, was detained in a California immigration jail because of his
connection, after the underground leader had protested the CIA's decision to
pull back support for the INC.

Recently, he has been meeting with Pentagon officials on training matters.
Kareem was in Washington on Feb. 21, when he spoke with UPI.

Q. What is your background?

A. My father was the secretary general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party
from 1966 to 1975. He has remained in the leadership since then. He was
nominated to be the vice president of Iraq from 1970 to 1974. But this
didn't happen, there was fighting.

After the Kurdish revolution collapsed in 1975, we went to Iran. From Iran
we went to Lebanon and then Egypt, and then we went back to Iraq. When I
went back to Iraq, because my father was a senior figure, I went to a
primary school where the principal was Saddam's first wife, Sajeda. She gave
me an exam for primary school, where her own sons and daughters were with
us. Later on I scored very high marks in high school and it allowed me to go
to engineering college. The civil engineering department at the University
of Baghdad is considered an elite college, so all the senior figures in the
government send their sons and daughters there. My classmates included the
son of (Deputy Prime Minister) Tariq Aziz Ziad. He is not such a bad guy.
Saddam's son Uday was also there.

I trained as a civil engineer, and in 1992 joined the INC. At that time we
established something called the IBC, the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation. We
broadcast news from all over Iraq, including the areas outside Saddam's
control. Later, we did a lot to recruit people, Iraqis in the army, even
officers working in the Iraqi intelligence.

Q: You went to primary school and technical college with Uday Hussein and
the children of other prominent Iraqis. How did this help you make contacts
later on when you were working against the government for the INC?

A: I knew a lot of people whose fathers are in the government, so I found it
very easy to just talk to them and get whatever I wanted from them because
they were friends. I would go to the Hunting Club where Uday would go
always.

You are not doing something suspicious to get information. A lot of them,
they like you. I have many contacts who used to work for the Iraqi special
security organization. They are my friends and they are helping me because I
am their friend, not because they are my agents. If you know those people,
life in Iraq is easier. For example, I was out of the army during the Gulf
War because I had the right papers. If you have the right papers in Iraq,
you can do anything.

Q: What was the recruiting process?

A: We used to broadcast from the north to the areas under Saddam's control,
and encourage officers and soldiers to desert their units and come and join
us in northern Iraq. When officers would join the INC they would send for
their families. I must say we were very successful in attracting even very
senior officials in the regime to the northern zone.

Q: Who did you recruit?

A: I'll give you examples. For example, in 1994 one of the officers working
for us in the Iraqi military intelligence sent us a message saying Iraq
planned a military buildup for another attempt to invade Kuwait. That was in
1994. On the same day, another officer who worked in the headquarters of the
army 5th corps sent us another message saying they had been ordered to the
Kuwaiti border. So we put this out to the news, and the Pentagon at first
denied it. Twelve hours later, the Pentagon sent about 30,000 troops to
Kuwait.

U.S. intelligence wanted a copy of the Salahuddin, an encryption device made
in Iraq that could be attached to the military radio communications system.
The device had a range of more than 124 miles. We provided them with some of
the units -- actually they asked us just for the motherboard. In less than a
week we had given them four of these units. We got the device from the
Republican Guard. We had sympathizers in the Iraqi Republican Guard. The
actual units are very small.

Q: Can you give other examples of how you were able to help U.S.
intelligence?

A: The CIA requested any information about the coaxial telephone and
television cable linking Iraqi's main cities. We were able to bring them two
parts of the cable. It's a metal cable, it is very fat and it is
underground. A week later we brought them the physical cable. After another
week we brought them the whole contract for the cables containing all the
details.

Q: You were one of the last INC leaders in Iraq when Saddam attacked your
base of operations in Irbil on Aug. 31, 1996. Can you tell me about what
happened that day?

A: The attack happened at 4:50 AM in the morning. While it was going on I
gave interviews about the battle to reporters on a satellite phone. Every 20
or 30 minutes I used to give two or three interviews. I remember the last
interview was with an Arabic magazine. He phoned and at the same time one of
my bodyguards said "(The Iraqi army) are very close, we have to withdraw to
another headquarters. We have 10 minutes." So I told this guy I cannot do
it. There were huge shellings. The house was on the corner. The Republican
Guard's tanks were close by on the main street, and there was a crowd
shouting how they loved Saddam and how they were ready to kill themselves
for Saddam. They were shooting like crazy. The Kurdish forces allied with
Saddam were closing in from the other side. I was talking on the phone, I
said: 'I don't know if I will be alive or not, so just goodbye. If I don't
call you again, that's it, I'm done.'

We changed houses again, taking the back streets to another house. We were
six senior figures from the INC. I went to my friend's house and made some
arrangements. The Iraqis began to surround the areas from the street and
search house by house. In front of the house where I was hiding in there was
a minibus. The army thought we were hiding in that bus, so they began to
shoot at it with machine guns. But apparently nobody was there.

A soldier entered the hall of the house. I was just behind the door. The
soldier went inside the house, and I had a pistol. I was standing behind the
door in the house and I thought I will kill him and then I will kill myself.

Q: Why would you have to kill yourself?

A: If they would capture me it would be a disaster for many people. I know a
lot, I know a lot of people inside Iraq, a lot of officers working with the
INC. They would torture me and force me to say things I do not want to say.
That was a decision we took, the six main senior people, before we are
captured we will kill ourselves.

There were two ladies with a baby girl just two days old in the house. So
those two ladies went to the people outside and told them, 'We are here, we
are only ladies in this house.' They spoke in the same accent as the Kurdish
peoples allied with Saddam. While they were talking to them a soldier
entered. The head of the force told the soldier, 'There is no one in the
house.' The soldier said, 'No, we have information that they are in this
house.' The commander said, 'I am ordering you to get out of the house. This
house is for our people.' So the soldier left. And here I was behind the
door, waiting for him.

Q: What kind of activities do you envision in the future for the INC and
what resources will you need from the American government?

A: In my opinion, if we are able to send information teams, we can send them
tomorrow. If the United States offers us combat training that is wonderful.
If not, how can we do it? Everybody knows how to shoot, but how to organize
the shooting is another story.

Q: What about these conversations you are having with the Pentagon?

A: We are having conversations with the Defense Security Cooperation
Agency, which provides training for different countries all around the
world. We have sent more than 133 trainees to the United States. We were
discussing what the INC will need, plus training issues, uniforms, that kind
of stuff.

Q: Can you talk about Saddam's son, Uday Hussein?

A: Uday is a nut, he is a crazy guy. He will drive in a new Mercedes --
with a new registration number. The next day he will drive another new car
with a new number. One day he came to the university with a rifle on his
shoulder and entered the class. When he raised his hand in class, the
teacher and the professor will say, 'yes my master.' Uday is the student,
can you imagine that. Uday will decide what is the appropriate time for the
exam and how long it will last, and the examiners will give him the
questions and the answers. It is up to him what to write, but he will get
the full degree. In the history of the college of engineering, nobody scored
98.9 as an average. Even Einstein if he came to the College of Engineering
would not score that. But Uday scored 98.9. If Uday talks to a lady, nobody
should talk to her later on because the body guards will beat you. If Uday
goes to a club or a hotel, nobody should park their car near his. If a
daughter or son of a minister parks his car near Uday's car, they will beat
him.

To put a point on it - he joined the PDK which was part of the INC at the time.

This link from 2001 provides some further pieces of interesting information.

1. Clinton washed his hands of the INC in 1996.
   
2. Karim was known to be an Iraqi agent from day one by the Bush Executive.
   
3. Karim was working propaganda in 1992, not security and military ops.
   
4. Karim could well have information on what the real state of anti-Iraq planning was pre-911, as he had direct pentagon meetings.