US pressure over Saddam scientist

[sabra]

Source: Brisbane Times

THE United States secretly pressured Australia to place one of Saddam Hussein's former top biological weapons scientists at Victoria University in Melbourne.

But the federal government rejected a March 2008 request from the US to accept Professor Ali al-Za'ag, a microbiologist and genetic engineering expert, under a State Department program to provide employment for Iraqi experts in weapons of mass destruction.

A cable sent from the US embassy in Canberra in March last year confirms that Professor Za'ag had been refused a visa after Australian officials cited ''a range of compelling security, immigration and legal reasons''.

...

The US government has given special treatment to scientists involved in Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, unlike other senior figures in the dictator's regime who have been executed or jailed. Selected scientists with sensitive expertise in weapons of mass destruction technology have been debriefed on Iraq's weapons programs and given employment to reduce the risk their skills and knowledge might be made available to other countries, for example Syria, Iran or North Korea.

Since at least 2006, Professor Za'ag has been working in the US government's Iraq Scientist Engagement Program to develop an international program to promote safe and responsible use of biological materials. He has also established a new forensic DNA training centre in Iraq.

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/us-pressure-over-saddam-scientist-20101219-191xc.html?from=brisbanetimes_sb

[davidinalameda]

1. oh the humanity!

:shrug:

[iamtechus]

2. Poor, illiterate goat herders were sent to gitmo. (nt)

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

3. Operation Paperclip Redux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939–45). It was executed by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the burgeoning Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91), one purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific knowledge and expertise to the USSR<1> and the UK.<2>

Although the JIOA’s recruitment of German scientists began after the European Allied victory (8 May 1945), US President Harry Truman did not formally order the execution of Operation Paperclip until August 1945. Truman's order expressly excluded anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism.” Said restrictions would have rendered ineligible most of the scientists the JIOA had identified for recruitment, among them rocket scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces”.

To circumvent President Truman’s anti-Nazi order, and the Allied Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the JIOA worked independently to create false employment and political biographies for the scientists. The JIOA also expunged from the public record the scientists' Nazi Party memberships and régime affiliations. Once “bleached” of their Nazism, the US Government granted the scientists security clearance to work in the United States. Paperclip, the project’s operational name, derived from the paperclips used to attach the scientists’ new political personæ to their “US Government Scientist” JIOA personnel files.<3>

[Igel]

4. Also similar to a program in the '90s,

in which Soviet nuclear scientists were provided jobs in the West.

Same reasoning.

As for "member of the Nazi Party," I have low standards. I've known too many CPSS members who really had no use for the Communist Party: Some disliked it intensely, some found it annoying, many found it just inconvenient. Joining was often simply an expedient. You want certain jobs or perks or advantages, or you want them to continue, you join. Sometimes you like it when you're 18 or 20 and not when you're 30, but quitting is a problem.

Ideally people would strike a principled position and pay whatever cost to them and their family for maintaining that position, including death. On the other hand, I find little incentive for secular martyrdom, when you know that the only thing that will happen from your principled resistance is your death and a permanent black mark for your kids (unless they cooperate even more intensively). Without hope of change, compromise for survival is what you're left with. You often suffer for it; sometimes you don't, if you can pursue what motivates you.

One of my dissertation advisors' brilliant grandfather rejected the CPSS. He chose exile over incarceration. He died not very well off and hadn't been in touch with his family for years when he died. His productivity plummeted as he lost much of his life; had he remained, he'd have lived fewer years but possibly continued to work. His brilliant son compromised with the Party and that compromise involved what motivated him in life. Forced to use his talents in ways he found repugnant, he died an early death from alcholism. The brilliant grandson found ways to avoid politics, but had no choice but join the CPSS that had helped kill his father and exile his grandfather. Then his field of study was declared "bourgeois" and he was sentenced to internal exile--where he found another field of study to excel at. He continued to work and was rehabilitated, too brilliant and irrelevant to stay shunned: He found motivations to live that paid lip service to the CPSS, ostensibly he supported the CPSS, but he merely tolerated its presence in his life, knowing what it had done to him, his father, and his grandfather. A stalwart Party member, but only doing what he believed required--sometimes what he was told to do, sometimes doing what he thought he was expected to do. Even things that he didn't obviously need to do he often assumed were necessary--a record of minimal compliance with overt requirements would lead his political supervisors to think he was just going through the motions, and that could be more dangerous than not being in the Party. Others supported the Party more or less, but his wasn't an uncommon modus vivendi. Authoritarian, totalitarian systems, both right and left, distort lives and unless you know how the distortion works you can't know when the distorted lives and the lives of the true believers in the system look the same. It doesn't help you separate them out, but it prevents you from being confident in your labeling an apparent supporter as a true believer.

Life is hard, people are weak, and consequently judgment should be well alloyed with mercy.