Real Dictators - Saddam Hussein Part 2: Enforcer, Frontman, Mafia Godfather

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

Saddam consolidates his own power base, appointing friends and relatives to key positions. We hear a remarkable account from a woman whose own family was targeted by his secret police. Soon, the deputy will be in pole position to move against his mentor. And after that, Saddam will shore up the loyalty of his party with an act of political theatre for the ages… A Noiser production, written by Duncan Barrett. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's January the 26th, 1969, in Baghdad. A middle-aged woman, Mrs. Yadgar, stands on the doorstep of a rather smart home. She has traveled more than 300 miles from Basra to attend the most important meeting of her life. Vice President Saddam Hussein has agreed to see her.

Outside the building, Mrs. Yadgar is met by Saddam's glamorous wife, Sajida. With open arms, she welcomes her into the family home. Jews like Mrs. Yadgar may be a minority in Iraq, but traditionally they have been treated with respect. Sajida listens sympathetically as Mrs. Yadgar explains her predicament. Her son, Daoud, has been snatched by the secret police. Police who answer directly to Saddam. It's not clear what they think Daoud has done, though.

When they raided the family home, it was his older brother they were looking for. One boy, it seems, is as good as another. At this time, Iraq's long-established Jewish population is feeling the pinch. Israel recently declared victory over its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War. declared victory over its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War. In the aftermath, just a month ago, six Iraqi soldiers were killed by Israeli air raids in Jordan. An outrage President al-Bakr blamed a fifth column of spies.

Iraqi Jews, he claimed, had been working with enemy agencies, the CIA, MI6, Mossad. And so the roundups began. Dawood Yadgar was just one of a dozen young men snatched from their homes on vague charges of espionage. He's now languishing in a prison cell, awaiting punishment, and his mother is determined to get him out. When Saddam arrives home, the guest is shown into his study. Sitting across from him, her eyes are drawn to a list of names on the desk between them.

She scans it frantically, searching for her son, and she finds him. This can't be a good sign. But Saddam reassures her, summoning an avuncular warmth that belies his thirty-two years. Everything will be all right, he tells her, looking her straight in the eye. Tomorrow your boy will come home. By the time Mrs. Yadgad departs that evening, it's too late to start the long return journey to Basra. Instead, she stays overnight with a friend in Baghdad. The next morning she gets in a taxi and sets off for home. But the driver is reluctant to pass through the center of town.

The traffic there is terrible, he says, what with the hangings in Liberation Square. The hangings? Yes, he tells her, of the spies. Mrs. Yadka orders the driver to head straight there. As she stumbles out of the cab, she's overwhelmed by the scene that meets her eyes. Tens of thousands of people have descended on the square. The mood is more like that of a festival than a mass execution. Mrs. Yadga pushes through the crowds, making her way from one gallows to another. Hanging from each wooden scaffold is a pair of dead bodies.

A piece of paper is pinned to each man's chest, listing his name, age, and religion. At last she finds him. Her son Dawud is one of fourteen men hanged in Liberation Square that day. Nine Jews, three Muslims, two Christians. The executions cause outrage around the globe. The Israeli Prime Minister declares that the land of Iraq has become one great prison. The events of the next few years will suggest he has a point. From Noiza, this is part two of the Saddam Hussein story.

And this is Real Dictators. The 1968 coup which brings Saddam Hussein and Hassan al-Bakr to power in Iraq, is a watershed moment. Professor Joseph Sassoon grew up in Baghdad before his family fled the country in the early 1970s. Childhood was so happy, and all I have is fond memories of the country, playing football, swimming in the river. But then came the country, playing football, swimming in the river. But then came the 68, and that really created fear in the hearts of everyone

because it became very apparent at a very quick pace that this is not like previous governments. There is going to be far more severe measures taken against any opponent." Five years earlier, Saddam participated in President al-Bakr's brutal campaign against Iraq's communists. Now the violence has turned on the country's Jewish population, and what's left of it. By this point, many have already fled the country. Strict conditions have been attached to their departure.

Each individual has been permitted to take just the one suitcase with them, containing three summer and three winter outfits. They could carry just 15 dinars in cash, less than 150 pounds sterling, and absolutely no prayer books or Torah scrolls. But that was then. The heat on Iraqi Jews has gone up since the Six-Day War. The Six-Day War really changed everything. really changed everything. Restrictions were imposed. My father was arrested, similar to more than 100 within the 5,000 Jewish community. And Jews were not allowed anymore to leave the country. But as luck had it in the early 1970s, the north of Iraq is really porous.

There are more like 400 kilometers of borders, which is impossible to patrol all the time, and it's mountainous. So we managed to escape through the borders to Iran. And of course, we're talking about the early 1970s when Iran was open to refugees. And it's by no means only Jews who are heading for the hills. Professor Juman Kuba. People like doctors, engineers, professionals who are not really into politics, they could see that all of a sudden their boss is some kid, you know, Baathist, just because he's close to Saddam and his entourage. He doesn't know

anything, but he's all of a sudden became your boss or became the minister of so-and-so. So a lot of professionals were harmed by that. In fact, the biggest exodus of Iraqi professionals took place right after the 68. And really, it created a dichotomy in Iraqi societies where many people went along just to get by. And that's why you see many people in Iraq today, they were members of the Ba'ath Party by default. If you didn't, you lost your job, you lost your house, you lost any possibility of getting anything. The idea is you have to be part of the system. There is no such a thing, I am on the sidelines. My mother was a teacher and actually she was a school principal.

She was very outspoken. When the Ba'athists came, they removed her from that position. In fact, Juman Kuba's own family, the Makis, are hit with a double whammy. Within a few months, they removed my father from a very senior position that he had. My dad was in charge of all the telecommunication in Iraq and even in some of the other countries. He was instrumental in building the infrastructure. My dad was on a trip, like a business trip abroad, and when he came back, he finds his office had been ransacked and all the drawers had been broken into. My father tried to complain, tried to confront them, but you know they were very powerful.

And even whoever you complained to had been changed, so it's useless, it's hopeless. As a schoolgirl, Juman sees a different side of the regime when her school curriculum is radically overhauled. It was like a mass indoctrination. Everything we learned was centered around the Ba'ath regime and the Ba'ath party. If you didn't sing, there were people watching and observing who's singing and who's not. watching and observing who's singing and who's not. They groomed a generation which grew up under this indoctrination, which I described.

Thank God I left because I know the truth. You know, I would have been indoctrinated and I would have spent my whole life just singing for Saddam and his party and not knowing the truth of what's happening. As a teenager at Baghdad High School, Juman is dragged out of her exams and quizzed on a different topic instead, her political affiliations. I was summoned to go to see the principal. So I just gave my exam paper and walked out. And when I arrived there, I saw my sister there

and she was really terrified. They had already told her the same thing and the school principal and her assistant, they were in this room, in her room. And she said, well, you need to join the union of students, which is the youth version of the Bat Party. And I said, I don't want to. I'm only 13 years old. I don't want to do that. I said, well, no, you have to join the party. You have to show your loyalty to the party. So I started to argue. I was, you know, very argumentative. And I said, I mean, I'm a good citizen. I don't have to join the party.

I just need to be sincere to my country. And she was yelling at me, said, well, no, if you don't join, you have to sign this whatever document. Juman and her sister are forced to sign a waiver, absolving their teachers of responsibility for the students' political views. It was very traumatizing, you know, to young children to be treated that way and to be accused and to somehow we have to prove that we are innocent. We haven't done anything, we're just kids. So that's even teachers and school principals, they forgot their mission as teachers and educators and they became just instruments to indoctrinate us kids. Ironically, as the Ba'ath Party is tightening its grip on the education system, Saddam's campaign to get the country reading is an international hit.

So much so that the United Nations launches a new Iraq Award for Literacy. Within Iraq, though, the real question becomes not whether you can read, but what. They do get a credit for the illiteracy campaign, you know, wiping illiteracy, that's a good thing. But many books were banned, and the only thing that you hear and see

is what the government lets you see. This book is forbidden, this magazine is forbidden. And sometimes the magazines would have something positive about the bath. So they would want you to see that. So they would rip out the parts that they don't want you to see. Those in possession of outlawed reading materials find themselves faced with a dilemma.

Our house had a lot of books. It became common in Iraq to bury the books. You have to bury them in the garden. It was not just us. Many people did that. They buried their books. And then we actually heard that the government knows about this tactic of burying books. They dug up the gardens and they punished those people. So we actually undug our books and we burned them. And that's a horrible thing to do and a horrible thing to say. But that's the Baath regime.

You know, that's what living under Saddam means. From the director of The Greatest Showman comes the most original musical ever. We'll be right back. With TD Direct Investing, you can get live support. So whether you need help buying a partial share from your favorite tech company, opening a TFSA, or learning about investing tools, we're here to help. But keeping your cat off your keyboard? That's up to you. Reach out to TD Direct Investing today and make your investing steps count. Plus, enjoy 1% cash back. Conditions apply.

Offer ends January 31, 2025. Visit td.com slash dioffer to learn more. Built on such extensive repression, the Ba'ath regime is able to point to a number of other victories throughout the 1970s, in addition to virtually eliminating adult literacy. in addition to virtually eliminating adult literacy. The nationalization of the oil industry in 1972 brings economic prosperity, along with increased power in the region. Dr. Ali Ali.

The nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company brings to the leadership enormous economic power. You know, they're running one of the wealthiest countries in the region, you know, potentially in the world. Forgetting the torture and the imprisonment of the 1970s, you look at the economic, socioeconomic achievements, it is remarkable. The truth is, had Saddam continued in this development and less of the grandiose ideas of controlling the whole region and focused on the country, who knows? The Ba'ath is a secular movement, not a theocratic one. And to some degree, in theory at least, Not a theocratic one. And to some degree, in theory at least, it's a feminist movement too.

Those who still look on women with the mentality and ideas of the ages of darkness and backwardness do not express the aspirations and ambitions of the revolution, Saddam tells the General Federation of Iraqi Women. In the early 1970s, he said, every one of you have enemies in the house. It's your father. It's your older brother. I am only your loyal supporter. I will push you to wherever you want. You can be directors, judges, ministers, and go back to education and learn. And you just see the graph of illiteracy declining among women, poor, and the middle class was getting more and more to universities and colleges. Huge changes.

But this outward prosperity and relative reformism nonetheless hides the darker underbelly of the regime. I mean, I know there are some good things that happened during his era, but actually the horrible things outweigh the good by a level of trillions. While Hassan al-Bakir is the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein heads the country's security services. It's under his leadership that Iraq is rapidly transformed into a police state that the Stasi might envy. Former Middle East Bureau Chief at the Times, James Hyder. I spoke to people who'd been tortured.

One guy who was dipped in a bath of acid and had survived. Yeah, he wasn't a squeamish person at all. If you were close to him, you did well. If you fell out of favor, then you were in big trouble and your family was probably in big trouble as well. There is supposed to be once an interview of Saddam he gave. He says, we don't need proof. We need suspicion. Suspicion is enough. So that are the enemy of the state, you're polluted, quote unquote. And if you are polluted, surely your family is also polluted. And therefore, everything is fine. There were countless, countless prisons in the country.

People would disappear, never be heard of again. One of the cruelest things, among the the many cruel things was not just the violence and torture, but not giving families closure, not letting families know that their sons were dead and where they were buried, if they were ever buried. This is the case for hundreds of thousands of families. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's not affected in some way. It's not just the secret police, the Muqabarak, who enforce this reign of terror. The state relies on its own citizens to constantly monitor each other as well.

For the first time in Iraq, they did encourage people to write about your neighbor, to write about your co-worker. You know, I have a problem with you as a neighbor. What a great way to get rid of you through saying I think you're an enemy of the country. you're an enemy of the country. Thanks in part to this elaborate security apparatus, Saddam and al-Bakr's regime proves unusually durable. In a country that's seen four coups in the space of a decade, making it to the five-year mark is an achievement.

But just weeks before the Wood anniversary, another Ba'athist, Colonel Nazim Qasar, launches his own leadership bid. Qasar is the head of Iraq's internal intelligence agency. But in the end, it's Saddam's intuition, rather than any actionable intel, that sees off the attempted coup. President al-Bakir has been in Poland on a state visit, and Saddam is scheduled to meet him on his plane lands at Baghdad airport. Qasar, who has already kidnapped the defense and interior ministers, plans to interrupt

the reception at the airport and place Saddam and Al-Bakr under arrest. But Saddam senses that something is afoot. He delays the arrival of the President's plane by a couple of hours. Spooked by the change of plans, Khazar makes a run for the Iranian border. He takes the two government ministers, now stripped down to their underwear, with him as hostages. government ministers, now stripped down to their underwear with him as hostages. Government helicopters give chase, and Khazar is soon stopped by a police roadblock. In the ensuing firefight, the defense minister is shot dead, the interior minister is rescued, and Khazar is taken into custody.

A week later, he and his accomplices are executed. Saddam and al-Bakr celebrate their five-year milestone in peace. As if the Baathist regime isn't terrifying enough, for the people of Baghdad there's a new bogeyman in town. A notorious serial killer known as Abu Tubar, or the hatchet man. So we heard about it in school, we heard about it in television, we hear about it at home. This family was found chopped, there's blood. It was very scary, especially for kids. Tubar's crime scenes look like something from a horror movie.

Whole families hacked to pieces, their homes drenched in blood. And the killer also has a distinctive M.O. Before each attack, he telephones his victim to let them know he's coming. First, somebody calls and makes a threat. And then somebody knocks at the door and that person goes to answer the door and they get attacked. It was very frightening. And we were all scared every time someone knocked at the door or the doorbell rang. We were afraid every time the phone rang. At first, it seems like the hatchet man is killing at random. But as the murderous spree continues,

some Iraqis begin asking questions. Perhaps, they speculate, there's a pattern to the killings after all. The people who knew the victim, like who knew of the victims, they were not regular people. They were either somebody who had a grudge with the bathist or somebody who previously were against the bath and so on. There was talk, but really it was just speculation, talk, you know, propositions here and there. But one day, Juman's father, Mr. Maki, makes a shocking discovery. Demoted from his previous high-flying position, he's still working in Iraqi telecommunications,

when he's alerted to a problem with the official Hatchet Man hotline. The police was having this show, hotline show, every night. And the police told my father that we are not receiving the call. So my dad went to examine the switchboard or whatever, and he saw that it was being diverted to the presidential palace. At first, Mr. Mackey doesn't appreciate the significance of what he's uncovered. He reconnects the line to police headquarters.

But a few days later, he receives another call, this time from one of his own switchboard operators. The staff called my father at home late at night, and they said we were following the line of one family who were receiving threats, and we interrupted the line and we put a hold on it, but we didn't know it was coming from the presidential palace. on it, but we didn't know it was coming from the presidential palace. And he said, moments later, some cars came from the palace with these armed men and they, they ransacked the place and they hit the staff members and they removed, they just like shredded the tape and, and they called us names and the man was frightened, he was shivering, he was, you know, gasping for air.

He was afraid for his life and the lives of his colleagues. There can now be no doubt as to what Mr. Mackey and his staff have discovered. A conspiracy right at the heart of the Bath Party. He discovered the truth that the Ba'ath are the true criminals and the Ba'ath are the ones who are terrorizing people and who are killing people. The next morning, Mr. Mackie speaks to the shell-shocked switchboard operator in person. My dad went there the next day and he asked, He speaks to the shell-shocked switchboard operator in person. My dad went there the next day and he asked, where is the second tape? Did they take it?

And the man said, no, they didn't take it. They don't know about it. So my dad was really happy knowing that there is the backup tapes and that he thought he was going to confront the Ba'athists with the evidence, with the truth, you know. But Iraq of the Ba'ath, there's no truth. There's no honesty. There's just crimes and thugs running your lives. So my father receives a call, an urgent call. They told him it is from the presidential palace.

And it was the son-in-law of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. And he threatened my father. He said, Mr. Mecci, close this investigation, just like it didn't happen. And my father was still insisting on being professional and sincere and ethical, which he is. And he said, no, you know, these people were injured. This government property was destroyed. The crime wasn't prevented. And he just yelled at him, just yelled at my father, saying, do you know who I am? And he hung up the phone.

For the Mackey family, it's the dawn of a sinister new era. First, a neighbor informs them that someone has been entering their house at night. Then a local taxi driver admits to driving the intruder there after picking up a mysterious package from a nearby pharmacy. We were convinced that somebody was trying to kill us and poison us. We did some investigation, you know, we went to the pharmacy and asked. They said, well, this drug, it's a weird drug, we don't use it. So it was a weird story, very frightening.

But these were all like pretexts to what was going to happen to my father. Less than two weeks later, Mr. Mackey sets off for work as usual. But that afternoon, he doesn't come home. It's mid-December and there's a chill in the air. As night falls, Mrs. Mackey begins to worry. But hours pass and there's still no sign of her husband. It's not until four in the morning that the family receive a call from his boss.

Mr. Mackey has been detained by the Mukhabarat. They just kidnapped him from his office. They shoved him into a car. They blindfolded him and they just took him to these dungeons of Mukhabarat, the intelligence. For more than a month, Mrs. Maki tries and fails to locate her husband. With every day that passes, she becomes more and more convinced he must be dead. In fact, Mr. Maki is experiencing the full misery of life as a political prisoner.

He was being treated in the most inhumane way. Beaten, stripped of his clothes, tortured with electricity, with beating, with cold and hot. I mean, horrible, horrible conditions, being kept in the dark. Finally, the family are allowed to visit him. Unshaven, hunched over, he looks two decades older. Things could be worse, though. Not everyone survives the Macabre Dungeons. Eventually, Mr. Mackey gets his day in court.

But there is no justice. Only a show trial. They accused him of taking money and they didn't let him speak to defend himself. He had receipts for all the money that he had used. And they didn't even let lawyers, like there are lawyers in Iraq, but they don't let them say anything. They don't let them speak. It's what we call a mockery trial. It's not a real trial. It's like a pseudo trial. I wasn't there, of course, being a kid, but I know my mother and my brothers, they went there and they were able to see my father taken out from the court to be taken to the prison.

Mr. Mackey is sentenced to one year at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Mr. Maki is sentenced to one year at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Abu Ghraib is a huge complex. It's a little bit on the outskirts of Baghdad. I do remember when I went there for the first time, my dad was in this room with like several hundred people. There's no private cells. It's just one place where they put people. And it was cold and wet.

As a child, my father meant the world to me. So I couldn't understand. I couldn't comprehend why is he there. But with my little child mind, I understood the Ba'ath is evil and is against Iraq. And it caused a lot of, you know, harm to us. And it's really hard for me to remember that, you know, it was a horrible, horrible time.

By the time he's released, he's more frail and vulnerable than ever. His health had deteriorated dramatically because of all the torture. He was hit on his head many times and as a result of that he suffered some strokes during his time there. The Bath are confident they'll have no more trouble from this old man. He's lost his job and he's not allowed to get another one. His time in detention is something he'll never fully recover from. And he's not the only one. The trauma of that 50 years ago, what happened to my father, that will never go away. You know, it's shaped my life. The Ba'ath regime destroyed many lives, destroyed a beautiful country, destroyed a beautiful society.

And it created a group of people who are bullies and thugs, and they ran our lives. So that trauma is still with me, really. While Iraqis suffer under the boot of his security forces, Saddam Hussein is consolidating his own power base. Since the death of the Minister of Defense in Colonel Qasr's disastrous coup attempt, President al-Bakir has taken on the role himself. But in 1978, he hands it over to a new man, Adnan Kheiralla. Adnan is Saddam's cousin, as well as his brother-in-law. He is also the eldest son of the beloved uncle who raised Saddam.

He is also the eldest son of the beloved uncle who raised Saddam. Adnan is the latest in a long line of men from Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, to ascend to power in recent years. It's a very, very small tribal area. I think on one hand there was the sense of loyalty and commitment. The tribal aspects of it is very important. This small town has now supplied so many government ministers, it's starting to look like the Eton or Oxbridge of Iraq. For the Ba'ath Party, it's becoming embarrassing.

Embarrassing enough, in fact, for Saddam to change the naming conventions of the entire country. Saddam is his name. Hussein is his father's name. In the beginning, it was Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti. But I think there was one cabinet and the announcer on the radio kept saying, blah, blah, blah, Al-Tikriti, blah, blah, blah, Al-Tikriti. And people started making jokes. And so he said, that's it.

No more surname. And you were really not allowed it. So it was you and your father's name only. President al-Bakir is Tikriti himself, and a cousin of Saddam Davout. But he's also 20 years his senior, and he lacks his protégé's ambition. Throughout the 70s, while the two men rule Iraq as a double act,

it's the younger man's star that's in The Ascendant. Will Barden Werper, author of The Prisoner in His Palace. Something that you'll hear from just about anyone who interacted with him, they will all say that when he came into the room, even if he was just wearing a dishdasha and sandals, he carried himself with a noticeable aura that never went away. It's only a matter of time before al-Bakr is eclipsed altogether. By 1979, Saddam has his ducks in a row. He's ready to move against his mentor. It all happens rather quickly.

Reluctantly, but without putting up a fight, Al-Bakir steps aside. By now he's well aware what Saddam is capable of. Better retire and live in a palace rather than fall into his hands. Supposedly, Saddam went to him and said, I think you should retire for medical reasons. And supposedly al-Bakr said, but I'm feeling fine. He said, no, I don't think so. I think you're not feeling well. And I drafted a statement saying you're resigning for health reasons. I drafted a statement saying you're resigning for health reasons. Having taken the crown, Saddam has no intention of going out the same way as his predecessor.

He surrounds himself with yet more Tikriti loyalists, many of them his own extended family. As his deputy, he appoints the former information minister, Tariq Aziz. Aziz is a canny operator who has been working with Saddam since the 50s. He's also, crucially, a Christian. In a Muslim-majority nation, this makes him much less of a political threat. threat, Saddam has appointed the one man guaranteed not to usurp him. You know, the most important criteria in his mind was your loyalty to him. If you're looking to understand Saddam, it is helpful, of course, to read all about Iraqi history and Middle Eastern history. But you can also just watch the TV show The Sopranos. and Middle Eastern history. But you can also just watch the TV show, The Sopranos.

I mean, there's as many parallels between Tony Soprano and how he goes about leading his crime family as there is to Saddam. Saddam didn't tolerate anyone to disagree with him, even think about disagreeing with him. In the mid-70s, where he was still not the president, he wanted to execute a whole list of prominent Iraqis. Some of the ministers objected and said, well, we can't.

We can't execute such prominent personalities. These are all well-known people. Those ministers were either imprisoned, killed, removed from power just for saying that they had a different opinion. But any previous purge pales in comparison to what happens once Saddam assumes the presidency. The stage is set for a political reshuffle that will turn the Ba'ath Party on its head. its head. On July 22, 1979, just six days after al-Bakr's resignation is broadcast, Saddam calls a meeting

of the leadership. In a large, smoky room in Baghdad, 400 senior party members gather to anoint their new ruler. On Saddam's orders, the meeting is filmed for posterity. He calls all the politburo of the party and you see them filing into this huge auditorium and it was really straight from a Hollywood movie. He's walking through the Congress with this swagger. You know, he's just removed Hassan al-Bakr from power. He's out of the way.

And he's at the front of the room, casually puffing on a cigar. America would be a State of the Union address where the president's in the front and the House of Representatives, the congressmen and the senators are out in the audience. And he started giving a speech and then he started semi-acting

that he's on the verge of tears that he has been betrayed and it hurts him so much. And he tells them that there's been a conspiracy and he has some sad news and that he's going to bring someone to tell them about what's happened. He's going to bring someone to the stage

to tell them so that they can learn. He uses this phrase so that you can learn, all of you can learn from this. And this was all prearranged. That one person that was tortured and supposedly his family was in the custody of the security services and told him if he doesn't stand up, the whole family would be killed. And so he brings this guy who is Hassan al-Bakr's secretary. He's a very senior person. He's a member of the Revolutionary Command Council.

And he reads out his confession. He got up and he said, I want to confess that I was conspiring. And he said, he's so confident this time. He's just sitting there smoking his Cuban cigar as he's listening to this. And he asked him, how could you do this? We're brothers. And who else was you? And he started singing names.

Visibly terrified, the former secretary starts to read aloud the names of the supposed traitors. They're here in this very room one by one dozens of the attendees start getting tapped on the shoulder and escorted out of the room and it becomes immediately clear to everyone present that whatever is happening is not a good thing and you can see kind of the panic begin to set in that you're going to be the next one to get tapped and let out. And if you watch his face as this takes place, it is pretty chilling because he doesn't look like he has a care in the world as these men are getting let out to their death. I interviewed someone 30 years later almost, and he told me when he thinks about it, his legs start shaking to this day because it was a shell shock.

I mean, the impact was so huge. Everyone left alive, the vast majority, realizing, don't mess with this guy. I think that there is a sort of a mafia godfather element to this. It was almost theatrical in the way that it was carried out. This is his first act. It's recorded. A copy of the video is sent to bath offices. It's sent to embassies abroad.

So he creates this myth, this idea that they can get to you at any time. As the so-called conspirators are led away one by one, the mood in the room is electric. Those who remain begin professing their support for Saddam, rising to their feet to cheer their new leader. But for those who've survived the purge, there's one final horror in store. Some of them are chosen for a very important job.

Guns are placed in their hands, and they're led to where their former colleagues are being held. One by one, these unwilling executioners will carry out Saddam's orders. Because in the new Iraq, there can be no more innocent bystanders. The more people you implicate in the killing and the torture, the safer you feel.

Because then it's very difficult for them one day to say, well, it was only Saddam. By forcing people to commit crimes and torture at all stages, you're now part of the, you know, it's the mafia code. Without a doubt, Saddam has made a lasting impression on the Ba'ath Party. And before long, he'll do the same for the rest of the country as well. In the next episode Saddam Hussein goes head to head with the new leader of Iran A man known as Chemical Ali Commits one of the most heinous atrocities of modern times. Meanwhile an army of mini-Sadams takes over Iraq, as sculptures and figurines of the dictator

are commissioned across the land. With his personality cult firmly established, Saddam is ready for war. That's next time.