The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Part Five

Summary: In this series of posts, I examine some funkiness regarding the story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclear scientist who claimed to have buried a nuclear centrifuge under his rose plant. In part one, I lay out a timeline for his story. Parts two and three examine some problems with the materials he turned over. Part four questions the stories Obeidi and Pitzer told about their meeting. In this post, I look at central prop in this story, a WaPo article that provided Obeidi’s motivation for reaching out to Pitzer. The WaPo story doesn’t discredit the story, but it does raise the possibility that Chalabi’s INC was involved in this story.

When faced with the challenge of how to turn over his centrifuge to the Americans without getting arrested, Mahdi Obeidi turned to a WaPo article for inspiration. He explains he was given the Internet printout of the article by a friend. It reminded him of former weapons inspector David Albright, whom Obeidi had met and misinformed in the late 1990s. That reminder gave him the idea to reach out to David Albright to see if he could broker a meeting with the Americans.