The Dunsmore Dossier: The Death of Dr. David Dunsmore and
The Fabricated Case for War

By Norman Gerard

The British-supplied dossier on WMDs was what the Americans were looking for to justify invading Iraq. President Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Dr. David Dunsmore was relieved as an U.N. weapon's inspector in Iraq and went back to work for the Ministry of Defense at the government's biological warfare facility. "We're at the brink of war, and I have betrayed my friends," he said. "Do you know how they deal with people who betray them? I will probably be found dead in the woods if the Americans invade Iraq."

After Saddam's defeat no WMDs were found, and the government was pressured to explain its deception. The blame was defrayed to Dunsmore, and he was ordered to reveal the names of those he had disclosed classified information to. The night before he was to testify he was found dead in the woods near his home, as he had predicted. The government concluded that Dr. Dunsmore's "suicide was regrettable."

The unanswered question remained: Who were the "friends" Dr. Dunsmore believed he had betrayed?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450277228

Norman Gerard

Norman Gerard started his career in the theater and has directed films including Disney’s EPCOT. He is the author of The Wreck of the Alamo, The Assassin from Stavanger, and The Dunsmore Dossier. Gerard has produced and directed two feature films: Snake Skin Jacket and The Murder in China Basin.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

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According to population statistics, more than fifty percent of the Arab world is under the age of thirty-five. Thirty-one year-old Prince Abdullah was sixteenth in line to rule the House of Saud and was referred to as Abdul to foster a hip image with the younger population.

Abdul’s long white traditional dishdasha robe fell to the ground and covered his Western-style Gucci shoes. His headwear was the traditional red-checkered kuffiyeh. He stroked his short manicured beard that outlined his mouth and chin. Abdul gazed over the windy barren plains where his ancestors lived as dirt-poor nomads even before Muhammad founded Islam in the sixth century. War has been waged over dar al-Islam ever since.

The British joined with local Arabs to drive out the Ottoman Empire starting in 1914. Four years later, the area around Mecca was recognized as an independent kingdom known as Hijaz. Not far from Hijaz, the region known as Najd was led by Ibn Saud, not much more than a local potentate at the time.

The western nations played the Hijaz and Saudi clans against each other, but in 1926 the Saudis triumphed. Ibn Saud gained the upper hand and took over both kingdoms. In 1932, the region was renamed Saudi Arabia. The next year crude oil, black gold, came bubbling up from the ground. Suddenly, and from that time forward, Arabia wasn’t just a point of interest for Muslims anymore.

Throughout the 1950’s the Saudi government built its infrastructure around oil, and the wealth of the region grew exponentially. The royal family spared no expense in building up their nation and their own personal holdings. The Saudi-managed investments were estimated to be around one trillion dollars in the United States, and even worth more than that in Great Britain. By 2001, more than 30,000 Brits worked and lived in Saudi Arabia.

One enterprising young Saudi construction magnate who played a critical role in this expansion was Muhammad Awad bin Laden. He became one of the wealthiest men in the world as a result. Muhammad crafted intimate ties with the royal family as they built an empire together. Muhammad Bin Laden was a hero and a powerful dealer in influence. In 1955 he had his seventeenth son, Osama bin Laden1, cousin of Prince Abdullah.

The Saud family was a member of the Wahhabi sect. They were Sunnis and strict religious fundamentalists.

It is written in Arabia, The Arabs flew their hawks because they wanted to hunt and eat. They did not hunt because they wanted to see their hawks fly. But that all changed with the discovery of oil and the luxury that the wealth from oil provided.

Hawking linked Prince Abdullah with his ancestors. The Prince would say, "the food my peregrine brings me is a traditional Bedouin diet and good for the figure.

The Prince’s favorite peregrine let out a shirk that echoed across the desert as it dove out of the dark blue sky, unfolded its lengthy wings, and then dropped a dead rabbit at its master’s feet. The peregrine’s massive display of white-tipped red and brown feathers brushed the Prince’s shoulder before she folded her wings snuggly back into her streamlined body in a biological wonder of aerodynamics that had been perfected over a million years of evolution. Then the peregrine dug its fangs into its master’s padded thick leather glove that extended above his elbow.

Hassan, a Saudi businessman who looked after the Prince’s investments, and a European named Vladi, were dressed in western-style business suits. Both were at the Prince’s side.

Vladi was a Bosnian Muslim with thinning blond hair and ice-blue killer’s eyes that matched his soul. He had an identifying deep scar on his cheek below his right eye that he’d received from a Catholic woman he raped at gunpoint in front of her husband and children. After the woman cut him, Vladi killed the entire family. Humiliation and death went hand in hand with the campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Vladi found immunity and employment in Saudi Arabia as Prince Abdullah’s personal bodyguard. Before he came to Saudi Arabia, Vladi did a short stint in South Africa as Prime Minister Botha’s bodyguard, before Botha’s apartheid government fell.

An older white bearded man was the Prince’s personal instructor in the art of hawking. He stood behind the Prince, proud of the traditions he had taught him, confident that the nomadic tradition would carry on for another generation.

Meanwhile, in Dhahran, bulldozers were at work cleaning up what was left of the United States military barracks that had been bombed by terrorists the night before. Nineteen U.S. Airmen were killed and 240 were injured.3 American soldiers were not permitted to investigate the crime. They argued and pleaded their case vigorously, but to no avail.

The Americans were permitted on Saudi soil by decree from the Saudi royal family. They were guests and as such were deemed to have no rights. The United States State Department agreed to the arrangement. American policy in the Middle East since President Carter was to handle all insurgencies delicately, a policy designed not to rile the Arabs or any of the governments in the region.

America decided to cut and run after a Hezbullah suicide bomber killed 241 Marines who were asleep in their barracks in Beirut, 1983.

Shortly thereafter, President Reagan pulled the Marines out of Lebanon without exacting reprisals.

Some pundits believed that evacuating Beirut was a mistake and might even mark the beginning of the next world war.

American Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton4 followed the course of not riling the Arabs. America earned the reputation of being a Paper Tiger, seemingly dangerous and powerful but in fact weak and indecisive.5 Islamic fundamentalists capitalized on this apparent weakness of will.

May 12, 2001—KABOOM! A bomb suddenly exploded destroying half of a shopping mall in Riyadh, killing twenty-six people, and injuring more than a hundred. That surprise attack was coupled with the one on the American barracks the day before.

The insurgents appeared to be well organized and sounded an unmistakable threat to the House of Saud.

Sounds of blaring oogah sirens and the sight of drab-green and black camouflaged military trucks packed with combat-ready soldiers flooded the streets of the Saudi capital. It signaled just how hair-trigger nervous the Wahhabis were.

Dozens of foreign workers, clearly not Saudi nationals, were herded into trucks and whisked away. Representation and redress didn’t exist in Saudi Arabia.

Civil rights didn’t warrant a zephyr of thought. According to Islamic law, the ruler (who upheld Islam) was the law.

The Koran was a religious doctrine that also set the foundation on how to run the state. The Koran outlined rules of marriage, tax collecting, self-defense and how enemies of the state were to be dealt with.

The Saud family instituted the Shari’ah in their kingdom. The Shari’ah was a system of strict religious laws that also served the nation’s entire judicial system. The House of Saud decided the law. They were judge and jury, consistent with their fundamentalist beliefs.

Several foreigners were beaten, carted off to prison and crammed into tiny jails. Prince Abdullah spoke to the British Undersecretary of Commerce and MI-6 Special Agent, Ian Westmore.

Prisoners were escorted from their cells and their hands were being systematically chopped off as the Prince and Undersecretary discussed their business.

Punishment served as an example of the state’s absolute authority.

Prince Abdullah rarely spoke above a whisper, and when he did, he did so with a Cambridge accent, an accent associated with privilege and linked to a fading class-system. The Prince spent an hour a day practicing his accent, having seen first-hand just how important a dialect influenced most British government officials by the way they braced and reacted when it was spoken.

Stress precedes many diseases observed in falcons in the Gulf, said the Prince, speaking in innuendoes, as would be expected of a Prince in diplomatic circles. Both men appeared unaffected by the nearby screams for mercy.

Some of the causes of stress on a falcon may be attributed to a confined area of living, physical discomfort and poor nutrition, the Prince continued. We do our best to alleviate stress in our part of the world. Populations can become easily excited.

Then Abdullah came to the point, indirectly of course. The young Prince needed something from the undersecretary.

These prisoners are supported by Saddam, fanatical Mullahs, and maybe a Western government or two? They would all like to see my family beheaded. There is no sense in quibbling. We behead them before they behead us.

It’s a matter of clean hands, your highness, Westmore offered, accommodating the Prince’s family business.

The Prince presented his proposal in a stage whisper.

"There is a very common disease among falcons known as Bumble Foot. Have you heard of it?"

Can’t say that I have. No.

It’s an infection that arises from self-inflicted punctures by the falcon’s sharp or overgrown talons. In the Bedouin tradition, we do not take care of this because the needle-sharp talons are necessary for the falcon’s success as a hunter, and we are traditionally impatient with long-term treatments, the Prince added jokingly.

"Unless something looks better almost immediately, treatment is usually abandoned and the bird may be released to Allah’s Will. Arabs in general would rather do business than wage war. It is time for us to get around to doing business."

An agonizing scream echoed from the tiled room just a few doors away. Blood mopped up nicely from tile and stainless steel cells.

The will of Allah, commented the Prince on the deathly scream. I apologize for the interruption.

The prisoner lost a hand to a swift sword. He was bandaged, escorted out, and then another foreign worker was promptly escorted in and met the identical punishment.

And our business is, your highness? Westmore asked.

Basra and Iraqi oil, the Prince replied forthrightly. Where it all started for the superiority of British sailing vessels.6

"Rule Britannia," Westmore smiled.

Indeed, and then Prince Abdullah completed the refrain:

When Britain first at Heaven’s command

Arose from out the azure main,

This was the charter of her land,

And guardian angels sung the strain:

Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!

Britons never shall be slaves.

I’m impressed, gloated Westmore. The Arabs do so love to emulate the eighteenth century upper class.

I’m a bit dusty on the words, but it’s the thought that concerns us. Britain’s return to the tar fields in Basra would secure the Gulf militarily, and we would welcome that at this time, as we once welcomed your help in defeating the Ottomans.

Westmore thought for a moment, and then he spoke.

Days of thunder, he said. Once rulers, always in your service, your highness.

The opportunity to change the region before you lose it entirely, whispered the Prince. King Fahd will not rule Saudi Arabia forever. He may be closer to death than most people might guess. There are factions outside the country as well as within it that want to impose their will on the House of Saud once the king dies. Even within the family there is disagreement.

The more Prince Abdullah spoke, the more suspicious Westmore became. He tried to keep a straight face, but internally he began questioning Prince Abdullah’s loyalties. Was the Prince a friend or a foe of the West? Was he an opportunist or a survivor? In Arabia these characteristics were not contradictions.

Prince Abdullah didn’t hint where his loyalties lay. At the end of all this we shall all look forward to another small but powerful state in the Gulf centered around Basra, he said. "You can work the means to that end with your cousins, the Americans. What honorable men treasure most comes to them willingly. The means to an independent Basra, apart and detached from Iraq, is not our concern. We lean to our friends, the British, who have not let us down in the past to convince the Americans."

Divide and conquer? Westmore asked with raised eyebrows.

Conquer and then divide, replied the Prince.7

One can only hope we don’t do the job so well that the Americans become intransigent and get us all stuck in a quagmire, Westmore sighed.8

We trust you to manage the Americans. Our common objective is to stabilize the region. Besides, the Prince added, Americans don’t have the stomach for a prolonged occupation of Iraq.

And as for us? asked Westmore.

Britain will exert its business influence as usual. When King Fahd dies there is the potential for civil war in Arabia, he said matter-of-factly.9 The oil ministry in Basra is located in the same building you built in the 1920’s. It’s waiting for you, as though you never left.

The Bush-Cheney administration is no less mercenary than previous American administrations going back to World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1945 after the war and promised the Saudi Royal family that America would defend it and its heirs in perpetuity in exchange for oil.

Every succeeding American president reinforced that understanding, most notably President Carter who pledged that America would go to war if necessary to protect its vital interests. The vital interest of America was cheap oil: A nation of petroleum, by petroleum, and for petroleum.10

Agonizing screams from the prisoners served to reinforce their deal. It was a preview of the screams of war that would change the map in the Gulf: Blood for Oil.

Westmore questioned the placid smile on Prince Abdullah’s face, thinking about the struggle for power within the House of Saud.

Et tu? he wondered.

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CHAPTER 2

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It was a calm day but rain was threatening, not unlike most days in Wimbledon, a bedroom community that became famous once each year in the summer for the tennis tournament that took the town’s namesake—Wimbledon. It was the last surviving major tournament to be played on grass.

Leave it to the British to be the last surviving anything.

Wimbledon was only fifteen minutes by train from the heart of London. The exclusive all-girls school was up the hill from the famous Tennis and Croquette Club. The girls played their soccer matches on the sprawling grass field below the club’s lower courts, numbers forty-two through forty-seven.

Clare Andrews was on the sidelines cheering on his 13-year-old daughter, Brook. It was a Saturday afternoon in October and the families, faculties and schoolmates who were in attendance came prepared: lawn chairs, blankets, cucumber, meatloaf, and ham sandwiches minus the crust, a bottle of gin or French white wine, and an ever-indispensable umbrella.

Andrews, unlike the others, brought his type-A personality to the match.

He coached every moment of his daughter’s play: ball movement, passing, defense, and position on the field. It was a nerve-racking and memorable event whenever Andrews showed for a match; memorable for the other parents and his daughter.

The coaches and referees went out of their way to ignore him. Everyone knew Andrews from his sporadic television appearances on the BBC, but they mostly knew Andrews for the gossip headline-making stories he wrote for the tabloids.

Andrews’s picture was on the masthead above The True Inside Story, a syndicated column he wrote that sold newspapers and paid him handsomely to maintain his lavish and gregarious lifestyle.

When Andrews worked for the BBC he hardly earned enough to pay the winter heating bill for his apartment.

People of pedigree, and those who thought of themselves worthy of a pedigree, kept at arms-length from Andrews. If asked they might describe him as charming and harmless, in an excitable way. They referred to Andrews’s True Inside Story column devotedly as True Dirt.

The column was read religiously. Andrews was somewhat of a national celebrity. Still and all, it wouldn’t have been proper to be seen in the company of a tabloid journalist in haughty Wimbledon-town.

A broad-shouldered tall and athletic-looking man with a rugby player’s nose observed Andrews from the sidelines for the entire first half of the match. It wasn’t until the end of the second half, with five minutes left to play and the score tied at one-all, that 50-year-old Westmore approached Andrews.

Clare Andrews? The BBC-Andrews? he asked, flattering Andrews. The extension of flattery was the greatest prelude to conversation or a dance.

Not today, I’m afraid, replied Andrews in a scratchy voice that he’d contracted from yelling all afternoon. I’ve nothing to do with the British Broadcasting Corporation. Today is ‘divorced daddy’s day.’

I have a business proposition you may wish to consider, Mr. Andrews, Westmore said, getting to the point.

Business is another matter, Andrews smiled back. I can always make time for business. Even on a girl’s soccer field.

Westmore handed Andrews his card, which he’d been holding in the palm of his hand since the halftime break in anticipation of confronting Andrews.

Andrews read the card aloud, Ian P. Westmore, Riyadh Saudi Arabia.

He slid his finger over the raised gold crest. Then he flicked the card to assay its durability, and it snapped back smartly. Andrews was impressed.

Your calling card snaps of money, he said. The card read: Contractor, Ministry of Commerce.

Andrews mumbled, Contractor? What kind of contractor? he asked and then spoke his name again. Ian P. Westmore. What does the ‘P’ stand for?

Peter.

A good Christian name, Andrews conceded. Are you English? he asked. Sorry, one can never tell these days.

Leeds, replied Andrews in a word.

Andrews reached into his wallet and presented Andrews his flimsy card, identifying him only as Clare Andrews, Journalist, and then asked him straightaway, What can I do for you Mr. Westmore, from Leeds by way of Saudi Arabia?

You have met Dr. David Dunsmore in your travels, have you not? asked Westmore.

At the mention of Dunsmore’s name Andrews became instantly suspicious and curious, in equal parts.

Please continue.

Perhaps you spoke to Dr. Dunsmore while on assignment in Iraq? asked Andrews. Does he know you, or would he respond if you were to contact him?

Westmore knew, of course, that Andrews had met Dr. Dunsmore. That’s why he was speaking to him.

Andrews met Dr. David Dunsmore in Iraq in 1999 while doing a story on the progress the United Nations arms inspectors were making on the verification of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), something Saddam Hussein agreed to dispose of as part of the settlement after the war with Kuwait.

Dr. Dunsmore was a renowned British scientist with an expertise in chemical weapons, and Andrews was a British journalist on assignment in Iraq. Dun-smore’s biography was in the MoD secret files, and those files were at