The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant's Regime, 1978-2001

Description

During the 2003 war that ended Saddam Hussein's regime, coalition forces captured thousands of hours of secret recordings of meetings, phone calls and conferences. Originally prepared by the Institute for Defense Analyses for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, this study presents annotated transcripts of Iraqi audio recordings of meetings between Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. The Saddam Tapes, along with the much larger digital collection of captured records at the National Defense University's Conflict Records Research Center, will provide researchers with important insights into the inner workings of the regime and, it is hoped, the nature of authoritarian regimes more generally. The collection has implications for a range of historical questions. How did Saddam react to the pressures of his wars? How did he manage the Machiavellian world he created? How did he react to the signals and actions of the international community on matters of war and peace? Was there a difference between the public and the private Saddam on critical matters of state? A close examination of this material in the context of events and other available evidence will address these and other questions.

Kevin M. Woods is a member of the research staff of the Institute for Defense Analyses. His studies on Iraq have been published in Foreign Affairs, Journal of Strategic Studies, and Intelligence and National Security, among others. He has authored and coauthored numerous studies, including Iraqi Perspective Report: Saddam's Senior Leadership on Operation Iraqi Freedom (2006) and The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein's Strategic Plans for the Persian Gulf War (2008). Woods is a retired US Army officer with operational experience in Iraq during the 1991 and 2003 wars. Woods was the recipient of the 1997 J. William Middendorf II Award for Research at the Naval War College and the 2007 Andrew J. Goodpaster Award for Excellence in Research at the Institute for Defense Analyses. David D. Palkki is the deputy director and senior researcher at the National Defense University's Conflict Records Research Center. He has authored and coauthored articles and chapters on Iraq that have been accepted for publication in International Security, in Diplomatic History, and by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Palkki is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. His dissertation, 'Deterring Saddam's Iraq: Theory and Practice', draws heavily on the captured Iraqi records. He previously worked as a contractor at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He is a recipient of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation's Herbert York Fellowship and a National Science Foundation fellowship. Mark E. Stout is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches courses in intelligence and strategic studies. He is also the historian at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. He was previously a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and he has worked for the Department of the Army, the Department of State, and the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the coauthor of three books, including Iraqi Perspective Report: Saddam's Senior Leadership on Operation Iraqi Freedom (2006), First to the Rhine: The 6th Army Group in World War II (2007), and The Terrorist Perspectives Project: Strategic and Operational Views of Al Qaida and Associated Movements (2008). He has published articles in Intelligence and National Security, Studies in Intelligence, Journal of Strategic Studies, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.

'Provides researchers with important insights.' Middle East