Saddam Hussein deputy leader in a union, and this would drive Saddam to obscurity. Saddam acted to secure his grip on power. He forced the ailing al-Bakr to resign on 16 July 1979, and formally assumed the presidency. Saddam convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on 22 July 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped, Saddam claimed to have found a fifth column within the Ba'ath Party and directed Muhyi Abdel-Hussein to read out a confession and the names of 68 alleged co-conspirators. These members were labelled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one and taken into
Interrogation of Saddam Hussein Hussein, translated from Arabic to English by the FBI. Some of these quotes were highlighted in secondary source accounts of the reports, including these (grouped by subject in rough chronological order): A number of press reports describe the Iraqi dictator admitting to a catastrophic miscalculation, having misled the United States into believing Iraq still possessed biological and chemical weapons. According to the "Associated Press": "Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran". This interpretation has been