Meaner Than a Junkyard Dog
Oilman Oscar Wyatt reveals how his world really works—from freeing the hostages in Iraq to doing deals with China and keeping up with his jet-set marriage.
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His own personal financial portfolio reflects his stature as an X factor international businessman. About 60 percent of Wyatt’s cash holdings are in foreign currency. “Don’t leave your money in the Reagan-Bush dollar,” I overheard him tell a longtime friend on the telephone. “By the time this president is finished with us, you won’t be able to buy a bag of lemon drops with a dollar.”
AN AMERICAN WHO TELLS THE TRUTH
One afternoon in late September, Wyatt was sitting at his desk when he got a telephone call from his friend Congressman Charlie Wilson of Lufkin. Wilson wanted help for six of his East Texas constituents who were being held hostage in Iraq as Saddam Hussein’s so-called human shields. “Is there any way you can use your contacts inside Iraq to free those Texans?” Wilson asked. Wyatt promised that he would try.
Wyatt first met Saddam Hussein nineteen years ago, when the oilman was in Baghdad buying oil to run Coastal’s refineries in 1972 and Saddam was Iraq’s second in command. They bumped into each other during a meeting at the national oil company building. “I was there negotiating with the oil officials when suddenly Saddam Hussein walked into the meeting,” said Wyatt. “My first impression of him was that he was tough, efficient, rigid—the kind of guy who was willing to go to the wall for what he believed in.” In short, someone a lot like Oscar Wyatt.
Even then the oil officials seemed to have a mixture of fear and respect for Saddam. Wyatt watched carefully as Saddam greeted everyone in the room and then told the Iraqis, “The future of our country is in your hands. We can’t build our country without money, and oil is all we have to sell.”
Wyatt continued to make trips to Baghdad, cementing his relationships with many of the oil ministers as well as a number of physicians, engineers, and professors. He never again ran into Saddam Hussein—until the events set in motion by the call from Wilson.
Wyatt began telephoning sources in Washington and the Middle East. One who became instrumental was Samir A. Vincent, an Iraqi-American geophysicist who has been marketing Iraq to U.S. companies since 1986. Vincent’s contacts inside Iraq are as varied as Wyatt’s. Vincent is solidly built and chooses his words with extreme caution. Dark and handsome, he looks like a bedouin tribesman who lifts weights. He attended Jesuit High School in Baghdad with Nizar Hamdoon, the foreign minister of Iraq, and also had met Hussein Kamel Hassan, Saddam’s son-in-lawn who is the acting oil minister of Iraq. Vincent placed an overseas telephone call to Hamdoon and asked if there was any chance of getting American hostages out of Baghdad. “You want them,” Hamdoon told Vincent, “come on over and get them.”
At the same time, Wyatt’s own contacts inside Iraq told him that Saddam might free some of the hostages. He and Wilson began to make plans for a trip to Baghdad in early December. Then Wilson received a telephone call from assistant secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger, asking him not to go to Baghdad. Eagleburger told him that the request came directly from President Bush. “When you get a request from the commander in chief during wartime, you honor it,” Wilson said.
So Wilson told Wyatt that as far as he was concerned, the trip was off. Wyatt replied that he was disappointed, but privately he was infuriated—as usual, with the Bush administration. “People in top positions of the Iraqi government had stuck their neck out to help me get the hostages out,” said Wyatt, still fuming five months later. “I decided, to hell with it, I’m going anyway.”
Wyatt needed a human shield of his own—someone who could handle the media while Wyatt did the negotiating. Immediately he thought of his old friend former governor John Connally, a member of the board of Coastal. “I know of no one more persuasive than Governor Connally,” Wyatt told me. “I knew he was the man for the job.”
On December 1, Wyatt and Connally flew to Amman, Jordan, in Coastal’s Boeing 707 loaded with medical supplies. They left the plane there, flew to Baghdad on Iraqi Airways, and checked into the Al Rasheed Hotel as guests of the Iraqi government. Since they had no contact with the U.S. embassy and were there at the displeasure of the president, Connally and Wyatt were careful not to violate U.S. sanctions. “We didn’t spend a penny in Baghdad,” Connally told me. “The Iraqi government paid for everything.” Or, as Wyatt put it: “We didn’t furnish anything but our hat and our ass.”
Wyatt and Connally both had their own suites at the hotel, but they set up their base of operations in Wyatt’s three-room suite. Samir Vincent, who had accompanied them on the trip, kept updating his list of American hostages. The list, which at one point grew to one hundred, included names from American senators and congressman, various corporations, and the Kuwaiti underground. Not one was an employee of Coastal.
On Monday, December 3, Wyatt and Connally met with Hussein Kamel Hassan, Saddam’s son-in-law, but got no commitment that he would press for the release of the hostages. Despite the foreign minister’s earlier invitation to simply come and get the hostages, Wyatt and Connally were under no illusions that it would be easy. Everyone in Saddam Hussein’s inner circle was fearful of doing anything to anger him. “It was a very ticklish situation,” Vincent told me. “Saddam is an imposing, even paranoid, man. We had to build support for releasing the hostages among those around him, without placing them in danger of appearing to be disloyal.”
Wednesday morning, Wyatt and Connally got a call asking them to stay in their hotel rooms. Within minutes, they were picked up and driven to the presidential palace. It was a chilly but sunny morning. Once inside the presidential compound, they saw as many as five soldiers posted on every corner, but when they approached the palace—a modern sand-colored building—no military guards were present. Wyatt and Connally were met by members of Saddam’s staff, including his interpreter, a Shakespearean scholar who teaches English literature at the University of Baghdad. They were led into a small meeting room, furnished in French décor, where Saddam Hussein was seated on a couch, dressed in military uniform, including a webbed belt with a pistol and holster. Three members of his cabinet were also present.
Saddam stood and reached to shake hands with Connally and Wyatt. Wyatt reminded him of their meeting nineteen years before. Throughout the conversation, Saddam was calm and deliberate, sometimes speaking in such a soft voice that Connally and Wyatt strained to hear him. After the initial introductions, they launched into their carefully rehearsed speeches.
“Mr. President, the average person in the U.S. or elsewhere knows little of Kuwait and even less about the emir,” Connally told him, “but they are outraged when they know Americans are being held here as hostages. You call them guests, but nonetheless they are people held against their will. If you free these people, you will gain a tremendous advantage in world opinion.”
Saddam nodded again but said nothing. Connally continued to describe the effect Saddam’s human-shield strategy was having on the general public in the United States. “In the minds of most people, this is an emotional revulsion,” argued Connally, “to the point that you are being called a modern-day Hitler at home.”
This time Saddam ducked his head, and his mouth formed into a small, amused smile. Still he didn’t say a word.
Wyatt took the pragmatic approach. “Mr. President,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, “think about how difficult it will be to handle all these detainees if war breaks out. For every two of them you’ve got, you’re going to have to have at least one soldier guarding them. You’ll have to feed them, clothe them, and house them, and all the time, you’ve got a war to fight.”
Through his interpreter, Saddam asked Wyatt: “Will the detainees discourage President Bush from attacking Iraq?”
“Absolutely not,” Wyatt shot back. “If the president reaches the point that he believes an attack is necessary to protect U.S. interests, a few hundred hostages won’t deter him for one minute.”
“We have no argument with the American people,” Saddam said. “Our argument is with President Bush.” Again Wyatt assured him that the hostages would gain him no advantage with Bush.
Then Saddam’s minister of information spoke up and said that he understood a majority of the members of the U.S. Congress were opposed to the use of force in the Middle East.
Connally and Wyatt were taken aback. “Don’t be deceived,” said Connally. “If the president launches an attack or asks for support, he will undoubtedly get it.”
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