Haitham Rashid Wihaib came to Georgetown last year with horror stories about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whom he said he served as chief-of-protocol; stories he also told the British and American press. There was only one problem: Wihaib may never have served Saddam , and most likely never even met him.
When Wihaib spoke at Georgetown in February 2005 at the invitation of the Lecture Fund, he was covered extensively in both the Voice and the Hoya. In the student newspapers, in his lecture and in international media, he was presented as an authoritative source on conditions in Iraq before and during the war. Now, new reports in the London Evening Standard indicate that Wihaib is a fraud.
“Having said I know him, I’m not sure I do know him, not having any proof,” said Alan Frame, a British media relations consultant who acted as Wihaib’s agent.
Wihaib caught the attention of the Iraqi Embassy in London while selling Saddam Hussein memorabilia on e-Bay in September. The embassy alleged he had lied about his past to obtain political asylum and personal gain. According to the Evening Standard’s sources in the Embassy, Wihaib was a receptionist in one of Hussein’s palaces and was fired from a junior post in Iraq’s Senegal embassy for “financial dishonesty and trouble-making among the staff.”
The Iraqi Embassies in the United Kingdom and the U.S. did not return calls for comment, nor did Wihaib.
One reporter who worked with Wihaib, Gordon Rayner of the London Daily Mail, stopped using the Iraqi as a source after the war because, he said, he was “starting to go off the rails a bit.”
“At the time I felt that he was accurate because he knows people in Iraq,” Rayner said. Indeed, some of Wihaib’s commentary, including his knowledge of the whereabouts of Hussein’s family in 2003, was correct.
However, Wihaib also claimed that Hussein had a relationship with Osama Bin Laden, and he accepted 5,000 pounds from the notorious British tabloid News of the World to write about Hussein’s supposed exploits with cocaine, heroin and “short, plump blonde women whom he would kill if they spurned his advances,” according to the Standard.
Wihaib came to Georgetown after Lecture Fund Chairman Gerard Alolod (SFS ‘05) heard of Wihaib from Samantha Friedman (SFS ‘05), a former Voice staffer, who had met him in London. According to Friedman, Wihaib told her interesting stories of Iraq and was interested in including Georgetown on an upcoming campus lecture tour. The New River Current ran a story before his first stop at Virginia Tech, questioning Wihaib’s credentials but noting that he had been interviewed on Fox News.
Wihaib was paid for his appearances at Virginia Tech and at Georgetown, and organizers of both appearances checked into his background, according to the Current and Alolod. Both organizations based their judgments on Wihaib’s appearances in the media. Although the Office of Communications was involved in promoting the event, Georgetown spokesperson Julie Green Bataille told the Voice that the University does not vet speakers who come to campus.
Wihaib told the Standard that the Iraqi Embassy was launching a smear campaign against him, but also that he has no way of corroborating his claims. He also said that the proceeds from the sale of the supposed Hussein artifacts will be donated to two charitable organizations he runs from London, the New Iraqi Humanitarian Rebuilding Project and the New Iraqi Green Party. (bottomlineequipment.com)
Business records indicate that Wihaib is also the director of the New Iraq International Trade and Commerce Group and was the director of two other now-defunct organizations as well.
While some sources have questioned the legitimacy of Wihaib’s organizations, others conceded that he is most likely a fabulist trying to use the chaos in his home country for personal gain.
“It doesn’t entirely surprise me. He is a bit of larger than life figure,” Rayner said.
Additional reporting by Shanthi Manian
