Saddam's Ex-Mistress Recalls Ruthless Man
Sept. 12 -- A woman who says she was Saddam Hussein's mistress describes a Viagra-fueled lover who enjoyed watching The Godfather and tapes of his enemies being tortured — but cried as the allies took Kuwait from Iraqi occupation during the Gulf War.
"He don't believe in his mother, he don't believe in God, he didn't believe in nobody," Parisoula Lampsos, 54, told ABCNEWS' Claire Shipman in an interview from a safe house in Lebanon.
"He believe only for Saddam," Lampsos added. "He look at the mirror, 'I am Saddam.' He went like that. He looks. 'I am Saddam. Heil Hitler!'"
Allegedly Helped Bin Laden
As U.S. officials look for current links between Saddam and al Qaeda, Lampsos said she was told the Iraqi leader has met and given money in the past to Osama bin Laden, according to one of several written excerpts from the Primetime Thursday broadcast.
Lampsos saw bin Laden at Saddam's palace in the 1980s, she said, and claimed Saddam's son Oday told her his father met with bin Laden again in the mid-1990s and gave him money.
"He give to Osama bin Laden," Lampsos said. "He give to Palestine."
Lampsos says she was Saddam's mistress on and off for 30 years, and at times saw him almost on a daily basis. But after fleeing Iraq a year ago, she fears Saddam will try to kill her, and she disguises herself by wearing a veil in public.
The Iraqi National Congress, the leading opposition group, helped Lampsos flee Iraq and supports her claim that she was Saddam's mistress. Western intelligence sources also say they believe her claim. Iraqi officials denounce it as ridiculous and declined to comment further.
Lampsos said she did not know whether Saddam has nuclear weapons. But she did say she overheard Saddam and his son Oday discussing plans to move chemical weapons around by night to avoid their detection by U.N. inspectors — something U.S. intelligence soruces say they always suspected.
U.S. intelligence agents have not yet debriefed Lampsos, but government sources told Primetime her apparent knowledge of Saddam's habits and behavoir could be critical to a U.S. effort to remove him from power.
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