The Captured Baʿthist State Records from the 2003 Iraq War: Repatriation and Retribution?

by Bruce P. Montgomery, Michael P. Brill

Thursday, June 16, 2022

DOWNLOAD AS A PDF

This article explores the interconnecting social and political events, motivations, and consequences surrounding the US restitution to Iraq of three major caches of records seized from Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1991 and 2003 wars. Emphasis is given to the Pentagon’s covert return of the trove of sensitive records and archives captured in the 2003 war to prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s sectarian-driven regime in May 2013.

The Captured Baʿthist State... by Hoover Institution

COMMENTS POLICY

Join the Conversation

View the discussion thread.

About the Authors

Bruce P. Montgomery is former professor and director of archives and special collections at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he developed a leading human rights archives and initiated the Iraq Documents Project, acquiring eighteen tons of Iraqi secret police records seized by the Kurds in 1991. He is author of The Seizure of Saddam Hussein’s Archives of Atrocity.

Michael P. Brill is a PhD candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where his research focuses on Baʿthist and contemporary Iraq.