ISSUES: CIA Unit Considered Depicting Saddam as Gay

In the annals of CIA subterfuge, this is a weird one: A special ops unit pitched the idea of trying to discredit Saddam Hussein as a gay pedophile before the 2003 invasion, reports the Washington Post. The idea was to create a phony home video purporting to show Saddam having sex with a teenage boy. Superiors eventually shot it down, though the unit did make a fake video with an Osama bin Laden lookalike bragging about his conquests of young males.

One problem with the scheme: “Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East—nobody cares,” a former CIA official tells the Post. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”