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Journalist and TV presenter Sir Trevor McDonald rewatches his iconic 1990 ITN interview with Saddam Hussein for a new ITV series called Reporting History
Sir Trevor McDonald has expressed his surprise at seeing a “smiling” Saddam Hussein – and revealed the question that still makes him “cringe” – as he rewatched his extraordinary 1990 grilling of the Iraqi dictator for the first time.
The broadcasting legend re-examined extended excerpts from the hour-long exclusive interview in the inaugural episode of the new ITV News show, Reporting History.
The show, released on ITVX and YouTube this Friday, March 6, sees journalists join News At Ten anchor Tom Bradby to revisit their remarkable on-the-day reports of the defining events of the modern age.
Sir Trevor’s sit-down interview with Hussein, which was recorded for ITN in a palace in Baghdad in November 1990, was the first by a British news organisation, weeks after Iraq’s swift and brutal invasion of neighbouring Kuwait.
Sir Trevor, now 86, told Reporting History no questions were off limits in the exchange, as he rewatched himself question the Iraqi leader on everything from the escalating threat of war to the reported atrocities by Iraqi forces over the border.
Sir Trevor McDonald on Reporting History. Credit: ITV News
However, he quickly expressed regret over his opening gambit, in which he asked: “Mr President, the invasion of a neighbouring country with such calculated force and brutality is a very un-Arab thing to do, isn’t it?”
Reflecting on it now, Sir Trevor told Bradby: “[It’s] a particularly biting bit of commentary to somebody like Saddam Hussein … because it is one of the highest kind of insults to somebody who is not only a president, but who thinks himself as a true nationalist.
“It’s quite a high-stakes way to begin an interview. I have probably learned my lesson now. And if I had to do this again, I’d find other words … I still cringe when I listen to it.”
At the time, Hussain’s attack on Kuwait saw Iraq facing retaliatory threats from the largest combined Western military alliance since the Second World War.
The interview that followed was hailed for capturing the dictator’s defiance and denial of wrongdoing, yet also his desperation, as he repeatedly appealed for a sit-down dialogue with the West to avoid the inevitable international conflict that followed.
The interview took place following Iraq’s invasion of neighbouring Kuwait. Credit: ITV News
And yet re-examining the exchanges 36 years on, Sir Trevor also re-evaluated the notorious dictator’s demeanour.
“I am surprised,” he said. “There was a flicker of an occasional smile, which did surprise me. I never associated Saddam with smiling and I was clearly wrong. He was a much smoother operator.
“I’m looking at it now because I hadn’t scrutinised it very much before. Don’t forget, this is a man who inspired such fear in the country.”
Hussein’s reign was defined by fierce oppression and murderous attacks on his opponents, notoriously gassing thousands of Kurds to death in the late 1980s, while rumours abounded that dissenting voices in his cabinet would be taken out and shot.
Watch Sir Trevor’s full-length interview with ITV News below
Within months of the ITN interview, Iraqi forces would go on to massacre hundreds of thousands of Shia and Marsh Arabs.
Acknowledging his interviewee’s ruthless reputation, Sir Trevor revealed the filming in Iraq was also not without jeopardy for him and his colleagues.
“You know, we were walking into the unknown,” he told Bradby. “And I’m not usually a person who sort of enjoys that.
“The first thing is an element of terror. It’s the unpredictability of it. There’s no format, there’s no formula.”
He said the ITN team was kept in limbo for more than a week before eventually being “roughed up” and strip-searched en route to the interview.
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“There was even a point where they said, ‘I’m not too sure you can take your cameras with you,'” Sir Trevor recalled. “I said, ‘What? But we’re going to do a television interview…
“Unpredictability was the game. And we never knew from one moment to another what was going to happen.”
By contrast, Sir Trevor recounted the quietly comical scenes that had played out weeks earlier in Iraq’s Cultural Office in London’s Tottenham Court Road as the then-newsreader doggedly pursued the landmark Hussein interview by cultivating a relationship with an Iraqi official.
Sir Trevor recounted how the crucial slip of paper with a formal reply to his interview request got lost under a mountain of paperwork in the official’s haphazard office, before he finally received an unexpected home phone call weeks later with the defining message: “Baghdad will see you now.”
While Hussein cut a composed figure on camera, Sir Trevor recalled the leader was left rattled in the half hour that followed filming, pacing the Baghdad palace floor while seeking to further justify his attack on the neighbouring Kuwait amid international outcry.
“I think he was not unaware of what Iraq’s position was,” Sir Trevor said. “And in the end, it was going to end as it was going to end.”
Credit: ITV News
While Iraq swiftly lost the Gulf War in 1991 in the face of the Western-led Operation Desert Storm, Hussein’s brutal reign continued until the US-driven invasion in 2003. He was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court in 2006 for crimes against humanity.
Reflecting on the state of Iraq today, Sir Trevor said: “There is still a feeling of sadness about what may have been several years later.
“Saddam represented one side of the religious divide. He supported the Sunnis. And there was an understanding in some parts of the world, I remember talking in Kuwait, in fact, to an Irish contingent of people who were there who [were] drawing on the experience of what happened in Northern Ireland as a way of trying to bring the different forces together, the different peoples together. And nothing like that happened.
“The divisions are now more profound almost than ever.
“I wonder whether a chance [has been] missed about trying to change that outcome? Difficult, perhaps impossible. But I just wonder whether enough of a chance was made about changing that?”
You can view Sir Trevor McDonald’s reflections on his seminal interview with Saddam Hussein in Reporting History on ITVX and YouTube. The extended audio conversation with Tom Bradby is also available on any podcast platform.
The limited series also includes remarkable testimony from ITV News correspondents who have found themselves in astonishing situations while capturing the news.
Among the episodes is International Editor Emma Murphy’s remarkable account of coming face-to-face with an armed and dangerous Raoul Moat in the summer of 2010 while reporting on his murderous shooting spree that sparked one of Britain’s largest manhunts.
And Correspondent John Ray describes in thrilling detail how he and an ITN team were held hostage by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces before escaping in the dying days of the Libyan dictator’s regime in 2011.
Reporting History sees journalists join News At Ten anchor Tom Bradby to revisit their remarkable on-the-day reports of the defining events of the modern age. Listen to the episodes below…
