COLUMN ONE : If Hussein Goes, Is This the Heir? : The Iraqi president’s cousin and son-in-law, Hussein Kamel Hassan, is edging closer to the power center. He’s seen as a likely successor but just as tough as the current leadership.

The first clues came in photographs.

For years, in the endless pictures that the sycophantic Iraqi media published of President Saddam Hussein, the face of Hussein Kamel Hassan routinely would appear in a far-right corner.

In the secretive world of Baghdad politics, where pictures often tell more than words about who’s really who in the inner circle, those images were evidence that the trim, young Iraqi with the de rigueur Saddam-style mustache was on the fringe of power.

But like a slow-motion run of animated cartoon panels, a series of photographs during the 1980s showed Kamel ever so gradually moving in from the corner. By this year, he was at center focus. There were even some photographs of Kamel handing out medals himself, with Hussein looking on.

For U.S. policy-makers and intelligence analysts, that sort of information is an important signal that a major new player has emerged inside the power structure of Iraq. “If Saddam had a heart attack, Kamel’s the most likely successor,” said one Administration Middle East expert.

Moreover, if Baghdad’s leadership ever decides to take President Bush up on his repeated suggestion that Iraq’s position in the world would be better if Hussein were no longer in charge, Hussein might well choose Kamel as his successor. “If Saddam is grooming anyone, it’s him,” the official said.

The rise of Hussein Kamel Hassan illustrates vividly the brutal rules of Iraqi politics--where family ties, ruthlessness and loyalty count above all else.

It also points up what may be the fatal flaw in the Bush Administration’s strategy of trying to stabilize the Persian Gulf region by pushing Hussein from power. For, while U.S. analysts disagree about some aspects of Kamel’s career, they are unanimous in saying that he is every bit as tough a customer as his cousin, father-in-law and mentor, Saddam Hussein.

As a result of Kamel’s increasing prominence, he has become the center of keen interest by U.S. Middle East experts both in and out of government. And not only them. Federal prosecutors in Atlanta have had Kamel under investigation as part of a broad-ranging investigation of Iraqi attempts to evade arms export restrictions and launder money through international banks.

And since Kamel recently added the Defense Ministry to his string of high-level Baghdad posts, U.S. defense analysts have been collecting information on his activities, as well, trying to discern what his rise portends for Iraq’s still-potent military.

For many analysts, the search for information about Kamel has been a slow and frustrating task. His past, like those of most Iraqi leaders, is shrouded in a mist of fear, questionable anecdotes and rumor. Little is reliably known about his childhood, his schooling or his personal tastes. Some suggest he may have had some military training.

Iraqi opposition figures spread tales--possibly true but impossible to verify--such as one that tells of a young woman who went to Kamel to appeal for the life of her father, a prisoner. Kamel is said to have seduced her, then abandoned the woman when she became pregnant. Only later, so the story goes, did the woman discover that her father had been dead all along.

But among the facts that are known is that Kamel, born in 1945, had two all-important credentials from the beginning: He came from Tikrit, a city 100 miles north of Baghdad. It is home to Hussein and many in his inner circle. In addition, he is Hussein’s first cousin.

Kamel is also variously reported as the paternal nephew or cousin of Ali Hassan Majid, Iraq’s ruthless interior minister; some accounts say he is both. Both men are members of the Majid clan, one of the two most important families in the power structure.

In 1983, having already achieved some prominence, Kamel added another important leadership credential by marrying Hussein’s eldest daughter, Raghad. Such marriages between close kin are not rare in Iraq. Some years after Kamel’s marriage, in fact, his brother married Hussein’s second daughter, Rana.

Such alliances show how “power is inbred in Iraq,” said a leading U.S. expert on the country.

“It is kind of like having Mafia families run countries,” added a congressional staff member with considerable experience in the region.

The family connections helped Kamel rise rapidly from early duty as an internal security officer--some reports claim he served as a prison warden--up through Hussein’s corps of bodyguards to a post as head of presidential security.

But Kamel has not risen solely on the basis of family.

“He’s a butcher at ease with himself,” said a leading Iraqi dissident who lost two friends to Kamel’s ruthless touch. In a country with a sad history of brutality and political murder, “he has a long record of killing people--himself or on order.”

Kamel also has a history of efficiently managing some of Iraq’s most important government programs, from the building of Hussein’s deadly arsenal of missiles and chemical weapons to the crushing of this winter’s rebellions against Baghdad’s power.

“He created the military-industrial complex in Iraq,” said Phebe Marr, an Iraq specialist at the National Defense University in Washington.

Through deception, violations of international law, the spending of exorbitant sums and pure guile, Kamel created front companies abroad to secretly buy military parts that Baghdad was barred from acquiring legally. At home, he put together the factories and laboratories that assembled the Arab world’s most sophisticated arms industry.

“He is very efficient,” a senior U.S. analyst lamented.

Among his successes were production of the advanced chemical weapons used by Iraq during its eight-year war against Iran and development by Iraq of techniques to turn short-range Soviet-made Scud missiles into the inaccurate but sometimes deadly long-range weapons that hit targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War.

It is those efforts that have brought Kamel’s name to the attention of U.S. prosecutors. Shortly after the end of the Gulf War, the Justice Department announced the indictment of two of Kamel’s top deputies as part of a broad scheme of alleged money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy designed to divert billions of dollars from legitimate industrial loans to Iraq into arms production.

At the time, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said that more “possible violations of federal law in connection with the acquisition by Iraq of military armaments . . . remain under investigation.”

In addition to the Justice Department, the U.S. Customs Service also is investigating Iraq’s attempts to evade international arms controls, officials here say.

According to the federal indictment, the Iraqis obtained $2 billion in loans during 1988 and 1989 from the small Atlanta branch of an Italian bank--the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro--money that ostensibly was to be used to build a steel mill, a dam and a chemical plant. In fact, the indictment alleged, the money was used to construct several major arms complexes.

At the time, Kamel was Iraq’s minister of industries and military industrialization, a post he acquired in 1988. In 1990, he expanded his empire. After a long power struggle with the country’s oil minister, Kamel was named acting chief of the petroleum industry, Iraq’s chief prewar source of revenue and its main hope of being able to rebuild its economy.

Then, just days after the collapse of the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings against Hussein, Kamel was named Iraq’s new defense minister.

With loyal deputies now running the oil and industry ministries, Kamel “has now got the whole military establishment and everything important on the revenue side under his control. That’s a tremendous swath of territory,” said Ken Katzman, a Gulf specialist and former U.S. intelligence analyst. “He’s now the rising star in Iraqi politics.

“He’s smart. He’s a hard worker. He’s focused, organized and motivates people well through incentives or punishment or whatever he has to do,” Katzman said. ‘He’s a mover and shaker, a fast climber.”

He also has little immediate competition.

Over the years, Hussein ruthlessly eliminated virtually anyone who might have challenged his rule. For several years, for example, U.S. officials believed that Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Tikriti, another close relative, was Hussein’s most powerful ally and potential successor. But Barzan, who headed the country’s intelligence agencies, appeared to have a falling out with Hussein and was subsequently sent to Geneva.

From Geneva, Barzan continues to be an important figure, allegedly running Iraqi relations with terrorist groups in the West. But he has increasingly been shut out of power, U.S. officials say. “It isn’t clear whether he’s still as much on the inside as he was before,” one official said. “He’s expressed some disgruntlement that he is not being consulted as much anymore.”

Another onetime contender was Hussein’s eldest son, Udai. But after being implicated in a murder, Udai was packed off to Switzerland as ambassador. There, he was declared persona non grata for misconduct and eventually returned to Baghdad. Although he remains an important figure, analysts doubt that he could fill his father’s place.

In the past, Kamel might have been considered out of the line of power because he was not a formal member of Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council, which has been the chief decision-making body to the extent that any decisions are made by someone other than Hussein.

But recent reports in the Iraqi media indicate that authority may be shifting from the Command Council to individual government ministers like Kamel.

Perhaps the one real question mark about Kamel’s future--aside from the question of what happens to Hussein and Baghdad’s ruling clique in general--is his relationship with the military. As the new defense minister, Kamel replaced an army professional and hero of the 1980-88 war with Iran, who was fired after barely three months in office. Although U.S. officials say that Kamel has limited military field experience, if any, he was also promoted from the rank of colonel to general.

One military operation Kamel did participate in was the smashing of March’s anti-Hussein rebellions. Kamel personally traveled with Iraqi troops to northern Kurdistan, U.S. analysts say. After rebels in the area were crushed, he prayed at a mosque in Irbil, a recaptured Kurdish city, then sent a message to Hussein congratulating him on the victory.

But analysts are not sure that the military is yet ready to accept as its boss someone from outside its own ranks. And if Hussein were violently removed from power, some analysts expect Kamel might fall, as well.

“Given the stress the country’s been under, the military would not want to embroil the nation in further infighting. They’d prefer a consensus to make it easy and not go to the mat on succession,” Katzman suggested. The “comfortable choice,” at least for now, in that sort of scenario would be Hussein’s deputy supreme commander and vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim, Katzman said.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s nominal government chief, Prime Minister Sadoun Hammadi, a Shiite Muslim, is now widely seen as a temporary appointment, one who likely has been set up by Hussein for a fall.

Riad Ajami, a political-economist who surveyed Iraq shortly before the Persian Gulf crisis, took a similar view. “Hammadi will be saddled with all the failures of the Saddam fiascoes and be pushed aside,” Ajami predicted. “He’s a convenient scapegoat.”

“The son-in-law will be an interesting way for Saddam to show that he was really a father figure for Iraq,” Ajami said. “He is giving Iraq a new son to succeed him.” That sort of move may also be an attempt to create a new political dynasty, he suggested.

Again, the story is in the photographs. In a rare recent family picture, Kamel was once again at center focus, positioned closer to Hussein than the Iraqi leader’s own children.

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.