thedrifter
12-22-03, 04:28 PM
Inside Red Dawn: Saddam Up Close
Out of the hole: Saddam struggled and spat, until a commando slugged him. Behind one of the most intense manhunts in history
By Evan Thomas and Babak Dehghanpisheh
NewsweekDec. 29/Jan. 5 issue - The Special Forces commando had already pulled the pin. He was primed to toss the grenade into the "spider hole," a Vietnam-era nickname for lethal hiding places. But the man cowering inside did not use the pistol resting in his lap. He raised both hands in submission and, speaking in English, announced, "I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq and I'm willing to negotiate."
As the story was later told, one of the Special Forces operators looked down at the disheveled, bearded, seemingly dazed man and replied, "President Bush sends his regards." And coming out of the hole, Saddam accidentally bumped his head. But a knowledgeable U.S. official told NEWSWEEK that it didn't quite happen that way. In fact, as Saddam was being handcuffed, he began to struggle with his captors. He spat at the soldiers. One of the commandos decked him, either with a punch or a rifle butt. (The military later tidied up the story of his capture for popular consumption.)
So ended one of the biggest and most maddening manhunts in history. The Americans had tried and failed to kill Saddam Hussein with laser-guided 2,000-pound bombs at the beginning and toward the end of the invasion of Iraq last spring. He had slipped out of Baghdad as American forces were advancing on the Iraqi capital in early April and vanished. Offers of a $25 million reward and all the secret listening devices of American technology had failed to find the Butcher of Baghdad. In the end, the capture of the man known to the military as High Value Target 1 (HVT-1) or Black List 1 (BL-1) required drudgery, patience and a bit of luck.
There had been no shortage of Saddam sightings between April and December. At the Fourth Infantry Division, based north of Baghdad, Saddam was known as "Elvis." After the $25 million reward was posted on July 3, "there were so many Elvis sightings we could hardly keep up," said Maj. Stan Murphy, 41, an intelligence officer with the First Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division. Residents of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, told NEWSWEEK that they had always known Saddam was hiding in their midst. Abu Ahmed, a former general in the Republican Guard who asked that only his nickname be used, said a friend spotted Saddam praying at his father's grave on Nov. 24, the first day of Eid Al Fitr, a Muslim holiday. Another Iraqi Army officer who had joined the newly reconstituted police recognized Saddam and a driver in an orange-and-white taxicab at a checkpoint in Tikrit. "So you've joined the new police," Saddam said. The former officer, feeling ashamed, answered, "We have to make a living." Saddam dug $300 out of his pocket and hand-ed it to him. Fearing reprisals against his family, the policeman said nothing to the Americans.
The Iraqi code of loyalty and silence frustrated American intelligence. In July, Major Murphy jotted four names and some notes on a few sheets of paper and handed them to his subordinates on the Fourth I.D.'s intelligence staff. "Make sense of it," he ordered, meaning look for patterns and links in the fragmentary intelligence. Murphy told his staff to focus on "enablers," —trusted members of the former regime outside the top-55 list. These men, in turn, relied on the arbaeen (or "forty"), a second- or third-tier group outside Saddam's closest bodyguards. The arbaeen are errand runners (whom Saddam would send out to find a late-night cigar), cooks, joke tellers and assorted yes men. Drawn from a half-dozen families, the arbaeen formed a secret web that allowed Saddam to move from place to place a step ahead of the Americans.
Reading extensively about Iraq's culture and customs, Murphy realized that unraveling the web would be exceedingly difficult. He was particularly struck by the story of a father commanded by his tribe to execute his son. The son had informed on two Iraqis later ambushed in an American raid. The tribe gave the father an ultimatum: kill the son or the whole family would be killed. The father chose option A.
Murphy's staff began making a chart connecting various families and tribes, showing blood ties and financial links. Murphy's initial list of four enablers ballooned to 9,000 names before the staff whittled it back down to some 300 names. One in particular was of interest. Military officials would publicly refer to the man only as "the source," though Col. James Hickey of the Fourth I.D.'s First Combat Brigade Team described him as "a middle-aged man with a very large waistline." The fat man was a kind of chief of staff who coordinated security and logistics as Saddam moved between hiding places. But where was the fat man?
Several raids in July at residences once occupied by the source failed to nab him. A long lull followed. Then, on Dec. 4, five raids were carried out around Tikrit but missed the target. An operation the next day in Samarra turned up $1.9 million. Another raid on Dec. 7 missed him in Bayji. But then on Friday, Dec. 12, the source was finally run to ground in Baghdad. Bundled into a helicopter and rushed up to Colonel Hickey's headquarters near Tikrit, the fat man was subjected to an intense interrogation on Saturday, Dec. 13. At 5 p.m. he cracked and "blurted Saddam's location," according to Hickey.
Examining satellite photos, Hickey and his men designated a house and a farm south of Tikrit as Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. A sizable force—Special Forces, armor, artillery, engineers, Apache attack helicopters, some 600 men all told—headed out on Operation Red Dawn, named after a 1980s movie about American guerrilla fighters battling a Soviet invasion. The objectives were quickly seized, but no Saddam. Intelligence told the soldiers to keep looking—for a hidden bunker, an "underground facility."
Special Forces commandos crept down a farm path toward a small adobe hut in a palm grove. The backup troops from the Fourth I.D. could see the infrared beams from the weapons of the commandos reflecting off tree branches. At 8:10 p.m. the radio crackled. "We found a hole," announced a Special Forces soldier. And a few minutes later: "We have an individual in the hole." The soldiers had little trouble identifying Saddam after they had handcuffed him and knocked him down in the spitting incident. They had been instructed to look for body marks—moles and an old gunshot wound from Saddam's participation in a failed assassination attempt against an Iraqi ruler back in the 1950s.
Saddam's hole was spartan—enough space to lie down, a dim light and a ventilation fan. But his hut was reasonably well stocked with Mars bars, insect repellent, canned meat and fruits, and $750,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Two packages of boxer-style underwear and a package of Lanvin socks still lay on the floor when reporters were given a tour a few days later. By then Saddam, his head covered with a hood, had been whisked off to a Baghdad jail cell to await interrogation by the CIA—and the judgment of his long-oppressed countrymen.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3770218&p1=0
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Out of the hole: Saddam struggled and spat, until a commando slugged him. Behind one of the most intense manhunts in history
By Evan Thomas and Babak Dehghanpisheh
NewsweekDec. 29/Jan. 5 issue - The Special Forces commando had already pulled the pin. He was primed to toss the grenade into the "spider hole," a Vietnam-era nickname for lethal hiding places. But the man cowering inside did not use the pistol resting in his lap. He raised both hands in submission and, speaking in English, announced, "I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq and I'm willing to negotiate."
As the story was later told, one of the Special Forces operators looked down at the disheveled, bearded, seemingly dazed man and replied, "President Bush sends his regards." And coming out of the hole, Saddam accidentally bumped his head. But a knowledgeable U.S. official told NEWSWEEK that it didn't quite happen that way. In fact, as Saddam was being handcuffed, he began to struggle with his captors. He spat at the soldiers. One of the commandos decked him, either with a punch or a rifle butt. (The military later tidied up the story of his capture for popular consumption.)
So ended one of the biggest and most maddening manhunts in history. The Americans had tried and failed to kill Saddam Hussein with laser-guided 2,000-pound bombs at the beginning and toward the end of the invasion of Iraq last spring. He had slipped out of Baghdad as American forces were advancing on the Iraqi capital in early April and vanished. Offers of a $25 million reward and all the secret listening devices of American technology had failed to find the Butcher of Baghdad. In the end, the capture of the man known to the military as High Value Target 1 (HVT-1) or Black List 1 (BL-1) required drudgery, patience and a bit of luck.
There had been no shortage of Saddam sightings between April and December. At the Fourth Infantry Division, based north of Baghdad, Saddam was known as "Elvis." After the $25 million reward was posted on July 3, "there were so many Elvis sightings we could hardly keep up," said Maj. Stan Murphy, 41, an intelligence officer with the First Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division. Residents of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, told NEWSWEEK that they had always known Saddam was hiding in their midst. Abu Ahmed, a former general in the Republican Guard who asked that only his nickname be used, said a friend spotted Saddam praying at his father's grave on Nov. 24, the first day of Eid Al Fitr, a Muslim holiday. Another Iraqi Army officer who had joined the newly reconstituted police recognized Saddam and a driver in an orange-and-white taxicab at a checkpoint in Tikrit. "So you've joined the new police," Saddam said. The former officer, feeling ashamed, answered, "We have to make a living." Saddam dug $300 out of his pocket and hand-ed it to him. Fearing reprisals against his family, the policeman said nothing to the Americans.
The Iraqi code of loyalty and silence frustrated American intelligence. In July, Major Murphy jotted four names and some notes on a few sheets of paper and handed them to his subordinates on the Fourth I.D.'s intelligence staff. "Make sense of it," he ordered, meaning look for patterns and links in the fragmentary intelligence. Murphy told his staff to focus on "enablers," —trusted members of the former regime outside the top-55 list. These men, in turn, relied on the arbaeen (or "forty"), a second- or third-tier group outside Saddam's closest bodyguards. The arbaeen are errand runners (whom Saddam would send out to find a late-night cigar), cooks, joke tellers and assorted yes men. Drawn from a half-dozen families, the arbaeen formed a secret web that allowed Saddam to move from place to place a step ahead of the Americans.
Reading extensively about Iraq's culture and customs, Murphy realized that unraveling the web would be exceedingly difficult. He was particularly struck by the story of a father commanded by his tribe to execute his son. The son had informed on two Iraqis later ambushed in an American raid. The tribe gave the father an ultimatum: kill the son or the whole family would be killed. The father chose option A.
Murphy's staff began making a chart connecting various families and tribes, showing blood ties and financial links. Murphy's initial list of four enablers ballooned to 9,000 names before the staff whittled it back down to some 300 names. One in particular was of interest. Military officials would publicly refer to the man only as "the source," though Col. James Hickey of the Fourth I.D.'s First Combat Brigade Team described him as "a middle-aged man with a very large waistline." The fat man was a kind of chief of staff who coordinated security and logistics as Saddam moved between hiding places. But where was the fat man?
Several raids in July at residences once occupied by the source failed to nab him. A long lull followed. Then, on Dec. 4, five raids were carried out around Tikrit but missed the target. An operation the next day in Samarra turned up $1.9 million. Another raid on Dec. 7 missed him in Bayji. But then on Friday, Dec. 12, the source was finally run to ground in Baghdad. Bundled into a helicopter and rushed up to Colonel Hickey's headquarters near Tikrit, the fat man was subjected to an intense interrogation on Saturday, Dec. 13. At 5 p.m. he cracked and "blurted Saddam's location," according to Hickey.
Examining satellite photos, Hickey and his men designated a house and a farm south of Tikrit as Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. A sizable force—Special Forces, armor, artillery, engineers, Apache attack helicopters, some 600 men all told—headed out on Operation Red Dawn, named after a 1980s movie about American guerrilla fighters battling a Soviet invasion. The objectives were quickly seized, but no Saddam. Intelligence told the soldiers to keep looking—for a hidden bunker, an "underground facility."
Special Forces commandos crept down a farm path toward a small adobe hut in a palm grove. The backup troops from the Fourth I.D. could see the infrared beams from the weapons of the commandos reflecting off tree branches. At 8:10 p.m. the radio crackled. "We found a hole," announced a Special Forces soldier. And a few minutes later: "We have an individual in the hole." The soldiers had little trouble identifying Saddam after they had handcuffed him and knocked him down in the spitting incident. They had been instructed to look for body marks—moles and an old gunshot wound from Saddam's participation in a failed assassination attempt against an Iraqi ruler back in the 1950s.
Saddam's hole was spartan—enough space to lie down, a dim light and a ventilation fan. But his hut was reasonably well stocked with Mars bars, insect repellent, canned meat and fruits, and $750,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Two packages of boxer-style underwear and a package of Lanvin socks still lay on the floor when reporters were given a tour a few days later. By then Saddam, his head covered with a hood, had been whisked off to a Baghdad jail cell to await interrogation by the CIA—and the judgment of his long-oppressed countrymen.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3770218&p1=0
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: