-----------------------------------
BETRAYED BY CLAN
Breakthrough Capped a Renewed Effort to Ferret Out Leads
By
ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 14 — The hunt for Saddam Hussein ended late Saturday with information from a member of his tribal clan.
Seizing Mr. Hussein, a man who one senior general said had 20 to 30 hide-outs and moved as often as every three to four hours, had become a maddening challenge. Eleven previous times in the last several months, a brigade combat team from the Army's Fourth Infantry Division thought it had a bead on Mr. Hussein and began raids to kill or capture him, only to come up empty, sometimes missing its man by only a matter of hours, military officials here said.
But at 8:26 p.m. Saturday, less than 11 hours after receiving the decisive tip, 600 American soldiers and Special Operations forces backed by tanks, artillery and Apache helicopter gunships surrounded two farmhouses, and near one of them found Mr. Hussein hiding alone at the bottom of an eight-foot hole.
He surrendered without a shot.
"He was just caught like a rat," Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, told reporters at his headquarters in Tikrit on Sunday. "He could have been hiding in a hundred different places, a thousand different places like this all around Iraq. It just takes finding the right person who will give you a good idea where he might be."
In recent weeks, American officials had started a new effort to draw up a list of people likely to be hiding Mr. Hussein, including bodyguards, former palace functionaries, tribal leaders and others not prominent on previous American wanted lists. After a half-dozen raids and arrests, one senior administration official said, the crucial breakthrough came Friday when a raid on a house in Baghdad led to the capture of an Iraqi who, under questioning in the hours that followed, identified the location where Mr. Hussein was ultimately found.
"As we continued to conduct raids and capture people, we got more and more information on the families that were somewhat close to Saddam Hussein," General Odierno said. "Over the last 10 days or so, we brought in about 5 or 10 members of those families who were then able to give us even more information. And finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals."
Officials have described the Iraqi seized Friday as a member of Mr. Hussein's clan or tribe, but have not been more specific.
The capture of the former Iraqi dictator ended months of painstaking efforts to gather and analyze information from informants, detainees, interceptions of cellphone conversations and interrogations of Mr. Hussein's family and tribal members.
The operation illustrates a new style of cooperative American warfare. Conventional Army soldiers work alongside members of Task Force 121, a military Special Operations unit that includes Central Intelligence Agency officers. Intelligence agencies that used to zealously guard their secrets now pool their information so troops can act swiftly on a highly perishable tip.
"Saddam moves all the time," said one Bush administration official. "Our ability to locate him is only as good as the most recent intelligence."
Many details of the raid on Saturday night — the precise information that led American forces to his hide-out and Mr. Hussein's movements since his government fell — remained unclear on Sunday. But top military officials here, in Tikrit and in Washington, say the operation that netted Mr. Hussein, labeled High Value Target No. 1 by the military, moved swiftly from "actionable intelligence" to capture.
Military officials said that about 10:50 a.m. Saturday in Iraq, the military command in Baghdad received the crucial information about Mr. Hussein's potential whereabouts.
The mission to capture or kill Mr. Hussein, code-named Operation Red Dawn, fell to the Fourth Division's First Brigade, commanded by Col. James Hickey. No Iraqi forces were involved in the operation, American military officials said.
About 6 p.m., amid darkness, the brigade's forces, including cavalry, engineers, artillery and Apaches, moved toward their targets: two farmhouses in Ad Dwar, a village about nine miles southeast of Tikrit, the heart of Mr. Hussein's ancestral homeland.
Two hours later, the forces raided the farmhouses but did not find Mr. Hussein. So Colonel Hickey ordered nearly two square miles blocked off, and an intensive search began.
Senior Pentagon and military officials said the mission to capture Mr. Hussein followed basic procedures. Conventional forces of the Fourth Division secured the perimeter of the search area while Special Operations forces in Task Force 121 conducted the direct search.
Because the area to be searched was large, it was unclear on Sunday night whether soldiers from the Fourth Division or Task Force 121 had discovered Mr. Hussein's hiding place, an underground chamber near a mud hut and metal lean-to inside a walled compound.
The hut had two small rooms, a bedroom and a rudimentary kitchen. The bedroom was cluttered with new clothes, including T-shirts and socks, some still in their wrappers, leading General Odierno to estimate that Mr. Hussein had been at the site perhaps only an hour or so.
An orange and white taxi was parked next to a sheep pen near the hut. The hut was near the Tigris River, and American forces found several boats nearby that commanders surmised may have been used to bring supplies to Mr. Hussein.
As American forces closed in, two Iraqis in the hut tried to flee, but were caught. American officials said they had not yet been able to identify them or their connection to Mr. Hussein. Mr. Hussein's hide-out was a shaft just wide enough to hold a man. General Odierno said a plastic foam trapdoor covered the mouth of the narrow hole. A rug had been placed on top of that and covered with dirt, bricks and other rubble to try to conceal it. An air vent had been built into the hole.
When troops opened the lid to the hide-out, they found Mr. Hussein alone, looking "bewildered" and "very disoriented," General Odierno said. He had a knife, a pistol and a suitcase containing $750,000 in American $100 bills. He offered no resistance, identified himself and was very quiet, military officials said.
"The pressure had become so tight on him he knew he couldn't travel in large entourages, so he didn't really have any men with him," General Odierno said. "He was in the bottom of a hole, so there was no way he could fight back."
Less than an hour later, Mr. Hussein was on an American helicopter headed south toward Baghdad and custody at an undisclosed location.
Douglas Jehl and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
(C) The New York Times 2003
Bearing Questions, 4 New Iraqi Leaders Pay Hussein a Visit
By
IAN FISHER
The New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 14 — The wild gray beard was gone, and he sat on a metal army cot, just awake from a nap, in socks and black slippers. He was not handcuffed. He did not recognize all his visitors, but they recognized him. That was the purpose of the visit: to help confirm that he was, in fact, Saddam Hussein.
What came next in the Sunday afternoon meeting, according to people in the room, was an extraordinary 30 minutes, in which four new leaders of Iraq pointedly questioned the nation's deposed and now captured leader about his tyrannical rule. Mr. Hussein, they said, was defiant and unrepentant but very much defeated.
"The world is crazy," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a Governing Council member in the room on Sunday after Mr. Hussein was captured near his hometown, Tikrit. "I was in his torture chamber in 1979, and now he was sitting there, powerless in front of me without anybody stopping me from doing anything to him. Just imagine. We were arguing, and he was using very foul language."
The carefully managed event gave the four men who had spent decades opposing the ruler they regard as an oppressor of their country a rare chance to confront him. Though he spoke forcefully, the haggard Mr. Hussein was now the prisoner, and his opponents seemed to gain some legitimacy as leaders through the meeting in which they said they had called him to task on behalf of their nation.
Ahmad Chalabi, a council member and head of the Iraqi National Congress who was also in the room, said: "He was quite lucid. He had command of his faculties. He would not apologize to the Iraqi people. He did not deny any of the crimes he was confronted with having done. He tried to justify them."
After Mr. Hussein's capture in an eight-foot-deep hole that one council member said was filled with "rats and mice," the four leaders were taken by helicopter on Sunday afternoon to a military base, at a location they would not disclose. In addition to Mr. Rubaie and Mr. Chalabi, two others were aboard: Adnan Pachachi, a council member who was the foreign minister before Mr. Hussein came to power, and Adel Abdel Mahdi, who represents the Shiite religious body, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Two American leaders in Iraq were there too: L. Paul Bremer III, the American civilian administrator of Iraq; and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq. The room was small, Mr. Rubaie said, and General Sanchez asked the men if they would like to see him through a window or by camera.
"We said, `No, we want to talk to him,' " Mr. Rubaie said.
Aides to the men differed slightly about what happened next. One said Mr. Hussein, who they said had just woken up, did not recognize any of his visitors. Another said he recognized Mr. Chalabi and asked him to introduce the others.
"Saddam turned to Pachachi and said: `You were the foreign minister of Iraq. What are you doing with these people?' " one aide said.
Mr. Rubaie said he had asked the first question which, he said, was met with a brutal and dismissive joke. He said he had asked why Mr. Hussein had killed two leading Shiite clerics, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr in 1980 and Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr in 1999.
The word "sidr" means "chest" in Arabic, and Mr. Hussein replied, "As sidr or ar rijl?" That translates as: "The chest or the foot?"
The men then asked Mr. Hussein about events in his nearly 35 years in power that officials in the United States and elsewhere cite in accusing the former ruler. They cited these examples:
- Asked about the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988, in which an estimated 5,000 people were killed, Mr. Hussein said, according to his visitors, that this was the work of Iran, at war with Iraq at the time.
- Asked about the mass graves of tens of thousands of Iraqis uncovered since Mr. Hussein was toppled from power in the American-led offensive this spring, Mr. Rubaie said Mr. Hussein answered: "Ask their relatives. They were thieves, and they ran away from the battlefields with Iran and from the battlefields of Kuwait."
- Asked why he invaded Kuwait in 1990, provoking the American-led assault on Iraq the next year, he said Kuwait was rightfully a part of Iraq.
"He was not remorseful at all," Mr. Chalabi said. "It was clear he was a complete narcissist who was incapable of showing remorse or sympathy to other human beings."
Mr. Chalabi said Mr. Hussein had also suggested that he was behind the recent wave of attacks against American soldiers in Iraq since his defeat.
"He said, `I gave a speech, and I said the Americans can come to Iraq but they can't occupy it and rule it,' " Mr. Chalabi said. "He said, `I said I would fight them with pistols, and I have.' "
"He didn't say it directly, but he was trying to take credit for it," Mr. Chalabi said.
At a news conference on Sunday evening, Mr. Pachachi said Mr. Hussein had tried to justify himself by saying Iraqis needed a tough ruler.
"He tried to justify his crimes by saying that he was a just but firm ruler," he said. "Of course our answer was he was an unjust ruler responsible for the deaths of thousands of people."
Throughout the meeting, Mr. Hussein was calm but often used foul language. Mr. Pachachi said he looked "tired and haggard." Mr. Bremer and General Sanchez, they said, did not speak, though Mr. Chalabi said Mr. Hussein was "deferential and respectful to the Americans."
"You can conclude from that some aspect that he was reconciled to his situation," he said.
"The most important fact: Had the roles been reversed, he would have torn us apart and cut us into small pieces after torture," Mr. Chalabi said. "This contrast was paramount in my mind, how we treated him and how he would have treated us."
Mr. Rubaie said: "One thing which is very important is that this man had with him underground when they arrested him two AK-47's and did not shoot one bullet. I told him, `You keep on saying that you are a brave man and a proud Arab.' I said, `When they arrested you why didn't you shoot one bullet? You are a coward.' "
"And he started to use very colorful language," he said. "Basically he used all his French."
"I was so angry because this guy has caused so much damage," Mr. Rubaie added. "He has ruined the whole country. He has ruined 25 million people."
"And I have to confess that the last word was for me," he continued. "I was the last to leave the room and I said, `May God curse you. Tell me, when are you going to be accountable to God and the day of judgment? What are you going to tell him about Halabja and the mass graves, the Iran-Iraq war, thousands and thousands executed? What are you going to tell God?' He was exercising his French language."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
A SELECT FEW CONFRONT THEIR TORMENTOR
By
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Washington Post
BAGHDAD, Dec. 14 -- Early Sunday morning, after his bushy beard had been shaved off and he had caught some sleep on an Army cot, Saddam Hussein received his first Iraqi visitors.
They were four senior Iraqi political figures, invited by American officials to the high-security detention center in Baghdad for the purpose of confirming Hussein's identity with their own eyes.
But instead of viewing him through a one-way window or a closed-circuit camera as the American officials had intended, the Iraqis asked for -- and were granted -- permission to meet with the former president. In a remarkable half-hour session, Hussein sat in a small room with four men who represented the legions of Iraqis imprisoned, tortured or killed by his government, as well as the thousands who fled into exile during his rule.
"It was surreal," said Mowaffak Rubaie, a Shiite Muslim member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council who fled the country in 1979 after being arrested and tortured by Hussein's secret police.
At first, they said, Hussein appeared fatigued and disheveled, as if he had just awakened. "He seemed tired and haggard," said Adnan Pachachi, who served as Iraq's foreign minister before Hussein's Baath Party took power in a 1968 coup. Rubaie said Hussein appeared "broken down."
But the former president's attitude changed when questioned about some of the worst crimes that occurred during his years in power, including the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the use of chemical weapons on Kurdish villagers and the killing of two prominent Shiite Muslim clerics. Despite being in American custody at a base at the Baghdad airport and facing the prospect of being tried in an Iraqi tribunal that could sentence him to death, Hussein was unrepentant, the four politicians said.
"He was arrogant and hateful," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, the head of the political bureau of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a party representing Shiites, who were a particular target of Hussein's government, which was dominated by rival Sunni Muslims.
"He was defiant," Pachachi said. "He tried to justify his crimes by saying he was a just ruler."
Rubaie said he asked the first question of Hussein: Why had he ordered the killing of two prominent Shiite clerics in the 1990s, Mohammed Bakr Sadr and Mohammed Sadiq Sadr?
Hussein responded with a callous joke, playing off the word "sadr," which means chest in Arabic, Rubaie said.
"He said, 'The chest or the foot?' " Rubaie recalled.
"It was blasphemous," the council member said. "It was outrageous and immoral."
Later in the meeting, Hussein insisted the chemical weapons attack on the northern Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988, in which an estimated 5,000 people were killed, was the work of Iran. And in response to a query about the invasion of Kuwait, he insisted that the tiny nation belonged to Iraq.
Asked about the mass graves across the country that contain the bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by his government, Hussein scoffed and called the victims "thieves, army deserters and traitors," according to Rubaie.
"He showed no remorse whatsoever," said Ahmed Chalabi, a prominent former opposition leader who also was at the meeting. Rubaie said one of the visitors noted that if they were still detainees and Hussein were still president, he would "put us in a meat grinder."
"We asked him, 'What if we give you to the Iraqi people?' " Rubaie recalled. "He said, 'To those demagogues?' Can you believe it? He called the Iraqi people demagogues."
That prompted one of the four to ask Hussein how he planned to "face God on doomsday."
"I will face him with a calm heart," Hussein responded, according to Rubaie.
As he left the room, Rubaie said he could not resist taking one parting shot. "I told him, 'Damn you!' " Rubaie said. " 'The Iraqis will send you to hell.' "
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
