Michael Bluth
03-23-2003, 08:21 PM
ACCORDING TO A knowledgeable intelligence source, Delta Force, the supersecret commando group, had managed to tap Saddam’s underground phone lines in Baghdad. But the real break came when the CIA managed to recruit an asset, a senior Iraqi official in a position to know Saddam’s greatest vulnerability: where he sleeps each night.
Saddam, who had stayed alive and in power for more than three decades by never sleeping in one place for long, had to trust at least a few bodyguards. He made the rare mistake of relying on one henchman who was more afraid of the United States than he was of Saddam Hussein.
SINGING TO THE AMERICANS
The Iraqi official “weighed the balance of fear,” says a senior administration official, who described the highly secret operation to NEWSWEEK. The man measured the risk that Saddam would suspect his betrayal versus the mortal certainty that the American military was coming to wipe out the Iraqi strongman and his closest followers. The Iraqi turncoat began to sing to the Americans. He told his intelligence handlers that on the night of March 19, Saddam, probably accompanied by his demonic sons Uday and Qusay, was sleeping in a bunker beneath a nondescript house in a residential area of Baghdad.
At the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., Director George Tenet got the tip shortly before 3 p.m. (11 p.m. Baghdad time). He raced down the George Washington Parkway to the Pentagon, bursting in on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as he met with his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. The air war—the astonishing first wave of “shock and awe,” hundreds of warheads raining down on Baghdad—was scheduled to begin the next night. But here was a chance to end the war before it even began. If Saddam and his henchmen could be killed in a “decapitating strike,” hundreds and maybe thousands of lives could be saved.
Tenet, Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers were hustled across the Potomac River to the White House to confer with the president. As George W. Bush listened impassively, the top spook and the military men told the commander in chief that there was at least a decent chance that Saddam could be killed in one swift blow. Bush considered but rejected the argument that Saddam must be given until 8 p.m. to respond to the ultimatum that he leave Iraq or face the consequences. But there was still a catch.
IN THE BUNKER
Saddam, according to the CIA’s intelligence, was hiding belowground in a special reinforced bunker, built by German engineers. Cruise missiles, with their thousand-pound warheads, were not powerful enough to penetrate the steel and concrete. Only warplanes carrying 2,000-pound MK-84s, so called bunker busters, could do the job. But Baghdad’s air defenses were robust, a hornet’s nest of surface-to-air missiles. The American arsenal included stealth fighters that, on most nights, could fly undetected past Iraqi radar. But over Baghdad, the moon was full. The planes would be silhouetted against the night sky.
Sending in American war-planes without first taking out Saddam’s antiaircraft batteries might be a suicide mission. But there was no time to organize and execute the sort of elaborate air campaign necessary to take out the SAM sites. At Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, Gen. Tommy Franks told the president that he had until 7:15 p.m.—3:15 a.m. Baghdad time—to give the “go” order. Dawn would break at 6:07 in Baghdad (10:07 p.m. in Washington).
Franks ordered two F-117 stealth fighters, each carrying two 2,000-pound bunker busters, into the air from their bases in Qatar, some 700 miles from Baghdad. They were to head toward Iraq, but to await orders before entering Iraqi airspace. On eight American warships in the Gulf, the coordinates of Saddam’s sleeping place were programmed into some 40 cruise missiles, targeted to slam into the rubble and, it was hoped, finish off any survivors.
DON’T KNOW OR CAN’T SAY?
At 7:12 p.m., President Bush said, “Let’s go.” The planes slipped through (undetected, as it turned out); their bombs struck home at about 9:30 p.m., 5:30 a.m. Baghdad time. The CIA’s spy, who was somewhere outside the bunker, reported that Saddam was inside. There were reports of rescue workers furiously digging in the rubble and that Saddam had been wounded. But was Saddam still alive? The CIA’s spy didn’t know or couldn’t say.
Generals and their political masters have been trying, and usually failing, to control the course of war for eons. They make grand plans that dissolve in fog and friction, but they keep on trying. Few men have tried harder than General Franks or his boss Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. For about a year, they wrestled over a war plan designed to remove Saddam from power at the lowest possible cost of life. This was to be a revolutionary plan. The American way of war has always been to overwhelm the enemy with superior firepower—more, bigger and better guns, ships, planes and tanks. (It was often said that World War II was won in the factories of Detroit.) But the Rumsfeld-Franks plan would rely on flexibility, surprise and superior intelligence; it would do more with less.
Mind games, not brute force, are the key. The CIA has collected the online addresses and private phone numbers of Saddam’s top generals. An Iraqi general will pick up his phone at home and hear an anonymous voice say, “Give it up. This is a lost battle. You’ll be saved if you defect.” Or he will get the same message when he checks his e-mail. It is possible that the rumors of Saddam’s death or injury in the first night’s strike are part of an elaborate “psy-op” to sow doubt and defeatism. With remnants of the Iraqi Army staging ambushes, driving to Baghdad promises to be a hard slog, no matter how great America’s superiority in men and materials. Better to turn Saddam’s own forces against him.
A SECRET WAR
“This will be a campaign unlike any other in history,” said General Franks at his first press briefing on Saturday. It already was. Behind the remarkable scenes of mushrooming explosions in Baghdad, the breathless reports of the legions of “embedded” news correspondents armed with minicams, a secret war has been waged, sensed and hinted about, but never fully explained. According to intelligence sources, U.S. officials engaged in secret surrender negotiations with top officials in Saddam’s regime. The military was able to adjust, holding off on the first night of “shock and awe”—called “A-Night” by CENTCOM planners. Pentagon officials spoke proudly about the military’s ability to “scale up and scale down” the level of violence and to hold collateral damage and noncombatant casualties to a minimum. Notably, American bombers did not turn out the lights in Baghdad.
But the secret talks were frustrating, say administration officials. Using former Iraqi generals as go-betweens, U.S. officials were able to discuss surrender terms with various of Saddam’s commanders, both in the field outside Baghdad and at the highest levels of the Special Republican Guard, Saddam’s most elite (and supposedly loyal) Army units. President Bush was reported by informed sources to be closely following the talks. But there was no clear indication these turncoat generals could deliver Saddam himself, and there are some worries in the intelligence community that Saddam’s men are actually leading the Americans on a merry chase. Last Thursday, after the surprise raid on Saddam’s bunker, U.S. intelligence intercepts picked up confused and worried chatter among Iraqi Army commanders. It appeared that the Iraqi command structure was in disarray. But then on Friday, the chatter died down, replaced by silence.
CIA analysts struggled to determine Saddam’s fate. Iraqi TV released a tape of Saddam, in glasses reading from a pad, reciting a defiant poem. Was that the real Saddam? Intelligence analysts brought in Saddam’s former mistress to count the moles on his face. The CIA determined that the man in the film was indeed Saddam, but some analysts speculated that the tape had been made before the bombing, that the ruler of Iraq had been merely rehearsing the poem (hence the glasses and pad). Despite the best efforts of the intelligence community, the fog of war was settling back in.
The military’s newfound nimbleness did pay off on several fronts. When Saddam began torching wells in the oil-rich Rumaila oilfields in southern Iraq, CENTCOM was able to move up the ground war by a day. The Army’s Third Infantry Division and the Marines’ First Division jumped off Thursday night. By capturing the Rumaila fields in short order, the American troops were able to avert an environmental and economic disaster for Iraq. Saddam’s forces managed to set fire to only nine of some 1,000 wells in the region.
Saddam, who had stayed alive and in power for more than three decades by never sleeping in one place for long, had to trust at least a few bodyguards. He made the rare mistake of relying on one henchman who was more afraid of the United States than he was of Saddam Hussein.
SINGING TO THE AMERICANS
The Iraqi official “weighed the balance of fear,” says a senior administration official, who described the highly secret operation to NEWSWEEK. The man measured the risk that Saddam would suspect his betrayal versus the mortal certainty that the American military was coming to wipe out the Iraqi strongman and his closest followers. The Iraqi turncoat began to sing to the Americans. He told his intelligence handlers that on the night of March 19, Saddam, probably accompanied by his demonic sons Uday and Qusay, was sleeping in a bunker beneath a nondescript house in a residential area of Baghdad.
At the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., Director George Tenet got the tip shortly before 3 p.m. (11 p.m. Baghdad time). He raced down the George Washington Parkway to the Pentagon, bursting in on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as he met with his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. The air war—the astonishing first wave of “shock and awe,” hundreds of warheads raining down on Baghdad—was scheduled to begin the next night. But here was a chance to end the war before it even began. If Saddam and his henchmen could be killed in a “decapitating strike,” hundreds and maybe thousands of lives could be saved.
Tenet, Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers were hustled across the Potomac River to the White House to confer with the president. As George W. Bush listened impassively, the top spook and the military men told the commander in chief that there was at least a decent chance that Saddam could be killed in one swift blow. Bush considered but rejected the argument that Saddam must be given until 8 p.m. to respond to the ultimatum that he leave Iraq or face the consequences. But there was still a catch.
IN THE BUNKER
Saddam, according to the CIA’s intelligence, was hiding belowground in a special reinforced bunker, built by German engineers. Cruise missiles, with their thousand-pound warheads, were not powerful enough to penetrate the steel and concrete. Only warplanes carrying 2,000-pound MK-84s, so called bunker busters, could do the job. But Baghdad’s air defenses were robust, a hornet’s nest of surface-to-air missiles. The American arsenal included stealth fighters that, on most nights, could fly undetected past Iraqi radar. But over Baghdad, the moon was full. The planes would be silhouetted against the night sky.
Sending in American war-planes without first taking out Saddam’s antiaircraft batteries might be a suicide mission. But there was no time to organize and execute the sort of elaborate air campaign necessary to take out the SAM sites. At Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, Gen. Tommy Franks told the president that he had until 7:15 p.m.—3:15 a.m. Baghdad time—to give the “go” order. Dawn would break at 6:07 in Baghdad (10:07 p.m. in Washington).
Franks ordered two F-117 stealth fighters, each carrying two 2,000-pound bunker busters, into the air from their bases in Qatar, some 700 miles from Baghdad. They were to head toward Iraq, but to await orders before entering Iraqi airspace. On eight American warships in the Gulf, the coordinates of Saddam’s sleeping place were programmed into some 40 cruise missiles, targeted to slam into the rubble and, it was hoped, finish off any survivors.
DON’T KNOW OR CAN’T SAY?
At 7:12 p.m., President Bush said, “Let’s go.” The planes slipped through (undetected, as it turned out); their bombs struck home at about 9:30 p.m., 5:30 a.m. Baghdad time. The CIA’s spy, who was somewhere outside the bunker, reported that Saddam was inside. There were reports of rescue workers furiously digging in the rubble and that Saddam had been wounded. But was Saddam still alive? The CIA’s spy didn’t know or couldn’t say.
Generals and their political masters have been trying, and usually failing, to control the course of war for eons. They make grand plans that dissolve in fog and friction, but they keep on trying. Few men have tried harder than General Franks or his boss Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. For about a year, they wrestled over a war plan designed to remove Saddam from power at the lowest possible cost of life. This was to be a revolutionary plan. The American way of war has always been to overwhelm the enemy with superior firepower—more, bigger and better guns, ships, planes and tanks. (It was often said that World War II was won in the factories of Detroit.) But the Rumsfeld-Franks plan would rely on flexibility, surprise and superior intelligence; it would do more with less.
Mind games, not brute force, are the key. The CIA has collected the online addresses and private phone numbers of Saddam’s top generals. An Iraqi general will pick up his phone at home and hear an anonymous voice say, “Give it up. This is a lost battle. You’ll be saved if you defect.” Or he will get the same message when he checks his e-mail. It is possible that the rumors of Saddam’s death or injury in the first night’s strike are part of an elaborate “psy-op” to sow doubt and defeatism. With remnants of the Iraqi Army staging ambushes, driving to Baghdad promises to be a hard slog, no matter how great America’s superiority in men and materials. Better to turn Saddam’s own forces against him.
A SECRET WAR
“This will be a campaign unlike any other in history,” said General Franks at his first press briefing on Saturday. It already was. Behind the remarkable scenes of mushrooming explosions in Baghdad, the breathless reports of the legions of “embedded” news correspondents armed with minicams, a secret war has been waged, sensed and hinted about, but never fully explained. According to intelligence sources, U.S. officials engaged in secret surrender negotiations with top officials in Saddam’s regime. The military was able to adjust, holding off on the first night of “shock and awe”—called “A-Night” by CENTCOM planners. Pentagon officials spoke proudly about the military’s ability to “scale up and scale down” the level of violence and to hold collateral damage and noncombatant casualties to a minimum. Notably, American bombers did not turn out the lights in Baghdad.
But the secret talks were frustrating, say administration officials. Using former Iraqi generals as go-betweens, U.S. officials were able to discuss surrender terms with various of Saddam’s commanders, both in the field outside Baghdad and at the highest levels of the Special Republican Guard, Saddam’s most elite (and supposedly loyal) Army units. President Bush was reported by informed sources to be closely following the talks. But there was no clear indication these turncoat generals could deliver Saddam himself, and there are some worries in the intelligence community that Saddam’s men are actually leading the Americans on a merry chase. Last Thursday, after the surprise raid on Saddam’s bunker, U.S. intelligence intercepts picked up confused and worried chatter among Iraqi Army commanders. It appeared that the Iraqi command structure was in disarray. But then on Friday, the chatter died down, replaced by silence.
CIA analysts struggled to determine Saddam’s fate. Iraqi TV released a tape of Saddam, in glasses reading from a pad, reciting a defiant poem. Was that the real Saddam? Intelligence analysts brought in Saddam’s former mistress to count the moles on his face. The CIA determined that the man in the film was indeed Saddam, but some analysts speculated that the tape had been made before the bombing, that the ruler of Iraq had been merely rehearsing the poem (hence the glasses and pad). Despite the best efforts of the intelligence community, the fog of war was settling back in.
The military’s newfound nimbleness did pay off on several fronts. When Saddam began torching wells in the oil-rich Rumaila oilfields in southern Iraq, CENTCOM was able to move up the ground war by a day. The Army’s Third Infantry Division and the Marines’ First Division jumped off Thursday night. By capturing the Rumaila fields in short order, the American troops were able to avert an environmental and economic disaster for Iraq. Saddam’s forces managed to set fire to only nine of some 1,000 wells in the region.