Intelligence

Saddam's great escape

Times Online - Sunday Times

On the eve of the Iraq war, American agents believed they had located Saddam and his sons. Could one missile strike win the campaign? Bob Woodward reveals the inside story of President Bush’s agonising, and early inklings that CIA intelligence might not be all it appeared

In July 2002, eight months before the war to oust Saddam Hussein, a convoy of Land Cruisers, Jeeps and a truck made a 10-hour journey over the border from Turkey into northern Iraq. They carried a group of CIA operatives.
One of them, who goes by the nickname of Tim, had been designated CIA base chief for Sulaymaniyah, the Kurdish town half way to Baghdad. A former navy Seal, he was in his thirties and spoke fluent Arabic.

Initially the work was difficult, but when Tim put it out that he would pay for information — the CIA gave him a war chest of $32m in $100 bills — things looked up.

By early 2003 Tim had a network of nearly 90 agents of such value that the CIA called them the Rockstars. They included senior Iraqi military officers and members of Saddam’s personal protection service, the Special Security Organisation (SSO). Tim equipped them with Thuraya satellite phones.

On Tuesday March 18, 2003, a call came through to Tim’s radio: “Pistachio, this is Jonestown!” A Rockstar agent, an SSO officer who was running part of the communications links that Saddam used as he moved between palaces and other locations, had important news.

He said that Saddam was at Dora Farm, a complex southeast of Baghdad on the bank of the Tigris River that was used by his wife. Dora Farm had the SSO codeword Umidza, meaning “slaughterhouse”.

The Rockstar’s information came from a sub-source called Rokan who was in charge of security at the “slaughterhouse”. Rokan had a Thuraya phone that could be geo-located on a CIA video display; it confirmed he was at the farm.

Tim passed the report on to Saul, the senior CIA officer running the Iraq operation at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It went straight to George Tenet, the CIA director, who tipped off the White House.

The information arrived at a tense moment in the final countdown to war. The previous evening, March 17, President Bush had gone on television to give Saddam and his two sons, Qusay and Uday, 48 hours to leave power.

By the morning of Wednesday March 19 there was more news from Dora Farm. Another Rockstar who had gone down to help with communications had noticed a significant security detail. They were stocking food and supplies. It looked like a family gathering.

Saul checked the latest overhead imagery of Baghdad. Lo and behold, under the palm trees at Dora Farm were 36 security vehicles!

The countdown to war was ticking. At least 31 teams of Special Operations Forces entered Iraq on schedule in the west and north as Tim received his next Rockstar report. It said Rokan had seen Saddam leave the slaughterhouse to attend meetings but would be back to sleep there with Qusay and Uday.

When this reached Washington, it galvanised Bush’s team. Within an hour Tenet, Saul, John McLaughlin, the deputy CIA director, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, were briefing the president in his dining room.

Bush questioned them about the sources. Who were they? How good were they? Saul explained that they had been running the main source, the Rockstar in charge of SSO communications, for months. A lot of his reporting had been confirmed.

“This is really good,” the president said. “This sounds good.”

They contemplated the impact of taking out Saddam and his sons. The best-case scenario was that it might even break the regime, make war unnecessary. It was unlikely but possible.

What kind of weapons would you use, the president asked. General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who had joined the group, proposed a strike package of 15 to 17 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Bush was sceptical. He asked: who is in which building? Where would Saddam stay? Do the sons have kids? Is Saddam with his wife? Are we sure it is not just where he put all of the kids to stay?

In northern Iraq, Tim received another report: Uday and Qusay were at the farm for sure, and Saddam was expected back at about 2.30am or 3am local time. The sources on the scene relayed more details about the farm. There was a “manzul” on the compound. Manzul could be translated as “place of refuge” or “bunker”. Tim chose bunker.

The sources provided some details about the “bunker” — its distance from the main houses, the thickness of its concrete, its depth underground. Tim sent to CIA headquarters a flash message summarising the information. Some time after 4pm — now past midnight in Iraq — it arrived in the White House situation room and was taken immediately to Bush and his aides, who had moved into the Oval Office.

“They say they’re with him right now! Both of the sons are there,” Tenet said. Their wives were there. The families were there also. Saddam was expected back in less than two hours. There was a bunker and one of the Rockstars had paced off where it was, had gone inside and taken rough measurements.

Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, asked Saul: “Can you show me where the bunker is?” Saul wasn’t sure, but they took the overhead photos and Hadley tried to draw a sketch. McLaughlin was soon doing an improved amateur engineer drawing.

By now the only principal missing from this council of war was Colin Powell, the secretary of state. The president told Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser: “You better call Colin.”

“Colin, get to the White House!” she said, reaching him at the State Department. She was abrupt and offered no explanation.

Powell arrived in a matter of minutes. They summarised for him. He tried to hang back because it was primarily a military matter. Soon he was going through the pros and cons: collateral damage, failure to hit Saddam. “If we’ve got a chance to decapitate them, it’s worth it,” he finally said.

Rumsfeld strongly recommended a strike, and Vice- President Dick Cheney agreed, though he seemed to be holding back.

Bush was still worrying about the women and children. This could be a kind of baby-milk factory, he said, recalling an incident from the 1991 Gulf war when the Iraqis had claimed a suspected biological weapons plant that was bombed was really for the production of baby milk.

“They would bring out dead women and children,” Bush said, “and the first pictures would be of civilian casualties on a massive scale of some kind.” It would be a nightmare.

Rumsfeld and Myers said it probably didn’t matter what they hit in the first strike because the Iraqi propaganda machine was going to say that the United States killed a number of women and children anyway. If necessary the Iraqis would execute women and children and say the United States did it.

Myers raised a serious problem: cruise missiles would not penetrate a bunker. They would need bunker-busting 2,000lb bombs to get that deep. Myers was sent off to talk to General Tommy Franks, the war commander.

Bush went around the room and asked, Would you do it?

“I would do it, Mr President,” Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, said. Rumsfeld, too, was strongly in favour.

Powell thought it was a hell of a lot of very specific information that seemed not bad, though it was a little curious that the CIA sources on the other end of the satellite phones could have acquired so much. “If we’ve got a chance to decapitate them, it’s worth it,” he recommended again.

Rice and Hadley had some more questions about the sources, but both favoured an attack.

Myers reached Franks on a secure phone. Could he load up an F-117A Nighthawk, the stealth single-seat fighter jet, with a pair of EGBU-27 bombs, the bunker busters?

“Absolutely not,” Franks said initially. “We don’t have the F-117 ready to go.”

When Franks checked further, however, he found that the air force squadron in Qatar had been following the intelligence and had readied one F-117. It had only that day received word that an F-117 could drop its bombs in pairs safely; this had never been tried before.

Franks asked what the probability was of a single F-117 getting through and delivering its pair of bombs? Though stealthy and radar-evading, the F-117 would have to go in prior to the suppression of Iraqi air defences, weak as these were. The answer came back that there was a 50% chance of success.

Prepare two planes, Franks ordered, figuring that would improve the chances.

He sent word to the White House that bombing would be possible, but he needed a final decision to go by about 7.15pm Washington time in order to get the F-117s in and out of Iraqi airspace well before dawn.

Another question arose in the Oval Office. If the attack was approved, should the president go on television and bring forward his planned speech announcing the beginning of the war? Under the ultimatum, he wasn’t scheduled to make it until next day.

“Look, this is an ongoing operation,” Cheney said. “We didn’t announce that the special forces were going in . . . We don’t have to announce it yet. You don’t announce it until you are ready to announce it.”

Powell raised the CNN effect. The attack would be seen instantly. Reporters stationed at the Rashid hotel in Baghdad were close enough possibly to see it or hear it. Dozens of cruise missiles and bunker buster bombs. The press was spring-loaded to proclaim: “It started! It started!”

Anti-aircraft fire and tracers would be flying all around. The war was going to begin with this event.

“If lives are in jeopardy,” the president said, “I’ve got to go announce it.”

Cheney reminded him that lives were already in danger and there had been no announcement. Bush called in Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett, his communications advisers, and explained that he was probably going to order the attack. “How do we do this?” he asked. “Do I go on television?” Should he inform the public before, during or after? Should Rumsfeld do it? Everyone turned to Hughes. They knew how much Bush relied on her.

“No, you need to do it, Mr President,” she said. “The American people shouldn’t hear it from the press, they shouldn’t hear it from somebody else. They should hear it from you. And you should tell them what and why.”

If they hit civilians or women and children, the president had to be ahead of the curve. She added her trademark observation: “We can’t sort of be catching up.”

Bartlett agreed with Hughes, but Cheney still had reservations. What would this mean for Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia? We promised Israel we would defend them. Tommy’s plan has a defence, but the plan wasn’t fully implemented yet.

“I promised people I’d let them know when the war begins,” Bush said. “And if lives — the war is beginning tonight, lives will be in jeopardy, I have to tell the American people that I’ve committed American forces to war.”

While the speech was prepared, the president went around the room again, asking if all the principals agreed, almost pushing each to the wall. They did. He kicked everyone out of the Oval Office but Cheney. What do you think, Dick?

“This is the best intelligence we’ve had yet on where Saddam’s located,” Cheney replied. “If we get him, it may save a lot of lives and shorten the war. And even if we don’t, we’re going to rattle his cage pretty seriously, and maybe disrupt the chain of command. That’s well worth the effort in and of itself . . . I think we ought to go for it.”

The others came back in. At 7.12pm, three minutes before Franks’s deadline, the president said: “Let’s go.”

Powell noted silently that things didn’t really get decided until the president had met with Cheney alone.

Myers went to the secure phone to inform Franks. Rice called London and woke up Sir David Manning, the British foreign policy adviser. “David, there’s a little change in plans. And I’m sorry to say this, but I think you better wake the prime minister and tell him.”

Bush went to the White House residence with Card. How long have the F-117s been up, the president asked. When do they get there?

The next report reaching him said they were in Iraqi airspace where they would be on radio silence.

Hughes and Bartlett went over to the residence with Michael Gerson, the president’s speechwriter. The usher escorted them up to the Treaty Room, Bush’s private office. Gerson thought the president was subdued and a little pale. For the first time he looked a little bit burdened by all of this.

“It’s been a very long day,” the president later recalled of that day. “I get upstairs and I can’t sleep. Because I’ve got about an hour-and-a-half now.” He didn’t want to speak to the nation until the bombers were off their targets. “I was trying to take a little nap.”

Once more, he called Rice. No news. He tried to sleep or read or find something to do and couldn’t so he called Rice again. “Mr President, we’ve just got a report from the person on the ground. A convoy has pulled into the complex.”

“Is that convoy full of kids?” Bush asked. It hit him that there was no turning back now.

The bombers were going in first, followed immediately by 36 cruise missiles. They had doubled the Tomahawk attack package. The cruise missiles had been launched to the Dora Farm target more than an hour ago; they had no self-destruct mechanism, so they were going in no matter what.

“No,” Rice replied, “he thinks it looks like the kind of convoy that would bring Saddam Hussein.”

At 9.30pm reports came that air-raid sirens had gone off in Baghdad. Anti-aircraft fire soon followed.

Myers reported to Hadley that the F-117s had successfully dropped their bombs but the pilots were not yet out of hostile territory. Hadley took the news to the study off the Oval Office where the president was getting his makeup.

“Let’s pray for the pilots,” Bush said.

At 10.16pm, the president announced on television that the “early stages” of the military campaign against Saddam had begun.

Myers reported at about 11pm that the pilots were out of hostile airspace.

“Well, thank God for that,” said the president.

At about midnight in Washington, Tim sent a report saying that, according to the principal Rockstar, Saddam and his two sons were at Dora Farm when the bombs and missiles hit, but he did not know their status.

Before dawn in Washington, he sent another cable. He was uncertain because he was just getting snatches from Rockstars fleeing the scene. Rokan, their source, had been killed by a cruise missile. One of Saddam’s sons, it was unclear which, had come out shouting “We’ve been betrayed” and shot another of the Rockstars in the knee. The other son had emerged from the rubble bloody and disoriented but it wasn’t clear whether it was his blood or someone else’ s.

Saddam had been injured, according to a Rockstar eyewitness, and had to be dug out of the rubble. He was blue. He was grey. He was being given oxygen. He had been put on a stretcher and loaded into the back of an ambulance, which then did not move for half an hour before departing the farm across a bridge.

Around 4.30am Tenet called the situation room and told the duty officer: “Tell the president we got the son of a bitch.”

They didn’t wake the president. And by the time Bush arrived at the Oval Office at about 6.30am, they weren’t so sure. It looked as if Saddam might have survived.

A few hours later that day — Thursday March 20 — Saddam appeared on Iraqi television. The “son of bitch” was alive and apparently well.

On March 24, five days after the start of the war, Tim made his way down to Dora Farm. The place had been abandoned by then and picked pretty clean by scavengers.

There were craters and clearly the place had been attacked. He searched everywhere. There was no bunker, nor any hint of one. He found a subterranean pantry for food storage attached to the main house. Perhaps that was what his Rockstars had been referring to. Was it possible that “manzul” was not a bunker but a pantry?

Tim eventually tracked down some of the Rockstar agents who had reported to him that night. Two said their wives had been captured by Saddam’s agents and tortured by having their fingernails pulled out. Another maintained that his house had been bulldozed. There was some evidence to support these claims, but Tim was unsure.

Tim was reassigned to CIA headquarters. Saul and other superiors asked him to put down the sequence of events of the day and night of March 19-20. The more Tim searched his memory and the few documents, he realised that much was cloudy. The Rockstars on the ground had not wanted to disappoint, and they had obviously been worried about being captured or killed.

Tim made a series of efforts to write down what had happened. Was he getting closer to or further from the truth? He never produced a definitive version. The biggest unanswered question was: had Saddam and his entourage been there at all that night?

© Bob Woodward 2004

May 1, 2004 at 09:24 PM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (387) | Top of page | Blog Home