BAGHDAD, IRAQ
December 2003
I squinted to get a better look at the video screen. Two MH-47 Chinook helicopters were streaking across the western Iraqi desert, bound for a small Arab compound north of Fallujah. Inside the helos were twenty-four Army special operations soldiers from our special operations task force. Their objective: Saddam Hussein.
The grainy black-and-white pictures were being broadcast from a Black Hawk helicopter flying above the Chinooks.
“Two minutes out,” came the call from the Joint Operations Center (JOC) noncommissioned officer.
“Roger. Two minutes out,” I acknowledged.
Around the JOC, fifty men, headsets on, eyes fixed on the screen, quietly talking into their microphones, were helping coordinate the mission.
“Little Birds on target, sir.”
Small black shadows jetted across the screen as the AH-6 Little Bird gunships, acting as fire support, took up positions on the north and south sides of the compound.
“Taking fire from the compound, sir.”
“Roger,” I said, adjusting my headset and leaning in to get a better look.
A steady stream of gunfire erupted from inside one of the small structures, aimed at the hovering Little Birds. The mini-guns on the Little Bird whirled in response, sending a burst of 7.62 rounds into the building, silencing the shooter.
“Birds on the ground.”
Dust enveloped the two Chinooks as they landed, one beside the other, just outside the walled compound. The SOF operators sprinted off the ramp of the helos, running full speed toward the metal gate on the outside of the wall.
“Sir, we have activity inside the compound.”
Onscreen I could see multiple Iraqi men moving in the courtyard. The operators had breached the outside gate and were flowing into the first building.
“Shots fired. Shots fired.”
There was a brief pause from the NCO.
“Two Tangos EKIA.”
“Roger.” I breathed a little easier. Two enemies killed in action.
I watched as the operators systematically cleared each building. Lining up outside the building entrances, the first man in the stack would toss a flash-crash grenade, stunning the occupants inside, followed by a bull rush of armed soldiers. Within ten minutes the fight was over.
My radio squelched. The squadron commander came on the line. “Raven Zero One, this is November Zero One.”
“Roger, Bill,” I answered.
“Sir, it’s a dry hole,” he said, sounding exasperated.
“No worries, Bill. Everyone okay?”
“Yes sir, everyone’s fine. We have a couple of EKIAs, but no Jackpot. It looks like these guys were building car bombs.”
Car bombs. VBIEDs. Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. They had killed hundreds in the markets of Baghdad and were one of the most lethal and effective weapons in Al Qaeda’s inventory.
“Well, someone is going to live because of your boys. Nicely done.”
“Sir, we’ve got another hour or so on site exploitation. Who knows, maybe someone will talk or we’ll find some pocket litter, but I don’t really think anyone here knows where Saddam is.”
“All right, Bill. Tell the boys thanks. We’ll reset and try another target tomorrow.”
“Roger, sir. Out here.”
Another night. Another dry hole. It was beginning to get old.
I had arrived in Baghdad three months earlier, in October 2003, to replace the outgoing Task Force 714 commander, Air Force Brigadier General Lyle Koenig. Our special operations task force was garrisoned at a small camp off the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). When Task Force 714 first arrived in Baghdad in March 2003, the commander at the time, Major General Dell Dailey, named the small garrison Camp NAMA, for “Nasty-Ass Military Area.” While it certainly wasn’t as bad as some places I had bedded down, Camp NAMA wasn’t Saddam’s Al-Faw Palace either. Most of us lived in tents or dilapidated buildings where the stench from broken sewer pipes and the smell of burning trash wafted over the entire camp. But I didn’t care. I was finally out of the White House and helping with the fight.
We set up our joint operations center in one of the few buildings not destroyed during the U.S. invasion. The camp housed about eight hundred soldiers, including a company of Army Rangers; a company from the 1st Cavalry Division, which provided our Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and M113s; a support company; the task force headquarters element; and a twelve-man intelligence element that ran our small jailhouse. The jail contained about five to twelve detainees who were held under very strict DoD guidelines. The intelligence we received from these detainees was providing invaluable leads to other Baath Party leaders.
As a way to motivate the American troops, some enterprising young public affairs officer came up with the idea of creating playing cards with the names and faces of Iraqi’s most wanted emblazoned on the cards. Saddam was the Ace of Spades.
Our Army special operations unit was given the job of hunting down the Top 50 High Value Targets. One by one, over the course of the past eight months, task force operators had captured or killed some of the more notorious Baath regime members. Most notably, just a few months before I arrived in Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Erwin’s A-Squadron located Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, in a barricaded hideout near Mosul. The two sons were well known for their abhorrent behavior. Uday kept women as sex slaves in his villa on the Euphrates River, and Qusay, whose villa was right next door to Uday’s, loved to torture innocent Iraqis for their disloyalty to Saddam. When we finally seized the villas after the fall of Baghdad, they reeked of blood, urine, and fear. Behind the barricades in Mosul, Uday and Qusay fought to the death, wounding several A-Squadron members in the fight and killing a military working dog. It finally took a TOW missile from a unit of the 101st Airborne Division to seal the bastards’ fate forever.
But while locating the top-tier Baathists came quickly, Saddam still eluded us nine months after the fall of Iraq.
I was having one of those feelings again. Inexplicable. Powerful. Eerie. One I couldn’t shake and certainly couldn’t rationalize. But it wasn’t the first time I had a “premonition,” and as I would find out later, it wouldn’t be the last time.
“Turn the plane around!” I shouted over the sound of the C-130’s engines.
“What?”
“I said, tell the pilot to turn the plane around and return to Baghdad.”
My military aide, Army Captain “Hank” Henry, pulled off his Bose headset and moved across the aisle to sit next to me.
“What did you say, sir?”
“Hank, we need to get back to Baghdad. Tonight’s the night we get Saddam Hussein.”
Hank looked around the sparsely filled airplane and asked quizzically, “Did someone call you?”
“No,” I continued to yell above the noise. “We just need to get back to Baghdad—and now.”
Hank was a Special Forces officer—a Green Beret. A former linebacker, he was big, strong, with a great sense of humor and an infectious smile. We had connected from day one. He was loyal to me and I was loyal to him.
“Roger, sir. Let me go talk to the pilot.”
Moments later Hank returned to tell me that we couldn’t divert the plane in Iraqi airspace. We would have to wait until we got on the ground in Al Udeid, Qatar, before we could hitch a ride back to our task force camp at Baghdad International Airport. This would delay our return by two hours, but it was the only option we had.
Once on the ground in Al Udeid, Hank managed to arm-twist some Air Force pilot and got us on the very next plane returning to Baghdad. Unbeknownst to me, Hank also called back to our Joint Operations Center and they assured him that nothing was going on. Certainly there were no leads on the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein.
“I hate this part,” Hank said as the C-130 pilot began his combat spiral into BIAP, dropping precipitously to avoid possible insurgent missiles. The landing at Baghdad International went without incident, but the passengers, a mixture of military, contractors, and Foreign Service types, seemed relieved to be on the ground.
Waiting for me on the tarmac was my sergeant major, Ed Certain. “Boss, what are you doing back?”
Hank flashed the sergeant major a look begging him not to encourage my eccentricity.
“Tonight’s the night,” I said. “What is the JOC tracking?”
The sergeant major grinned and looked at Hank. “Well, Admiral, funny you should ask. C-Squadron pulled al-Muslit out of the jailhouse a few hours ago and they think he can lead them to Saddam’s driver and possibly Saddam himself.”
Mohammad Ibrahim Omar al-Muslit, whom C-Squadron had been hunting for two months, had just been captured earlier that morning. He was the closest associate to Saddam that we had in custody.
We jumped into the waiting Toyota Hilux for the short drive back to Camp NAMA.
“Sir, for all we know, al-Muslit could be just another Beacon Boy. I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in this lead either,” Certain said.
Beacon Boy. It was all I’d heard since arriving in Iraq. Beacon Boy was supposed to be the golden source. The guy who would lead us to Saddam. He was so named because our tech guys had given him a tracking device, a beacon, that he would initiate if he were colocated with Saddam. Our Army special operations task force was always on standby to immediately react if Beacon Boy signaled the force. The signal never came, but somehow we hung on, desperate for anything that would lead us to Saddam. We all knew Beacon Boy was crooked, but he always gave us just enough intelligence to keep us interested. We were being played. We knew it, but we had no choice. He was our only lead—until now.
“I think this time is different,” I told the sergeant major.
“What’s different about it?”
“Just call it a hunch,” I said, smiling.
“Okay, sir,” the sergeant major said, shaking his head. “But didn’t you have some important meeting with General Abizaid in Al Udeid?”
“Well, if I’m right about tonight, Abizaid won’t mind me missing the meeting.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Certain asked.
“If I’m wrong… I’m sure he’ll understand.”
During my time as the commander of the task force in Iraq, I reported to General John Abizaid, who was in charge of Central Command. Abizaid was an exceptional leader. He was strong-willed, tactically minded, understood the Arab culture, and had a dry sense of humor that surfaced in the toughest moments. As a new admiral living in an Army world, learning from officers like John Abizaid set me up for success later in my career.
We pulled up to the JOC and offloaded our gear. It was about 1930 local when I walked inside and immediately looked up to the massive screen that displayed our feed from the surveillance helicopter that the task force owned. On the screen was a small one-room mud building, the kind that was prevalent throughout Iraq. A few palm trees dotted the landscape around it, but there were no other houses visible in the area. At the bottom of the picture our JOC chief had overlaid the words “Objective Wolverine One.” It was tonight’s mission.
Navy SEAL Captain Lee Snell, my deputy commander, was on the radio headset talking to someone in the field. I sat down next to Snell and he immediately got up to give me the command seat. I waved him off.
“You’ve got it, Lee. What’s going on?”
“Sir, C-Squadron thinks they have a lead on Saddam’s cook, Qais. We moved al-Muslit from the jailhouse to Tikrit early this afternoon, and al-Muslit says he will lead them to Qais, and supposedly Qais is hiding Saddam. We’re monitoring Qais’s house, Objective Wolverine One.”
The picture from the WESTCAM optical sensor on the helicopter was grainy and occasionally the sensor would slew outward, going from a close-in look to five thousand feet.
Putting on the headset, I listened to the radio communications on C-Squadron’s tactical frequency.
As the chatter on the net increased, it was clear that we had captured Qais, but as usual with all detainees, he denied having any knowledge of the whereabouts of Saddam. Unbeknownst to me, at the urging of al-Muslit, who was with a second SOF troop, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Coultrup, the C-Squadron commander, and Colonel Jim Hickey, from 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, had maneuvered farther up the dirt road from Wolverine One to another small house, designated Wolverine Two.
As I watched the ISR feed from the WESTCAM and listened to the radios, the visual and the verbal didn’t match up. Wolverine One appeared reasonably quiet, but the radio calls from Coultrup sounded like they were moving rapidly on a target.
“It sounds like they’re on target, Lee. I don’t see any movement outside the house.”
I motioned to the JOC noncommissioned officer, who sat at the end of the long wooden table that made a horseshoe around the ISR screen. He was also on the headset, seeing what I was seeing—which was nothing. I raised my hands in the universal sign of “WTF,” and he shrugged and called back, “ISR is on the target. I don’t know where the squadron is, sir.”
I hated to call the squadron in the middle of an operation. It’s the last thing any tactical guy on the ground wants—a call from his boss sitting warm and comfortable in a JOC fifty miles away from the action. Still, it was our responsibility to manage the Quick Reaction Force and the medical evacuation if something went wrong on target. That was hard to do if you didn’t have good situational awareness of the mission. And the truth was, I was curious as to whether this new lead was panning out.
Somewhat reluctantly I pushed the talk button and reached out to Coultrup. “Bill, are you on target?”
“Yes sir,” Coultrup responded somewhat excitedly.
“We don’t see you on ISR.”
There was a pause on Coultrup’s end. “Sir, we are on Wolverine Two. Just down the road from the original target, and we have Jackpot.”
Jackpot? Jackpot?
Jackpot was the code word meaning they had captured the objective. At first I assumed Coultrup meant Qais, but suddenly it occurred to me that the tone of Coultrup’s voice indicated something more significant.
“Jackpot? Do you mean Little Jackpot or—Big Jackpot?”
“Big Jackpot!” Coultrup answered.
Around the JOC floor, where everyone was listening in, there was a strange sense of quiet, as though no one believed what we were hearing. I didn’t want to appear too anxious. Over the course of the past several months the operators on the ground had called Jackpot on other targets, only to find out that we were mistaken. A lot of the Iraqi names and faces were similar—easy to make the mistake. But this was Saddam Hussein, one of the most recognizable men in the world. Surely they couldn’t be wrong this time.
“Call me on the land line when you get back to Tikrit,” I told Coultrup. If this was Saddam, Coultrup didn’t need me asking a lot of questions while he was still on target. We could talk when he got back to the squadron’s base in Tikrit.
Behind me in the JOC, I could feel the sense of excitement building. I turned to Snell and told him to secure all outside lines. No communications were to leave Camp NAMA without my approval. No persons were to leave Camp NAMA without my approval. Until we could verify that the Jackpot was indeed Saddam Hussein, no one was going to go off half-cocked and tell the outside world the news. This would be strictly by the book.
Thirty minutes later, Bill Coultrup called me from Tikrit.
“Well, what do think, Bill? Is it him?”
“Yes sir, I think it’s him.”
“Bill, before I call Abizaid, McChrystal, and Sanchez, I have to know for certain. How certain are you?”
Over the phone, I could hear other SOF operators talking loudly, taking off their kit, the post-mission clatter that accompanied every operation.
“Sir, I’m about 98 percent certain,” Coultrup responded. In the background one SOF operator yelled out, “Bullshit! It’s 100 percent.”
Coultrup laughed. “Sir, it’s him. We pulled him out of a spider hole on Wolverine Two and the first thing he said was, ‘I’m Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq and I am willing to negotiate.’”
As it turned out, al Muslit had indeed led the assault force to the right target. On Wolverine Two was Qais’s brother, who also denied knowing where Saddam was located. While on target, al-Muslit, trying not to be too obvious, tapped his foot on the floorboards around the small house, indicating that there just might be something underneath. After a few minutes, and with the help of a troop K-9, the SOF soldiers unearthed the spider hole. Saddam, who had a gun by his side, almost didn’t make it out of the hole alive, but the assaulters quickly disarmed him and dragged him out. After he announced that he was Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, one of the operators responded, “President Bush sends his regards!”
Lee Snell was listening over my shoulder. I smiled and nodded to Lee. “Coultrup says it’s him.”
I directed Coultrup to put Saddam on the first helo available and get him down to Camp NAMA. Then I started making my calls to Abizaid and McChrystal, my new boss at Fort Bragg. During the calls both men wanted assurances that it was Saddam, which I didn’t have at the time. I briefed them on the plan to get Jackpot here within the hour and then I could verify with my own eyes that it was Saddam. However, if there was any doubt, we would get blood samples and send them back for a DNA match.
As I was completing my calls, a young sergeant approached me and said that Lieutenant General Sanchez was out in the lobby.
Rick Sanchez was the military commander in Iraq. He and I had met only briefly in General Abizaid’s office months earlier, but I liked the man. His leadership in Iraq had been heavily scrutinized, mostly by those who weren’t in the fight. During my time with him I found him to be competent, hardworking, poised, and approachable. Still, I was quite surprised by Sanchez’s arrival. His headquarters at the Al-Faw Palace was a good thirty-minute drive from Camp NAMA. Had he gotten the word on tonight’s mission? I was still on the phone coordinating our detainee’s arrival to Baghdad when Sanchez and Major General Barb Fast, the senior intelligence officer in Iraq, walked up to my table.
Sanchez pulled up a folding chair and sat down beside me. “Well, I understand you got Saddam,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Sir, I don’t know just yet. The man we captured should be on the ground in ten minutes. You can see for yourself when he lands.”
“Well, I got a call from the CIA. They think you have him, and I’m told George Tenet has already notified President Bush.”
I shook my head in exasperation. Someone in the intelligence community had called Buzzy Krongard, the Executive Director at CIA, who had notified Tenet, who had called Bush—all in a matter of minutes after the capture.
“Well, I hope they’re right,” I said, with some sense of frustration.
Fifteen minutes later, the jailhouse called in to tell Captain Snell that the detainee had arrived. I was still working with the CENTCOM staff to develop a follow on plan for the movement of Saddam, if it was him. Additionally, I was coordinating with the military holding facility across the street to get Chemical Ali transferred to me for the evening so I could have another eyewitness verify the identity of our detainee. I knew that millions of Iraqis and Americans alike would need proof positive before they accepted that Saddam was alive and in custody.
Sanchez, Fast, and Snell went to the jailhouse to verify our detainee’s identity, while I continued my coordination. Minutes later, Snell called me to confirm that we had captured the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.
Snell returned from the jail and I headed over to see our newest prisoner. The jailhouse was a one-story, eight-room concrete building, which we had turned into a temporary holding facility. The hallways were short and narrow. The smell of sweat and dust permeated the building. The room’s air conditioners spewed out lukewarm air and only added to the musty, humid atmosphere. Inside was a small cadre of intelligence officers, military policemen, interrogators, and medics whose only focus was to get intelligence from Iraqi detainees.
As I arrived, there were more than the usual personnel scurrying about, all wanting to help, and all hoping to get a peek at our prisoner. I gently pushed my way through the crowd and found Sanchez talking with Bill Coultrup.
“This is a historic moment,” Sanchez said.
Coultrup was beaming from ear to ear, and rightfully so. Coultrup had been an Army Special Forces operator most of his adult life. He was in Mogadishu during Black Hawk Down. He fought in Bosnia, Kosovo, and was part of the initial invasion of Iraq. He was a bit eccentric, but Bill Coultup was a warrior through and through. I worked with him many times over the next few years, and few men I knew were as professionally aggressive and talented.
Coultrup turned to me and said with a smile, “Okay, boss, I’ve done my job. He’s all yours now.”
I thanked Coultrup for a good night’s work, and then Sanchez and I got down to discussing the next steps. A press release was drafted, but it still needed some adjustments. In anticipation of this day, we had also developed an interrogation plan to see if we could find out the truth about the WMD and the whereabouts of Navy Captain Scott Speicher, a pilot who was shot down during Desert Storm in 1991. But the plan still needed approval from Abizaid. The new Iraqi leadership in Baghdad would also want a say in Saddam’s ultimate disposition.
But first of all, we had to show the Iraqis and the world that Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured. At the time of capture, Saddam was wearing a long, full beard that hid some of his features. While it was still obvious to me that it was Saddam Hussein behind the whiskers, I felt it was necessary to shave him so there was no doubt in the average Iraqi’s mind that this was their former President.
Turning to Sanchez, I said, “Sir, I’m going to have one of my medics shave Saddam so we have a good picture for the press.”
“Shave him?”
“Yes sir. Clean him up for the photo.”
“Do we have the authority to shave him?” Sanchez asked seriously.
“Sir.” I laughed. “We had the authority to shoot him if he was a threat. I think I have the authority to shave him.”
Sanchez smiled. “I guess you do.”
We got a good before-and-after photo. Sanchez and I personally wrote the press release, and by early the following morning things had settled down.
At 1000 hours on December 14, 2003, with cameras rolling, Ambassador Paul Bremer, with Sanchez at his side, stood before the media and announced, “We got him!”
The world press went crazy. All the television channels broadcast our before-and-after photos of Saddam around the globe. In the press release, we gave full credit to the 4th Infantry Division for the capture. The 4th ID was an invaluable part of the pursuit, and in an attempt to protect the identity of our special operators, we shaped the story accordingly.
Later that same day, Bremer and Sanchez flew into Baghdad International with Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, and three other Iraqi resistance leaders. I met Bremer’s party at the airfield and escorted them to our holding facility. Along with Bremer and Sanchez were several Foreign Service officers from the embassy and a couple of press folks.
Upon arrival at the holding facility, I ensured that each man was searched and made it clear that no photos were to be taken. Once inside, we walked down the passageway to the room where Saddam was being held. Bremer moved with a cool sense of accomplishment and confidence, selectively ignoring the stench and rawness that accompanied a battlefield jail. Sanchez seemed somewhat annoyed at the circus-like atmosphere that surrounded Bremer. I could tell that Sanchez would have preferred not to be there. As we got closer to the room, I could see by the looks on the faces of the resistance leaders that they were nervous. Their fear ran deep and they believed that even a captured Saddam was a threat to their lives.
As I nodded to the guard outside the room, he opened the door. Inside, Saddam, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, was sitting on an Army cot looking very much in control. As Bremer and Sanchez entered the room, Saddam remained seated, his arrogance still unchanged by his capture. Chalabi and the other Iraqis pushed past Sanchez and immediately began to yell profanities at Saddam.
Saddam smiled like a Mafia boss caught by the police, but who somehow knew that eventually he would get the last laugh. Screaming, shaking their fists, and spitting in Saddam’s direction, the Iraqis seemed to be releasing decades of hatred in an outburst of emotion.
Saddam motioned to them to quiet down. He was still the President of Iraq and they were his subjects. After purging their anger, they moved to the back of the room as though the prisoner in the orange jumpsuit still had some mystical power to cause their demise. Only Chalabi seemed unfazed by Saddam’s show of authority. In what was clearly a surreptitious preplanned photo opportunity, he moved forward from the back of the room and sat directly across from Saddam. I saw the flash, but couldn’t identify who took the photo. By the next morning, a picture of a confident-looking Chalabi “lecturing” a captured Saddam Hussein hit the press.
The meet lasted about thirty minutes, and Bremer and his party departed Camp NAMA. As word of the meeting leaked out, speculation about the treatment of Saddam, his whereabouts, and his final disposition were all subjects of banter on the news stations.
One commentator implied that we were likely torturing Saddam and using drugs to get vital information on the location of the WMD. At one point, the hype got so out of control that the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, General Doug Brown, called me directly to confirm that we were not using drugs to elicit information. I reassured Brown that no drugs were being used and that in fact, Saddam was living better than most of the soldiers at Camp NAMA. He remained isolated in the small room and I kept a doctor and an Army Ranger in attendance at all times. Saddam received a medical checkup every day and we delivered food from the dining facility for each meal. Initially, I expected to hold him for only a day or two before we moved him to Basra and then out to a Navy ship in international waters. That plan was quickly scuttled by General Abizaid, who subsequently directed me to hold Saddam until further notice.
I had three overarching concerns with respect to Saddam’s detention and protection. Would he commit suicide? Would one of our Iraqi colleagues try to kill him (the Jack Ruby scenario)? Would the Iraqi insurgents attempt to storm the facility and break him out? Camp NAMA was only a few hundred yards from a main road in which hundreds of Iraqi trucks moved every day to supply U.S. troops. While I thought most Americans wouldn’t care if Saddam was assassinated or committed suicide, he was now my prisoner and therefore I had an obligation, both morally and legally, to keep him safe until the chain of command or the Iraqis could decide his fate.
In an effort to ensure Saddam’s safety, I directed that all Iraqis be barred from entering the jailhouse. This was difficult for many of our staunch Iraqi allies who saw my order as an affront to their loyalty. It was, but the consequences of failure outweighed their sensitivities. Additionally, I reinforced our small jail facility by establishing exterior fighting positions and placing Rangers and some of our great 1st Cavalry soldiers along the main avenues of approach. Within forty-eight hours I felt comfortable that I had all the right precautions in place to ensure Saddam’s safety.
On day three of Saddam’s incarceration, Abizaid called to tell me that “another government agency” was taking over the questioning of our prisoner. I wasn’t happy, but the topic was not open for discussion. I “requested” that General Abizaid send me a written order directing me to hand over the prisoner. He completely understood my concerns and was kind enough to oblige.
I expected that the other government agency would take Saddam to an undisclosed location and question him there, but as it turned out, they wanted to keep Saddam at Camp NAMA and continue with the dialogue at our location. Additionally, they knew that our translator, an intelligence officer who worked for me at Camp NAMA, had developed a relationship with Saddam, which would be beneficial to their efforts.
When the other government agency’s team arrived, I made it clear that Saddam’s health and welfare remained my responsibility. Concerned that their techniques might be more aggressive than the established military procedures, I wanted to ensure that I had a vote in anything that occurred at Camp NAMA. As it turned out, my fears about the team were completely unfounded. They were professional, courteous, followed the rules to the letter, and complied with every one of my requests.
The questioning was more like an interview than an interrogation. The team spent four to six hours a day talking with Saddam, trying to build rapport in hopes of finding the WMD or the whereabouts of Captain Speicher. Saddam was surprisingly chatty and seemed to enjoy the banter that went on between the team and him. It was obvious from the start that he had no idea of the location of Captain Speicher. While the Navy MIA was of great concern to the United States, to Saddam he was just another pilot lost during the first Gulf War. Whatever happened to Speicher was below Saddam’s level of oversight.
There were also no weapons of mass destruction, and no matter how many times the team reengaged Saddam on the issue, the answer was always the same. Iraq didn’t have nuclear WMD. It was not the answer we were hoping for.
When asked about the Kurdish genocide, sarin gas that killed tens of thousands of Kurds in the north of Iraq, Saddam was dismissive and replied with a shrug of his shoulders, “That was Ali, not me.” Chemical Ali, Saddam’s closest friend, had been placed in charge of the Kurd situation up north and resorted to unspeakable atrocities to wipe out the population. It was only through the U.S. imposition of the Northern No-Fly Zone in 1992 that the Kurds survived.
When questioned about the murder of his two sons-in-law who fled to Jordan with Saddam’s daughters and then naively returned thinking all was forgiven, like a Mafia don, Saddam replied, “It was family business.”
Over the course of the next ten days, the team continued their questioning, but it was becoming clear that the interaction was giving Saddam a source of pride that wasn’t helpful. From his vantage point, he had the upper hand in the discussions, and as such, he felt empowered. The team was aware of the dynamic and eventually decided that nothing more would be gained from their continued dialogue. After two weeks they departed, without having obtained much insight into the critical questions, which we had hoped to have answered.
During Saddam’s stay, I visited the small room once a day to talk with the doctor and the guard to ensure everything was okay. Each time I entered, Saddam would stand up and attempt to engage me in a conversation. I would motion for him to sit down and never addressed him directly. I had given a standing order that no one was to talk with Saddam unless I granted approval. As the days went by, Saddam’s haughtiness and confidence began to wane, and with every visit I made, and every conversation I didn’t have, his frustration grew and his sense of power diminished. Over time, the change in his personality was dramatic.
About three weeks into Saddam’s imprisonment, General Abizaid came by the holding facility to meet with the military intelligence team and to thank them for their efforts in capturing Saddam. At one point I asked Abizaid if he wanted to meet Saddam. Without hesitation Abizaid said, “Why in the world would I want to meet with that megalomaniac?”
In a strange way, the starkness of his answer surprised all of us. The Saddam we saw every day was a broken old man in an orange jumpsuit who sat quietly on his cot hoping to talk with anyone who would listen. But the real Saddam was indeed a megalomaniac. On his hands was the blood of tens of thousands of his own citizens. He had gassed another ten thousand Iranians during the ten-year Iran-Iraq War. His sons and his close friends were deranged human beings who took perverse pleasure in the pain of others. His secret police protected Saddam with a degree of ruthlessness not seen since Stalin’s era. Saddam viewed himself as a historic Arab figure who ruled like the pharaohs of old with godlike authority over the lives of his subjects, but in reality he was just evil.
After thirty days of holding Saddam at Camp NAMA, I received orders to move him to a military police facility where the former President of Iraq would be interned until his trial. By early January 2004, we were in the midst of a growing insurgency. Al Qaeda in Iraq was becoming a real threat to stability. Car bombs and suicide bombers were commonplace. The rise of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Sunni extremists was creating untold problems for an American military that had come to dislodge Saddam’s army and now found itself fighting a shadow force of Iraqi insurgents.
On his final day at Camp NAMA, I decided to gamble and ask Saddam to go on television and order the insurgents to surrender. I developed a plan with my translator and rehearsed my remarks so the translator knew exactly what I wanted to say and how. While I had no illusions as to the potential for success, I also felt I had nothing to lose.
As I entered the small room, Saddam stood up, smiled, and began to engage me in conversation. I remained stoic and asked him to sit. He attempted to maneuver me to the cot and himself to a nearby chair. I grabbed him by the shoulders and gently but forcefully placed him back on the cot. His demeanor immediately changed. He did not like being told what to do.
I began my pitch by telling him that the war was over and that U.S. forces were fully in control. While nine months after the invasion that fact might have seemed obvious, but during the interrogations it was clear that Saddam didn’t know the current status of the fight. A small grin appeared on his face. It was a smile of satisfaction. He knew there was something else I wasn’t telling him just yet.
I continued by saying that there were many Iraqis who had not yet laid down their arms, and as such, we were killing a number of his citizens who didn’t need to die—the war was over. He remained silent, waiting for my offer, which he seemed to know was coming.
To save his people the anguish and to help rebuild Iraq to the great nation it could become, I offered Saddam the opportunity to make a video asking for the remaining fighters to lay down their weapons and begin the reconstruction.
He looked directly at me and said in Arabic, “Would you ask your men to surrender?”
It was a question I knew was coming. “If it meant saving my countrymen, yes. I would ask them to surrender.”
It was a lie and Saddam knew it. He responded, “I don’t think so.”
“You will undoubtedly hang for your crimes,” I continued. “Do you want to be remembered as a petty dictator like Mussolini, or do you want to be remembered as a patriotic Iraqi who tried to save his country.”
“We shall see if I hang for my crimes,” he said, his arrogance back on full display.
“Then this is the last time we will see each other. I will be transferring you to another facility tonight.” Saddam seemed shaken by my final comment. I stood up and promptly left the room.
Later that night, under tight security, I handed over my prisoner to the commanding officer of the military detention facility on the Baghdad airport. I would never see Saddam Hussein again, but I would continue to fight in Iraq for another six years until U.S. forces departed in December 2010.
On December 30, 2006, after a lengthy trial, Saddam Hussein was hanged for crimes against the Iraqi people. Thirteen years later, as Iraq remains a troubled nation, haunted by ISIS and Al Qaeda, and often on the verge of sectarian war, some may ask whether the U.S. effort was worth it. There were no WMD, and the fracture of Iraqi society caused the death of thousands of innocent people and the loss of over three thousand American and allied lives. I have no good answer. I have only hope. I hope that someday from the ashes of this war will arise a stronger, more representative, more inclusive Iraqi government. I hope that from the broken pieces of countless Iraqi lives will come a man or woman who will change the course of history: develop a cure for cancer, bring peace to the Middle East, or lighten the darkness. I hope that the families of the fallen warriors will find peace in knowing that their loved ones died serving valiantly, protecting their fellow soldiers and halting the spread of Saddam’s evil.
I can only hope.