![]() Suddenly the door opened and I immediately found myself sucking in air. Inside, I found pandemonium and another wait until finally a GI said, ‘OK, guys. At the airport, a side road led to a series of low-slung blockhouses that once housed Saddam’s Special Republican Guard. Men in night-vision goggles drove us at 100mph down the Airport Road, a no-go zone at night. The military was flying the putative Saddam to Baghdad airport that night and it was decided we’d make the identification there.Īt midnight, after a long wait, the convoy was ready. The myth – and it was a myth – that Saddam maintained multiple lookalikes was a source of wry amusement to those of us who worked in intelligence, but I decided silence was the better part of valour and started compiling a list of questions only the dictator could answer. ![]() Krongard interrupted me: ‘We need to make sure this is Saddam and not one of those body doubles.’ Now a group of senior officers were quizzing me in Krongard’s office how, they asked, would I make a definitive identification? I told them about the tribal tattoos on Saddam’s right hand and wrist, the bullet scar on his left leg and that his lower lip tended to droop to one side, something I picked up from studying videotapes. Until, that is, troops searching a farm near Saddam’s home village of Tikrit found a large bearded man concealed in a tiny underground bunker. ![]() The war to topple the regime had been going for nearly nine months, yet when it came to Saddam, all we’d turned up were ‘Elvis sightings’, as we called them. That was when I was called to see Buzzy Krongard, the CIA’s executive director. It was December 13, 2003, and I’d been in Iraq for eight weeks – a CIA analyst looking for leads that might take us to Saddam and his notorious henchmen. He answered the description.Īnd my bosses at the CIA were grilling me, the expert.Ĭould this burly, unkempt man truly be Saddam Hussein, the ruthless dictator of Iraq? The most wanted man in the world? ![]() A Special Forces team hunting the man we called High Value Target No 1 had pulled someone from a hole in the ground. ![]()
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