Hussein confidant directed troops to farm

Once again, it was beginning to look as though Iraq's most wanted man had eluded them.

An informant, a Hussein confidant whom they had brought along on the operation, had led them to that farm on the Tigris River. Now he pointed them to the very spot in which Hussein was hiding in an underground chamber, according to soldiers involved in his capture. Moments later, Iraq's fugitive former president was in US custody.

The informant was a senior officer in Hussein's elite Special Security Organization, according to the US commander who led the operation. When US special forces seized him Friday during a raid in Baghdad, they had not immediately realized that they held someone with precious information.

But in little more than a day, US troops determined his identity, brought him to Tikrit, and won his cooperation, according to Colonel James Hickey, who leads the Fourth Infantry Division's First Brigade. Less than four hours after the informant had divulged that Hussein was hiding on a farm near the village of Adwar, soldiers from the First Brigade and special forces had caught him.

The senior Iraqi security officer had been sought by US troops since early July. Even as US forces had learned more about the security officer's significance, he had eluded capture repeatedly.

"Each raid builds on the previous one, and you put the puzzle together best as you can. Sometimes things fit into place at the most unpredictable time," Hickey said.

US officers declined to disclose the informant's name, saying they needed to protect his identity so he could continue to provide intelligence.

Hickey described him as a native of Abou Ajil, a hamlet slightly north of Tikrit, the regional capital 10 miles northwest of Adwar. Tikrit is populated by many members of Hussein's security forces and has been the site of some of the fiercest resistance against US occupation.

Another US Army officer said the informant was a key figure and financier in the insurgency. This officer called the informant part of the "42-inch waistband" group of middle-aged Hussein loyalists who are orchestrating a campaign of violence. The man first attracted the attention of the US military in early July, when troops from the First Brigade raided his property in Abou Ajil. Although they missed arresting him by moments, the troops captured items that indicated he was related to several key Hussein allies, according to Hickey and other US officers said.

At first, Hickey said he believed the man was a bodyguard for Hussein, but he learned weeks later that he was a senior figure in the Special Security Organization, a force run by Hussein's son, Qusay, and charged with protecting the president and other highly sensitive government facilities.

US raids over the following months netted more of Hussein's operatives, but the senior security officer remained at large.

Over three nights during the first week of this month, US troops carried out raids in Tikrit, Samarra, and Baiji in a bid to collar the security officer. The operations produced other suspects, but not the quarry himself.

That achievement inadvertently fell to special forces troops in Baghdad, who swept him up Friday.

"Ultimately, they determined sometime before Saturday morning they had someone we were interested in talking to," Hickey recalled.

At 10:50 a.m. Saturday, Hickey received a telephone call from Baghdad informing him that his fugitive was in custody and would be transported to the Fourth Infantry's base in Tikrit. Hickey recalled that he felt it was going to be an interesting day.

US interrogators in Tikrit questioned the security officer from midday until late afternoon, Hickey said, and the man began providing information about Hussein's whereabouts.

"He wasn't willingly giving stuff up," said an officer in the Fourth Infantry Division.

The captive initially led US officers to think that Hussein's hideaway was at one of several sites west of Tikrit, according to Hickey. At 5 p.m., the informant told his interrogators that Hussein was actually in Adwar, directing them to two farmhouses on the edge of town. An hour later, Hickey had 600 soldiers moving toward Hussein.

But the soldiers did not find him.

Hickey said he had specific intelligence on the day of the raid that Hussein was possibly hiding underground. He did not say whether this information came from the informant.