TIME: The Secret
Collaborators
Monday, October 20, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
Saddam Hussein didn't want to believe what his
intelligence networks were saying. Before the war
last spring, says a former colonel in the Iraqi
intelligence service, Saddam's analysts presented him
with classified reports predicting a decisive U.S.
victory. The documents described how the Iraqi
security forces, already outmatched, had been
undermined by Washington's success in recruiting
Iraqi spies and double agents. Internal intelligence
reported to Saddam that Iraq's defenses would
probably collapse. "We diplomatically suggested he
should not stay here," the colonel says, "because we
couldn't tell him outright that he had to step down."
Even as U.S. troops moved into his capital, Saddam
struck a resilient pose, appearing on Iraqi TV one
day wading through a worshipful Baghdad crowd,
grinning broadly, pumping his fist in the air,
stopping to kiss a child.
Five days later, the Iraqi leader could no longer
keep up his staunch facade. His orders largely
unheeded, his soldiers declining to fight, Saddam
went out for a look at his falling capital, a
secretary who accompanied him recalls. Saddam stood
on Zaitun Street, the boulevard decorated with
monumental statues of two muscular forearms holding
swords that cross above the roadway. As he turned to
leave, he paused. Using an Arabic expression of utter
disillusionment, he muttered, "Even my clothes have
betrayed me."
Indeed, the quick and relatively painless U.S.
overthrow of Saddam's regime was achieved not just by
military means but also by betrayal. Before a shot
was fired, the U.S. recruited and dispatched Iraqi
collaborators to uncover Saddam's plans and
capabilities, and hobble them. Deals were done;
psychological warfare was waged; money was paid; and
even blackmail was used. While the Bush
Administration's post-Saddam planning has proved
wanting, in this area of prewar thinking,
Washington's strategies paid off. By the time the
first U.S. tanks crossed the Kuwaiti border, top
Republican Guard officers had been won over, and the
secret police had been penetrated. Spies had
infiltrated, and spotters had been dispatched to help
guide American bombs. "You'd be surprised at what
these guys achieved," says a Pentagon official in
Iraq, referring to the Iraqi collaborators. Even if
Saddam was the last to know, many of those in his
inner circle understood how deeply the Iraqi security
services had been penetrated. At a funeral for two
junior military officers midway through the war,
mourners asked the commanders present how things were
going. "They told us we were losing," one mourner
remembers, "that there was a kind of treason in the
army and the Republican Guard."
A side effect of the mass Iraqi desertions during the
war has been that remnants of the regime survived to
cause trouble in post-Saddam Iraq. Last week saw a
fair share of mayhem. Suicide bombers drove an
explosives-packed car into a Baghdad police station,
killing eight people, and a Spanish diplomat was shot
to death at the gate of his home in the capital.
Resistance to the American occupation has been such
that 188 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since
President Bush declared an end to major hostilities
on May 1. Still, the U.S.'s swift dispatch of Saddam
undoubtedly saved both U.S. and Iraqi lives. This is
the story of America's secret campaign to sabotage
the regime from within and of the Iraqis who waged
it.
INFILTRATING IRAQ
Al-Jaburi had the right connections to serve as an
American spy. Stocky, fit and in his early 40s,
al-Jaburi--who prefers not to have his first name
published--served for almost a decade in the regime's
most feared agency, the Special Security Organization
(SSO). In the late 1980s, he was purged from the SSO
after Saddam accused his clansmen of plotting a coup.
In 1999 al-Jaburi defected to Jordan. There he joined
an opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord
(I.N.A.), which has a well-established relationship
with the CIA.
According to Ibrahim Janabi, one of the I.N.A.'s main
liaisons with the CIA in Amman, the CIA began ramping
up for war in October 2002. "They asked us to
contribute some tough, hardworking people to train
for missions inside Iraq," says Janabi. "So I gave
them al-Jaburi." The introduction, al-Jaburi recalls,
was made in a coffee shop in Amman on Oct. 18.
Al-Jaburi says CIA officers, with the aid of a lie
detector, questioned him for days on a range of
topics, including whether he was volunteering or
being coerced to join. One question probed what he
would do if he found his brother fighting against
him. "I'd kill him," al-Jaburi says he answered. On
Nov. 22, al-Jaburi says, he signed a contract
guaranteeing him monthly payments of $3,000, with
$9,000 paid in advance. Two days later he boarded a
small jet bound from Jordan to Washington.
His class of 13 recruits, containing Iraqis and
Lebanese, was flown from Washington to a secluded
facility of temporary buildings hours away, al-Jaburi
recalls. They were told they were in Texas. For two
months they trained with some 20 instructors in
physical fitness, intelligence gathering, report
writing and surveillance. At a separate naval
facility, recruits learned about explosives--how to
sabotage armored vehicles, tanks, oil pipelines,
electricity pylons and railways.
In February, al-Jaburi says, he flew to Kuwait,
staying in a villa with his CIA handlers. They
equipped him with $50,000 in American currency, a GPS
locator, satellite phones and a forged Iraqi identity
card showing completion of military service so that
he could move around Iraq unhindered. Al-Jaburi says
he left for Iraq on March 11, guided across the
border by smugglers arranged by Kuwaiti intelligence.
"I'd been in the SSO, so I knew how dangerous this
was going to be," al-Jaburi says. "But I also knew I
had to do it."
The bulk of the $50,000 the CIA had provided
al-Jaburi was for buying accomplices. He started with
"Ahmed" (not his real name), an SSO officer in the
main presidential compound whom al-Jaburi already
knew. "I told him everything," says al-Jaburi. "I
told him I'd listed his name with the CIA, and I had
$5,000 for him." Ahmed proved an easy sell, replying,
"What do you want from me?" The SSO man described
where the Republican Guard had been posted in Baghdad
and its environs, and revealed that it had been
ordered to pull back into the city if attacked. In
fact, after the U.S. bombed the Guard's positions
early in the war, many of its officers abandoned
their men, who then deserted en masse. Ahmed also
identified the location of heavy-gun emplacements and
missile batteries around the capital, targets the
Americans hit with great effect during the air
campaign.
Faced with the task of scouting the locations Ahmed
had listed, al-Jaburi turned to an old friend and
contact, A. Mashadani. Al-Jaburi had recruited
Mashadani, a major in the mukhabarat, Iraq's main
intelligence agency, soon after joining the I.N.A.
For two years Mashadani, who had access to some of
the mukhabarat's best secrets, had been feeding the
CIA--through al-Jaburi--information on Iraqi
missiles, antiaircraft systems and troop movements.
Mashadani weighed the risks of helping al-Jaburi now.
He had watched the execution of a colleague accused
of spying for Iran. "Iran wasn't going to save that
guy, or anyone," he says. "But we felt the U.S. could
get rid of Saddam."
Using a mukhabarat sedan to which he had access as an
officer in the organization, Mashadani and al-Jaburi
visited as many of the locations Ahmed had identified
as they could. Standing at the site, al-Jaburi would
discreetly activate his GPS locator, which searches
the sky for satellites to triangulate its position,
and then note the coordinates. At an appointed hour
each night, he would use his satellite phone to
contact the CIA and relate what he had found out.
This required caution. Just possessing a satellite
phone could result in death under Saddam's regime.
From the beginning, al-Jaburi's primary mission had
been to scope out Saddam International Airport, one
of the keys to taking Baghdad. Ahmed had a way in. He
had a friend, "Mahmoud," who he says commanded the
SSO's 3rd Battalion and was in charge of airport
security. Ahmed knew Mahmoud had cursed Saddam
privately, so he took him out for drinks, drawing him
out on his views. The airport commander was
sufficiently negative about Saddam to warrant a
three-way drinking date with al-Jaburi. At a third
session, al-Jaburi asked Mahmoud to cooperate and
offered him $15,000. The commander, al-Jaburi says,
agreed to help.
At sundown on March 23, with the war raging in the
south and Baghdad under nightly bombardment, the
airport commander drove al-Jaburi, in a military
uniform, and Mashadani, bearing his mukhabarat ID,
into the airport compound. In an SSO car, the trio
crisscrossed the tarmac, mapping every building and
bunker, counting every soldier and weapon they could
see. Following the CIA's instructions, they repeated
the exercise three times over three nights to confirm
their sketches. By the time they had finished, U.S.
battle planners had a detailed picture of the
situation at the airport, from the weak points in the
Iraqi defenses to the safest landing zones for
American choppers.
On March 26 an exhausted al-Jaburi took a break to
visit his family in his hometown near Tikrit. The
next day his brother, an engineer at the Bayji oil
refinery, was summoned to the plant to remove
documents before the Americans got there. Al-Jaburi
decided to go too, hoping to get papers of use to the
U.S. It was a trap. Saddam's secret police surrounded
al-Jaburi's car. He learned later that they had acted
on a tip from one of his relatives eager to collect a
reward.
Taken to Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the
last stop for many of the regime's opponents,
al-Jaburi was sure he was going to die. His jailers,
he said, placed a hood over his head and hung him
from the ceiling by his arms, which were bound behind
him. They hit him repeatedly with wire cords and
clubs, smashing his feet.
Meanwhile, Mashadani was informed by his superiors
that they had a special duty for him. At the meeting
place, a mukhabarat facility, he says, "I found my
duty was facing a lot of hands with guns." For six
hours, Mashadani was grilled about his dealings with
al-Jaburi. "All the senior bosses were coming to my
interrogation," he says. "Everyone went crazy that a
mukhabarat officer had been meeting a spy." At
daylight, his jailers took him to see the beaten
al-Jaburi. Both say they admitted nothing.
For four days, al-Jaburi says, his jailers tortured
him: beating him, shocking him, smashing his hand.
Mashadani gives a similar account. At one point,
interrogators dragged al-Jaburi's mother and wife
into the prison for questioning. Al-Jaburi could hear
them wailing through the cell door. The sessions went
on for six to eight hours at a time. Al-Jaburi says
he was grilled about other spies, information he had
relayed before his capture, GPS coordinates he had
sent. He says his CIA training prepared him to give
away nothing of importance. But he feared that time
was running out. With the regime collapsing, Saddam's
execution squads were working double time, plucking
five to 10 men from their cells every hour. "It was
like a slaughterhouse," says al-Jaburi.
As the war's front changed, al-Jaburi and Mashadani
were moved from Abu Ghraib to prisons in Fallujah and
then Ramadi. On April 11 the last guard at the Ramadi
jail fled the advancing Americans, and locals came to
set the two men free. Half-crippled and waving a
white flag, they staggered up to an American unit. "I
told them that we had just got out of prison and that
we worked for the CIA," says al-Jaburi. A
military-police humvee whisked them to Baghdad
airport, which was under U.S. control. A CIA officer
appeared with open arms. "Don't touch my back,"
al-Jaburi yelped, the wounds from his interrogation
still fresh. He remembers the officer saying, "You
are the heroes of the airport, the keys to Baghdad.
Your future is assured."
ENTICING THE GAMBLERS
As an underground operative of the opposition Iraqi
National Congress (I.N.C.), Wael Abu al-Timman spent
years hiding from Saddam's henchmen. Now, with the
war fast approaching, al-Timman was recruiting them.
His instructions from the I.N.C., which worked
closely with the U.S. before and during the war, were
to find men not only willing to provide information
about Iraqi defenses but also willing to see to it
that the Iraqi forces failed to fight. Having served
as a captain in the Republican Guard, al-Timman, who
was based in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq but
traveled often to Baghdad, turned to his old
comrades. He was astonished by how many were willing
to switch allegiances. "They knew it was their last
chance [to join the likely winners]," he recalls. "We
called them the gamblers."
Once the U.S. began bombing Baghdad, al-Timman's
mission changed. He raced from one bomb site to the
next, noting the physical damage and assessing
casualties, keeping an eye out for leadership figures
among the dead and wounded. At an appointed time each
night, using a satellite phone, he called in his
assessments to an I.N.C. contact, who passed them on
to the Americans, who could then decide whether to
hit old targets again or move on to others. "I
considered it the most important thing I could do
because it would bring an end to the war sooner,"
al-Timman says. On April 7 he milled with bystanders
as rescuers dug through the rubble of several
destroyed houses in the Baghdad suburb of al-Mansur.
The Pentagon, thinking Saddam was inside, had struck
the buildings. But the rescuers told al-Timman that
Saddam had just been there briefly to inspect the
damage and offer condolences for those killed.
Al-Timman made sure that Saddam's body was not among
those retrieved, then phoned in what he had learned
so the hunt for Saddam could continue.
THE BLACKMAIL CARD
The operations chief for the I.N.C. goes by the name
of Abu Ranin. His job before the war was to crack the
mukhabarat. His tactics were hardball. The I.N.C. had
done surveillance on Iraqi missions around the world,
making educated guesses about who was an intelligence
agent. From these lists, the I.N.C. narrowed down its
targets. "We chose them for their weaknesses, setting
out to get something on them and force them to work
for us," says Abu Ranin, who was then based in
Jordan.
In a West European capital, Abu Ranin says, he
collected evidence on a mukhabarat station chief who
was selling government property on the black market.
When Abu Ranin threatened to alert Baghdad, he says,
the officer rolled over. Abu Ranin would not say what
information the man provided. Abu Ranin's greatest
coup, he says, was in Romania. As he tells the story,
he discovered a mukhabarat officer in Bucharest who
had two useful qualities: he oversaw the regime's
East European agents, and he had a weakness for
prostitutes. Posing as a wealthy businessman based in
Europe, Abu Ranin befriended the officer. He rented a
villa and threw a private party with five prostitutes
and ample alcohol. The mukhabarat officer brought
four colleagues. Abu Ranin secretly audiotaped their
drunken boastings and cajoled them into a few
snapshots with the women. Blackmail, however, proved
unnecessary. When his guests were distracted, Abu
Ranin grabbed the officer's cell phone and downloaded
its address book.
Over ensuing weeks, Abu Ranin called the names in the
address book and concluded that he had the identities
of 65 agents--either Iraqis based abroad or their
contacts in foreign intelligence services,
particularly Syrian and Palestinian. He then traipsed
around the Middle East, arranging meetings with the
Iraqi agents on various pretenses. Once, for example,
he posed as a diamond trader looking to sell gems.
Instead of showing up for the assignations, he would
hide near the meeting place and surreptitiously
photograph the agents. When his dossier was complete,
he forwarded it up the I.N.C. chain of command.
Exactly what use was made of his work, Abu Ranin
isn't certain, but the data would have offered scores
of prospects to the Americans working on turning
Iraqi agents. And as the story of al-Jaburi, Ahmed
and Mahmoud illustrates, one spy can beget another
who begets another and so on.
A SINKING SHIP
As war approached and the Iraqi collaborators
intensified their work, the underpinnings of Saddam's
regime began to quiver noticeably. In the offices of
Saddam's son Qusay, commander of the Republican
Guard, "a lot of officers told us the coalition had
called them or their families, telling them to
surrender and offering money," says a former staff
member who asks to be called Mohammed. It was the
same at the mukhabarat. "Many told us they had been
offered money or guarantees of safety or promises of
positions of authority in the new government," says a
member of the staff in the mukhabarat director's
office. More telling was the number of officials who
did not report the calls. "We know the Americans
called virtually all the senior officers and a lot of
the lesser ranks right down to lieutenants, but most
of them did not come and tell us," says Mohammed.
When it came to war, most of Saddam's armies either
chose flight over fight or were neutered by
commanders who had agreed to accommodate the
coalition. Colonel Ali Jaffar Hussan al-Duri was not
one of them, but his ultimate superior was. Once the
fighting had begun, Hussan's division of the al-Quds
army, an official Iraqi militia, received what he
called "an incredible" order to send half the men
home on leave. He challenged the edict with his
brigadier, who was equally bemused. They attempted to
verify it, but communications had been cut. So they
dismissed half the unit and watched the other half
vanish soon after. "One top commander, a traitor, can
make the whole army disappear," Hussan says, ashamed
of his comrades' performance. With the U.S. briefed
on the locations of many of Saddam's forces, the
Americans devised novel ways to intimidate troops who
might have stood their ground. "They broke into our
[field] radio and told us they knew our precise
locations," says a junior Republican Guard officer.
In Baghdad, Mohammed, of Qusay Hussein's office, was
ordered a few days before the capital fell to tour
the antiaircraft batteries in the area that had, by
and large, stopped firing. When Mohammed asked
soldiers sitting in their bunkers why their guns were
silent, they answered, "Our general told us not to
shoot." Mohammed told them Saddam had ordered that
any crew failing to fire that night would be
executed. In the morning he returned, bellowing at
the units to explain why they had not fired at the
U.S. jets. "Because straight after you left
yesterday, the general came around," one man replied.
"He told us not to listen to you guys."
DAY-AFTER GRUMBLES
Not all the secret agents got away with subversion.
"Sultan," a captain in the SSO, says he became
suspicious of a man claiming to be a mukhabarat
official who was telling colleagues that the Iraqi
army was losing and that the Americans were
everywhere. Sultan suggested the man come and speak
to his unit. "We took him to real mukhabarat
officers. They sniffed him out immediately and took
him," says Sultan proudly, sipping tea in a
back-street cafe in Tikrit.
The suspected spy probably met the same fate as an
undercover I.N.C. man called Lieutenant Ali, a close
friend of al-Timman's. He was caught when the man who
smuggled him to Baghdad from Kurdistan sold him out
to the regime. After the war, al-Timman learned that
Ali was imprisoned for weeks before being taken to
Ramadi, where he was propped against a wall and shot
on April 9, the day Saddam's statue came down in
Baghdad's Firdos Square.
Some undercover agents who helped the U.S. are
dissatisfied with the price they have paid.
Disillusioned by their prospects in the new Iraq and
threatened by an increasingly bold resistance
movement, they feel abandoned by the Americans, for
whom they risked their lives and betrayed their
country. A mukhabarat colonel who spied for the
I.N.C. now sits in a bare office. He has a nominal
position with a minimal income and no real authority.
He is bitter, claiming he was promised more. "If they
don't give the Iraqi groups power, we can liberate
ourselves from the Americans and engulf Iraq in
fire," he threatens.
Al-Jaburi and Mashadani, the CIA's heroes of the
battle for the airport, feel left out in the cold as
well. Al-Jaburi says he was paid $75,000 for his
efforts, Mashadani $60,000--good money in a country
where the average yearly income is $2,500, as well as
in the U.S., where the per-capita income is $23,000.
Still, the two men feel that they are highly exposed
and that the U.S. is not doing enough to protect
them. Al-Jaburi's name has appeared on a death
list--obtained by TIME--kept by the remnants of the
Fedayeen Saddam militia. Two of his relatives were
shot dead while driving his car. He complains that
the U.S. has not given him a license to carry a gun
to protect himself. Without such a permit, Iraqis
with arms are subject to arrest at U.S. checkpoints.
"The Americans are good-hearted. When they love you,
they really love you," says al-Jaburi, "but when you
finish your job, they forget you." Replies an officer
of the CIA, who would not comment on the
contributions of any particular Iraqi: "The people
who have worked for us have been well treated. If
there's some unhappiness, I suspect that it is from
people who are either exaggerating their role or
inventing promises that were never made." The
greatest pledge the U.S. made to these people, of
course, was that it would take down Saddam. That it
did, with their considerable assistance.
--With
reporting by Timothy J. Burger/Washington