Saddam
Alive In Iraq, Intercepted Calls Suggest
By Andrew
Buncombe in Washington
Independent
21 June 2003
New intelligence recovered by American agents electronically eavesdropping
on supporters of Saddam Hussein suggests the former Iraqi dictator is
alive and still living inside Iraq. It also suggests that his two sons
survived attempts by US and British forces to kill them early in the
war.
The taped conversations between
fugitive members of the Fedayeen militia and the ousted regime's intelligence
services, revealed yesterday in The New York Times, include talk about
the need to protect Saddam. The fact that the ousted president has been
able to remain at large for so long suggests that he had made extensive
plans for such a scenario and that there are a number of loyalists prepared
to help him.
Many within the Bush administration
believed that Saddam - and perhaps his sons, Uday and Qusay - were killed
in air strikes on targets in Baghdad on 20 March and 7 April. But the
new intelligence is forcing officials to rethink. Most Iraqis living
in Baghdad remain convinced the former leader is alive and well.
The new evidence has prompted
an increased effort to find Saddam, a task that is being led by a specialist
and secretive team of US special forces troops. The so-called Task Force
20 includes members of the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's counter-terrorism
specialists and operatives from the CIA. Finding Saddam would represent
a massive public relations coup for the Bush administration.
There have been numerous
unconfirmed sightings of the former president. Last week, Ahmed Chalabi,
leader of the Iraqi National Congress, repeated his belief that Saddam
was living and moving in an arc from Diyala, north-east of Baghdad,
around the Tigris river toward his home town of Tikrit and into the
Dulaimi areas to the west of the Tigris.
Mr Chalabi, who has provided
much of the intelligence on which Washington has based its claims that
Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, also said that the former
leader was using $1.3bn looted from the country's central bank to offer
bounty for all American soldiers killed. The former dictator intends
to have his revenge, in the belief that he "can sit it out and
get the Americans going", Mr Chalabi told the Council of Foreign
Relations in New York.
Victoria Clarke, a Pentagon
spokeswoman, said: "Of course the search for all senior Iraqi regime
figures is important, and is getting all sorts of effort. But what is
really important is the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer running
the country and won't be."
Earlier this week American
forces revealed that they had arrested Saddam's closest confidant, raising
hopes that he could provide information on the whereabouts of the former
leader. Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, who was number four on the Pentagon's
most-wanted list, was captured close to Saddam's former stronghold of
Tikrit. At the same time, the fact that Mr Tikriti was able to escape
capture for nearly two months highlights how difficult it could be to
capture the former leader.
Paul Bremer, the US administrator
in Iraq, admitted earlier this month that the failure to find Saddam
had an impact on efforts to rebuild the country. "I would obviously
prefer that we had clear evidence that Saddam is dead or that we had
him alive in our custody," he said. "It does make a difference
because it allows the Baathists to go around in the bazaars and villages
as they are doing, saying 'Saddam, is alive and he's going to come back
and we're going to come back'."