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CIA Had Fix on Hussein Intelligence Revealed 'Target of Opportunity'
Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, March 20, 2003; Page A01 Around 4 p.m. yesterday, Director of Central Intelligence George J.
Tenet offered President Bush the prospect -- improbable to the point of
fantasy, yet somehow at hand -- that the war against Iraq might be
transformed with its opening shots. The CIA, Tenet said, believed it had a
fix on President Saddam Hussein. Hussein and others in "the most senior levels of the Iraqi leadership,"
ordinarily among the most elusive of men, had fallen under U.S.
surveillance. The unforeseen glimpse of the enemy was not expected to
last, and so presented what one administration official called "a target
of opportunity" that might not reappear. Not only did the agency know
where Hussein was, according to the official's description of Tenet's
briefing, but it believed with "a high probability" that he would remain
there for hours to come -- cloistered with his war council in an isolated
private residence in southern Baghdad. Bush listened calmly -- as his aides portrayed the scene -- while Tenet
described the sources and limits of his information, the likelihood that
it was true and the length of time Hussein could be expected to spend at
the site. The Iraqi president, a man of many palaces, avoids them at
moments of maximum risk. He is said by analysts to be a kind of refugee in
the country he rules, moving constantly and without predictable pattern.
There was no guarantee, Tenet said, that Hussein's whereabouts would be
pinpointed again. First reports in wartime seldom stand for long, and there is little
reason to suppose that what the president heard yesterday, or what his
aides portrayed of his response, will be the final word. What is known of
this episode is akin to what the Army calls the "hot wash" -- an immediate
after-action report that remains to be verified and placed in context. But
initial appearances suggest that Hussein survived, and that the opening
salvo foretells an extraordinary war. Bush ventured little militarily -- expending about 40 cruise missiles
and placing two pilots and their aircraft in harm's way. He had much to
gain. But as an early portent, and in the political psychology of war,
shooting at and missing an oft-missed foe carries other costs that are
hard to measure. In the first hours after hearing Tenet's report, Bush and his senior
national security advisers tore up the carefully orchestrated schedule of
violence that the U.S. Central Command had honed for months. Those present
in the Oval Office, officials said, included Vice President Cheney,
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff
Andrew H. Card Jr. and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Bush signed the launch order at 6:30 p.m., it included a hasty
improvisation. The first shots would strike through the roof and walls of
an anonymous Baghdad home, and deep beneath it, in hopes of decapitating
the Iraqi government in a single blow. "If you're going to take a shot like this, you're going to take a shot
at the top guy," said a government official with knowledge of the sequence
of events. "It was a fairly singular strike." Aboard eight Navy warships in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, operations
officers reprogrammed Tomahawk cruise missiles on the fly with digital
target data transmitted from CIA headquarters at Langley. From Qatar's Al
Udeid air base, a pair of pilots boarded a pair of stealthy F-117A strike
fighters, each of them equipped with a pair of 2,000-pound bombs. The
pilots pulled back on their flight controls with only snap orders to guide
them, in place of the usually exhaustive pre-flight briefing. The aircraft and missiles each carried satellite-guided warheads. The
bombs aboard the F-117s were Joint Direct Attack Munitions, designed to
penetrate layers of stone and steel. Three hours after Bush gave the order, at 5:33 a.m. local time, a
series of closely spaced explosions rocked southern Baghdad, witnesses in
the city said. Iraqi television, competing for air time with the newly
American-flagged frequencies of Iraqi radio, reported swiftly that Hussein
was alive and well and would address the nation shortly. Then another three hours passed, and Hussein made what was billed as a
live appearance at 12:30 a.m., Eastern time, today. In their first urgent review, U.S. analysts were said to be uncertain
whether the man on the screen was in fact Hussein, or was speaking live.
One official said the case against the broadcast's authenticity included
that Hussein has several body doubles and his glasses looked nothing like
the ones he normally wears. Though Hussein mentioned yesterday's date in
the broadcast, that corresponded to Bush's ultimatum for war and could
have been recorded. He said nothing specific about the bomb and missile
strike. On the other hand, an official said, "the rhetoric is not unlike
rhetoric he has used in other speeches." U.S. officials cautioned that it would be some time before intelligence
could assess with certainty what the U.S. strike had hit, and who had been
there. But it was already clear, as it never had been entirely in 1991,
that the man in the White House intended to find the Iraqi president and
kill him. The 1991 Persian Gulf War included hundreds of strikes at "leadership
targets," but President George H.W. Bush and his advisers did not
acknowledge they were aimed at Hussein in particular. After the war,
evidence emerged that the U.S.-led air campaign had tried and failed on
dozens of occasions to destroy him in his bunker. But those attacks were not the first of the war, which of necessity
targeted Iraqi air defenses and the command and control of Iraqi fighting
forces. If the CIA had come across yesterday's intelligence windfall in
1991, the U.S. military could not have struck the Bahgdad residence fast
enough. Tomahawk cruise missiles could have spun up their jet engines, and the
gyroscopes to guide their flight, but there would have been no way to
enter precision-targeting data in minutes or even hours. At the time, the
missiles required three-dimensional terrain maps that took days to
construct. In the decade since the Gulf War, the Tomahawk's guidance system has
been upgraded to follow Global Positioning System satellites instead. The
Navy can download new digital coordinates direct from the intelligence
directorate of U.S. Central Command. "Actionable intelligence," the bane
of a high-technology military faced with an elusive low-tech foe, requires
far less lead time in the present war. Whatever the result of yesterday's strike, officials said, there will
be more rapid re-targetings and more unexpected opportunities before the
war is over. Staff writers Walter Pincus, Vernon Loeb, Mike Allen and Karen
DeYoung contributed to this report. Related Links More National News Special Report Military Columnist Washington Post reporter Steve Vogel covers local and regional military issues. His Military Matters column runs every other week. Full Mideast Coverage |
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