Hussein Is Probably Alive in Iraq, U.S. Experts Say

[thedrifter]

Hussein Is Probably Alive in Iraq, U.S. Experts Say
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON


ASHINGTON, June 19 ? American intelligence analysts now believe that Saddam Hussein is much more likely to be alive than dead, a view that has been strengthened in recent weeks by intercepted communications among fugitive members of the Saddam Fedayeen and the Iraqi intelligence service, according to United States government officials.

The officials said the recently obtained intelligence had re-intensified the search for Mr. Hussein along with his sons, Uday and Qusay. The search is being led by Task Force 20, a secret military organization that includes members of the Army's highly specialized Delta Force and of the Navy's elite counterterrorism squads, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency.

The intercepted communications between some of Mr. Hussein's supporters have included credible discussions indicating that the former Iraqi president is alive and must be protected, two Defense Department officials said. Military officials indicated tonight that new operations in the hunt for him were under way.

If Mr. Hussein is alive, the prevailing view among intelligence analysts is that he is still in Iraq. These officials said they suspected that he would feel safer seeking refuge among his supporters in familiar surroundings, rather than risk fleeing to another country, where he could be at greater risk of discovery by American intelligence.

Beyond the intelligence officials, aides to President Bush have begun to express less certainty about the question, saying they do not know whether he is dead or alive. They include those aides who in the immediate aftermath of the war said Mr. Hussein was probably dead.

Increasingly, other officials in the United States and Britain have said publicly that Mr. Hussein probably survived the war. Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Fox News last weekend that "probably the majority opinion is that he is alive." The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, said in Australia this week that "my judgment and the judgment of the coalition remains that he is almost certainly still in Iraq."

His fate is a factor in the civil unrest in Iraq, endangering American soldiers, some officials say, as Hussein supporters try to organize a continued resistance.

On Monday, the arrest of Mr. Hussein's closest confidant, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, who was No. 4 on an American most-wanted list, raised some hope of obtaining more conclusive information about the former Iraqi leader. The presumption was that Mr. Mahmoud was more likely to have detailed knowledge about what happened to him than almost anyone else in the former government.

At the same time, American officials' optimism about Mr. Mahmoud's capture, near Mr. Hussein's stronghold of Tikrit, has been mixed with disappointment that he was not found to have been hiding with the former president, as some intelligence analysts had suspected.

Mr. Mahmoud's success in eluding capture for nearly two months in a country occupied by nearly 150,000 American soldiers underscored what intelligence officials said was the reality that Iraq still offered many hiding places ? even for a figure of of Mr. Hussein's prominence.

Also contributing to the belief that Mr. Hussein may be alive is that the authorities have so far failed to recover specific physical evidence, like his body or DNA material, from the sites of two American bombing raids that tried to kill him.

A number of intelligence analysts said they now believed that he had escaped the two air strikes, on March 20 and April 7. But because they have no conclusive evidence one way or the other, they said they had stopped short of drawing any firm conclusions about his fate.

It was known that Task Force 20 has led the hunt for chemical and biological weapons. But its role in trying to determine the fate of Mr. Hussein had not been previously disclosed. Some officials have suggested that the efforts are linked and that he or his sons left power with a precise knowledge of Iraq's weapons program.

Task Force 20, the military organization that defense officials said had been charged with conducting the search, reports to the Central Command and its leader, Gen. Tommy R. Franks. The Central Command has only recently acknowledged the existence of Task Force 20, and a spokesman for the command, James Wilkinson, said he would not comment on it or its mission. But other American officials said it was being supported by several intelligence agencies, including the C.I.A., and was organized so it could act quickly on intelligence gathered by satellites and electronic eavesdropping.

The uncertainty about Mr. Hussein has complicated American efforts to stabilize Iraq. Administration officials said conviction that he may be alive appears to be an important factor in the surge of armed opposition against American forces.

Although the resistance has been sporadic and localized, some of the fighters appear to have been coordinated at local levels by the fugitive members of the Saddam Fedayeen, a paramilitary organization, and remnants of the former Iraqi intelligence service, American officials said.

"These guys are growing in resistance, and they're still being troublesome, and you have to ask what's motivating them," a defense official said. The officials said recent intelligence reports had indicated that Mr. Hussein and his inner circle were trying to garner support inside the country.

The whereabouts of Mr. Hussein's two sons also remains a mystery. The second son, Qusay, is believed almost certainly to be alive, American officials said. They described that view as being much stronger than the theories about Mr. Hussein himself.

But they said debate continued about Uday Hussein, the elder son, with some intelligence officials believing that he had been killed, possibly in the first American raid.

In the weeks since the end of the war, the White House and the Pentagon have tried to shift attention from the question of their inability to find Mr. Hussein. They said that the open question would have no impact on the American troops in Iraq and that the most important thing was that he had been removed from power.

White House officials have said it may take months or longer to resolve the uncertainty about Mr. Hussein's fate, a time frame they have compared to the six months needed to confirm Hitler's death at the end of World War II.

"Of course, the search for all senior Iraqi regime figures is important, and is getting all sorts of effort," the Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said in an interview today. "But what is really important is the fact that Saddam is no longer running the country ? and he won't be."

But some American military and intelligence officials in Washington and Iraq have begun to argue that the question of whether Mr. Hussein is alive or dead is increasingly relevant. The new American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, acknowledged this month that the coalition's inability to capture him or recover his body was helping to fuel a resistance movement led by Baath Party members.

"I would obviously prefer that we had clear evidence that Saddam is dead or that we had him alive in our custody," Mr. Bremer said. "It does make a difference because it allows the Baathists to go around in the bazaars and in the villages, as they are doing, saying: `Saddam is alive, and he's going to come back. And we're going to come back.' "

Asked about efforts to find Mr. Hussein and his sons, Mr. Wilkinson said only: "We don't comment on our specific efforts on this front, but clearly the search for the leadership is one of several key priorities. And as others have said, if they're dead, we've got them, and if they're alive, we'll get them."

American forces have tried to get answers to the puzzling question of whether Mr. Hussein was killed in the air attacks. American military engineers equipped with bulldozers and backhoes began excavation work at a restaurant in the Mansur district of Baghdad, the target of the April 7 strike. But intelligence officials in Washington said the search had turned up empty.

The status of excavation efforts at the second site, known as Doura Farms, south of Baghdad, is less clear. The site was reported to have been the target of the March 20 air raid that began the war with an attempt to kill Mr. Hussein and his sons, but its exact location has never been specified by American officials. Reporters who have visited a suspected site recently said it had been graded over.

Precise information about Mr. Hussein has been very difficult for the government to obtain. Defense Department officials said Iraqi officials in American custody had told interrogators that he was not at the site of the April 7 attack, contradicting claims in earlier intelligence by what they said were two independent sources that prompted the strike on the restaurant.

Overall, American officials said that the most senior Iraqi officials now in custody were proving to be highly trained in resisting American interrogation techniques, even if they were coercive, and that they had provided little information of value about Mr. Hussein.

Interrogators have reported that detainees appeared to provide detailed information only about subjects they believed the authorities already were aware of and provided rambling answers to specific questions without revealing the extent of their information about Mr. Hussein or Iraq's weapons programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/in...partner=GOOGLE


Sempers,

Roger