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Messages Imply Sammy May Be Dead
American intelligence officials said today that they had intercepted communications in which former Iraqi officials said among themselves that they believed that President Saddam Hussein had been killed in a bombing raid in Baghdad. But the American officials said they were not certain that Mr. Hussein had been killed, citing the lack of physical evidence and the fact that forensic teams had not yet examined the site of an American bombing raid on Monday in the Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad, where intelligence reports indicated Mr. Hussein was meeting top aides. The officials who described the communications intercepts today have disputed reports from military officials in the field who said Mr. Hussein was seen Thursday at a mosque in Baghdad that was the site of a firefight later that day."Dark-haired guy with a moustache, right? Yep. That was him..." American officials warned that it is possible that the midlevel Iraqi officials discussing Mr. Hussein's death did not know the truth, or were passing on disinformation, convinced that the American intelligence agencies would be eavesdropping on their conversations. Likely they know about as much as we do, if that much... Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that he had not seen enough intelligence information "that would enable me to walk up and say that I have conviction that he's dead." Even so, American officials said that there were two, and possibly more, intercepted communications involving different Iraqi leaders discussing Mr. Hussein's death. In the conversations, the Iraqis did not specifically refer to the circumstances in which Mr. Hussein was supposed to have been killed. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-04-12 |
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