The Iraqi man who gave up Saddam Hussein to US forces last weekend was his top aide through eight months on the lam, a senior US military intelligence officer told reporters. âHe was someone I would call his right arm,â said Major Stan Murphy, the head of intelligence for the 4th Infantry Divisionâs First Brigade in Saddamâs hometown of Tikrit. The major ruled out the possibility the informant, who is currently in detention, would receive any of the 25-million-dollar bounty on Saddamâs head. âHe is a bad man and should rot in jail,â he said.
| That's $25 million we can use for more important things. At a nominal ten bucks a case, I make it 2.5 million cases of beer... |
The man, whose name the military will not reveal, was a longtime aide of Saddam and hailed from one of five major tribes in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) stretch around Tikrit that the fallen dictator relied on to elude the Americans after Baghdad fell last April. âHe was in the five families. There were members of the five families that were in the security forces, the armyâ and the government, Murphy said.
"Call Rocco, down at the CPA, and find out what's gonna happen tonight!"
"Yes, Don Finocchio!"
"And lemme know what the Barzini clan's doin'!" |
Since April, Saddamâs top lieutenant, along with four or five other Iraqis from the prominent Tikrit-area tribes, formed the inner circle that helped hide the fugitive dictator, implement his orders to the resistance for attacks, finance the insurgency and provide combatants with weaponry. âHe (Saddam) would give general guidance, hey I want to see more attacks, I want to see more of this. His enablers would then go out to their different tiers below them, give a little more specific guidance, maybe some money or weapons or something, and that tier would go out to the other tiers all the way down to the trigger puller,â Murphy said.
| That's about the only way it was going to happen. It's not like Sammy was going to hold staff meetings, like he was so fond of having televised in the old days. It was probably more efficient than the way he used to do things. |
There were four to nine tiers of the resistance, Murphy added.
| Now there's three to eight... |
But while the other enablers shared the burden of labour and their functions overlapped, the man who eventually informed on Saddam was the fugitive strongmanâs most trusted confidante. âIn my mind, he was that important... to get the general guidance from Saddam and add specific details for everything,â Murphy said. The middle-aged man, whose name or job in the old regime Murphy refused to disclose, had started to serve Saddam in his late-teens or early twenties and had risen to become one of Saddamâs most valued sidekicks. He fit a stock profile of many of the men who served under Saddam. He was balding and heavily overweight, with an almost 50-inch waistline, and âloved womenâ, Murphy said.
| Rotund little fellow, isn't he? And I thought I was porky... |
He also participated in the old regimeâs crimes against the Iraqi people, Murphy said, without disclosing the exact nature of his involvement in Saddamâs abuses. Among other responsibilities, Saddamâs right hand man and the other three-to-four enablers supervised a two-man cell under them that was responsible for the logistics of moving Saddam around safehouses north and west of Baghdad where the fallen dictator counted tribal support, Murphy said. |