We Got Him!

by Steve Russell

  DRAINING THE SWAMP

  Reporters asked many times about the status of the hunt for Saddam. He was always a priority, I responded, but our mission would be accomplished whether or not he was captured. I shared how close we were getting and asserted that it was merely a matter of time before he was snared. Frequently they would ask whether I supposed he was in the area. I told them that I believed he could be as his support base was clearly in Tikrit.

  There were many clues leading to Saddam. While we saw a few obvious road signs that confirmed the path, we would later see detailed signs that reinforced just how straight our course was. Even so, we would rarely receive a sighting that was timely. Usually it would come as third- or fifth-hand information and almost always: “He was here four days ago.” Thanks, buddy. That helps a lot.

  Rumors depicted Saddam as a sheepherder, a taxi driver, or a street fighter in the heart of Tikrit with an RPG. He was everywhere, yet nowhere. We called these ruminations “Elvis” sightings. Like the rock-and-roll king who continued to live in the hearts and the tabloids of his faithful followers, it seemed for every good Saddam tip we pursued, there were at least twenty such “Elvis” sightings. We often joked that he was probably pumping gas in Auja.

  While the Saddam rumors were routinely discounted, we took seriously the cascade of information allowing us to track those who actually knew his location and were likely concealing him. We had a pretty clear picture of that elusive network. For months we believed that the network revolved around the Musslit family in particular. The problem was getting to them and, once that was accomplished, how to move in on Saddam swiftly enough before the information decayed. We had been so close yet always a step or two behind.

  The trickle of information began to leak into a watershed that drained out a swamp of ugly characters. As snout, eyes, and tail were exposed, we began to see months of effort pay off. We had some incredibly good fortune with a series of raids over the next three weeks. Part of our ability to connect the dots between the Khatabs, Ghanis, and Rashids and further tie them to the Musslits, Hasans, and Majids was due to an act of kindness that would pay huge dividends.

  One day, while visiting General Mezher, the Salah ad Din Police Chief, I was approached by a kindly police officer not much younger than myself. He had issued several invitations to visit him at his home. On a whim, I decided to go. He lived in a critical section of town not far from 40th Street where there had been much heavy fighting. A set of ears and eyes in that neighborhood would be good even if only to expose the street fighters.

  One day, my translator, Joe Filmore, and I visited the policeman and engaged in pleasantries. He introduced me to his elderly father and stated that he was the Mukhtar for that district of Tikrit. The old gentleman looked terrible. His face was ashen, and he had a peculiar smell, rather like raw hamburger and Limburger cheese. Looking down at his feet, I could see why. The man’s big toe on one foot was decayed to the bone. It was like looking at an x-ray. The next toe was halfway into becoming its big brother. Clearly, diabetes was taking its toll.

  The policeman asked if we could help his father, so I left to retrieve my field surgeon, Doc Marzullo, who immediately went to work. He arranged to have the old man operated on at the Tikrit hospital by Iraqi doctors to avoid any suspicion. He made a full recovery after having the two decayed toes amputated. By our next visit, he was flush, full of life, and ever afterward grateful. I was happy to have helped. As we visited, the man’s son said, “Wait here, I want to show you something.”

  He returned shortly. “Look at this,” he offered, holding open a page from an oversized, hardbound Iraqi Army registry. Each page was handwritten with a photograph adhered beside each soldier’s entry. Even though I could not read Arabic, I knew that the page I was looking at displayed an 18-year-old Saddam Hussein.

  “Holy cow!” I said, not sure how Joe would translate that. “Where did you get this?”

  “I was the personnel officer for the Republican Guard Corps near here. When your forces came, I secured all the records,” he divulged with the confident assertion of fulfilling his military duties in the face of extreme circumstance.

  “Are they secure?” I asked.

  “Yes, I have them all.” He said flatly.

  “Holy cow!” I said again, instantly recognizing the significance of his words. He had thousands of records. Every soldier ever conscripted in Tikrit had been chronicled, complete with a period photograph. Further, the man’s father had been a Mukhtar for decades in the city. In Arabic culture, the Mukhtar is paid a small fee to record all the births, marriages, and deaths of his neighborhood. It is a position of great respect and honor. In this case, it also meant a gold mine of additional family records had just been made available to us.

  Over a brief time, these men helped us in a true spirit of gratitude. I was ever careful about being seen anywhere near them. Occasionally, on patrol, our soldiers would stop at a Pepsi stand with a back door connecting to a courtyard. I believe the policeman’s brother owned it. From that walled compound, I could hop another wall and be at the back door of the Mukhtar’s house. Our soldiers would leave, giving the appearance that we had all moved on. Then Joe Filmore, Clay Bell, and I would have time to sift through the latest family connections.

  There was a bit of concern from Bryan Luke among others about our safety on these collection missions, but I felt it was worth the risk. It was in the heart of bad country where many former SSO and Himaya bodyguards lived and where I had personally been involved in several vicious fights. Even so, we obviously could not enter this man’s home with a large number of soldiers or have them posting sentry around his house. He and his father would become dead men. Still, being in the heart of that neighborhood, I felt secure. It wasn’t likely that they would bomb us on that dense neighborhood street, as they would be unable to shield their own families, houses, and property. The trick was to get in and out invisibly without compromising the Mukhtar and his son.

  These men were a source I categorically refused to share with anyone. While Colonel Hickey was aware of the prized connection and John’s SOF team and I often discussed the finer points of targets we were trying to crack, I never disclosed the name, the location, or any of the details of this covert source. I only said that it could be completely trusted. Added to HUMINT (Human Intelligence) and SIGINT (Signal Intelligence), we now had MUKHINT (Mukhtar Intelligence). This was just one more payoff in the next three weeks as we pursued Saddam.

  With this windfall of connecting information, Clay Bell and I updated John and Kelly from the SOF team about the Khatabs, Rashids, and Ghanis and sifted through the networks of the Musslits. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Poirier of the 720th Military Police Battalion had come upon some critical information of his own. Dave had been working with the police and passing information from his perspective to John and his SOF guys as well. This time, he was certain he knew where to nab one of the Musslit brothers. Faris Yaseen Omar al-Musslit, a first cousin of Rudman and Mohammed, was one of the most wanted men we had all been tracking.

  On November 8, Dave’s MPs and General Mezher’s police captured Faris when an informant, whom few wanted to believe, came forward. Dave decided to take the risk and carry out the raid even if no one else joined them. We were not permitted to pursue the target as the location, beyond the Jabal-Hamrin Ridge, was miles outside our sector. John and his SOF team could have gone but decided to pass because several things just didn’t quite add up. Dave, however, felt it was worth the effort if there was even a small chance that Faris could be there. Fortune smiled on the 720th, and we were all grateful that Dave pursued this lead. One more nefarious creature had been snagged from the swamp.

  While we were unraveling the Khatabs, Rashids, and Ghanis and the 720th was following their lead on Faris al-Musslit, John’s SOF guys had been more interested in a tip on Rudman Ibrahim Omar al-Musslit. The tip led them to a sparse mud-brick farm near Rawa in the Haditha area west of us in Al Anbar province.
John’s team hastily organized a raid using other SOF elements from Baghdad for support. It was a huge success but had one unfortunate outcome.

  When I learned that John’s SOF team had scored Rudman, I was ecstatic. We had been pursuing this man since May as we were convinced that he would surely know Saddam’s location. When John appeared on November 9 to hash out more information, I congratulated him on the successful raid. In the last 48 hours, two Musslits had been captured, and details of the major insurgent network had been uncovered as we linked the street-fighting families with the Musslits and Hasans.

  “There was a little problem,” John said with his typical understatement. “After we nabbed him, I guess he couldn’t take the stress. He keeled over with a heart attack.”

  “That sucks,” I said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” John said in all seriousness. “It wasn’t anything we did. When we found him, he was totally surprised and just kind of dropped his head in resignation. We needed his information more than him. I guess his ticker just couldn’t take it.”

  It was a devastating blow to the good news of Rudman’s capture. We kept his detainment and death a secret, hoping to gain some time. As we discussed the fallout of events, we were more certain than ever that the Musslits were the key to finding Saddam. Only Mohammed, Rudman’s brother, could possibly hold that key now. While we felt that he may have been the missing link all along, we also felt that Rudman would have known Saddam’s location as well. With Rudman dead, the critical question was one we had also been asking for six months: Where was Mohammed Ibrahim Omar al-Musslit?

  To answer that question, we pulled out all the stops. John’s team, my battalion, and indeed the entire 1st Brigade focused on this issue while we tore into the insurgent networks. We scrutinized every miniscule bit of information, every link and photo until they surrendered enough information to lead us to a substantial number of revolutionaries. As John and I conferred with our respective staffs, we felt perhaps a massive roundup raid might be a worthy option. The timing would be critical.

  We were once again hot on the trail to Saddam. We had orbited widely around it in September and October but had to fight back the street fighters protecting the network. With that accomplished, we now had a clear blood trail to Saddam’s inner circle. The excitement began to escalate. If we could shatter the inner circle, we felt, the entire network would rapidly collapse. It did.

  On November 13, John’s SOF team and my battalion conducted another small raid to get at Mohammed al-Musslit. There was some dubious and sketchy information implying that certain targets might be linked to the recent helicopter downings. I was doubtful as the informant reported that the helicopters had been shot down with RPGs. I knew that they were taken down with SA-16 anti-aircraft missiles smuggled from Syria. Even so, we all agreed that the raid might be worth the effort.

  While Mohammed was not the objective of the raid, we believed the targets to be his drivers and business associates. Among the nine men detained were the four targets we were specifically seeking. Four more creatures were fished from the swamp. Although lesser players, an elderly guy named General Hamer “Abu” Dries and his two sons possessed critical information. Dries was a former Director of General Security and a close friend of Mohammed al-Musslit. This small raid would initiate a string of connections to groups encountered in Tikrit and Cadaseeyah, linking Mohammed al-Musslit to them all.

  Each raid was becoming crucial at this point, revealing vital information that unfortunately had to be acted upon without delay. With Rudman dead, our focus on Mohammed was a given, but we quickly realized that it was Mohammed who had been in charge all along. Rudman had a huge responsibility in Baghdad and Tikrit and the area west of the Tigris, but even he apparently answered to his brother, Mohammed.

  With shows of force and the subsequent heavy raiding, the majority of locals reached a peak of discontent, not that they had ever been fond of us anyway. Reporters filed stories parading this discontent, charging that our “big stick” approach was creating more problems than solutions. The press had often criticized our seeming lack of effort to win hearts and minds. But how can you win a black heart and a closed mind? Some members of the press failed to understand that the people we dealt with could not be swayed. Passing out lollipops meant nothing to them. They understood and respected power. Anything less posed an opportunity to strike back at us.

  I sensed we were at a tipping point. We all did. I could have cared less what newspapers in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, or New York had to say about what I should do in Tikrit. Now was not the time to take counsel of fears or be given to hand wringing or worry about how it would hurt my chances to become the next field marshal of the army. This was about defeating enemies. Nothing silences critics like success. If we could put the street fighters off balance, we just might be able to get at the protecting families of Saddam. To do that, we had to continue to show ourselves strong. I did not wish to lose the momentum in a repeat of tough fights like those of September and October that had resulted in more killed and wounded soldiers. We had them on the ropes, and it was time to start slugging.

  FAITHFUL EFFORTS

  We continued to face numerous roadside bomb attacks, but providentially, we had been spared casualties or found the bombs before they could be detonated. We retaliated with a powerful display of weaponry. General Odierno had given orders across the 4th Infantry Division to seek out targets and hit them in a coordinated effort. This had followed our earlier operations in our own brigade that had hit enemy supply sites and displayed shows of force. On the 17th of November, our battalion once again rolled tanks, Bradleys, infantry, scouts, and Iraqi civil defense soldiers into town.

  There were reporters on the streets from all the major agencies and networks watching the surge of activity. “Colonel, what is this all about?” they asked.

  “It is not a display so much as responding to enemy operations as they occur,” I explained. “We are taking a very offensive stance to take the enemy out whenever we can.”

  “By rolling tanks through the city?” asked one, not fully understanding the power that shows of force can wield to disrupt enemy activity.

  “Our raids are devised to remove enemy threats,” I allowed. “We want to eliminate those threats and bare our fangs and claws.”

  “What message will that send?” asked another.

  “The message is this: Give up. It’s over. Get on with the future of Iraq. Support the new government,” I replied.

  Part of the renewed effort to find military targets included the use of mortars in harassment and interdiction fires. I was thankful that Colonel Hickey had won this freedom of action for us. In every war, H&I fires were effective in disrupting and deterring the enemy while protecting friendly forces. We used the missions to great effect by targeting the very fields on which the enemy had launched mortar attacks on us. From the outset, the result was no more enemy mortar attacks from those areas.

  As we continued employing every means to cause Saddam’s faithful to lose hope, we, on the other hand, had to maintain a hope of our own. We knew we were on the right track. We knew we could prevail. We knew we had the means. Still, at times, the prize seemed so elusive. It took a certain measure of faith to pursue what was so improbable. Colonel Hickey was adept at keeping us patient and focused. Each new day could yield the very things we pursued if we did not lose faith in our strategy.

  Faith. Perhaps best defined as the evidence of things hoped for and not seen, it still drove us forward. It was fueled by a deep conviction that we were participants in something bigger than ourselves. That is not to say that we did not have our doubts and setbacks. We did. Faith would erase the doubts and, coupled with the encouragement of fellow warriors, it allowed us to build more confidence in our mission.

  Reporters took note of my faith because I would often play the guitar while our battalion adjutant, Captain Craig Childs, would lead singing at the chaplain’s services to our headquarters
troops. They found faith in the field intriguing, amusing, or perhaps even foolhardy. Saul Hudson from Associated Press did a feature story in September 2003 that took the foolhardy approach. Rory Mulholland wrote a book called Camp Britney about his brief stint with my task force. He struggled to interpret what he regarded as the incongruity of my faith with the greater whole of combat soldiering. My soldiers had less difficulty with it. They knew two things about me: I would ensure that they had everything needed in battle and I would personally lead them from the front lines. I was honored to have their respect as both soldier and man of faith.

  My executive officer, Mike Rauhut, also a man of great faith, encouraged me often. We had even met each other months before I took command at a Bible study at Ft. Hood. We prayed often for God’s guidance, wisdom and protection in our capacity as leaders of a thousand soldiers.

  Truthfully, most of my soldiers knew of my faith. I never tried to hide it. For me, freedom of expression and religion are among the fundamental aspects of liberty for every American. While some might imagine the military culture to be an imperfect environment in which to exercise faith, I wholly disagree.

  Some might argue that such expression of faith might be better suited for the unit chaplain. We each had our roles. Mine was as a leader and combat infantryman. Showing a sense of faith and character was never a deterrent to my soldiers or our mission. Most would argue it enhanced it. For me personally, I know it did. I determined to be a good soldier first and then my faith would speak for itself.

  The Army chaplains fought an interesting war of their own. While we fought for streets and cities, they fought for hearts and peace of mind. We took life, and they proclaimed new life. Our relationship with them was good, and in times of duress, soldiers rarely turned them away.