Ellis kept the poem Saddam had written for Rita tucked away in a scrapbook, the one that had compared her beauty to “the stars and moon in the sky.”
He’d always dreamed of going back to Iraq someday and visiting the mountainous north, a region whose beauty Saddam had often described to him. Ellis was waiting for things to “settle down” enough for him to do so. He wouldn’t get that chance, though.
After putting up a brave fight, Ellis succumbed to his cancer on March 21, 2016, at the age of sixty-six.
ROD MIDDLETON
On the night of December 29, 2006, FBI Agent Rod Middleton and his thirteen-year-old son bellied up to the bar at the Fox and Hound in Tucson, Arizona. They must have seemed an odd twosome. Thousands of miles to the east, as the sun rose over Baghdad on Saturday morning, the Super Twelve had just delivered Saddam to the gallows for his execution. Middleton wanted to get out of the house and do something to mark the occasion, and so he called a number of friends to see if they wanted to meet him for a drink. None were free, so he and his son headed to the bar and asked the bartender to change the channel on one of the TVs from college football to CNN to catch the breaking news.
Watching CNN, Middleton’s mind was a swirl of conflicting emotions. Sympathy for Saddam wasn’t one of them. As the Super Twelve stood at the execution site on that cold morning in Baghdad and struggled with having just delivered a pleasant old man to his death, Middleton sat at the bar, nursing his beer. He wasn’t afflicted with doubt, but rather felt a liberating sense of closure and finality. He’d played a critical role in the interrogation of one of the century’s most prominent dictators, and, because of that, he’d missed some of the final months of his young wife’s life. He was proud that he’d helped gather evidence that would lead to Saddam’s death sentence. The way Middleton looked at it, he hadn’t made the decision to go to war, but he’d honorably carried out his mission to investigate human rights crimes, and he’d helped bring the perpetrator to justice.
In a few days it will be 2007, he thought, and it’s going to be a good year. He wasn’t even sure why he was suddenly convinced of this. But as the “Breaking News” ticker crept across the bar’s TV screen announcing Saddam’s death, Middleton experienced something of a catharsis. A horrible person who’d brought to his people decades of misery and suffering, and had proven a slippery interrogation subject, was finally dead. His good mood led to other pleasant thoughts, such as the upcoming second date he’d be enjoying with a woman he’d met. After Barbara’s death, it had taken him a long time to consider seeing other women, but, as he looked down at his son, who’d already gulped down his Shirley Temple, he couldn’t help but feel that he and his children had earned some happiness.
Middleton would go on to marry the woman he’d been thinking about at the bar that night—and he’d feel real pride at seeing his daughter join the Navy, and his son the Army. These days Middleton still takes masochistic pleasure in running long distances. He especially enjoys the 120-mile Baker to Vegas Law Enforcement Relay Race. As he glides determinedly across the desert landscape of western Nevada, the same unforgiving sun bears down on him that had tormented him during those solitary afternoon runs across the base in Baghdad. Undeterred, he strides east into the sun and away from the shadows.
ADAM ROGERSON
Jeff Rogerson knew that his son Adam had changed in a fundamental way as soon as he came home. He could see it in his face. “You know your kids,” Jeff Rogerson says. “I could tell something was wrong by looking at him, just like I could tell if he was tired.”
Jeff had been shocked, yet encouraged, when seventeen-year-old Adam had shown up at one of his masonry job sites years before and announced to his father that he’d joined the Army. He thought it would be good for his son, who, he says, while a tough kid, still “couldn’t have found his butt with both hands before enlisting.” Adam would be continuing a family tradition of military service, as his grandfather had earned a Distinguished Flying Cross serving in the Army Air Corps in World War II and Jeff had served in the 82nd Airborne Division.
Jeff couldn’t have imagined, though, what Adam’s mission would ultimately be, or the impact it would have on him.
After the countless hours he’d spent getting to know Saddam in the subterranean Crypt and on the Rock, Rogerson says that the execution was “like losing a family member.” Recognizing how this might sound to someone who didn’t share his experience, Rogerson explains, “You shoot someone on an overpass in combat, you keep going, who cares. You care for a second, and then it’s like ‘Eliminate the threat, and keep moving.’ But getting to know someone, and getting close to them . . . as time passes, it hasn’t gotten any better for me.”
Rogerson slowly began to notice signs of psychological strain as he readjusted to life in America. The symptoms weren’t immediate, and may have been delayed by the initial flurry of activity following his return from Iraq and resumption of duties as a military policeman at Fort Campbell. He was quickly thrust back into alternating twenty-four-hour shifts. It wasn’t until things slowed down, and he had time to reflect, that he began to suspect something was wrong.
The difficulty of coming home after such a psychologically challenging mission was made worse by orders he’d received not to tell anyone about it. His own father didn’t even know what to believe when, years after his son had arrived home, he finally started volunteering details of the Saddam mission. Until then, Adam had always been careful to invent cover stories to conceal what had really happened on the deployment.
“I almost feel like a murderer,” Rogerson says, “like I killed a guy I was close to.”
These days the popular, cocky high school jock has been replaced by a subdued man who keeps to himself and passes time at home with his wife, seven-year-old daughter, and one-year-old son. His weeks are marked by frequent VA appointments, where he receives treatment for the PTSD he was diagnosed with and is on disability for. Rogerson is stoic about his situation. He doesn’t ask for sympathy or attention; rather, he recognizes that he’s just one of many who’ve come home from war and been forced to grapple with the consequences of it.
Things aren’t all bad. Rogerson appreciates the opportunity he now has to spend more time with his wife and young children. He also enjoys the company of his father-in-law, with whom he likes to play horseshoes and darts. He even hopes to soon resume coaching the defensive line for his younger brother’s semipro football team, the Lorraine Nightmares.
Rogerson rarely talks to his former buddies from the Super Twelve, though. He suspects that this may be because he “doesn’t want to bring the memories back.” Recently, at a Cleveland Browns game, he was stunned to run into his former sergeant, Tom Flanagan—whom he and the rest of the Super Twelve had always admired—in a tunnel leading into the stands. He was surprised at how awkward the encounter was. The two men, who’d been through so much together, struggled to find something to say. They hugged, said that they missed each other, and traded numbers.
Neither would dial the other.
“I just sort of stick to myself,” Rogerson says. “Maybe one day if we have some sort of reunion I’ll talk to the guys, but for now it still feels too fresh, even though it has been ten years.”
STEVE HUTCHINSON
“To this day, I still hear that fucking metal trapdoor slam,” Steve Hutchinson says. “I always believed in everything I did in the military, but the moment that floor dropped open, I knew I was done with serving, even though I would continue to wear the uniform until my time was up.”
Hutch now splits his time between running a firearms and tactical training business back in Georgia, and doing periodic security contracting work overseas. His wife encourages him to focus on his stateside business, eager to have him spend more time at home after their having been apart for much of the previous fourteen years. Hutch acknowledges that maybe it’s time to consider throttling back his adventurous lifestyle, which has had psychological and physical consequences. He some
times wakes up with a jolt during the night, expecting to see Saddam. And there are days when his wife, a nurse, takes his blood pressure, and it’s as high as 155 over 90. The deployment stress, the memories, the Monster energy drinks, the cigarettes—all have taken their toll.
Hutch has come a long way from the hungover bouncer who enlisted in the Army following a surge of post-9/11 patriotism. He’s now a proud father of three, and his days of late-night carousing are over. However, gone, too, is his hopeful idealism.
“I felt the obligation to serve after 9/11, and whether I liked the missions or not, during all my deployments, I never questioned them.” The combat didn’t especially bother him, he says, recalling in an offhand way the insurgents whose lives had been ended by 5.56mm rounds he and others had fired. Everything changed, though, when he led the old man he’d grown to know to his execution and was forced to stand by as his body was desecrated.
On that morning of December 30, 2006, Hutch says, “I resolved to never be that rube again, allowing the government to twist my faith.” Reflecting on the overall U.S. mission in Iraq, he muses, “How many years of my life did I devote to this?” He stops for a moment and then adds, “I wish it had turned out better.”
The Raymond Weil watch that Saddam Hussein took off his wrist to give Hutch on the eve of his execution rests quietly in a safe in his pleasant Georgia home. It has steadily marked the passage of time since Saddam’s own time ran out. Time keeps ticking, until it doesn’t—for self-professed reincarnations of King Nebuchadnezzar, his innumerable victims, or those who stood watch over his final days.
SADDAM HUSSEIN
Saddam Hussein has now been dead for a decade. The face whose gaze could induce panic in the bravest of men has long since decomposed. Even in death, though, he hasn’t found rest. His Albu Nasir tribesmen, fearing that approaching Shiite militias would try to desecrate their leader’s grave, dug up his remains and moved them to a secret location in 2014.
The tribe’s concerns were well founded.
Shiite militiamen would eventually break into the tomb—which had grown into something of a shrine to the former president—destroy everything in it, and burn it to the ground.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I was working at the Pentagon when I decided to walk away from a rewarding job and steady paycheck to write this book. It was a leap of faith, for many reasons, not the least of which was that, though I’d been serving as an infantry officer in Iraq at the same time Saddam was executed, I didn’t participate in any of the events described, nor could I be confident that anyone who had would speak to me.
I could not have succeeded without the help of so many. First and foremost, I would like to thank Paul Sphar, Steve Hutchinson, Chris Tasker, and Adam Rogerson for agreeing to speak with me about their experiences guarding Saddam. This is their story, not mine, and I couldn’t have written this book without them. I am immensely grateful for their patient answers to what must have seemed like my endless questions. Thank you also to Robert “Doc” Ellis and his wife, Rita, Rod Middleton, Jeff Green, Dave Manners, John Maguire, William Wiley, and Iraqi general Ra’ad al-Hamdani for agreeing to spend so much time answering my questions. Thanks as well to Marianna Riley, for introducing me to Robert Ellis, and for encouraging me to expand on some of the material that can be found in their excellent book, Caring for Victor: A U.S. Army Nurse and Saddam Hussein.
Jane Fleming Fransson deserves special thanks for believing in me, and this story, from the beginning, for her valuable guidance the entire way, and most of all for serving as an informal therapist when I needed a boost. Thank you to my agent, Zoë Pagnamenta, for her steadfast support, and for shepherding me into the hands of Rick Horgan, my fantastic editor at Scribner. Rick put me through the literary equivalent of Ranger School, and for that I will always be grateful, even if, like Ranger School, the process itself could be painful. Most of all, I thank them both for taking a chance on me.
Thank you to Shameem Rassam, who not only shared her own experiences with me, but introduced me to others in the Iraqi expatriate community whom I would later interview and whose insights were important to this book.
Thank you to Omar Feikeiki for his translation assistance, and to Kevin Woods for helping point me in the right direction as I began my research.
Ranya Kadri was the consummate hostess on my visit to Amman, and provided invaluable help making introductions to the Jordanian officials I needed to interview while there. The coffee and cookies she served were as fantastic as her translation during my interviews, and for all that, I thank her.
Thank you to Eric Schmitt, Sebastian Junger, Richard Clarke, and George Packer for taking time out of their busy days to share their accumulated wisdom as writers with this first-time book author. Thank you to Steve Wells for reading the entire manuscript and providing such valuable insights. I could always rely on John Bellinger and Alejandra Parra-Orlandoni to provide sound legal advice.
Thank you to the staff at Misha’s Coffee and Northside Social in Northern Virginia for always serving the bearded guy in the Mets cap steaming cups of hot coffee, day in and day out, for what seemed like an eternity as I inched forward on this project, and to O’Sullivan’s Irish Pub, where I could always find a pint of Guinness at week’s end. Lest I forget, thank you to Parker the cat, for spending so many hours at my side, napping contentedly as I worked. You helped calm my nerves when the stress of various setbacks threatened to overwhelm me.
Thank you to my parents, Walter and Patricia, my brothers, Tad and Buddy, and my sisters, Nelly and Annie, for their support and advice. I’m especially grateful to my parents and to Annie, all writers in their own right, for reading so many drafts and generously sharing their editorial talents with me. I’ll probably never be able to properly put into words my gratitude, or repay them for their time.
Finally, I’d like to thank my beautiful and patient new wife, Marcy, for also taking a chance on me. Most women wouldn’t be thrilled to learn that their boyfriend was quitting a good job to embark on an uncertain journey that for so long looked like it would never end. I’m sure she must have had some doubts about the wisdom of her decision as she went off to work each morning and left me to do whatever it is that writers do, but if she did, she never voiced them. Instead, she provided unwavering support. I hope I’ve made her proud.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© TIM COBURN PHOTOGRAPHY
Will Bardenwerper has contributed to the New York Times and the Washington Post. He served as an Airborne Ranger–qualified infantry officer in Iraq, where he was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge and a Bronze Star. Following his army service, he worked for the Department of Defense and in the private sector, including assignments in the Middle East and Horn of Africa. He has an MA in international public policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a BA in English from Princeton. Will lives with his wife, Marcy, in Denver.
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SOURCES
Army historians conducted interviews with each member of the Super Twelve, as well as Joseph, the interpreter. I was provided copies of these interviews by Michael Gordon in 2010 while helping research his 2012 book The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama.
ADDITIONAL INTERVIEWS
Note: I interviewed many of these individuals multiple times.
*Indicates pseudonym
Robert Baer—Former CIA case officer
Amatzia Baram—Professor of Middle Eastern History, University of Haifa
Samih Batthiki—Former senior Jordanian government official
Chris Belles—One of Saddam Hussein’s guards from a unit prior to the Super Twelve
Frank Byers*—FBI agent who worked on interrogation of Saddam Hussein
Ramsey Clark—Member of Saddam Hussein’s defense team
Jesse Dawson—One of Saddam Hussein’s guards from a unit prior to the Super Twelve
Paul Delacourt—FBI agent who served as program manager for the Regime Crimes Liaison Office and helped establish the Iraqi High Tribunal
Charles Duelfer—Former CIA official who also led the Iraqi Survey Group responsible for the search for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
Robert Ellis—Master sergeant who provided Saddam Hussein with medical care while in U.S. custody
Jeff Green—FBI agent who worked on the interrogation of Saddam Hussein
Leena Haddad*—Friend of Raghad Hussein
Ra’ad al-Hamdani—Former general under Saddam Hussein
Steve Hutchinson—Specialist with the Super Twelve
Todd Irinaga—FBI agent who worked on the interrogation of Saddam Hussein
Marwan Kasim—Former Jordanian foreign minister
Kent Kiehl—Neuroscientist and expert on psychopathy
Juman Kubba—Author of a memoir of what it was like to grow up in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
Nelson Lee*—Former special operator who helped capture Saddam Hussein
The Prisoner in His Palace Page 20