by Robin Moore
Saddam was reported posing as a cab driver, a janitor, and in countless other disguises, frequently said to include a beard and dark glasses. Saddam was also rumored to have a number of body doubles, and to have undergone plastic surgery. None of the reports panned out, but they all consumed vital time and resources nonetheless.
Raiders, Special Operators, and a Man with a Jeep
The task force that had originally set out to find Saddam was replaced in mid-summer (the actual date is classified) by a faster, harder-hitting one with tighter OPSEC (Operational Security): Task Force 121, a joint force of the most elite of each service’s Special Operations forces working in close partnership with Task Force RAIDER, the 4th Infantry Division’s Brigade combat team. Prior to that, conventional forces in general, and the 4th ID in particular, rarely worked with Special Operations forces. That changed drastically as the 1st Battalion 22nd Infantry, G Troop of the 10th Cavalry regiment (the brigade’s armored cavalry troop), and the scout platoon immediately began the conducting supporting and joint raids with Special Operations forces. One additional change would prove to be a deciding factor. Based in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, the Raider Brigade, as it is called, took over the mission to find and capture, or kill, the deposed dictator. Task Force RAIDER’s commander, COL James Hickey, was the perfect man for the job of hunting down Saddam.
A 1982 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), COL Jim Hickey commanded the 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade. Hickey is all Army, so much so that the Hickey family car is a World War II–era jeep.
The Chicago native, one of six children of an Irish-born plumber, wanted all through his youth to attend VMI, admiring its rich military heritage and deep traditions. Since 1839, VMI has produced nine Rhodes Scholars, thirty-eight college and university presidents, a National Football League head coach, three United States Senators, numerous U.S. Representatives, chief executive officers, explorers, authors, military leaders, actors, an Academy Award–winning producer, civil rights advocates, six Congressional Medal of Honor winners, and the only soldier in history to win the Nobel Peace Prize—General George C. Marshall. The tenacity of VMI’s military leaders, such as “Stonewall” Jackson, is legendary. It was the perfect environment for Hickey, who flourished in VMI’s military-style education. Hickey was welcomed into the close brotherhood of the military education environment.
Following graduation, Hickey excelled in the Army. He commanded the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Carson, Colorado, a unit whose history dates back to such heroic engagements as the Battle of Milk Creek in 1879, for which eleven Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded. In keeping with his alma mater’s tradition of the fully rounded citizen-soldier, Hickey engaged in scholarly pursuits, attending Georgetown University as an Army Senior Service College Fellow just before his assignment to Iraq, where he took command of the 1st Brigade on June 13, and was promoted to colonel in one of Saddam’s former palaces.
Hickey’s top soldier was CSM Lawrence K. Wilson. CSM Wilson entered the Army at Aberdeen, North Carolina, in February 1977. Although he left at the end of his enlistment, the Army remained in his blood, and he reentered in June 1981. Wilson is a soldier’s soldier, one who has worked his way through the ranks by taking the hard jobs and serving on the line with his fellow soldiers. Others sought out desks and staff duties, but Wilson worked his way through positions as team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, and operations sergeant. He had four assignments as a First Sergeant (the top noncommissioned officer in a company) and Engineer Battalion Command Sergeant Major (the top soldier slot in a battalion).
Wilson’s quiet professionalism and high standards were an ideal match for Hickey’s focused drive and leadership. CSM Wilson’s attention to detail and high standards ensured the brigade’s soldiers were always trained to a razor’s edge. Hickey’s quiet confidence, keen mind, and continuous encouragement toward innovation and initiative inspired those highly proficient soldiers to reach beyond themselves. Together the two men created and maintained an environment that empowered subordinates to take innovative approaches to solving the difficult problems they faced.
COL Hickey’s PSG (Personal Security Guard) was SPC “Joe.” Joe’s real name remains confidential, a consideration that protects his ability to use his native language to seamlessly move through the local population without the danger of being linked to the U.S. military. Joe was many other things, including COL Hickey’s Arabic interpreter and aide. This daunting combination of aide, interpreter, and bodyguard to the brigade commander required a true professional. His multilevel skills and abilities were in line with the high standards and innovative, “outside the box” approach adopted by Hickey’s group, which ultimately led them to success.
According to Joe, his original MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was 19K (military jargon for a main battle tank crewman). Given his drive and dedication to quiet professionalism, he will be reenlisting for Special Forces training following his deployment with TF RAIDER, after serving under COL Hickey. Joe says that he joined the Army “to be a soldier, nothing more, nothing less.” Joe would be there at Hickey’s side for everything to follow, and privy to much more than the average E-4 enlisted man.
“Outside the Box”
Task Force RAIDER, together with its Special Operations and interagency partners, shared the same frustrations as their predecessors in tracking down Saddam.
Catching a prey as crafty as Saddam, in his own environment, could not be done by the traditional ways of doing business. Compiling mountains of information, methodically sorting through it all, building the picture piece by piece until it all became clear was not an option. The cultural landscape in Iraq, with its labyrinth of customs, centuries of cultural norms, and family alliances would make such an approach virtually impossible.
Nor would a linear approach be responsive enough to support quick action against Saddam and his supporters as they moved rapidly in the shadows from place to place, narrowly avoiding death or capture. A truly innovative approach was needed, one based on doctrine and experience, but not shackled by it. It needed people who colored outside the lines drawn by the traditionally rigid analysis processes. It needed what many in the military and private sector called “thinking outside the box.” It’s exactly the kind of thing Donald Rumsfeld wanted from his Department of Defense Transformation Initiative.
That approach is precisely what Rumsfeld and the United States got with Hickey and his Special Operations, conventional force and interagency team. It was particularly manifest in the unique and eclectic group that was Hickey’s S-2 (intelligence) shop under supervision of Major Stan Murphy.
The Right Team at the Right Time
MAJ Stan Murphy was the son of a fighter pilot who was shot down twice during two tours in Vietnam, ultimately serving a year there as a POW after his second bailout. From childhood, Stan knew he too would serve in the military. But he repeatedly put it off, first graduating college and then kicking around in several jobs before enlisting in the Army at the age of twenty-eight. He graduated from OCS (Officer Candidate School) in 1991. An Infantry officer from the get-go, he attended airborne school, serving his first assignment in sub-zero Alaskan weather with the elite 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR). Murphy switched MOS to MI (Military Intelligence) after his promotion to Captain. He had attended many of the schools the new job slot had to offer, and knew the schoolbook version of MI front-to-back. However, Murphy had never applied this knowledge to any real-world situations.
After selection as a resident student for the Army’s Command and General Staff College (CGSC), Murphy told Angela Santana, the branch manager, that after graduation he wanted her to assign him back to “the pointed end of the bayonet” with the 4th ID. She did, after Murphy graduated CGSC on June 6. Twenty-one days later he was on his way to Iraq. Murphy took charge of the brigade’s eighteen-person Brigade Intelligence Support Element (BISE) as the 1st Brigade Intelligence Officer (S-2) o
n July 1, 2003. It was the first assignment in his career as a unit intelligence officer (S-2). He admits feeling in over his head when he started looking at all the information he had to know as well as he knew himself. More than once, he wondered if he could perform his job. The pressure was real and the quarry elusive. This was years more intimidating than a field exercise, and light-years away from the Command and General Staff College, from three weeks before.
First Lieutenant (1LT) Angela Ann Santana was attached to MAJ Murphy’s S-2 shop from the 4th Infantry Division’s 104th Military Intelligence Battalion. She worked the night shift in the Task Force RAIDER Tactical Operations Center as Special Projects Officer and Analysis Control Team Leader. In addition to being a proficient officer and skilled analyst, Santana had unique scholarly credentials for a young Army officer. She held both a bachelor of science degree in Psychology from Campbell University in North Carolina and a master’s degree in Counseling from Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Like many on Murphy’s team, Santana’s path to the Army and to the hunt for Saddam took a skewed route. She joined the military in October 1989 as a reservist using the delayed entrance program. Two days after graduating high school in May 1990, Santana reported to basic training, then completed Advanced Individual Training (AIT)—not as an intelligence analyst, but as a medic, complete with the Army’s 91A skill identifier. She then returned to home, school, and occasional reserve training until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait later that year.
As was the case with many reserve units, Santana’s unit was activated in December 1990 for Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM and deployed to Saudi Arabia. There, close to Hafr al-Batin, Santana got her first taste of war and her first experience with the effects of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. She was the youngest soldier in the camp.
As a combat medic during the Gulf War, Santana administered not only to U.S. soldiers, but also to many of the Iraqis who surrendered or were captured. The amiable young soldier spoke often and at length with many of her charges. What she learned appalled her.
The regular army Iraqi soldiers treated by Santana lacked basic food, water, and sometimes even shoes. They were trapped as unwilling martyrs to Saddam’s dreams of conquest. As Santana saw it, Saddam gave them choices that ended only in death. They could either die fighting the Americans, or be killed by Saddam’s elite forces for refusing to participate, or for not performing well enough to suit Saddam’s men.
One defeated and tearful Iraqi soldier told of losing his wife and five children at the hands of Saddam’s regime. They were killed for his “crime” of not wanting to join Saddam’s army, of wanting only to care for them and live in peace. To Saddam’s recruiters, the solution was simple. As the man stood in anguish, they executed his wife and children in front of him, then coldly informed him that he no longer had a reason not to serve in Saddam’s army.
When Santana left Iraq after the Gulf War, she was convinced that the right course was to free the Iraqi people and the world from this sadistic and oppressive dictator. She left bereft that he remained in power, never imagining that the course of fate would return her again to finally hunt him down.
Like many others, Santana’s DESERT STORM experience convinced her that the military was her calling. She returned to the United States to join active duty in October 1993. Only this time, the Army system cast her as an administrative specialist, sent her to executive secretary school, and placed her as an executive secretary for general officers. Santana was back in the military she’d come to love, but she wanted her contribution to be greater.
After receiving her master’s degree in 2001, Santana was accepted into Officer Candidate School. Santana finally felt she was on a path to give back to the military the knowledge and experience she’d received. Coincidentally, one of her class exercises in the Military Intelligence Officer Basic Course involved a scenario where Southwest Asia considered courses of action should Saddam be overthrown. As she later stood watch in the Raider Tactical Operations Center and worked feverishly with her fellow soldiers to locate Saddam Hussein, Santana could remember briefing her classmates on the possible reactions of Iraq’s neighboring countries if Saddam were ousted, and how the United States would need to intervene to keep them from invading Iraq.
Along the way Angela had met and married Special Forces Sergeant First Class (SFC) Jose Santana. They were a happy blend of Special Operations and conventional forces, and both were dedicated to their choices. The only thing they wanted were the children they’d tried unsuccessfully for more than five years to conceive. The Santanas’ assignment to Fort Hood, Texas, offered the opportunity for SFC Santana to take a well-deserved break from the pace of being a Special Operator. They both looked forward to their new locale. Angela Santana arrived at Fort Hood in August 2003, and was assigned to 1-44 ADA BN (1st Battalion, 44th Air Defense Artillery Battalion) as their intelligence officer (S-2). Jose Santana arrived in December 2003 and took a position recruiting Special Operations soldiers. The pace of life was just right for starting a family, and as 1LT Santana worked with Division planners on how they would fight a war in Iraq, there was no indication she would be there four months later.
1LT Santana took the opportunity to request her medical records from Fort Bragg and began the transition from the final stages of fertility testing to fertility treatment. After five years of trying, and in the midst of preparing the 4th Infantry Division for war in Iraq, Angela Santana learned she was pregnant. What should have been the happiest time of her life rapidly became a nightmare. Although her chain of command supported her decision, Santana’s transition to the Rear Detachment element (who would remain behind) brought her increasing concern that her fellow soldiers would somehow feel she’d shirked her responsibilities and become pregnant to avoid the war. The stress eventually took its toll, and she suffered a miscarriage. Angela Santana deployed less than one month later to join MAJ Murphy’s eclectic team in the hunt for Saddam.
Every team needed a consummate technician, and MAJ Murphy’s “all-source intelligence technician”—his chief analyst—was CW2 (Chief Warrant Officer II) Bryan G. Gray. Born and raised in Amarillo, Texas, Gray joined the U.S. Army on January 4, 1989. Like COL Hickey, CSM Wilson, and many of his fellow soldiers, CW2 Gray saw the military as his calling. As long as the recruiter provided him a job that would involve what some might view as the diametrically opposed areas of intelligence, and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, he was satisfied. Gray served his initial enlisted time as an intelligence analyst until being selected for the Army’s Warrant Officer program in 1998. He’s been an all-source intelligence technician ever since.
Like Task Force RAIDER’s top sergeant, CW2 Gray resisted anything that kept him away from soldiers and “the point of the bayonet.” While many of his fellow analysts took jobs with comfortable desks, a supply of donuts, air conditioning, and other amenities, Gray kept himself in the thick of it. He was involved in conventional and Special Operations assignments, including the 6th PSYOPS (Psychological Operations) Battalion of the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) and the 82nd Airborne Division’s 3-73 Armored Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment (the Red Devils of World War II fame), all at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He served with the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division Camp Red Cloud Korea and the 10th Mountain Division’s 110th Military Intelligence Battalion in Fort Drum, New York, before landing on Saddam’s doorstep with Hickey and the rest of the Task Force RAIDER team.
Gray’s many assignments had kept him in the thick of America’s fight to defend democracy and battle terrorism. He’d matched wits with Saddam and his intelligence forces before in Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM, serving in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. He helped put down and bring to justice men like Saddam Hussein during Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY in Haiti, Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR in Bosnia, and Operation JOINT FORGE in Kosovo. Now Gray was back to further the job he and his fellow soldiers started under President Bush’s father—getti
ng Saddam.
One of Murphy’s workhorses in the analysis section was Corporal Hal Engstrom. Engstrom was about as far from the “typical soldier” as one can get. From his age at enlistment to the path that brought him to Task Force RAIDER, just about everything in Engstrom’s brief military career to that point was unconventional. He’d earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in education, and was firmly planted in a career as an educator. He taught English at Cordova Middle School in Phoenix, Arizona. Like most Americans, Hal Engstrom’s life was radically changed by the events of September 11, 2001.
Engstrom was teaching school when planes, commandeered by radical terrorists working under the orders of Osama Bin Laden, struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania. The implications of such an attack on American soil particularly resonated with this student of history.
On October 19, 2001, at the age of thirty-four, when most men are building a comfortable nest egg and settling into life and family, Engstrom enlisted in the Army. With his educational credentials he could have qualified almost immediately for officer training, but his age put him over the cut-off. Eng-strom, not wanting to be kept out of the fight, enlisted in the Army as a private with the hope of eventually applying for warrant officer selection.
When his teaching contract expired, Hal Engstrom went to basic training, followed by intelligence training. Toward the end of his training it began to look like “the system” was working against him. Although it was clear at that point that Iraq was America’s next target in the war on terrorism and oppression, Engstrom worried his zeal to join the fight would be dampened by an assignment to an analyst’s cubicle in some non-deploying headquarters. It was an assignment many of his fellow soldiers sought, but it was not why Engstrom joined the Army. Rather than sit back and wait to see what the system, with its red tape and endless processes, would spit out for his duty assignment, Engstrom pressed his drill sergeants to help win an assignment to a unit bound for Iraq and the war against Saddam. Even after Engstrom won the assignment he sought, things weren’t simple. The orders assigning him to his first unit changed twice, and when he finally ended up in the 4th Infantry Division, he found himself sharing the frustration of his fellow soldiers and commanders by being blocked from entry into Iraq, due to political wrangling with Turkey. He shared the fear that initially plagued many in the 4th ID: they would get to Iraq, but miss the war.