How Able Danger Method Bagged Saddam

[Bonnie]

November 2nd, 2005



“

We believed rightly that Saddam was in our AO (area of operations) from summer ’03 on, and also believed that if he were caught, he would likely be caught in our area as in any. We publicly stated so from June ’03 onward.”

These words are from an e-mail Lt. Col. Steven D. Russell wrote to me recently. He commanded Task Force 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, which was based in Tikrit, Saddam’s tribal homeground, about 100 miles north of Baghdad. It was the unit most responsible for capturing Saddam Hussein, though the credit must be shared with the special operations task force with whom Russell and his men worked closely. In his words:

“Colonel (James B.) Hickey (commander, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division) and I have always been on record as stating that it was very hard work from both conventional and special ops guys in combination with raids, conventional combat ops and intel-driven operations”

that Saddam and others identified in the high value target “deck of cards” were captured.

With Saddam Hussein’s trial underway, this would be an appropriate occasion to re-visit the persevering efforts that led to that historic day in December 2003 when the Butcher of Baghdad was pulled from his rathole. One of the intelligence techniques employed was the same used by the Able Danger to identify Mohammed Atta.

“Data mining is the slang for it,” Captain Timothy Morrow explained to me. That is, slang for the methods he and his small team employed. Captain Morrow served as intelligence officer for 1/22nd Infantry and credited LTC Russell and Col. Hickey for allowing his staff the leeway to work outside the box. In this case, it meant a free hand to develop a non-standard database that included information from all known sources, which in turn served as the basis for a link diagram. That diagram – an intelligence mosaic if you will – depicted the nature of different enemy factions, including the identities of many of Saddam’s facilitators. Further, Morrow and his staff were given the freedom to share their data directly with other units and agencies, thereby insuring that they received actionable intelligence in a timely manner. To make the process seamless and retain its simplicity, the captain regularly briefed the special operations task force and Major Stan Murphy’s1st Brigade’s intelligence team himself.

The leeway allowed by his superior officers also permitted Capt. Morrow to shift his focus early on from regime members and scientists who may have been involved with WMD to hunting insurgency enablers. He believed that, since Saddam ran his regime like a mafia organization with close relatives at the top, and that they all had trusted bodyguards, he would target those bodyguards, along with Saddam’s business associates.

“We interrogated them to get new information and to verify older intelligence. Then we passed them off to other agencies and units. We did all of this, including handoffs, as rapidly as possible so no intelligence would get stale.”

Captain Morrow stressed that the database and link diagram had to be simple enough to tie together information flowing in from various sources, e.g., human intelligence (the most important), spot intelligence reports from other units in the field and items such as photos found on captured enemy personnel, photos that might, for instance, depict the bodyguard who carried them posing with a known associate of Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein himself. It was the use of these multiple sources that defined data mining in this case. Capt. Morrow told me that the entire process was an art, not a science; that by June 2003 his team had published the first link diagram of Saddam’s inner circle bodyguards and associates with photographs of many of them. This, together with the database, “continued to be a living, growing document used for analysis and briefings.”

more

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4957

 

[CSM]

Most folks have no idea how much work goes into creating a link diagram like that. It is extremely hard to do and get it right. Too bad our national intelligence agencies can't (or won't) do the same type of thing.