US President Bush early this year signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert program to topple Saddam Hussein, including authority to use lethal force to capture the Iraqi president, according to informed sources.
The presidential order, an expansion of a previous presidential finding designed to oust Hussein, directs the CIA to use all available tools, including:
Increased support to Iraqi opposition groups and forces inside and outside Iraq including money, weapons, equipment, training and intelligence information.
Expanded efforts to collect intelligence within the Iraqi government, military, security service and overall population where pockets of intense anti-Hussein sentiment have been detected.
Possible use of CIA and U.S. Special Forces teams, similar to those that have been successfully deployed in Afghanistan since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Such forces would be authorized to kill Hussein if they were acting in self-defense.
The administration has already allocated tens of millions of dollars to the covert program. Nonetheless, CIA Director George J. Tenet has told Bush and his war cabinet that the CIA effort alone, without companion military action, economic and diplomatic pressure, probably has only about a 10 to 20 percent chance of succeeding, the sources said.
One source said that the CIA covert action should be viewed largely as "preparatory" to a military strike so the agency can identify targets, intensify intelligence gathering on the ground in Iraq, and build relations with alternative future leaders and groups if Hussein is ousted.
Another well-placed source said of the covert plan, "It is not a silver bullet, but hopes are high and we could get lucky."
Yesterday afternoon, a CIA spokesman declined to comment.
Bush's intelligence order shows that the administration has begun to put money and resources into a policy that has publicly consisted mostly of tough rhetoric. Sources said the CIA initiative is part of a broader Bush administration plan to remove Hussein that includes economic pressure, diplomacy and what officials believe will eventually include military action on a large scale.
The president has made plain in speeches and interviews his desire to remove Hussein, by military force if necessary, but has offered few details of how he plans to do that. The Pentagon is considering a range of options, including an invasion that would use 200,000 to 250,000 military personnel. Sources said such an operation probably could not be launched until next year.
In an April 4 interview with British journalist Trevor McDonald that was later published by the White House, Bush was asked, "Have you made up your mind that Iraq must be attacked?"
"I made up my mind that Hussein needs to go," Bush responded. "That's about all I'm willing to share with you." Pressed, Bush said, "The policy of my government is that he goes."
Then two weeks ago at the U.S. Military Academy he declared that he would take preemptive action against regimes he deemed a threat to the United States. "If we wait for the threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," Bush said.
Officials said that although military confrontation with the Iraqi army may be inevitable under Bush's policies, it was only prudent for the administration first to expand its efforts on all fronts, including the diplomatic, economic, and covert.
Tenet has also argued forcefully that compared with Afghanistan, Iraq represents a much more difficult target for the CIA. In Afghanistan, the warlords and tribes often could easily be bought off and were enticed to change sides and join up with the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces as they began to overrun the Taliban. There is no such tradition in Iraq, officials said, and the standing Iraqi military is eight times the size of the military forces that the Taliban controlled before it fell last year.
On the other hand, some intelligence reports show that contempt for Hussein within the Iraqi leadership, military and among the population runs very high.
On Feb. 28, USA Today quoted a former top CIA official as saying Bush had approved a covert plan against Hussein, but the story provided few details.
Vice President Cheney has taken an active role in the administration's Iraq policy. A key briefing on the president's intelligence order took place in Cheney's West Wing office. Cheney acted as a kind of quarterback, one source said, introducing the subject, and then turning the briefing over to Tenet, who outlined the covert plan.
Another key player is Gen. Wayne A. Downing, the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, who has a large and expanding staff within the White House. Downing, a former commander of U.S. Special Operations forces, and the CIA are trying to identify individuals or groups that might fill a leadership vacuum if Hussein is toppled, sources said.
Over the years the CIA has had a contentious relationship with the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a leading anti-Hussein opposition group that has been funded by the United States and is led by Ahmed Chalabi, who is based in London.
Last month, The Washington Post reported that Downing has been meeting with leaders of two Kurdish parties based in Northern Iraq, an area protected by U.S. and British air patrols that try to enforce a "no-fly" zone for Hussein's aircraft.
For at least the last six years, the CIA also has supported another Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord.
The Iraqi operation comes at a time when CIA resources have been vastly expanded for the war on terrorism, and the agency's operational capacity is already stretched.
The CIA is still operating in Afghanistan, and Bush has authorized covert action to disrupt, capture or destroy terrorists in as many as 80 countries. Worldwide terrorist targets go well beyond Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and include the Iranian-supported Hezbollah terrorist organization and other terrorist groups.
A highly classified worldwide attack matrix describes the levels of CIA covert action in these countries, including propaganda operations, support for internal police and foreign intelligence services, and lethal covert action against terrorist groups or individuals.
Several officials voiced concern that the CIA, which significantly cut back its covert actions and clandestine intelligence gathering in the 1990s, may be overextended.
"You can't take on the world," said one person with extensive CIA experience over the last several decades.
Other sources said that the Iraq covert operations can be managed and run by a small nucleus working at CIA headquarters, various stations, bases and special facilities abroad.
In addition, a covert action necessarily results in a vast increase in the flow of information about the target country, what some CIA officers call "the ground truth." This not only comes from human sources but also from communications intelligence and satellite surveillance.
From this, sources said, the CIA will glean much more information about Hussein, his possible locations, his security and travel patterns, how he communicates with his inner circle, the command relationships with his military and security service, and his possible vulnerabilities.
Hussein has been in power since 1979, and in 1990 had his puppet legislature declare him president for life. He is notoriously suspicious, elusive and unpredictable. Iraq is a police state that exists in large measure to keep Hussein in power.
According to various intelligence reports, Hussein often travels at night, moves among various residences, palaces and bunkers, and deploys decoy look-alikes. Those suspected of the slightest disloyalty are removed from his circle or killed.
"He is already totally paranoid," said one source, noting that immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, Hussein moved some of his military equipment, apparently anticipating possible U.S. military strikes.
Hussein's staying power is remarkable. In the months after he invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States learned of several attempts on his life that he thwarted. "We had knowledge of at least one," said a former senior official from the first Bush administration. After U.S. and coalition forces defeated and drove Hussein's forces from Kuwait in March 1991, inflicting one of the largest and most visible military humiliations of the post-Vietnam period, the former official said, "We thought some colonel or brigadier general would march in and shoot him."
It didn't happen, and despite predictions from Arab leaders and the CIA at the time, Hussein survived. He has been defiant since. Hussein's forces regularly threaten U.S. and British aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones created after his defeat in 1991, and the United States has retaliated with airstrikes.
In late 1998 Hussein shut down United Nations inspections of Iraqi facilities suspected of making weapons of mass destruction. President Bill Clinton in December ordered operation Desert Fox, which involved about 650 bomber and missile sorties against 100 Iraqi targets during a 70-hour period.
Hussein still did not let in the U.N. inspectors, and they have not been there since. For nearly four years Hussein has been able to pursue what were once robust chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
(China Daily June 17, 2002)
