Hunting Down Saddam (35 page)

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—getting 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.

“Everyone,” as one soldier put it, “wants to be there when the last round is fired. No one wants to just be there to police up the brass.”

Though the path was often frustrating and divergent, Hal Engstrom and his fellow soldiers made it to Iraq and now faced the biggest enemy of all: The Butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein. It was the job of MAJ Murphy's intel team, along with their Special Operations and interagency colleagues, to find the missing pieces and assemble the trail that would lead to Saddam.

Mongo Link

The Iraqi social structure and intricate code of loyalty and silence frustrated American intelligence analysts in the same way that Saddam's ability to remain just out of reach frustrated U.S. military commanders. Captain Jim Walker, Murphy's predecessor, had done an excellent job of gathering information. Murphy took over a database with over 1,100 names of individuals, but there seemed no way to make sense of it all. With his infantry background, Murphy brought a fresh perspective. He knew there had to be a way to paint the picture of the enemy that commanders could use to make decisions when the enemy was not easily identifiable. This was an enemy who didn't wear uniforms or stand out in a crowd. He could be the common laborer on the corner during the day and a mortar man by night. Murphy and his team had to find a way to interpret and present the information and continue to conduct operations at the same time. Murphy intuitively knew that he needed to change the paradigm and turn the Iraqi cultural obstacles into weapons for his own arsenal.

First Murphy and his team had to know their enemy. Although Iraq's culture was
not
their enemy, Saddam and his followers were using it as a weapon of sorts, and Murphy had to understand how to neutralize it, and turn it to an advantage. Even the most cursory review made Murphy quickly realize that all the studying he'd done prior to arriving in Iraq was insufficient. Real world studying of Arab culture, the family ties, and the tribes and the loyalties embedded within them impressed upon him how important the human factor was going to be. Murphy began reading extensively about Iraq's culture and customs. The more he read the more he understood how difficult and complex their task would be.

His inspiration came from reading the account of an Iraqi father commanded by his tribe to execute his son. The son had informed on two Iraqis, later ambushed in an American raid. The tribal ultimatum to the father was simple: kill the son or they would kill the man and his entire family. The father chose to kill his son.

With that, Murphy realized the strength of tribal traditions. If someone in your network came to your home for sanctuary or aid, you were bound by centuries-old tradition to take them in. That alone made the number of Saddam's potential hiding places staggering. If he was going to find Saddam, he had to break the inner circle of families protecting him. To break the circle, he had to understand its constituency. The majority of the reports Task Force RAIDER received reinforced the belief that Saddam was in their area of operations. This made sense. Tikrit is where his family and tribal ties were anchored; they would be the likely ones supporting him with places to stay, vehicles, money, and food. History tends to repeat itself; Tikrit was where he hid and healed after the failed coup attempt, before fleeing to Syria.

Murphy brought his idea to Hickey and the vision was born. Murphy and his team would find the path; Hickey would follow it. Together they'd get their man.

This team approach brought them immediate and continued success. In June, Task Force RAIDER conducted raids day and night, gathering vast amounts of information, weaponry, munitions, and money. One raid produced eight million U.S. dollars. Another netted Abid Hamid al-Tikriti, number four on the Most Wanted list. Hamid al-Tikriti was one of Saddam's closest aides, a man who controlled access to Saddam and was frequently seen at his side. U.S. intelligence confirmed that he handed down many of the regime's repressive orders. The raids in June and July produced information that became a template for Murphy's grouping security guards into cells that had various responsibilities in the resistance.

In early July, Murphy started what was to become an immensely complicated intelligence project by putting down four names and a few notes on paper and passing it to Gray, Santana, Engstrom, and the rest of the intelligence section. On his way out to a commander's conference, Murphy told Santana and Gray to take his notes and link the thoughts together. He gave a simple directive: “Make sense of it.”