Sea Stories

by William H. Mcraven

  “No,” I continued to yell above the noise. “We just need to get back to Baghdad—and now.”

  Hank was a Special Forces officer—a Green Beret. A former linebacker, he was big, strong, with a great sense of humor and an infectious smile. We had connected from day one. He was loyal to me and I was loyal to him.

  “Roger, sir. Let me go talk to the pilot.”

  Moments later Hank returned to tell me that we couldn’t divert the plane in Iraqi airspace. We would have to wait until we got on the ground in Al Udeid, Qatar, before we could hitch a ride back to our task force camp at Baghdad International Airport. This would delay our return by two hours, but it was the only option we had.

  Once on the ground in Al Udeid, Hank managed to arm-twist some Air Force pilot and got us on the very next plane returning to Baghdad. Unbeknownst to me, Hank also called back to our Joint Operations Center and they assured him that nothing was going on. Certainly there were no leads on the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein.

  “I hate this part,” Hank said as the C-130 pilot began his combat spiral into BIAP, dropping precipitously to avoid possible insurgent missiles. The landing at Baghdad International went without incident, but the passengers, a mixture of military, contractors, and Foreign Service types, seemed relieved to be on the ground.

  Waiting for me on the tarmac was my sergeant major, Ed Certain. “Boss, what are you doing back?”

  Hank flashed the sergeant major a look begging him not to encourage my eccentricity.

  “Tonight’s the night,” I said. “What is the JOC tracking?”

  The sergeant major grinned and looked at Hank. “Well, Admiral, funny you should ask. C-Squadron pulled al-Muslit out of the jailhouse a few hours ago and they think he can lead them to Saddam’s driver and possibly Saddam himself.”

  Mohammad Ibrahim Omar al-Muslit, whom C-Squadron had been hunting for two months, had just been captured earlier that morning. He was the closest associate to Saddam that we had in custody.

  We jumped into the waiting Toyota Hilux for the short drive back to Camp NAMA.

  “Sir, for all we know, al-Muslit could be just another Beacon Boy. I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in this lead either,” Certain said.

  Beacon Boy. It was all I’d heard since arriving in Iraq. Beacon Boy was supposed to be the golden source. The guy who would lead us to Saddam. He was so named because our tech guys had given him a tracking device, a beacon, that he would initiate if he were colocated with Saddam. Our Army special operations task force was always on standby to immediately react if Beacon Boy signaled the force. The signal never came, but somehow we hung on, desperate for anything that would lead us to Saddam. We all knew Beacon Boy was crooked, but he always gave us just enough intelligence to keep us interested. We were being played. We knew it, but we had no choice. He was our only lead—until now.

  “I think this time is different,” I told the sergeant major.

  “What’s different about it?”

  “Just call it a hunch,” I said, smiling.

  “Okay, sir,” the sergeant major said, shaking his head. “But didn’t you have some important meeting with General Abizaid in Al Udeid?”

  “Well, if I’m right about tonight, Abizaid won’t mind me missing the meeting.”

  “And if you’re wrong?” Certain asked.

  “If I’m wrong… I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  During my time as the commander of the task force in Iraq, I reported to General John Abizaid, who was in charge of Central Command. Abizaid was an exceptional leader. He was strong-willed, tactically minded, understood the Arab culture, and had a dry sense of humor that surfaced in the toughest moments. As a new admiral living in an Army world, learning from officers like John Abizaid set me up for success later in my career.

  We pulled up to the JOC and offloaded our gear. It was about 1930 local when I walked inside and immediately looked up to the massive screen that displayed our feed from the surveillance helicopter that the task force owned. On the screen was a small one-room mud building, the kind that was prevalent throughout Iraq. A few palm trees dotted the landscape around it, but there were no other houses visible in the area. At the bottom of the picture our JOC chief had overlaid the words “Objective Wolverine One.” It was tonight’s mission.

  Navy SEAL Captain Lee Snell, my deputy commander, was on the radio headset talking to someone in the field. I sat down next to Snell and he immediately got up to give me the command seat. I waved him off.

  “You’ve got it, Lee. What’s going on?”

  “Sir, C-Squadron thinks they have a lead on Saddam’s cook, Qais. We moved al-Muslit from the jailhouse to Tikrit early this afternoon, and al-Muslit says he will lead them to Qais, and supposedly Qais is hiding Saddam. We’re monitoring Qais’s house, Objective Wolverine One.”

  The picture from the WESTCAM optical sensor on the helicopter was grainy and occasionally the sensor would slew outward, going from a close-in look to five thousand feet.

  Putting on the headset, I listened to the radio communications on C-Squadron’s tactical frequency.

  As the chatter on the net increased, it was clear that we had captured Qais, but as usual with all detainees, he denied having any knowledge of the whereabouts of Saddam. Unbeknownst to me, at the urging of al-Muslit, who was with a second SOF troop, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Coultrup, the C-Squadron commander, and Colonel Jim Hickey, from 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, had maneuvered farther up the dirt road from Wolverine One to another small house, designated Wolverine Two.

  As I watched the ISR feed from the WESTCAM and listened to the radios, the visual and the verbal didn’t match up. Wolverine One appeared reasonably quiet, but the radio calls from Coultrup sounded like they were moving rapidly on a target.

  “It sounds like they’re on target, Lee. I don’t see any movement outside the house.”

  I motioned to the JOC noncommissioned officer, who sat at the end of the long wooden table that made a horseshoe around the ISR screen. He was also on the headset, seeing what I was seeing—which was nothing. I raised my hands in the universal sign of “WTF,” and he shrugged and called back, “ISR is on the target. I don’t know where the squadron is, sir.”

  I hated to call the squadron in the middle of an operation. It’s the last thing any tactical guy on the ground wants—a call from his boss sitting warm and comfortable in a JOC fifty miles away from the action. Still, it was our responsibility to manage the Quick Reaction Force and the medical evacuation if something went wrong on target. That was hard to do if you didn’t have good situational awareness of the mission. And the truth was, I was curious as to whether this new lead was panning out.

  Somewhat reluctantly I pushed the talk button and reached out to Coultrup. “Bill, are you on target?”

  “Yes sir,” Coultrup responded somewhat excitedly.

  “We don’t see you on ISR.”

  There was a pause on Coultrup’s end. “Sir, we are on Wolverine Two. Just down the road from the original target, and we have Jackpot.”

  Jackpot? Jackpot?

  Jackpot was the code word meaning they had captured the objective. At first I assumed Coultrup meant Qais, but suddenly it occurred to me that the tone of Coultrup’s voice indicated something more significant.

  “Jackpot? Do you mean Little Jackpot or—Big Jackpot?”

  “Big Jackpot!” Coultrup answered.

  Around the JOC floor, where everyone was listening in, there was a strange sense of quiet, as though no one believed what we were hearing. I didn’t want to appear too anxious. Over the course of the past several months the operators on the ground had called Jackpot on other targets, only to find out that we were mistaken. A lot of the Iraqi names and faces were similar—easy to make the mistake. But this was Saddam Hussein, one of the most recognizable men in the world. Surely they couldn’t be wrong this time.

  “Call me on the land line when you get back to Tikrit,” I told Coultrup. If this was Saddam, Co
ultrup didn’t need me asking a lot of questions while he was still on target. We could talk when he got back to the squadron’s base in Tikrit.

  Behind me in the JOC, I could feel the sense of excitement building. I turned to Snell and told him to secure all outside lines. No communications were to leave Camp NAMA without my approval. No persons were to leave Camp NAMA without my approval. Until we could verify that the Jackpot was indeed Saddam Hussein, no one was going to go off half-cocked and tell the outside world the news. This would be strictly by the book.

  Thirty minutes later, Bill Coultrup called me from Tikrit.

  “Well, what do think, Bill? Is it him?”

  “Yes sir, I think it’s him.”

  “Bill, before I call Abizaid, McChrystal, and Sanchez, I have to know for certain. How certain are you?”

  Over the phone, I could hear other SOF operators talking loudly, taking off their kit, the post-mission clatter that accompanied every operation.

  “Sir, I’m about 98 percent certain,” Coultrup responded. In the background one SOF operator yelled out, “Bullshit! It’s 100 percent.”

  Coultrup laughed. “Sir, it’s him. We pulled him out of a spider hole on Wolverine Two and the first thing he said was, ‘I’m Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq and I am willing to negotiate.’”

  As it turned out, al Muslit had indeed led the assault force to the right target. On Wolverine Two was Qais’s brother, who also denied knowing where Saddam was located. While on target, al-Muslit, trying not to be too obvious, tapped his foot on the floorboards around the small house, indicating that there just might be something underneath. After a few minutes, and with the help of a troop K-9, the SOF soldiers unearthed the spider hole. Saddam, who had a gun by his side, almost didn’t make it out of the hole alive, but the assaulters quickly disarmed him and dragged him out. After he announced that he was Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, one of the operators responded, “President Bush sends his regards!”

  Lee Snell was listening over my shoulder. I smiled and nodded to Lee. “Coultrup says it’s him.”

  I directed Coultrup to put Saddam on the first helo available and get him down to Camp NAMA. Then I started making my calls to Abizaid and McChrystal, my new boss at Fort Bragg. During the calls both men wanted assurances that it was Saddam, which I didn’t have at the time. I briefed them on the plan to get Jackpot here within the hour and then I could verify with my own eyes that it was Saddam. However, if there was any doubt, we would get blood samples and send them back for a DNA match.

  As I was completing my calls, a young sergeant approached me and said that Lieutenant General Sanchez was out in the lobby.

  Rick Sanchez was the military commander in Iraq. He and I had met only briefly in General Abizaid’s office months earlier, but I liked the man. His leadership in Iraq had been heavily scrutinized, mostly by those who weren’t in the fight. During my time with him I found him to be competent, hardworking, poised, and approachable. Still, I was quite surprised by Sanchez’s arrival. His headquarters at the Al-Faw Palace was a good thirty-minute drive from Camp NAMA. Had he gotten the word on tonight’s mission? I was still on the phone coordinating our detainee’s arrival to Baghdad when Sanchez and Major General Barb Fast, the senior intelligence officer in Iraq, walked up to my table.

  Sanchez pulled up a folding chair and sat down beside me. “Well, I understand you got Saddam,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Sir, I don’t know just yet. The man we captured should be on the ground in ten minutes. You can see for yourself when he lands.”

  “Well, I got a call from the CIA. They think you have him, and I’m told George Tenet has already notified President Bush.”

  I shook my head in exasperation. Someone in the intelligence community had called Buzzy Krongard, the Executive Director at CIA, who had notified Tenet, who had called Bush—all in a matter of minutes after the capture.

  “Well, I hope they’re right,” I said, with some sense of frustration.

  Fifteen minutes later, the jailhouse called in to tell Captain Snell that the detainee had arrived. I was still working with the CENTCOM staff to develop a follow on plan for the movement of Saddam, if it was him. Additionally, I was coordinating with the military holding facility across the street to get Chemical Ali transferred to me for the evening so I could have another eyewitness verify the identity of our detainee. I knew that millions of Iraqis and Americans alike would need proof positive before they accepted that Saddam was alive and in custody.

  Sanchez, Fast, and Snell went to the jailhouse to verify our detainee’s identity, while I continued my coordination. Minutes later, Snell called me to confirm that we had captured the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

  Snell returned from the jail and I headed over to see our newest prisoner. The jailhouse was a one-story, eight-room concrete building, which we had turned into a temporary holding facility. The hallways were short and narrow. The smell of sweat and dust permeated the building. The room’s air conditioners spewed out lukewarm air and only added to the musty, humid atmosphere. Inside was a small cadre of intelligence officers, military policemen, interrogators, and medics whose only focus was to get intelligence from Iraqi detainees.

  As I arrived, there were more than the usual personnel scurrying about, all wanting to help, and all hoping to get a peek at our prisoner. I gently pushed my way through the crowd and found Sanchez talking with Bill Coultrup.

  “This is a historic moment,” Sanchez said.

  Coultrup was beaming from ear to ear, and rightfully so. Coultrup had been an Army Special Forces operator most of his adult life. He was in Mogadishu during Black Hawk Down. He fought in Bosnia, Kosovo, and was part of the initial invasion of Iraq. He was a bit eccentric, but Bill Coultup was a warrior through and through. I worked with him many times over the next few years, and few men I knew were as professionally aggressive and talented.

  Coultrup turned to me and said with a smile, “Okay, boss, I’ve done my job. He’s all yours now.”

  I thanked Coultrup for a good night’s work, and then Sanchez and I got down to discussing the next steps. A press release was drafted, but it still needed some adjustments. In anticipation of this day, we had also developed an interrogation plan to see if we could find out the truth about the WMD and the whereabouts of Navy Captain Scott Speicher, a pilot who was shot down during Desert Storm in 1991. But the plan still needed approval from Abizaid. The new Iraqi leadership in Baghdad would also want a say in Saddam’s ultimate disposition.

  But first of all, we had to show the Iraqis and the world that Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured. At the time of capture, Saddam was wearing a long, full beard that hid some of his features. While it was still obvious to me that it was Saddam Hussein behind the whiskers, I felt it was necessary to shave him so there was no doubt in the average Iraqi’s mind that this was their former President.

  Turning to Sanchez, I said, “Sir, I’m going to have one of my medics shave Saddam so we have a good picture for the press.”

  “Shave him?”

  “Yes sir. Clean him up for the photo.”

  “Do we have the authority to shave him?” Sanchez asked seriously.

  “Sir.” I laughed. “We had the authority to shoot him if he was a threat. I think I have the authority to shave him.”

  Sanchez smiled. “I guess you do.”

  We got a good before-and-after photo. Sanchez and I personally wrote the press release, and by early the following morning things had settled down.

  At 1000 hours on December 14, 2003, with cameras rolling, Ambassador Paul Bremer, with Sanchez at his side, stood before the media and announced, “We got him!”

  The world press went crazy. All the television channels broadcast our before-and-after photos of Saddam around the globe. In the press release, we gave full credit to the 4th Infantry Division for the capture. The 4th ID was an invaluable part of the pursuit, and in an attempt to protect the identity of our special operat
ors, we shaped the story accordingly.

  Later that same day, Bremer and Sanchez flew into Baghdad International with Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, and three other Iraqi resistance leaders. I met Bremer’s party at the airfield and escorted them to our holding facility. Along with Bremer and Sanchez were several Foreign Service officers from the embassy and a couple of press folks.

  Upon arrival at the holding facility, I ensured that each man was searched and made it clear that no photos were to be taken. Once inside, we walked down the passageway to the room where Saddam was being held. Bremer moved with a cool sense of accomplishment and confidence, selectively ignoring the stench and rawness that accompanied a battlefield jail. Sanchez seemed somewhat annoyed at the circus-like atmosphere that surrounded Bremer. I could tell that Sanchez would have preferred not to be there. As we got closer to the room, I could see by the looks on the faces of the resistance leaders that they were nervous. Their fear ran deep and they believed that even a captured Saddam was a threat to their lives.

  As I nodded to the guard outside the room, he opened the door. Inside, Saddam, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, was sitting on an Army cot looking very much in control. As Bremer and Sanchez entered the room, Saddam remained seated, his arrogance still unchanged by his capture. Chalabi and the other Iraqis pushed past Sanchez and immediately began to yell profanities at Saddam.

  Saddam smiled like a Mafia boss caught by the police, but who somehow knew that eventually he would get the last laugh. Screaming, shaking their fists, and spitting in Saddam’s direction, the Iraqis seemed to be releasing decades of hatred in an outburst of emotion.

  Saddam motioned to them to quiet down. He was still the President of Iraq and they were his subjects. After purging their anger, they moved to the back of the room as though the prisoner in the orange jumpsuit still had some mystical power to cause their demise. Only Chalabi seemed unfazed by Saddam’s show of authority. In what was clearly a surreptitious preplanned photo opportunity, he moved forward from the back of the room and sat directly across from Saddam. I saw the flash, but couldn’t identify who took the photo. By the next morning, a picture of a confident-looking Chalabi “lecturing” a captured Saddam Hussein hit the press.