Posted on 06/21/2003 4:59:24 PM PDT by Pokey78
Peter Beaumont examines the new role of a secret unit that worked in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Colombia
The most secretive military unit in the US armed forces is code-named Grey Fox. Over the past two months its role has been boiled down to a single mission: the hunt for Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay.
And if Saddam is now dead, killed last week, it is certain Grey Fox was involved: Saddam would be its biggest catch since the downfall of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Officially members of a unit named 'Intelligence Support Activity', Grey Fox was established by the Pentagon in 1981 to work as manhunters, assassins and deep penetration agents.
Since then, the unit that has been criticised by senior US officials for its 'lawlessness' and 'lack of control' has hunted Serbian war criminals in the Balkans, fought in Somalia, and in counter-terror operations across the globe: it is a key part of what the Pentagon calls its 'black world' of undercover operations.
But it was in the war in Afghanistan that the unit was expanded and given its free hand, part of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's efforts to build a massively expanded covert military capability for the US war on terrorism.
Now the soldier-spies of Grey Fox, part of Task Force 20, who come under the political control of the Pentagon's new Under Secretary of State for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, have one mission: to kill or capture Saddam.
It is Grey Fox's unmarked signal interception aircraft that have been flying in low passes over areas of Iraq such as the 'Sunni Triangle', north of Baghdad, monitoring sat phone and radio communications by Baathist holdouts.
And it is Grey Fox's men on the ground, along with CIA, SAS and MI6 teams, that have been hunting for the most senior members of the regime, in the hope that this will lead them closer to Saddam and his family or produce definitive knowledge of their fate.
A hunt on a massive scale has used spy satellites, photo-reconnaissance aircraft, and unmanned drones, which have been searching the area between Baghdad and Tikrit, the dictator's home town and the place where, most US intelligence officialsguess, Saddam has been hiding.
Grey Fox's intercept operators have also been scanning the airwaves of encrypted communications equipment used by his lieutenants to communicate with other members of the Baath party leadership.
Grey Fox's mission in Iraq has become more urgent as the security situation has declined and as the parallel hunt for Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction has come close to farce.
And so Saddam - dead or alive - has become the obsession of post-Baathist Iraq, a panacea that senior US officials, both civilian and military, have convinced themselves will instantly end the escalating lethal attacks on the US forces of occupation.
This logic has been best described by Paul Bremer, Iraq's US civilian administrator. 'I think it does make a difference because [as long as Saddam's whereabouts remain a mystery] it allows the Baathists to go around in the bazaars and in the villages, which they are doing, saying, "Saddam is alive, and he's going to come back". We must obviously continue to leave no stone unturned in the search for Saddam.'
And so the trawl has gone on, a search that to the outside world seems at best chaotic and rumour-filled, despite the occupying forces' success in capturing other high-profile members of the regime.
In the weeks since Baghdad's fall, US forces have stormed homes and offices and mosques following tip-offs that Saddam or members of his regime had taken refuge there.
US troops also searched a Baghdad bomb site for DNA evidence as to whether Saddam Hussein was killed in an April air strike, after US intelligence sources said they believed he was inside a house levelled by US bombs on 7 April.
The present theory is that Saddam was in the house in the upmarket Mansour district but survived the bombing and left shortly after. According to neighbours quoted in the US media his entourage spent much of the war hiding in a home a block away from the bombed house.
Now US officials believe there was a prearranged signal for senior Iraqis to flee as the regime collapsed, citing evidence they have uncovered such as the distribution of fake identification documents to top officials.
Although none reported seeing Saddam, residents said they believe he fled only after the bunker-busters hit nearby. They said Saddam's top bodyguard, Ali Nassir, and a cousin, Gen Ali Suleyman Abdullah al-Majid, were among those who guarded the house until hours after the bombing.
But for all its impression of chaos, Grey Fox's hunt has quietly been tightening the noose on a man many officials, both British and US - including Britain's Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon - have believed to be alive and at large in Iraq.
Day by day and week by week the most senior officials in Saddam's regime have been scooped up, surrendering or arrested by US officials.
Those captives include some of the highest ranking figures, 31 now of the 'pack of cards' of Iraq's 55 most wanted, including Tariq Aziz, the former Deputy Prime Minister, Zuhayr Talib abd al-Sattar al-Naqib, director of military intelligence, Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Sadi, a presidential adviser on scientific and technical affairs, and Rihab Taha, also known as Dr Germ.
Last Monday saw the most significant capture of all, with the arrest of Saddam's personal secretary and No 4 on the Americans' most-wanted list from the former regime, Abed Hamid Mahmoud.
Third in power only to Saddam and his younger son, Qusay, it was Mahmoud who controlled access to Saddam, who was his companion when Saddam made his pilgrimmage to Mecca, and is said to be one of the few people he trusted completely.
Until last week. Perhaps.
Let me get this straight: Escobar was more important than Saddam?
What's this? Did I miss something?
Hear us when we call to thee for those in peril in the desert. Go get the SOBs.
Not quite. The ISA stopped being the ISA in the late 80s and started being something else. Though I get giddy every time the former ISA pops up in the news or the literature -- they have an aura of secret and coolness about them like no one else in the armed forces or the intelligence community.
Hmm, the Pentagon doesn't have Undersecretaries of State, it has Undersecretaries of Defense
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