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INFILTRATING IRAQ
Al-Jaburi had the right connections to serve as an American spy. Stocky, fit and in his early 40s, al-Jaburi--who prefers not to have his first name published--served for almost a decade in the regime's most feared agency, the Special Security Organization (SSO). In the late 1980s, he was purged from the SSO after Saddam accused his clansmen of plotting a coup. In 1999 al-Jaburi defected to Jordan. There he joined an opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord (I.N.A.), which has a well-established relationship with the CIA.
According to Ibrahim Janabi, one of the I.N.A.'s main liaisons with the CIA in Amman, the CIA began ramping up for war in October 2002. "They asked us to contribute some tough, hardworking people to train for missions inside Iraq," says Janabi. "So I gave them al-Jaburi." The introduction, al-Jaburi recalls, was made in a coffee shop in Amman on Oct. 18. Al-Jaburi says CIA officers, with the aid of a lie detector, questioned him for days on a range of topics, including whether he was volunteering or being coerced to join. One question probed what he would do if he found his brother fighting against him. "I'd kill him," al-Jaburi says he answered. On Nov. 22, al-Jaburi says, he signed a contract guaranteeing him monthly payments of $3,000, with $9,000 paid in advance. Two days later he boarded a small jet bound from Jordan to Washington.
His class of 13 recruits, containing Iraqis and Lebanese, was flown from Washington to a secluded facility of temporary buildings hours away, al-Jaburi recalls. They were told they were in Texas. For two months they trained with some 20 instructors in physical fitness, intelligence gathering, report writing and surveillance. At a separate naval facility, recruits learned about explosives--how to sabotage armored vehicles, tanks, oil pipelines, electricity pylons and railways.
In February, al-Jaburi says, he flew to Kuwait, staying in a villa with his CIA handlers. They equipped him with $50,000 in American currency, a GPS locator, satellite phones and a forged Iraqi identity card showing completion of military service so that he could move around Iraq unhindered. Al-Jaburi says he left for Iraq on March 11, guided across the border by smugglers arranged by Kuwaiti intelligence. "I'd been in the SSO, so I knew how dangerous this was going to be," al-Jaburi says. "But I also knew I had to do it."
The bulk of the $50,000 the CIA had provided al-Jaburi was for buying accomplices. He started with "Ahmed" (not his real name), an SSO officer in the main presidential compound whom al-Jaburi already knew. "I told him everything," says al-Jaburi. "I told him I'd listed his name with the CIA, and I had $5,000 for him." Ahmed proved an easy sell, replying, "What do you want from me?" The SSO man described where the Republican Guard had been posted in Baghdad and its environs, and revealed that it had been ordered to pull back into the city if attacked. In fact, after the U.S. bombed the Guard's positions early in the war, many of its officers abandoned their men, who then deserted en masse. Ahmed also identified the location of heavy-gun emplacements and missile batteries around the capital, targets the Americans hit with great effect during the air campaign.