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Once the U.S. began bombing Baghdad, al-Timman's mission changed. He raced from one bomb site to the next, noting the physical damage and assessing casualties, keeping an eye out for leadership figures among the dead and wounded. At an appointed time each night, using a satellite phone, he called in his assessments to an I.N.C. contact, who passed them on to the Americans, who could then decide whether to hit old targets again or move on to others. "I considered it the most important thing I could do because it would bring an end to the war sooner," al-Timman says. On April 7 he milled with bystanders as rescuers dug through the rubble of several destroyed houses in the Baghdad suburb of al-Mansur. The Pentagon, thinking Saddam was inside, had struck the buildings. But the rescuers told al-Timman that Saddam had just been there briefly to inspect the damage and offer condolences for those killed. Al-Timman made sure that Saddam's body was not among those retrieved, then phoned in what he had learned so the hunt for Saddam could continue.
THE BLACKMAIL CARD
The operations chief for the I.N.C. goes by the name of Abu Ranin. His job before the war was to crack the mukhabarat. His tactics were hardball. The I.N.C. had done surveillance on Iraqi missions around the world, making educated guesses about who was an intelligence agent. From these lists, the I.N.C. narrowed down its targets. "We chose them for their weaknesses, setting out to get something on them and force them to work for us," says Abu Ranin, who was then based in Jordan.
In a West European capital, Abu Ranin says, he collected evidence on a mukhabarat station chief who was selling government property on the black market. When Abu Ranin threatened to alert Baghdad, he says, the officer rolled over. Abu Ranin would not say what information the man provided. Abu Ranin's greatest coup, he says, was in Romania. As he tells the story, he discovered a mukhabarat officer in Bucharest who had two useful qualities: he oversaw the regime's East European agents, and he had a weakness for prostitutes. Posing as a wealthy businessman based in Europe, Abu Ranin befriended the officer. He rented a villa and threw a private party with five prostitutes and ample alcohol. The mukhabarat officer brought four colleagues. Abu Ranin secretly audiotaped their drunken boastings and cajoled them into a few snapshots with the women. Blackmail, however, proved unnecessary. When his guests were distracted, Abu Ranin grabbed the officer's cell phone and downloaded its address book.