The capture of Saddam Hussein (2003) | 60 Minutes Archive

60 Minutes rewinds what that hole was like where Saddam Hussein spent his last moments as a free man. We'll take you inside in a moment, but first we'll introduce you to the man who did it to Saddam. Colonel James Hickey has been putting the puzzle together, one piece at a time for months, he launched 12 attacks against the Iraqi dictator before Saturday night's

capture

today. Colonel Aiki took Scott Pelley to the site of Saddam's Last Stand and told us about the army he sent to

capture

one man, about 600 soldiers. of the tanks Bradley Humvees howitzers planes in position ready to provide support to Spire alone to capture Saddam Hussein.

Well, our estimate was that there was going to be armed resistance. You were expecting a shootout. The capture of Saddam was absolutely nothing that Colonel James Hickey had expected in the eight months. The human hunt ended here, oh, this is in a muddy orange grove where the dictator had fallen from the palaces to Beggar. This is pretty much what it looked like when we got here. Hickey showed us the one-room cabin and outdoor kitchen where Saddam was reduced to squalor. He still thought he was president of a nation, but here was the Lord of the Flies, that's the happy tuna.

Saddam's kitchen, well, for some time now, I suppose it has had its cans of instant tuna coffee and jars of beans and cold cuts. It turned out that Saddam was simply a few miles from Hickey's headquarters, the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division securing the site. Basically, we have to guide them through Hickey. The son of Irish immigrants grew up outside Chicago and earned advanced degrees in both public policy and diplomacy, but most of his work here has been detective work, hunting down Saddam and his high-ranking henchmen. of the. How many raids have his soldiers made in the Tacrad area since he arrived?

Well, the Brigade in my area of ​​responsibility has conducted over 500 raids of various types since we arrived. probably since June, about mid-June, constantly thinking about the possibilities, Hickey says there was no luck for magic in finding Saddam. This time it was months of raids and interrogations focused on five powerful families in Saddam's hometown of Crete, what Hickey calls working the family tree. I have identified, you know, about five families that we thought from the beginning were particularly important to number one's security and his efforts to try to coordinate armed resistance in our area. Colonel, you talk about these five families and how to work. the family tree sounds like a mafia investigation clearly this was a regime that relied on a handful of key families to work through the Bloodlines hickey.

Intelligence officials identified one man in particular, a high-ranking member of Saddam's personal security team, that man was last encountered. week and that was the key, the man has not been identified, but he gave up on Saddam's hideout. Hickey did not say why the man betrayed Saddam, but within hours of doing so, Hickey's Force moved under the cover of darkness and suddenly the power went out. town where Saddam was hiding. Luckily, the electricity within the city of that gate was cut off, further increasing our approach. Good luck, good luck, how did that happen? It just happened thanks to a special forces team.

They called task force one, two, one, the Special Forces team searched the shack, but there was no Saddam, but then they took a second look. I think they initially heard a sound and they pulled back a small piece of carpet again, they found a small block of Styrofoam that was covered with a little bit of dirt. They took that off and clearly saw a man down there and they saw two hands come up the bottom of the carpet. hole. The hole is right at the end of an orange grove just below this date palm and it is just the right size hole.

For a man, I'm going to put this camera down and give you a look at what it's like and this is it. There's a fluorescent light up here connected up by an electrical cord. This is like a concrete wall. It seems that it is less. two feet wide and then here the same thing, a small space with a fan also connected by the same cable and this hole here, this pipe is connected to the pipe that goes outside and brings fresh air, there is enough space, I have six feet high, there's enough room to lie down here, but nothing more than that, just a small volt of concrete and there's the opening that leads outside, the floor is just dirt and this is it, this is the last thing Saddam saw like a free man and this would be the first thing the American forces saw, although in the darkness when Saddam came out of the hole he was dressed in a Dasha plate, which is the Arab robe that falls to the ground and he had his gun strapped to his hip.

He was taken out and presented according to the soldier I spoke with, he said: I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq and I am willing to negotiate and the reply was: President Bush sends you his regards. Standard operating procedure for a soldier finding a hole. like this throwing a grenade down there was probably about to happen Why didn't it happen well? The man who the man below will keep clearly communicated his willingness to surrender could have lost Saddam to history at that point it may already be history. Saddam was handcuffed, a hood was put over his head and then flown by helicopter to Tikrit and then to Baghdad.

Captain Desmond Bailey of Wetumpka, Alabama, was covering the Special Forces team as they took out Saddam. That you thought? The first feeling was, you know, this, this is all it took for the old man to think that he would have fallen more like the New Day Crusade with a fight, his two sons, a big shootout, they went down shooting, we were prepared for direct contact with the fire. but he didn't have it, which isn't a bad thing, we were just expecting that and when it didn't happen, I mean, it's not the way we had pictured it in our minds, what did the gunners say about him?

He was the same as I can. I don't think so, this is it, this is it, where is the Burning Fury? Know? But we lost three soldiers on September 18 in an ambush and two others were wounded, so our troop as a whole welcomes the opportunity to move in and destroy them. who intend to cause us harm the story will continue after this you had been chasing this man for eight months, he had carried out 12 raids in which he had escaped from you when they called you and said: we have him, what did he say? That's cool, come on, that's what I said, that's cool, we started moving north on Highway 24 and I called General Odierno on my vehicle's secure phone and told him we had captured Saddam Hussein, what did he say? ?

Well, he really said it and I. I said yes sir and told him that he would be there in about 20

minutes

and that he had about a million dollars to give among the rags they had found. The riches turned out to be about 750,000 in US 100 bills, one soldier told us. We were rich for a minute these were the last photos of Saddam in April when American forces entered Baghdad this was Saddam at the beginning of his rule, the dictator who boasted of palaces, a million-man army and his face on every corner was reduced in 254 days to a hole for a house, a powerless Arsenal and a face that even after the fall could not be hidden.

How are you sir? How good to see it. Hello this morning. Colonel Hickey called the Mullers and the politicians together in Tirrete and told them that Times have changed, what is absolutely clear is one simple fact: Saddam Hussein in his criminal regime will not return according to the intelligence developed since Saddam's capture. The raids continue every night. Of the original 55 Most Wanted Fugitives, there are only 14. Still at large. There's been criticism that the term mission accomplished has been applied to this too soon, but now that they've pulled it out of this hole, the mission accomplished well, this was part of my mission, you know it was a target of opportunity and we took care of it. and there is work to be done and we are not done yet and we will continue with our duties until someone tells me that we have accomplished our mission or have been properly relieved, so that is what we do.

The mission absolutely continues.