>>Attack May Spark Coup In Iraq, Say U.S. Analysts
Ouster of Hussein Tied To Onset of Military Action
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 6, 2002; Page A01
Senior intelligence experts inside and outside government have reached a consensus that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would likely be ousted in a coup led by members of his inner circle in the final days or hours before U.S. forces launch a major ground attack.
Faced with an imminent, overwhelming U.S. assault and the choice of either being Hussein's successors or being imprisoned or killed in the fighting, top-ranking officers or a group of military and other senior officials would take the chance to eliminate the Iraqi leader, several senior administration officials and intelligence experts said in recent interviews.
"Someone will take action and cause it to happen," said one former high-ranking CIA officer with close ties to current thinking among intelligence officials.
It was unclear how widespread this view is within the administration. But with military preparations for a possible attack underway, senior officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have recently spoken publicly about Iraqis eliminating Hussein themselves, either through assassination or sending him into exile.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer picked up the theme last week, encouraging a coup d'état or assassination in answer to questions about the possible cost of a U.S.-led invasion. "The cost of a one-way ticket is substantially less than [the cost of war]," Fleischer said. "The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that."
"Saddam Hussein could decide that his future is limited and he'd like to leave," Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 18. "Another way to do it would be to persuade enough people in Iraq the world would be a lot better world if that regime weren't there and they decided to change the regime."
The "silver bullet" approach -- Iraqis eliminating Hussein on their own -- has long been central to the CIA's efforts to end the Iraqi leader's dictatorship. Earlier this year, President Bush directed the CIA to undertake a comprehensive covert program to topple the Iraqi leader, including authority to use lethal force.
It included instructions to increase support and contacts with Iraqi opposition groups and forces outside and inside Iraq, and authorized expanded efforts to collect intelligence within the Iraqi government, military and intelligence service where pockets of anti-Hussein sentiment have been detected.
The Washington Post reported in June that CIA Director George J. Tenet briefed Bush and senior Cabinet members that the newly authorized covert plan had only a small chance of working unless it was accompanied by outside military action, or at least by convincing the Iraqis that overwhelming military action was imminent.
Iraqi officers over the years have watched Hussein have his own sons-in-law shot for temporarily defecting and the brutal elimination of senior colleagues based on rumors that they were disloyal. These officers "will have to be certain the Americans are coming with overwhelming force before they move," said one top government analyst. "They have been hurt before."
A former senior Clinton administration official agreed with this assessment, citing a failed CIA attempt employing Iraqi senior officers to eliminate Hussein in 1996. "It always has been the view of [the] intelligence community that there was a low chance of success in the absence of the sound of [military] footsteps in Baghdad," the official said.
Several officials said one reason for their view that the inner circle in Baghdad would move against Hussein is the Bush administration's vocal and seemingly determined planning to launch a war with a goal not just of eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction but also of changing the country's leadership. Senior defense and intelligence officials have spoken openly of their conviction that many Iraqi military units would not defend Hussein in the event of a U.S. attack, or could be persuaded not to do so.
The assessment that a coup in Baghdad would be possible, if not probable, may have helped shape some of the administration's thinking about planning for a post-Hussein Iraq.
It has led many CIA and State Department officials, for example, to oppose recognition of the leaders of prominent Iraqi exile groups as a government in exile, arguing that they would never be accepted to head any new Baghdad government. "The exiles would be seen as a U.S. quisling government," one senior analyst said, referring to the Norwegian who betrayed his country to the Nazis in World War II and then headed the government under Fascist occupation.
Although U.S. officials have talked of instituting a democratic government in Baghdad, many intelligence officials believe that a military-led coup could help keep Iraq together and avoid moves toward separation that could come from its three major ethnic groups: the Shiite majority, Kurdish groups of the north and the Sunni minority that has dominated the country in recent times. A coup also would leave many of Iraq's upper- and middle-level bureaucrats in place, limiting the need for major rebuilding of the government, according to the intelligence community's thinking.
Since the late 1990s, one of several clandestine Iraq operations the CIA has underway is to identify key officials around Hussein and find ways to contact them, mostly through intermediaries. The object is to plant the seeds for an eventual coup or possible assassination, according to current and former U.S. officials. Promises of future power or wealth are among the rewards dangled in front of the Iraqis, sources said.
Exiled Iraqi officers and political figures are being used by U.S. intelligence to keep in touch with former colleagues and there are continuing efforts, mostly unsuccessful, to approach and perhaps recruit Iraqis who travel outside the country, officials said.
Hussein is aware of these activities and has regularly shaken up his top officer corps and others with access to him, including those in his own security force. "He came up through the security ranks of the Baath Party and is obsessed with his own security," one senior analyst said.
Hussein's closest aides are often the only ones to see him and he constantly is on the move, sources said. His public appearances, for example, are almost never announced ahead of time and it is well publicized that he almost never sleeps in the same bed two nights in a row.
The Special Republican Guard and other key security forces are run by Hussein's younger son, Qusay, and they include a large number of members from their tribe in Tikrit, the Iraqi leader's power base in northern Iraq. Even so, Hussein and his son constantly move key people around "just to keep them off balance," one intelligence official said.
Another official said that these people are so identified with the Iraqi leader that his ouster would probably include wiping out most of his tribe. "They have profited from the relationship and they know his death could be theirs," one official said. "That makes them even more loyal."
One of the more curious nuances in the administration's public pronouncements in recent weeks is the idea of Hussein and his family and advisers being sent into exile.
"If Saddam Hussein is in a corner, it is because he has put himself there," Rumsfeld said in his House testimony last month. "One choice he has is to take his family and key leaders and seek asylum elsewhere. Surely one of the 180-plus countries would take his regime -- possibly Belarus."
When questioned about Rumsfeld's comments afterward, Pentagon officials said some people in the administration thought exile was a possibility. "But," one Rumsfeld spokesman said, "there was no secret message being sent [by the secretary]."
Most intelligence analysts said they doubt Hussein would take that route. "He knows that if he is not in power, he's dead," one top government Iraq analyst said. "What country would take him and how could he be sure he would be safe?"<<
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