Thirty-eight weeks after the United States began stalking Saddam Hussein with an arsenal of lethal force, technology and coercion, it fell to a soldier with a spade to flush the fallen leader from a hole.
About a mile from his nearest palace, Hussein spent his final minutes of freedom in an underground chamber of hard-packed dirt, just wide enough to permit a man to recline. After decades as self-proclaimed heir to the iconic 12th-century warrior, Saladin, Hussein surrendered meekly without a shot from the pistol he clutched in his lap.
The clues that led to Hussein's capture emerged three weeks ago, officials said, when intelligence analysts and Special Operations forces shifted the focus of their hunt from Hussein's innermost circle to the more distant relatives and tribal allies who they suspected had been sheltering the deposed president. U.S. officials here and in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new strategy led to the capture in Baghdad on Friday of a relative from Hussein's Tikriti clan. Under interrogation, the man contributed a vital, though still undisclosed, clue to Hussein's whereabouts.
Photographic and infrared surveillance in the 24 hours that followed narrowed the search area inside Dawr, a village near Hussein's birthplace, 10 miles southeast of Tikrit. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said that by 10:50 a.m. Saturday, new intelligence had further refined the targeted area to two locations. About 600 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team were then "assigned the mission to kill or capture Saddam Hussein," Sanchez said.
Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division headquartered nearby, said "we were going after what we thought was an HVT," or high-value target, the military argot for the fugitives most wanted by occupation forces. Odierno said few of his subordinates knew the quarry was "potentially HVT number one."
What U.S. forces call a "fusion cell of HVT analysts," drawn from the CIA and military intelligence personnel, commenced a fresh review in late November of the vast trove of information already in hand about "the people helping to facilitate his freedom," one official said. These were not the men and women featured on the 55-card deck of top fugitives, many of whom are in custody, or even the circle just beyond them. But they were bound by fierce bonds of loyalty, and the analysts culled from among those Iraqis a list of "most likely facilitators."
Ties of blood, clan
A series of arrests led analysts -- by investigating ties of blood and clan -- ever closer to those in contact with Hussein. The decisive arrests began during the first week of December, officials said.
"We tried to work through family and tribal ties that might have been close to Saddam Hussein," Odierno told reporters in Tikrit. "As we continued to conduct raids and capture people, we got more and more information on the families that were somewhat close to Saddam Hussein. Over the last 10 days or so we brought in about five to 10 members of these families who then were able to give us even more information. And finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals."
"They started peeling back the onion," said an official in Washington.
The U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to the capture or death of Hussein. But because the breakthrough came as the result of interrogations, not a voluntary tip, one senior official said "we saved the taxpayer $25 million." A similar reward is outstanding for Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader.
Drawing on a similar effort in Afghanistan to capture bin Laden, U.S. military forces and the CIA formed a task force devoted exclusively to finding Hussein and his top allies.
Called Task Force 121, it is an interagency team of CIA paramilitaries and "black," or unacknowledged, Special Operations forces. Two officials, one of them a Congressional intelligence source who was briefed on the operation on Sunday, said Task Force 121 took part in Saturday's raid. The "shooters" and "door kickers" in the task force are said to number fewer than 40, but they typically operate with support from a much larger combat team.
Saturday's raid, dubbed Operation Red Dawn, came under the command of Col. James Hickey, who leads the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade. The division had previously staged operations among the palms and citrus trees of Dawr.
Home to one of Hussein's closest aides, Izzat Ibrahim Douri, Dawr is a few miles from Hussein's birthplace of Auja.
In May, about 500 soldiers rounded up dozens of Hussein loyalists in Dawr, including an Iraqi general who had disguised himself as a shepherd.
Hussein's last stand had a special resonance in Dawr, because the village had once been the site of his salvation. His capture on Saturday came near an unusually narrow stretch of the Tigris River known as Abra, or "crossing." In 1959, after a failed attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Abdel Karim Qassem, the 22-year-old Hussein swam for his life across the river at that very spot.
Two-room adobe hut
According to accounts from military commanders, roughly seven hours passed between the time U.S. intelligence identified Dawr as Hussein's likely hiding place and the launch of Hickey's combat team at nightfall. The 600 soldiers converged by helicopter, humvee and armored vehicle, synchronizing their arrival in the village from several directions.
Intelligence brought the hunters close, but not quite to their objective. They had two specific targets, buildings they called Wolverine One and Wolverine Two. Both turned up empty. It appeared for a time, military officials said, that they had missed Hussein once again.
But Hickey, following a procedure honed since spring, cordoned off two square kilometers, or about three-fourths of a square mile, around the targets. Searching step by step, the soldiers came to a two-room adobe hut.
Outside stood a sheep's pen and a weathered orange taxi, of the sort that U.S. forces believed had become the former president's transportation of choice. A single molded plastic chair furnished the kitchen. T-shirts, socks and sandals cluttered the bedroom.
The soldiers were very close now, though they did not know it yet. Hussein lay in darkened silence, six to eight feet under their boots.
Then, a few steps outside the adobe hut, Hickey's troops noticed a faded prayer rug atop a patch of freshly swept dirt.
It was not clear Sunday what led soldiers to take a closer look. One military officer, whose account could not be confirmed, said ground-penetrating radar assisted the search. Two officials said raider teams had previously come upon similar hiding places and were attuned to the likelihood of another.
According to one account, a soldier trained in explosive ordnance disposal, heavily shielded against a potential blast, pushed the prayer rug aside to probe for traps. Then, according to Iraqi officials who were briefed on the operation by the U.S. occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer, a soldier took up his shovel and cleared off the dirt.
Excavation revealed a hatch, flush to the ground, atop what Sanchez called a "spider hole." Odierno, displaying a photograph, said the cover was made of Styrofoam -- light enough to be pushed open from within, should Hussein's two security guards desert him.
A square-cut hole, resembling a mine shaft, flared horizontally at the bottom. Soldiers disinterred the only occupant, who told the soldiers his name was Saddam Hussein.
"He was a bit disoriented obviously as he came up," Odierno said. "He was very much bewildered. Then he was taken away." His two bodyguards were also captured when they tried to flee.
Asked why Hussein offered no resistance -- a point of astonishment and even dismay among many Iraqis Sunday -- Odierno suppressed a smile.
'Caught like a rat'
"He was in the bottom of a hole, so there was no way he could fight back," Odierno said. "So he was just caught like a rat."
The immediate and urgent problem for U.S. forces became the positive identification of the man in the hole, shaggy-haired and with a ragged beard that had much more salt than pepper. In Baghdad, U.S. officials said, some of Hussein's closest aides -- now in detention -- confirmed his identity.
A military forensic lab found a preliminary match between Hussein's known DNA and the sample taken from the captive, though more time will be required for definitive analysis. According to a senior U.S. officer, the captive also had several scars matching those fitting descriptions of Hussein, including a gunshot wound to the leg.
A senior U.S. commander in Iraq, whose responsibilities are outside Tikrit, said Hussein's capture gave great new impetus to the military campaign against a resistance driven by what U.S. forces call "former regime loyalists."
"I believe we can exploit this," the senior officer said. "We're back in business in a big way."
He added that after months of frustration on the subject, "Our intel structure is really starting to work."
Priest reported from Washington. Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad and staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.