The Prisoner in His Palace Page 4

  Tasker was sent on his way with a hefty ticket and a summons to appear in court on the same day that they were scheduled to deploy. Beneath the bravado that Tasker and Rogerson affected as they continued on their trip, both realized that they had some growing up to do.

  In Iraq in 2006, they’d grow up fast.

  CHAPTER 7

  Baghdad, Iraq—summer of 2006

  Memories of pre-deployment hijinks rapidly fading, the Super Twelve found themselves thoroughly immersed in the task of guarding the man whom most people back home regarded as the face of the “Axis of Evil.” When Saddam wasn’t awaiting trial appearances in the Crypt underneath the Iraqi High Tribunal, the twelve MPs guarded him in a bombed-out former palace that was rumored to have belonged to Saddam’s son Uday. It was located on a small island accessible only by crossing a drawbridge. Saddam had been moved here during the summer following his capture and subsequent interrogation at Baghdad’s Camp Cropper. His relocation to the high-security island, tucked away on the U.S. military’s larger Camp Victory, was a closely held secret.

  The Super Twelve nicknamed the island palace-turned-prison “the Rock,” after the movie about Alcatraz. It was almost as if the dictator were being hidden in plain sight, since he was the only prisoner there and confined inside a single cell that had been specially outfitted with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. From a distance, an observer wouldn’t have regarded the building as anything more than a crumbling palace. Though those holding Saddam had tried to prevent him from figuring out his location, going so far as to use blankets to cover the windows of vehicles as they moved him for court appearances, he soon deduced exactly where he was. He’d helped to design some of the buildings, after all, and in many of them his initials were carved into columns and ceilings.

  The Rock was near Saddam’s Al-Faw Palace, located within what had been a luxurious private retreat for Saddam’s family and Baath Party dignitaries about ten kilometers from Baghdad’s Green Zone, the former seat of the Iraqi government and current headquarters of the American occupation. The building they called the Rock was one of a sprawling collection of mansions and villas previously enjoyed by the party elite. The complex’s strategic location near the international airport was one of the reasons it had been selected by the Americans as a major logistics hub housing thousands of troops.

  Though years before in this location Saddam and his favored ministers had enjoyed hunting outings followed by extravagant dinners, and his son Uday had indulged in sadistic alcohol- and drug-fueled orgies, Camp Victory was now like a mini-America. It included a Burger King and a Subway, and it hosted a wide array of entertainers, from country singer Toby Keith to professional wrestling stars. The scantily clad WWE Divas were especially popular.

  The Super Twelve had been instructed to avoid interacting with the deposed leader, while doing whatever they could to keep him safe and happy as he stood trial. U.S. leadership could ill afford even the faintest suggestion that he’d been mistreated, and they figured that the more content Saddam was, the more smoothly his trial would progress. At first, the MPs were careful not to engage him in conversation, limiting their interaction to chilly “yes, sirs” and “no, sirs.” But the soldiers spent twenty-four hours a day with him, broken into three eight-hour shifts, and some thawing on both sides was inevitable.

  Every once in a while Saddam would relay requests to them through his interpreter, Joseph, a burly Lebanese-American who’d been paired with the imprisoned dictator a year prior. Saddam would have the MPs adjust the thermostat or fetch some tea. It was like that for a while—awkward interactions mostly. Months later, Tucker Dawson, the youngest of the Twelve, would remember engaging in a playful—borderline childish, really—cat-and-mouse game in which Saddam would try to catch Dawson staring at him. “I was like a little kid. I’d seen him on TV, waving AKs up in the air and stuff. And now he’s in a cell. And I just looked at him. Then he’d look up at me, and I’d look away real quick . . . and then he’d look at me real fast. He was messing with me. He finally looked up at me real fast and he said, ‘I got you!’ Then he started laughing. And I was like, ‘Yes, sir.’ And he was like, ‘You new?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ And he laughed, ‘Huh huh huh huh.’ That’s how he laughed. He had a crazy little laugh.”

  Hutch, veteran of numerous deployments as a military policeman and aware of the pitfalls associated with growing too close to detainees, was intent on treating the mission as no different from any other. He resolved to approach his new dictator-guarding responsibility as “no more, no less than burning shit in barrels,” one of the less enviable duties sometimes assigned to junior-ranking soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was okay with the fact that at first, “I didn’t exist in Saddam’s eyes.” He remained wary around the prisoner, always reminding himself that the former president was generally regarded “as one of the most violent people in the world.”

  For the Super Twelve, then, the first few weeks of monitoring Saddam were a mix of fright, nervous vigilance, and boredom. For these young men, it was like visiting the zoo and being forced to watch a creature who, though deadly, rarely does anything but sit, only occasionally deigning to walk across the cage to thrill the assembled spectators.

  Slowly, things began to change, though. One late-summer evening, a few weeks into their mission, Hutch and Paul Sphar found themselves sitting across from the former dictator in the open-air outdoor rec area near his cell on the Rock. The space was about fifteen feet long and seven feet wide, enclosed by tall concrete walls that were topped with barbed wire. Though nondescript and shabby, it did offer something of value to a prisoner who spent most of his time in a windowless cell: a daytime view of Baghdad’s generally blue skies and a nighttime view of its generally clear evenings.

  Joseph, the interpreter, sat next to the former president, creating a bizarre foursome. There was Hutch, the former bouncer; Sphar, the rotund, tattooed former grocery store clerk; Joseph, the Lebanese-American who possessed a mysterious gravitas; and, finally, seated on a wobbly piece of patio furniture, the man who seemed fated to be judged one of history’s all-time villains.

  Back home at Fort Campbell, it would have been rare enough for junior-ranking soldiers like Hutch and Sphar to cross paths with someone as lofty as an Army colonel, and on the occasions when they might, such as at a brigade ball, bridging the rank gap could be terribly awkward. Yet, here the two MPs were, sitting a few feet from a former head of state—an accused war criminal on trial for crimes against humanity.

  Sphar, in particular, felt cognitive dissonance. He’d been raised in a broken home in the small farming community of Orland, California, where he hung out with the “rowdy kids” growing up. He and his friends had spent their time searching for harmless mischief like sneaking into construction sites and abandoned buildings. As in most small towns, everyone in Orland seemed to know everyone else. In reflecting back on his upbringing, Sphar would later say, “It never entered my mind to do college.” Partly inspired by his grandfather who’d lied about his age to serve in World War II, he joined the Army out of patriotism—but he also didn’t want to spend the rest of his life working at the grocery store checkout counter and racking shopping carts.

  Now he was facing Saddam Hussein, who sat on a red plastic chair fitted with arms that had been taped with rubber pads to make it easier on the old man’s back. Safely within “lunging distance,” he and Hutch sat on flimsy plastic chairs of their own and regarded Saddam across a small plastic table. At the far end of the rec area, opposite the door that opened out to it, was a plot of dirt, from which some weeds had sprouted. Saddam had already established a routine of watering them, treating them more like beautiful flowers than the ugly growths they were.

  Saddam and Joseph puffed on Cohiba cigars as they chatted animatedly, like two retirees meeting at the local diner to catch up on current events. Hutch and Sphar couldn’t decipher their Arabic words. Looking up at the starry night, the two soldiers, trying to be quiet
and not disturb the former president, would sometimes find themselves thinking back to late-night training exercises back home in the Tennessee wilderness, and fantasizing about the porterhouses they’d devour at Outback Steakhouse as soon as they got home.

  On nights like these Saddam appeared to derive immense satisfaction from simple pleasures, like smoking his cigars. He would carefully—almost theatrically—pull a Cohiba from the empty wet wipe box that he used to carry them in. Then he’d light the cigar, savoring every inhalation before exhaling. The soldiers were puzzled as to where he got this seemingly limitless supply of cigars.

  Suddenly, Joseph looked up from his conversation with Saddam and spoke to Hutch: He wants to know where you’re from, your nationality.

  Hutch was momentarily taken aback. Up to this point, the dictator hadn’t seemed to regard him as anything but an additional piece of the patio furniture. Now he wanted to know something about him. Tell him America, replied Hutch.

  No, no, before that, Joseph clarified.

  Well, I guess from Europe, Hutch replied.

  No, no, there is more, Saddam said, breaking into the conversation directly, showing that he’d been following the entire exchange between Joseph and Hutch in English. This was one of the first indications of how surprisingly good Saddam’s English was. As the Super Twelve would learn, the prisoner only employed it strategically to engage with people he wanted to talk to.

  Hutch was unsure where Saddam was headed. What’s he talking about? Hutch asked Joseph. What does he want from me?

  He just wants to know your heritage, Joseph said.

  Hmm, well, I am also part Native American.

  Perhaps Saddam had wondered about Hutch’s ethnicity, as his complexion had darkened considerably from exposure to the relentless Iraq sun. Suddenly, the deposed president put one hand up like a feather behind his head, and another in front of his mouth, mimicking an Indian war cry, at which point he and Hutch burst into laughter.

  Saddam’s primitive radio played quietly in the background. Though he’d been offered access to more modern entertainment like a portable DVD player, he preferred the old radio with its antennas grasping for signals in the desert sky. He’d sometimes switch channels between Arabic and American pop music. Curiously, he’d always stop tuning if he stumbled across a Mary J. Blige song.

  Sphar ducked inside to prepare some hot tea—Lipton. Saddam drank it constantly, enjoying it with honey and sugar. If the water wasn’t boiling, he’d have the guards reboil it. When Sphar returned with the tea, Saddam beckoned for him and Hutch to come closer. This had never happened before. They approached the former president with trepidation, as they would a wild bear who’d suddenly lumbered onto a path they’d been walking down.

  Saddam opened a book that had been resting on the plastic table. He flipped through it as the two soldiers looked over his shoulder. He studied it carefully through his reading glasses, occasionally pausing when a picture seemed to trigger a particular memory.

  Finally, he pointed to a picture of himself as a young schoolboy. The fact that he’d even been able to attend school was the stuff of Baath Party mythmaking. A young Saddam, the story went, ambitious and desperate to escape his stepfather’s abuse as well as a dismal future as a subsistence farmer in the dusty backwater of Awja, snuck out of his mother’s mud hut in the dead of night and made his away alone along desolate, bandit-infested trails to his uncle Khairallah Tulfah’s house in Tikrit. Khairallah was a former Army officer and Iraqi nationalist who’d spent time in prison for participating in a rebellion against the British.

  Headmaster expelled me when I was young! Saddam exclaimed to Hutch and Sphar in English, still squinting closely at the figures on the page.

  Saddam, who had a twinkle in his eye as he enjoyed the attention of his eager audience, told the two soldiers how the headmaster had enraged his uncle by kicking the young Saddam out of school. His uncle viewed this as an affront to the entire family.

  Headmaster paid for this insult, Saddam said. When my uncle heard, he gave me a gun, told me to make sure they let me come back!

  Pausing to sip his tea and take a puff on his cigar, Saddam concluded the night’s story by sitting back and smiling, leaving the unfortunate headmaster’s fate to the soldiers’ imaginations.

  Hutch would begin to notice a difference in Saddam’s demeanor depending on who was on guard duty. In a weird way, it was a thrill to be one of the soldiers whose company Saddam approved of and enjoyed. This sensation wasn’t unique to the Super Twelve. An Iraqi woman whose family was part of Saddam’s inner circle for a portion of her childhood describes Saddam’s uncanny ability to motivate people to please him, explaining, “When you did something to cause Uncle Amo’s [Saddam’s] admiration, he would shine his eyes on you. We all knew that shining eye look and sought it out. It was the prize, the deposit you put in the bank against a dry spell.”

  Saddam’s deputies had felt the same way when he’d been in power, only then the consequences of falling out of favor could be deadly.

  CHAPTER 8

  Al-Khuld Conference Center, Baghdad, Iraq—July 22, 1979

  Saddam Hussein was seated on an elevated podium in the Al-Khuld Conference Center, clad in a well-tailored suit and occasionally taking deep puffs from a large cigar. Assembled before him in the hot auditorium were almost one thousand senior Baath Party leaders, fidgeting in their seats and fanning themselves from the heat. Saddam appeared totally relaxed, almost disinterested at times. He was now, at age forty-two, president of Iraq, having won the position by virtue of his ferocity, cunning, and unmatched tactical brilliance in internal party machinations.

  The session began with Taha Yassin Ramadan, a longtime deputy of Saddam’s, solemnly announcing the discovery of a “painful and atrocious plot.” Ramadan revealed that the plotters were in the audience, and would soon be publicly identified.

  The Baath Party’s secretary-general, Muhie Abdul Hussein Mashadi, was then ushered onto the stage. Mashadi had made the mistake of publicly objecting to the mysterious resignation of Saddam’s predecessor, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a leave-taking that had propelled Saddam into the presidency. Mashadi was reportedly given a choice: either publicly confess to participation in a plot involving twenty-two other party members suspected of sharing his objection, or know that the last sight of his life would be watching his wife and daughters raped in front of him before he was killed. Mashadi chose the first option, likely with some sliver of hope that it would spare his life.

  Mashadi was visibly shaking as he began speaking, his voice unsteady and raspy. Saddam occasionally interrupted with leading questions, simultaneously making the process appear less rehearsed while ensuring that Mashadi spit out the story in all its contrived detail. Mashadi had been reduced to a pathetic actor, desperately hoping that a convincing performance might save him. Wanting Mashadi’s words to pour out so that the proper people would be implicated, Saddam went so far as to get up from his chair on the podium and invite Mashadi to sit in it, so that he could be more comfortable while elaborating.

  Returning to the podium, Saddam theatrically produced a list of the alleged coconspirators. Emotionless, he said, “Everyone I will name should stand up, repeat the party oath, and follow his comrades out of the hall.” Saddam then slowly began reading the names. As each name was called, a man would rise to be ushered from the hall to confront his fate. Some were led out by security, while others quietly removed themselves when their names were announced, careful not to step on the toes of others as they exited. One man, in a virtual panic, rose and haltingly asked, “Did you mention my name, sir?” Saddam paused, repeated the name, and the fellow then excused himself, obediently walking to what he must have known could be his death. Sixty-six conspirators were named in all.

  As if to ward off any possibility that their names would appear as an afterthought on their leader’s list, some of the more shameless leapt to their feet and shouted, “Long live Saddam.” They clapped violently, bri
nging to mind tales—perhaps apocryphal—of Stalin’s audiences standing and clapping until they began to pass out, terrified to be the first to stop and thereby risk being labeled an enemy of the state. Others wept, likely out of relief at having dodged possible torture and death. In fact, Saddam was a devoted student of Stalin. He reportedly maintained a personal library that was stocked with studies of the paradigmatic tyrant.

  Saddam even managed to produce a few tears of his own, dabbing them away with a handkerchief, as if he, too, were overcome by the emotion of such a painful betrayal.

  As he gazed down at the terrified functionaries, a trace of disgust crossing his face, the audience cried for blood, their denunciations of the conspirators approaching a crescendo. One sycophant shouted, “We demand the execution of the traitors.” Saddam played off of the crowd’s contrived bloodlust, rhetorically asking, “How do we treat the traitors? You know how we will treat them—with nothing but the sword.”

  The executions were videotaped by Saddam’s security service. The condemned men were blindfolded and forced to their knees, their hands tied behind their backs. Saddam reportedly led the way as the camera zoomed in to show a brutal succession of guns placed to the heads of the “conspirators,” triggers pulled, rounds exploding into brains, bodies collapsing onto the ground, last heartbeats pumping spurts of life into the dirt. The tape was then distributed to party and military leadership.

  Not even Saddam’s close personal friends and associates were immune from the purge. The condemned included a deputy who’d often joined Saddam and his wife, Sajida, for dinner over the years. The man’s wife was supposedly on a shopping trip to Paris with Sajida when he was executed.