Did Regime Choreograph Exit?

Analysts at the CIA and elsewhere are increasingly examining the possibility that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s inner circle carried out elaborate plans to escape and leave little or no incriminating evidence behind, U.S. intelligence officials say.

The officials said the latest thinking is part of an effort to make sense of a series of developments that defied U.S. expectations.

Among the surprises were the regime’s disappearance April 9, its failure to use any chemical or biological weapons against U.S. troops, and the fact that key ministries and facilities being searched by U.S. forces appear to have been “professionally” scrubbed by the departing regime.

“There is fresh and new pondering of what in the world was [the regime’s] strategy,” one U.S. intelligence official said. “Government employees not showing up the same day. Buildings being clean as a whistle. People in the intelligence community are starting to ask, ‘Was this planned?’ ”

Officials stressed that analysts are examining a range of theories to account for the regime’s abrupt disappearance and the so-far unsuccessful search for banned weapons.

Many remain convinced that members of the regime simply scattered as U.S. forces punched into Baghdad and that evidence of banned weapons will eventually turn up.

But the fact that analysts are testing the theory that there was a carefully choreographed evacuation underscores the extent to which many aspects of the war remain a mystery to U.S. intelligence.

Officials said the CIA and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency have launched extensive post-mortems even as they continue to scramble for new clues to the fate of Hussein and the vast majority of the regime’s leaders.

So far, only four of those listed among the 52 most wanted by U.S. forces are known to be in custody, including Samir Abdulaziz Najim, a senior Baath Party official turned over to the U.S. by Kurdish forces Friday.

None of those detained carries a “face card” rank on the deck of mug shots distributed by the Pentagon, although one top Iraqi leader designated as the king of spades -- Ali Hasan Majid, or “Chemical Ali” -- is believed to have been killed by a bomb.

The mystery surrounding Hussein’s status deepened Friday with Abu Dhabi television’s release of what it said was a videotape of the Iraqi dictator shot April 9.

The tape purportedly shows Hussein and his younger son, Qusai, wading through crowds in Baghdad the very day it fell to U.S. control, and two days after American warplanes bombed a building believed to contain Hussein and maybe one or both of his sons.

Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates, also released what it said was an April 9 audiotape of Hussein exhorting Iraqis to fight and promising that they would be “rewarded by paradise” in the end.

A U.S. intelligence official said the CIA was examining the tapes but saw no indication that either contained images or time-specific references that could prove they were made April 9 or showed that Hussein is still alive.

In fact, the official said, a previous tape that supposedly showed Hussein walking through a Baghdad neighborhood in the middle of the war is now believed to have been made in early March, weeks before the U.S. invasion began.

The official said buildings and other features seen in the background on the tape -- cited at the time as evidence that the Iraqi leader had survived the opening strike of the war -- don’t match the neighborhood’s appearance in early April.

Officials at the CIA remain confident that Hussein was in buildings targeted in two “decapitation” airstrikes during the war.

But even though U.S. forces have had days to comb through the rubble of both sites, intelligence officials said they have seen no proof that Hussein or his sons were injured or killed.

Reports and rumors continue to flow in from Baghdad. “There are always Elvis sightings,” the official said. But the question of Hussein’s status, he said, remains “wide open.”

Several U.S. intelligence sources said the sudden disappearance of the Iraqi regime April 9 suggests a well-orchestrated exit strategy.

“There was either a coordinated, preplanned thing where if the coalition reaches this point, everybody leave town,” said a military intelligence official who asked not to be identified, “or possibly there was a big powwow that night and everybody said it was time to go.”

How they left -- and where they went -- is an even bigger mystery. “It could be [that] many are still in Baghdad laying low,” the official said.

Referring to Hussein’s hometown, the official added: “Some could have taken off for Tikrit. Or it could be they made it across into Syria.”

An Iraqi envoy loyal to Hussein said Friday that he was confident the Iraqi president had been killed by the allied bombing of Baghdad.

“I know his character,” Iraq’s ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro, Sami Sadoun, told Associated Press in an interview. “The defense of Baghdad would not have collapsed so quickly if he was not dead.”

Sadoun, who headed the office of Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz for 25 years, said he lost all contact with his superiors in Baghdad on April 7.

“Immediately after the bombing, I did not get any instructions,” Sadoun said. “Not even a single fax. Suddenly, there is no more Republican Guard, no more police or defense of Baghdad.”

CIA officials said they have seen no evidence that any senior Iraqis managed to flee the country. But others said there was steady traffic into Syria throughout the war and that spy satellites or aircraft couldn’t distinguish escaping regime leaders from ordinary traffic.

“If you wanted out and got a little caravan of three Jeeps, you could get out,” said a former U.S. official familiar with aerial surveillance of Iraq. “We wouldn’t know it. It’s too hard.”

A military intelligence official said the U.S. had monitored regime finances for months before the war in an effort to track the movements of senior officials. But he said the effort has so far failed to yield any significant clues.

Several top Iraqi officials now in custody could be helpful, but even the two Hussein half brothers now being questioned were on the periphery of the regime, estranged from the dictator and his inner circle.

“Saddam had been keeping them in solitary confinement on their farms for many years,” said Judith Yaphe, an instructor at National Defense University and formerly one of the CIA’s top Iraq analysts. Neither, she said, would likely have been involved in escape plans.

Aside from Hussein and his sons, other highly recognizable Iraqi leaders are also unaccounted for. Among them are Aziz and Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

Officials said CIA analysts are also exploring the possibility that Hussein’s strategy never was to use chemical or biological weapons against the U.S. and that when war became inevitable, the regime focused on hiding whatever evidence hadn’t already been destroyed or disguised.

“His last trick may have been to pour the remaining stuff down a rat hole,” one former CIA official said. “What is the worst he could do: fire off a round at us, or have us come in and find nothing? Clearly, find nothing.”

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Times staff writer Bob Drogin contributed to this report.