Hussein’s Helpers a Key Source of Guerrilla Funding, U.S. Says

The small coterie of advisors and friends who assisted Saddam Hussein during his time as a fugitive represents a vital cog in the larger network of former regime loyalists funding and organizing the armed insurgency in Iraq, U.S. military officials said.

These Hussein confidants have relied on funds that may have been looted from the national treasury and stashed around the country to finance anti-coalition attacks, the officials said. The money has been used to hire legions of insurgents, including trigger-pullers, mortar men, bomb makers and others willing to wreak havoc, they said.

“They would pay to get things done, or they would give someone the money who would then pay someone else,” said Maj. Stan Murphy, intelligence officer with the Army brigade that sought Hussein for months and caught him Saturday in a pit outside a farmhouse.

The emerging picture of Hussein’s network comes from interviews with military officials involved in the eight-month search for Hussein, a process that included the detention and interrogation of hundreds of his associates.

Military officials said Hussein’s cronies -- all from his home base in and around Tikrit -- have kept a considerable distance from the roadside bombs, ambushes, assassinations and other bloody tactics that have roiled Iraq. They have been careful to maintain several layers of insulation, complicating any efforts to get at them, officials said.

Those who knew Hussein’s whereabouts at a given time numbered 20 or fewer, officials said. Many other people may have been involved in operations to support the deposed leader. All are believed to be linked to the armed opposition.

“They were too valuable to Saddam and the others to be captured or killed during an operation,” Murphy said Tuesday at the command center of the brigade’s Tikrit headquarters, where officers have tracked the extended families linked to Hussein and his security apparatus. “They would be many tiers removed, sometimes as many as nine tiers. Different areas have more tiers than others.”

Analysts said the easy availability of weapons in Iraq meant that relatively little money has been spent on arms and bomb-making material -- a bonus for the insurgents.

The money flow, like the insurgency itself, has been limited to cells, officials said, reducing the risk of an arrest compromising an entire funding network or resulting in the death or capture of someone in Hussein’s inner circle. By all accounts, individual insurgent cells -- which might range from half a dozen to 100 members -- can choose their own targets.

But it has been understood by the paymasters and organizers that the attacks were in Hussein’s name, carried his imprimatur and had the ultimate goal of returning him and his Baath Party to power, U.S. military officials said. The deposed dictator’s role was limited, officials said, because he was busy ensuring his personal safety, moving frequently from safe house to safe house.

“I’ve always stated, repeatedly, our expectation was that Saddam was probably involved in intent and in financing,” Lt. Col. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the coalition troops, said Tuesday in Baghdad.

Whether Hussein actually approved expenditures while in hiding remains to be seen. A small cadre of Hussein loyalists using battered cars, scooters and river launches was probably used to ferry information to and from Hussein, keeping him informed about the violence tearing at the country, officials said.

Hussein was arrested Saturday in a hole outside a ramshackle adobe farmhouse near the Tigris River with no telephones or communications equipment, indicating he was probably unable to coordinate the attacks.

“Of course there will be intelligence value to the fact that he is now in coalition hands,” Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Baghdad.

Officials say many attackers are known to be working for financial incentive, receiving anywhere from $100 for shooting at a convoy to $10,000 for causing a U.S. fatality. With Iraq’s unemployment rate high and its economy stumbling, that is good money for young men already imbued with years of anti-Western propaganda.

Army officials have said for some time that they believed the insurgents’ funds were running out. The amount paid for attacks has generally risen, officials said, probably because hitting U.S. targets has become riskier as security has improved. Still, significant sums of money continue to turn up in the opposition’s hands, including the $750,000 found in a metal box in Hussein’s farm hut.

A few days earlier, U.S. soldiers had seized $1.9 million during a raid in the town of Samarra. That money was traced to a Hussein confidant who was later arrested in Baghdad on suspicion of anti-coalition activities. The unidentified suspect eventually provided the information that led to Hussein’s capture.

The informant’s record of abetting violence against the coalition before he provided the tip disqualifies him from receiving the $25-million reward offered by the U.S., officials said.

Hussein’s Tikrit backers are not the only funders of the insurgency, officials said. Fighters motivated by religious zeal might be operating independently, though they also might be receiving funding from the network linked to Hussein. Teams of suicide bombers might be getting money from outside the country.

But the Hussein money men have played a crucial role, especially in the so-called Sunni Triangle area, where the security situation is most volatile, officials said.

Fighters from that area are widely believed to be on the move and conducting operations elsewhere, such as the northern city of Kirkuk, which has seen an upsurge in violence.

“They’ll send someone up here from the south to cause trouble,” said Maj. Douglas Vincent of the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade in Kirkuk. “Kirkuk was a very stable place for a long time.”

The dispersed cash suggests that Hussein’s forces may have been preparing for a guerrilla war before the regime’s downfall. The Pentagon has generally downplayed that notion, but some see the money caches as strong evidence of planning.

“There are some indicators that Saddam knew all along the regime was going to collapse, and gave some indications to his supporters to do this kind of activity,” said Capt. Joseph Scanlin, intelligence officer for the 173d Airborne. “I don’t think he planned the guerrilla war, but he set the basis for it to be conducted.”

Whether Hussein’s arrest signals a return to some semblance of security in Iraq remains to be seen. Attacks against coalition forces remained at last week’s level, about 18 a day.

Two suicide car bombs at police stations rocked greater Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 10 people, including the two attackers.

And the former leader’s symbolic role seemed to loom larger as Iraqis, apparently outraged by his arrest and treatment, staged pro-Hussein demonstrations across the country Tuesday, some of which ended in clashes with U.S. troops and Iraqi police.

“As I’ve said over and over, we expect the violence to continue at the same level for some time,” Sanchez said. “We’re prepared for that.”

Others view Hussein’s arrest as the beginning of the end for the insurgency, as his underlings have less to fight for and the clandestine network he helped put in place loses its reason for being: returning him to power.

Said Col. James Hickey, commander of the Army 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade, which captured Hussein: “If you can lop off the head of the snake, the rest of the snake is not going to be too viable after that.”