Regime in Denial to the End

In the end, Saddam Hussein’s regime was so unaware of its approaching demise that it was issuing orders to units that no longer existed, U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday.

It was so out of touch with the war’s events that at times it seemed to believe the impossibly optimistic assertions served up every day by its information minister.

“There was [intelligence] that indicated they didn’t fully appreciate the mess they were in,” said one U.S. intelligence official. “Part of the problem was they believed their own spin.”

“Nobody wants to tell Saddam and senior leaders bad news, so lots of times they don’t,” the official said. “They tend to believe things are going better than they are, and before you know it, coalition forces are up close and personal.”

Iraqi decision-making “was based on totally unreliable information and a wholly corrupt process,” the official said.

Officials said they presume Hussein was getting better information than was doled out to reporters each day by his information minister, Mohammed Said Sahaf, who said in one memorable moment that “the tide has turned” in Iraq’s favor the day U.S. tanks made their first tour of the capital.

But officials said there were numerous indications that reports from field leaders to senior commanders were ridiculously optimistic, claiming that their units were fighting when they actually had deserted, that they were winning when they were being routed.

On several occasions, officials said, orders were sent down to units that had been destroyed or had disappeared.

“It was like Hitler ordering nonexistent units to come to the defense of Berlin,” one senior intelligence official said. “It’s a perfect analogy.”

The collapse was so sudden it appeared to catch U.S. forces off-guard as well, and it touched off a scramble by military and CIA operatives in Iraq for answers to an array of pressing questions. Chief among them are what happened to Hussein, where his alleged banned weapons are and why they weren’t used.

U.S. officials said they do not have answers yet, nor do they know what happened to other senior officials of the Iraqi government who seemed intent on holding out until Wednesday, when they simply failed to show up for work and melted into the city.

Officials said rumors out of Baghdad are rampant, with reports that Hussein is holed up in the Russian Embassy, that he fled to Syria, was hiding in Tikrit, was killed in an airstrike Monday or died in a firefight after the bombs missed their mark.

“All those rumors are floating around Baghdad, and all of them have been reported through intelligence channels,” one official said. “Any of them can be true. All of them can’t be.”

Indeed, officials said most of the reports were being chalked up as “rumint,” spy agency shorthand for lowly regarded rumors intelligence.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went through a list of requirements that are likely to drive intelligence work in Iraq for months.

He said the United States is particularly interested in locating Iraqi scientists with knowledge of the country’s banned-weapons programs. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has suggested that many of these scientists were rounded up by Hussein operatives before the war began. Their whereabouts are unknown.

Rumsfeld urged Iraqis to preserve records identifying members of Hussein’s Baath Party, of the Fedayeen Saddam guerrilla groups that put up stiff resistance to U.S. forces in the south and of the notorious intelligence services run by Hussein’s younger son, Qusai.

Concerned that weapons materials could be smuggled out of the country or looted by terrorists, the Pentagon and the CIA made it clear they are willing to pay cash for information, and perhaps even set up informants in witness protection programs.

“Rewards are available to those who help us prevent the disappearance of personnel, documentation and materials,” Rumsfeld said. “Good lives and a better future are possible for those who turn themselves in and choose to cooperate with coalition forces.”

Rumsfeld broke a pattern at the Pentagon in recent weeks in which he and other officials have downplayed the importance of finding the Iraqi leader.

“We still must capture, account for or otherwise deal with Saddam Hussein and his sons and the senior Iraqi leadership,” Rumsfeld said.

The implosion of Hussein’s regime renewed speculation that he was killed in an airstrike this week. Several officials said the timing certainly seems suggestive: The strike happened Monday, word probably spread through senior leadership ranks Tuesday, and the regime collapsed Wednesday. But U.S. intelligence officials said they still have no clear evidence that Hussein or his sons were in the building when it was hit.

The attack was ordered after Iraqi informants reported seeing Hussein, one or both of his sons and dozens of intelligence officials enter a building in the Mansour district of the city.

But there were no U.S. personnel on the ground to confirm the sighting, officials said, and it was unclear whether U.S. forces had access to the site Wednesday. There has been no subsequent chatter on Iraqi communications channels indicating Hussein was injured or killed.

U.S. officials discounted reports in several British newspapers Wednesday asserting that British intelligence believed Hussein had left the building via an underground tunnel before four 2,000-pound bombs turned the site to rubble.

A U.S. official said Britain’s MI-6 had a source who heard from another person that Hussein had escaped. “It could be right, but neither they nor we have come to any conclusion,” the official said. “No one has determined it to be true.” He added that the alleged meeting site was not known to have a tunnel or bunker underneath it.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the tip-off that led to the bombing raid was “not quite as good” as the alert from an informant that Hussein was at his daughter’s compound in south Baghdad on March 20.

That tip led to the opening airstrike of the war, and CIA officials insisted for days afterward that Hussein had been at the compound, known as Dora Farm. They say they still don’t know for certain that he escaped, but most analysts believe at least some of Hussein’s subsequent TV appearances were genuine.

Rumsfeld suggested Wednesday that Hussein or others could have fled the country, saying there is evidence that “senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria” and then on to other destinations.

But a U.S. intelligence official said that though there have been reports that one of Hussein’s three wives fled to Syria before the war, there is no indication that Hussein or members of his inner circle have left Baghdad.

“We don’t know where they are,” the official said, “but there’s no evidence that they’ve gotten out in any direction.”

Hussein’s ancestral hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, remains a possible hide-out, the official said. But he noted that U.S. forces had all but sealed off routes between the two cities days ago.

Officials said the intelligence community is at a loss to explain why Hussein didn’t use chemical weapons, which were the Bush administration’s primary justification for the war.

“We fully expected that at some point he would,” a U.S. military intelligence official said. “It’s very confusing, very difficult to figure out.”

Officials speculated that Iraqi units may have disobeyed orders or didn’t have time to get weapons in position, or that Hussein was killed or wounded in the March 20 bombing and was the only one with authority to order a chemical strike.

Officials also cautioned there are pockets of resistance in Tikrit and elsewhere where chemical attacks could still occur.

The military intelligence official acknowledged that the U.S. did not have evidence chemical weapons were in position to be fired but said there is little doubt in the intelligence community that the weapons exist.

“Everyone is absolutely convinced it’s there,” the official said. “If we end up after an exhaustive search and we don’t find anything, there will be a lot of people really amazed and frustrated.”

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Times staff writer Bob Drogin contributed to this report.