#Saddam hussein capture how to#
#Saddam hussein capture professional#

#Saddam hussein capture professional#

“If a prisoner really wanted me to hurt them, I would start spreading rumors around the town and the prison that they’re the ones who are being cooperative.By Victoria Hougham, Academic and Professional Affairs “If I really got upset with a prisoner, I could cause them more problems than torture,” Maddox explains.

#Saddam hussein capture how to#

Not that Maddox didn’t know how to turn up the heat on a reticent subject. “If you’re torturing somebody,” Maddox states, “then you’re just stupid.” “The problem with our policy on torture is that people who have never done any interrogations, ever,” Maddox bristles, “are speaking smartly on the topic.” Those without experience in interrogation-the higher-ups-often work with false assumptions, he says. What has surfaced since Red Dawn, instead: authorizations for water-boarding, the torture of suspects through intermediaries at black sites overseas and the scandalous abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.įor Maddox, this happened because commanding officers lost sight of their mission and began seeking the punishment of prisoners as a troop morale booster instead of intelligence. Special Forces that helped find Hussein and pull him from his hiding place.Īs effective as his techniques have been in the war on terror, Maddox knows that “intelligence through empathy” has not become the historical legacy of the ongoing battle. Iraqi-American Samir, pinning Saddam Hussein to the ground during his capture in 2003. And he was the one who explained the entire layout-Mohammed Ibrahim was the messenger for Saddam and the insurgency.”

“On December 1 we arrested al-Muslit’s driver.

“We started with family members, business partners, and that eventually led to his driver,” says Maddox. After about three months of interrogations, Maddox began to suspect that the guard’s presence in Tikrit signaled the former dictator’s proximity, so finding him became the central mission. Maddox and the Special Task Force came to focus on one central character: Mohammed Ibrahim Omar al-Muslit, a relative and bodyguard of Saddam. That, he says, was the greatest compliment: “Of course I want my prisoners to think that I am with them, and if my boss thinks that I am with those prisoners, then I must be doing a really good job.” There is no part of it that is real.”Īt times, Maddox even fooled his superiors, who pulled him from interrogations, afraid he was losing his way. “If I need to cry or laugh or yell or scream, or get scared,” Maddox explains, “I gotta be able to pull any of those out of the bag as instantaneously and authentically as possible. While Maddox says his friends sometimes compare him to Jack Ryan-the fictitious CIA analyst-turned-field-operative in author Tom Clancy’s spy thrillers-he may have more in common with actors who have played Jack Ryan on screen.

But while Tikrit was also Hussein’s home town, few strategists expected to find him there most assumed he had escaped to Syria. By chance he got attached to Special Operations Task Force 121 in Tikrit, a city on the Tigris River about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. After two years with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Maddox was ordered to Baghdad International Airport in July 2003. The September 11 attacks, and America’s subsequent war on terror, changed all that. But except for occasional interviews with Chinese citizens apprehended on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of human-trafficking networks, Maddox had no opportunities to practice his interrogation and intelligence-gathering skills. After quitting the paratroopers in 1997, he pursued the more cerebral route of military linguist, with a concentration on Mandarin Chinese. Maddox wasn’t exactly groomed for the role of Saddam hunter. Richards/AFP/Getty Images From Chinese linguist to Middle Eastern interrogator troops after coalition troops invaded the country.

Iraq's 'most wanted' deck of playing cards, distributed to U.S.