as a former fbi agent and chairman of the house intelligence committee, i had oversight of all 16 of our nation's intelligence agencies. my name is mike rogers. i had access to classified information gathered by our operatives, people who risked everything for the united states and our families. you don't know their faces or their names. you don't know the real stories from the people who lived the fear and the pressure until now. >> every military force on the ground was looking for saddam hussein. >> i get orders that i'm going to go join this task force that i never heard of.

i didn't know. >> you can't just sit behind walls and expect the information to come to you. you've got to go out and get it. >> we would get information that was bad information and innocent people get killed on both sides. >> we knew there was a degree of professionalism that we were facing, and it was deadly. >> we could tell when someone was lying and we would confront them with those lies. >> everybody we talk to has a piece of information that you may not have known that would become valuable later. >> time was running out, but i would not stop looking for saddam. ♪

saddam hussein and his sons must leave iraq within 48 hours. their refusal to do so will result in military conflict. >> on the president's order, coalition forces began the ground war to disarm iraq and liberate the iraqi people. >> operation iraqi freedom, our effort to dismantle the iraqi regime is fully under way. >> it started with air strikes in march. >> the ground campaign began late march, early april. i believe the last time we saw

saddam was april 9th in the infamous film clip of him moving down the streets in double play town baghdad. >> we pulled down the statue of sadd saddam. but in order to have a decisive military victory, we needed the real saddam. we needed saddam hussein. the first brigade was a large unit with thousands of soldiers. and the mission of the brigade was establishing stability. the challenge to that was dealing with the physical reality of an armed insurgency. >> the u.s. military estimates there are between 4,000 and 5,000 mid level baathist opposition fighters. >> one of my patrols was ambushed on the east side of the

tigress river. >> their focus was really hvt's -- high value targets. >> the coalition governments have identified a list of key regime leaders, 55 individuals who may be pursued, killed or captured. >> the special operations forces could go into the most dangerous target and do it as zero to minimal casualty because of their skills. these are extraordinarily gifted and trained men. you did not want to be the objective of their attention. >> in 2003, the organization i was assigned to was sent to iraq to hunt down the cards,

including saddam hussein. sometimes it was going after people of the deck of cards, sometime it was the known associates of the deck of cards. >> you have to understand the enemy, especially in this context, the people. but you can't just sit back behind walls and expect the information to come to you. you've got to go out and get it. >> we would get information that was bad information. they would identify location, there would be nothing there, the wrong individual. the individual was someone that someone else disliked for whatever reason. it's frustrating, because you just destroyed someone's house. they're sitting there clesleepi and next thing you know there's people running through their house. they may not be guilty of anything. and then nintd people get killed on both sides. >> with the amount of detainees we were pulling off target, we needed someone that could conduct the interrogations to ensure we was getting the information we wanted. >> in 2003, i was a staff sergeant in the united states

army. i was a trained interrogator, but i had never actually conducted a real, live interrogation. the war is going on for three months, and i get orders that i'm going to go join this task force that i had never heard of. >> what did you do? >> i didn't know. but i packed my bags and i moment flown to tikrit and i'm picked up by soldiers with beards. soldiers didn't have beards. >> we didn't work with them previously. didn't train with them. he didn't really know what was going on with targets. initially, it was a bumpy road. >> jeff was not happy to see me. jeff wasn't happy to see anybody. jeff was not a trained interrogator. jeff a soldier. jeff had a mission. he had prisoners that he wanted to get interrogated, so he and i drove to this u.s. army prison. there were hundreds of

prisoners. we brought the first prisoner down, we set him down and jeff looks at me and he goes, so how are we going to do this? i was a new interrogator. i did not have a plan, but jeff and i looked at each other and we started asking questions. (vo) stank face. a universal expression of disgust, often caused by inadequate cat litter. if you or your a loved one suffers from stank face, the cure is tidy cats. it's new and improved with guaranteed tidylock protection that locks away odors. so you don't have to face one more stank face. tidy cats. every home, every cat. there's a tidy cats for that.

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>> i was a trained interrogator deployed to iraq to deploy with a task force that was responsible for tracking down everyone on the deck of cards, specifically saddam hussein. >> i went to tikrit, his hometown, but i had never actually conducted a real, live interrogation. i didn't really feel like i knew what i was doing at all. but i learned very quickly. >> in the beginning we would go in a room with eric, the translator and the detainee. and eric would begin questioning and talking to the individual. >> as the interrogator, i worked for a commander. i would bring in the information that helps him make better decisions. and to give that information, i was learning how to get inside

the minds of these prisoners and break them down. when i'm talking about breaking a prisoner, it has nothing to do with physical contact or any kind. it has to do with breaking their previous decision of not cooperating with me to provide me information, and now they choose to provide me that information. that's a break. >> as questions are being asked and answered, every now and then i might pass him a note to highlight on a topic that was brought up. or tell him the individual was lying based off of what happened on the operation. jeff and i were figuring out how to ask good questions. we could tell when someone was lying. and we were beginning to confront them with those lies. >> we were able to follow each other mentally without talking. he knew what i needed. so yeah, we worked real well together.

>> we interrogate all night and then maybe at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning we would sit down and we would talk about it. and we would talk about it nonstop. >> and it became a big fees pie our day to day life, using those interrogations during the operations. >> u.s. troops carried out predawn raids in saddam hussein's hometown. the army says several suspects were arrested in tikrit. >> by september, jeff and i had gone beyond just determining the guilt or innocence of the prisoners that we brought in. i was trying to get information that would lead to an insurgent member, a current bad guy, or a former regime official. >> did anybody think that saddam hussein was in tikrit at this time? >> nobody thought saddam hussein was in tikrit. we looked through the whole

town. we had gone on hundreds and thousands of raids. we had been through all of the houses and he wasn't there. >> we kind of put finding saddam not so much on the back burner, but we literally got tired of chasing santa claus. and what i mean by that is you would always have a reporting that saddam was here, saddam was there. so instead of looking for that santa claus, we started looking for what we knew to be facts. >> the current insurgency was what i saw killing our soldiers. and that to me was like, we're going after the real bad guys. >> the u.s. calls this operation iraqi freedom. the war of liberation, they say, to make iraq's people free. commanders acknowledge the resistance has been unexpectedly fierce. >> by this phase of the campaign, we tactically were doing everything we had ever been trained to do to defeat

this insurgency. the way they were using land mines and ieds was tactically correct. so we knew there was a degree of professionalism that we were facing, and it was deadly. >> the iraqi battle space was a complex environment. learning the human terrain was as important, if not more important than understanding the physical terrain. >> the key to understanding the area of emerging threats was to maintain communications with the local inhabitants. listen to them, spend a lot of time with them, gather information. >> every individual you talk to can give you something that you didn't know. that was a trick eric figured out. that everybody you talked to has a piece of information that you may not have known, that if you can store it, it can become value later. >> there's no way to know how critical all the details are that i get from interrogations. but i do remember them all.

you never know till much later what details really matter. jeff and i worked for a couple of months, and these prisoners are providing us information. and i started to get a feel for tikrit. and i realized, every person has a life and they have a family and they live in a neighbor and they're part of a tribe and they go to a certain mosque. that's like this family's kids go to this elementary school. that means they're going to have connections to other families that go to that elementary school. it all ties in. so when the local iraqi police says hey, we got this guy, a month ago, we would have said so what? now we're like oh, that's a cousin of so and so. bring him in. >> were we catching saddam? no. but were we getting closer in painting a picture of how to get to him? yes. we weren't getting locations, we weren't getting places, but we were getting pieces of a puzzle

that let everybody understand that nobody was going to know where he was until we found the right people. >> after several hundred interrogations, these prisoners, they started talking about their insurgency groups. they started popping up the names of al muslids. september 5th, they brought in a guy al muslit. he was an inner circle bodyguard for saddam hussein. and we talked to him all night. nasr asim breaks. >> saddam hussein had a security apparatus surrounding him. multiple layers and all these bodyguards played a role.

>> they had 28 out of the 32 inner circle bodyguards for saddam hussein. and this al muslit group filtered through all levels of the bodyguard network. and we started to realize, maybe this is not just about the insurgency, it's about saddam hussein and the previous leadership structure. >> in the middle east, tribal and family relationships are paramount to how business gets done. the muslit clan was in close alliance with saddam's family. >> many of us compared this to which hollywood would call a organized crime family. that's what we saw. >> we realized these individuals

were in and around the tikrit area. these individuals were close to saddam at one time. so we assumed they would at least know key things on how to find saddam. >> that was the first time i thought we may something. fight heartburn fast. with tums chewy delights. the mouthwatering soft chew that goes to work in seconds to conquer heartburn fast. tum tum tum tum. chewy delights. only from tums.

>> how long will saddam hussein remain embarrassing unfinished business for members of the united states along with other wanted. >> i remember seeing black and white portraits of saddam hussein in people's homes, still displaying loyalty. that was an indicator to me that they sensed saddam was still out there. >> every military on the ground was looking for saddam hussein. but eric and i realized nobody was going to know where he was until we found the right people. >> in order to find saddam hussein, we were going after the insurgen insurgency, but we didn't know who was in charge of the insurgency. but jeff and i were starting to see a lot of these al muslits who are involved in the insurgency. they brought in a guy, nas nasr yasim omar al muslit.

he breaks and lays out 28 of the 32 inner circle bodyguards for saddam. mohammed ibrahim and others all from the muslit family. i'm thinking about who's running this insurgency. and i started to realize it was all connected to this family, these al muslits. so now i know if we find anybody related to an al muslit, that's where we focus our time. so we're bringing in all these people. and jeff and i figured out a very cloer way to get these prisoners to open up and start providing us information. we're really running. and then it comes into early october. and jeff's leaving.

>> our rotation was up and we were placed by another unit. they came in and we flew home. >> as soon as the new team showed up, i was introduced to their intelligence analyst. the analyst was there to collect information that could lead to the capture of high-value targets. i told this team, listen, there's a team of bodyguards and i think they're very powerful, controlling this insurgency. so what i started doing is charting my information out on pieces of paper. now, the focal point was the al muslits. the new analyst loved charts. he would go to the computer and put it all into a computerized linked diagram. and two weeks into the new team being there, the new commander bam bam says eric, can we go arrest these guys? i thought you would never ask.

the team starts going on raids to get these al muslits. we were going after my bad guys now. and we told the guards, anybody says the word al muslit, call us. and november 7th, get a call from the informants that we know where rahman is. rahman al muslit. i always deemed him extremely important, because he was so close to saddam during the regime. and we capture the guy, but a team from baghdad came in with helicopters and threw him straight to baghdad so i never set eyes on rodman, they

captured his son as well. they said you have 48 hours. and they were going to release him. you have a strategy. i'm not trying to scare them and intimidate them. i'm trying to influence them to provide me the intelligence, which is inside their brain. they don't know what they know. so i started talking to baby radman. he was very defensive of his dad. so i would press, press, press on his dad. talk, talk, talk to him about his dad. and then i would go, does your dad have any brothers? and this kid looked at it as a release valve. oh, yeah, talk about something other than my dad? and we went through every single brother. and one of the brothers that we talked about was mohammad ibrahim. mohammad ibrahim omar al muslit.

another one of saddam hussein's inner circle bodyguards. and we very strongly felt that he was leading the insurgency throughout tikrit. and i said, i want this mohammed ibrahim, will you help me find him? he said yeah, my uncle, he's got these buddies he's always with. i said who? he said business partners and his driver. and i realize, i say all right, here we go. so i went to bam bam and i said listen, i know mohammed ibrahim's driver is not wanted, but i think he's valuable. i think he can take us to mohammed ibrahim and i've got to have him arrested. so bam bam arrested the driver of mohammed ibrahim. so i start interrogated basi basim latif. he said why do you want my boss?

i told him because he's running the insurgency. and then he said you have no idea what you're talking about. he satd mohammed ibrahim has never ordered a single attack. he said there's only one person that orders the attacks. there's only one person that's ever ordered the attacks, and it's the president. saddam hussein. i knew at that moment, we were finally really hunting saddam and we had a chance.

. >> army bulldozers are smashing saddam hussein's larger than life portrait in an apparent attempt to loosen his political grip. >> why is it so hard to find him? >> he has a lot of experience running underground. he had a lot of years to prepare and he's got a very big country to hide in. >> saddam had built such a cult around himself that he was the symbol of iraqi resistance, and in the end he was the key high-value target. >> so my interrogation with mohammad ibrahim's driver bassam latif went on for several years and eventually he broke. he said there's only one person that orders the attacks and that's the president. that's what they call saddam, the president.

i knew at that moment, we were hunting saddam. i knew we were finally really hunting him and we had a chance. i felt very strongly that saddam hussein was in the area. it was saddam's hometown. i felt he was in contact with mohammed ibrahim and he might be a route to saddam. but i'm running out of time to find mohammed ibrahim. my tour was up. i was supposed to be there for six months. i was about to leave. my flight was leaving the country on december 13th. i didn't care. i'm not stopping. basam didn't know mohammed ibrahim's exact location, but he had several safe houses for mohammed ibrahim and he gave all of these locations. it was go time. >> and that made sense because the enemy we were dealing with

then was networked across the country side in cells, from one family group to another family group. and sometimes you would gather information about one area in the most unlikely places. >> we conducted five simultaneous raids on all of the mohammed ibrahim safe houses. mohammed ibrahim was not located at any of them . he wasn't there. but mohammed ibrahim's 20-year-old son was there. so i start interrogating mohammed ibrahim about his dad. and he tells me, my dad was at the house two hours before you all came. and i'm done. i'm done. who is supposed to know where he

went? who would know? i've got everyone leading up to a moment in time and in a two-hour gap, he's gone. we'd exhausted every target to find mohammed ibrahim. i was hoping the son could give him the next spot. so i'm talking to him, looking far clue. i talk to him all night. i mean, all night. i can't think of anything. i'm talking and talking and talking. then i asked him, what does your dad do for fun? what's his hobbies? he said they go fishing. i said where do they fish? he says in samara. i said where? he said on the river. i said where? he said they just built this pond. and i said he built a pond.

i said why would they build a popped? and it came to me. august, jeff and i are interrogating saddam hussein's cook. >> the individual was picked up on ahead, nobody knew who he was. during the process of conducting interrogations, it was identified that he was a former chef. and one of the things we learned in that conversation was every time saddam showed up, he cooked a special meal. we asked what that special meal was, and it was musqut. it's a fish that's raised in fish farms in iraq. >> the fish pond is built in a middle of a war? why would you do that? unless you're stocking fish for the guy who can't be going to

the store to get fish. at that point, it wasn't just a hunt. we had to go to that pond. headquarters in baghdad is going to raid the fish pond, and i was convinced we were getting close to saddam. but for me to find him, i've got to have mohammed ibrahim. night comes and i was told, whatever happened at the fish pond, that would be my last night in tikrit. they conducted the raid and captured two guys. and 20 minutes later, bam bam calls back on the radio and he says it's a dry hole. he says we got two fishermen. and they told me, they said listen, you're done. you're going back to baghdad for your last few days. and i knew time was running out

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>> we have to hunt him down. we have 130,000 troops there. we have not done that. >> i was supposed to be there for six months. my assignment was almost up, but i didn't care. i would not stop looking for s saddam. i called one of the interrogators in baghdad and said don't let the fishermen go, i'm coming tonight. i needed to prove what they were. there's no way two guys are sticking around in the middle of nowhere next to a fish pond fishing at 1:00 in the morning. that have night, i started my interrogations of the fishermen. we started talking to the first one. he seemed kind of normal. actually, i was kind of worried. i start talking to the second fishermen and i realize, these two fishermen have different

stories. and i went one hour and one hour and back and forth on these fishermen, kind of turned them against each other. it took 12 hours. one of the fishermen finally says, i work for mohammed ibrahim. he goes, i just fish. i just fish and put all the fish in the pond. i get him to understand that mohammed ibrahim is a bad guy and working as his fishermen gets him in trouble. and he says listen, my cousin is the deputy to mohammed ibrahim, they are always together. he goes, they left samara three days ago. where did they go? baghdad. got the exact location, exact house. so i brought in an analyst from the task force team in baghdad and said man, i got a target. mohammed ibrahim in baghdad. and i know this is my last

chance to find mohammed ibrahim and saddam hussein. they call about 1:00 and said we're bringing in the prisoners, the guy owns the house with three other people. they drive him in, they drop him off. i bring in the first prisoner, the one who said owned the house. what's your name, mohammed? mohammed what? hedar. okay. took two hours for him to say i'm the deputy to mohammed ibrahim. good, where is he? he said he was at the house last night. i'm thinking son of a bitch. it's a ghost. i missed him again. i was devastated. i asked him, where was he? where was he? he said he was at the house.

and i'm getting where is he! i know you know how powerful -- i'm yelling at him. and theling kwthelinguist is sa mister, he was saying he was at the house when the soldiers came. i was like they don't miss anybody. and i went, did they get him? and i went to the guards and i said who do we have? who was brought in on this raid? i'm looking at three guys sitting on the ground, hoods on, hands behind their back. and i'm like is mohammed ibrahim one of these guys? and i knew exactly what he was supposed to look like. john travolta. he had a john travolta chin. i'm running out of time. first hood, not him. second hood, definitely not him.

third hood, i didn't even get it off his head and i saw the chin. my entire tour in tikrit was going to come down to my last 2 1/2 hours. mo ham med ibrahim in a six by six foot room in baghdad. he had a mental chess game. he denied capabilities and i was countering his moves. he says you give me too much credit. i would say i don't give you any credit. i would list off every one of his brothers and relatives and cousins and all of these a al muslits we captured and i said they give you credit kbauz you ruined their lives. they'll spend the rest of their

life in prison unless you take us to saddam. it's going to happen without you or with you. if it happens with you, all your relatives walk. if it happens without you, you get nothing. then he said if i tell you where saddam hussein is, they'll kill me. then i said be uh you're "they." you're the top person. you're the only one that doesn't have ramifications for giving up saddam. give him up and you won't be the leader of the insurgency. you'll be the one that stood up to the plate, to the dictator, that will be you and your family walks. and i know he was listening to me. i know he was. i had to leave at 7:00 and they were banging on my door going --

i mean 7:00 came. and they came in and said you're out, man. you've got to be at your manifest. i told thhim, i'm leaving. you're going to die in here a prisoner, a terrorist. and you won't have another shot because nobody knows what you can do. nobody knows what you can do. this is it. and he's like, i can't do it. i said you're going to change your mind and you're going to want to do it. and when you're going to want to do it, make them come talk to you. go crazy, bang on the walls, bang on the make them come talk to you. and i left. so i went to my tent to pack my bags. a few minutes later, a colleague picks me up and is taking me to the flight line. and my buddy was like, what did you do to your guy?

the linguist sent a message that muhammed ibrahim's banging on the walls of his cell. and i jumped out of the truck, and i just told lee, i said, go hold that plane. he's going to give up saddam hussein. and lee's like, i got it. and i ran back. got muhammed ibrahim out, and he declared that we take us to saddam hussein right then. i got out the map, and he drew an exact location on the map, drew the sketch. said farmhouse in the village of adwar, which is the outskirts of tikrit. he said we got to go, we got to go right now. i went outside and told the other interrogators, this is the map to saddam hussein. and they're like, dude, go get on the plane. get ready for the rio olympic games

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and it was the commander of special operations unit. he goes, well, the guy we're looking for, we picked up in baghdad. i go, really? he says, yeah. i said, you know what we're doing tonight? we're going after saddam. i knew we had to move that night because i think once that guy was captured, the word would eventually get back. you know, the reality is we didn't know what to expect. i mean, this was a difficult place, adwar. it was the hometown of saddam hussein. yes, there was going to be risk so i expected a fight, a serious fight. based upon lessons from other missions very similar to this. i said, listen, when does the moon come up? 2100 hours. okay. sunset is about 6:30. i wanted it to be absolute

blackout conditions, no illumination whatsoever when we got on to the objective. that would give us an advantage. and i also wanted to move fast. you understand the risks, but as a commander, you try to mitigate those risks through artful tactics. element of surprise, overwhelming force at the objective area, apache gunships, what have you. i mean, i had an armor brigade with every implement of war that you could imagine with incredibly courageous and skilled soldiers, operating with the most capable combat special operators in the world. i had this sword that would do anything. the night was incredibly quiet. and by 1930, or 7:30 at night, the sun is set. it's completely blacked out. we were ready to go.

so now the assault force is moving towards what we called the release point at a high rate of speed. and everything is going like clockwork. no lights on. we're using our night-vision goggles. the first assault party went in, and the special operations leader knew there was a possibility of an underground facility. but the special operators didn't find anything on the objective and sort of walked off and said probably a dry hole, and dez bailey, the commander said, let's go back and check again. around 8:15, got the initial report, possible jackpot. >> ladies and gentlemen, we got him! [cheers and applause]

>> within 24 hours of having the critical piece of information giving away his location, they went there, surrounded the area. discovered him hiding in a hole in the ground that was what was described as an essentially a small man-made hole, about six feet by eight feet in size. hiding there when troops discovered him in that location, he came out. he was disoriented. >> he said i am saddam hussein, i'm the president of iraq, and i'm willing to negotiate. and then the response from u.s. soldiers was president bush sends his regards. >> we found saddam hussein about 9 kilometers southeast of his hometown. but it just seemed to make sense to me, he's going to trust his own people. he's going to trust his own blood. that's how that baathist regime really worked, at least saddam's inner circle. he was a small village boy who

went back to his hometown in his last days. and that's where he decided to hide out, not too far from where he was born and grew up. he went home to feel safe. >> were you disappointed that you didn't get to be involved in the capture of saddam hussein? >> i get that question more than any question in the world. i don't care. i don't need to see him. he's not a relic. it wasn't my job to see him.

back in 1981, i had the american dream. a beautiful wife, a house in the suburbs and a 6-year-old son. i still have the heartache. i still have the rage. i waited years for justice. i know what it's like to be there waiting for some answers. and over those years, i learned howo