AIN'T LIKE THE MOVIES:

Death of a Terrorist: The Americans had come close to killing him before, but he'd managed to escape. Not this time. (Evan Thomas and Rod Nordland, 6/19/06, Newsweek)

All the while, the Americans were trying to catch Zarqawi. The name of the unit tasked with capturing him changed from time to time—the most recent moniker, Task Force 145, was recently dropped after it became too widely known, says a senior diplomat who did not wish to publicly discuss classified information. The toughest U.S. commandos were working the streets in Iraq for any clues, and their methods were not always Marquis of Queensberry. In March, a New York Times story described how an elite Special Operations unit called Task Force 6-26 had taken over one of Saddam's old torture chambers and turned it into an interrogation cell called the Black Room. Placards on the wall advised NO BLOOD, NO FOUL, and interrogators spat on prisoners and beat them with rifle butts, all to extract information that might lead to the capture of Zarqawi, according to the Times story.

The Iraqis and Americans came close on at least several occasions. Once, Iraqi forces actually held Zarqawi in custody outside Fallujah, but failed to recognize him and let him go after a half hour. Another time, American forces captured his driver and his laptop—but Zarqawi somehow slipped away.

It may seem odd that super-soldiers like Delta Force, celebrated for missions impossible in film and fiction, cannot catch a man with a $25 million bounty on his head in an area crawling with U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. But the bureaucratic and logistical obstacles facing even the most elite operators were portrayed in revealing detail in an Army Times article, published last month. The article, whose details were confirmed by a U.S. counterterror official who wished to remain anonymous discussing secret operations, recounted the failed attempts of the group then called Task Force 145 to hunt down Zarqawi, who was known to be on the run inside the Sunni Triangle.

In February 2005, the Americans got a tip that Zarqawi was due to travel down a road alongside the Tigris River. An elaborate ambush was set up—but Zarqawi didn't show. Then, just as the Americans were about to give up, a vehicle blew through a Delta Force roadblock and came bearing down on a checkpoint manned by Rangers. A machine gunner had the SUV squarely in his sights and asked permission to fire. The lieutenant in charge hesitated; he did not have a "positive I.D." of the passengers inside. The vehicle roared by, and there, holding a U.S. assault rifle and staring wildly out the window, was the face of Zarqawi. Quickly, the special operators mounted a pursuit. Delta operators took off on a high-speed chase while an unmanned aerial drone, known as a Shadow, watched the scene unfold from on high. Zarqawi was "s---ting in his pants," a special operator later recounted to the Army Times. "He was screaming at the driver. He knew he was caught."

But technology failed the hunters. The camera on the drone automatically "reset," switching from a tight focus on Zarqawi's vehicle to a wide-angle view of the town. Staffers manning the Shadow's camera scrambled to zoom back in on Zarqawi—but by then he had jumped out of the car and vanished.

This spring the Americans began squeezing Zarqawi again. In April, a raid on a terrorist safe house by Navy SEAL Team Six killed five terrorists, three of whom wore suicide belts. At the time, Zarqawi "was probably 1,000 meters away," a Special Ops source told Army Times. In the safe house, special operators found a tape—showing Zarqawi, in his black pajamas and white running shoes, fumbling with an American-made automatic weapon.

In the end, Zarqawi may have been brought down by his own vanity and virulence. In an effort to stir sectarian violence, to pit Shiites against Sunnis in civil war, Zarqawi had staged several bombings against Shia holy places, including a February attack against a revered shrine in Samarra. The bloodbaths had their desired effect; Iraq seemed to be verging on all-out civil war. But they brought a reprimand from bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who chided Zarqawi for turning public opinion against Al Qaeda by targeting fellow Muslims.

By the time Zarqawi was making videos of himself in April, he was increasingly marginalized and in danger of betrayal. "He felt under pressure, and he felt he was losing power," says a senior Jordanian security official who declined to be identified discussing intelligence. Zarqawi had recently formed a mujahedin Shura Council to put more of an Iraqi face on the insurgency. The tape was an effort to assert his control, says the official, who adds, "It was a big mistake. The minute the tape was released was the beginning of his end."

The Jordanians had been aggressively seeking Zarqawi ever since his forces bombed three hotels in Amman in November, killing 60 people and wiping out a wedding party. In December, King Abdullah, wearing the uniform of the Jordanian Special Forces, personally told his top intel officers, "I am not going to wait for Zarqawi to come and hit Jordan." In short order, an elite unit called the Group of the Knights of God was established to hunt the outlaw.

It appears that the Jordanians were the first to penetrate Zarqawi's network, although even Jordanian officials concede that the final attack on Zarqawi was the work of American special operators. The details remain murky, but military and intelligence officials laid out a basic outline of the final hunt.

At some point about two weeks before the attack, the Americans learned the identity of Zarqawi's latest spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdel-Rahman. American intelligence began to stalk him, following his movements by an aerial drone, hoping he would lead the Americans to Zarqawi. Some news organizations also reported that American spooks had an informer inside Zarqawi's inner circle. It is hard to know for sure: American intelligence has been known to plant disinformation about spies and traitors in order to sow distrust among terrorist cells. U.S. intelligence officials, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter, would say only that the Americans were able to piece together a mosaic from human sources, aerial reconnaissance and electronic intercepts.

Bureaucracy had slowed the hunt for Zarqawi in the past. This time, the special operators moved quickly. When they were sure that Zarqawi had arrived at the safe house in a palm grove outside the village of Hibhib, commanders ordered in a bombing attack. Apparently, little thought was given to trying to storm the safe house to take Zarqawi alive. "You have to ask yourself, is it worth putting American men and women's lives at risk to go into what was probably a heavily fortified and guarded thing, in order to grab him?" said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a senior military spokesman in Baghdad. A U.S. counterterror official, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, noted that this was the first chance the Americans had to bomb Zarqawi without causing a great deal of collateral damage, i.e., killing many innocent civilians, including women and children.

At about 6:15 on Wednesday night, two F-16 warplanes on routine patrol were given coordinates of the safe house and told a "high-value target" was inside. Since one of the planes was in the midst of midair refueling, both bombs were dropped by one plane. The devastation was complete. According to wire reports, a pair of thin foam mattresses were scattered across the rubble, along with a small carton of pineapple juice, with its straw intact. Little else was. (A neighbor claimed that Americans beat Zarqawi before he died.)

Almost immediately, special operators began raiding terrorist safe houses in Baghdad and the surrounding area, rolling up Zarqawi's allies and deputies. The men had been under observation while the hunt for Zarqawi went on; now the time had come to kill or capture them before they could strike again. The roundup was deemed a great success by military spokesmen.

Zarqawi, who was always extremely well financed, was smart enough to decentralize his operation, delegating to local "emirs" the authority to stage attacks without checking with him. Even with special operators rounding up some lieutenants, there may be operations already in the works that can't be cut off. Still, at least one Zarqawi expert is sanguine. Historian Amatzia Baram of Israel's University of Haifa says, "This is a feather in the cap of American intelligence. It has very little to do with drones. This is HUMINT [human intelligence]." When the Americans conquered Iraq, "American human intelligence was close to zero," says Baram. True, "terror organizations are not taken out with one blow; somebody takes their place." But Baram sees an opportunity to drive a wedge between Sunni tribal leaders and the remnants of Zarqawi's group. Even before Zarqawi was taken out, there was tension and even open fighting between them in the Sunni Triangle and along the Syrian border.

How They Killed Him: The inside story of how al-Qaeda informants turned on Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, led U.S. forces to the terrorist's lair and ended a frustrating hunt for Iraq's most wanted man (SCOTT MACLEOD, BILL POWELL, 6/11/06, TIME)

The dinner party had gathered last Wednesday evening in a farmhouse in the fertile, fruit-growing countryside just outside Baqubah, 30 miles north of Baghdad. One of the attendees was Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. With him were at least three women and three men, including Sheik Abdul-Rahman, al-Zarqawi's so-called spiritual adviser and confidant. Also in the house was one of al-Zarqawi's most trusted couriers, an aide tasked with relaying messages from the commander to militants in the field. What al-Zarqawi could not have known was that U.S. and Jordanian intelligence officials had been tracking the movements of Abdul-Rahman and the courier--whom Jordanian intelligence refers to as Mr. X--for weeks. Fewer than half a dozen members of a U.S. reconnaissance and surveillance team from Delta Force hid in a grove of date and palm trees, watching the building. After years of hunting, they finally had the prey in their sights.

But almost as soon as they took up position, the commandos feared they were about to lose him. A special-operations source tells TIME that the surveillance team was worried that there wasn't enough time to assemble a ground assault force to raid the house and capture al-Zarqawi; the commandos at the site lacked sufficient manpower and weaponry to attack on their own. As dusk neared, the team fretted al-Zarqawi might slip away if they waited too long. A knowledgeable Pentagon official says the Delta team "saw one group come into the house and one group exit." Al-Zarqawi was not in the departing group, but the commandos were afraid he might be in the next one. The recon unit's leader radioed his superiors to request an air strike. Two Air Force F-16s on another mission miles away were given the assignment. At 6:12 p.m., the first of two precision-guided 500-lb. bombs fell on the farmhouse. For anyone still inside, there was nowhere left to hide.

The U.S. wasn't taking chances. During the three-year hunt for him, al-Zarqawi was a maddeningly elusive target--a master of disguise who could pass as a woman in a burqa one day, an Iraqi policeman the next. He traveled in groups of women and children to lower suspicion and frequently moved with ease through checkpoints in Iraq. Although military commanders believe they came close to capturing al-Zarqawi on at least half a dozen occasions in the past two years, few had reason to anticipate an imminent breakthrough. But military and intelligence officials in Washington, Baghdad and Amman tell TIME that the net around al-Zarqawi tightened significantly in the weeks leading up to the strike--boosted by the cooperation of al-Qaeda informants willing to betray their leader. The U.S. scored the war's biggest triumph since catching Saddam Hussein thanks to the determination of a small group of American hunters, to a Jordanian King's desire to avenge an attack on his country and, as always, to a good deal of luck. "This wasn't two hours', two nights' or two weeks' work," says a government source. "This was years of work to get this one guy."

As always, we ask the question: how can the terrorists ever hope to take over the running of countries if they can never afford to let us know where they are?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2006 9:27 PM