Exclusive Book Excerpt: 'Sabotage' Part 5 -- Capturing Iraq's most wanted man

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, took an ingenious turn in 2006. The CIA dispatched agents into Iraqi Internet cafes, where they downloaded, within a matter of seconds, an amazing intelligence tool — a program that allowed the CIA to read e-mails as they were being written on café computers.

As members of al-Zarqawi’s organization typed messages, agents back home read along. The Agency calls it Digital Network Intelligence. But as promising as it seemed, such eavesdropping sometimes provided only clues. Terrorists often write in code: “I’ve got the groceries” may mean the terrorist has acquired needed guns or bomb parts.

Also targeting Internet cafés was another al-Zarqawi hunter: Task Force Orange, a six-hundred-person military spy unit. The e-mails captured by the CIA and Task Force Orange could tell eavesdroppers where to focus electronic intercepts. Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq used cell phones constantly to coordinate bombings. Seized cell phones often provided a list of key phone numbers to monitor.

The CIA played a key role in the hunt for al-Zarqawi, but in many ways, the most important figure was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld was the man chiefly responsible for getting the Pentagon involved in developing actionable intelligence for the War on Terror. He had complained in a 2002 memo to policy guru Douglas Feith that the armed forces were not organized for manhunts, and so he set out to change that.

Rumsfeld enlarged the DIA and in March 2003 made Stephen Cambone the first undersecretary of defense for intelligence. But it wasn’t enough. Rumsfeld was determined to make his special operations forces integral components in America’s intelligence efforts against the terrorists.

His chief terrorist-hunting force was Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), headquartered in a highly secure compound at Fort Bragg. There, the elite Army Delta Force and Navy SEAL Team 6 planned and practiced counter-terrorism. These daring commandos often relied on intelligence from others, and Rumsfeld wanted to move intelligence gathering in-house. In 2006 he assigned Task Force Orange to JSOC.

Task Force Orange, known as Gray Fox at the outset of the War on Terror, performed amazingly daring missions. It had its own air fleet at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Its members flew into countries under assumed names, principally to track people or intercept communications.

The NSA, for all its eavesdropping technology, cannot penetrate a fiber-optic telephone line. That’s why U.S. Navy submarines are used to find and splice undersea communications cables.

On land, Task Force Orange can do the same thing. Operators enter the targeted country, find the line they want to intercept, dig it up if need be, and attach a listening device.

Task Force Orange viewed al-Zarqawi as trackable. Unlike bin Laden, he was a hands-on operator. He personally met some of the foreign jihadis who entered Iraq, he did some of the planning, and he moved around the country like a field commander, encouraging his bands of murderers. Al-Zarqawi was a terrorist who relied on a cell phone.

He didn’t have his own, but borrowed others’, using them as mobile command posts to direct terror strikes. Cell phone signals even proved a perfect way to detonate deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from afar.

Using a constant cell phone signal and GPS (global positioning system), the spy teams of Task Force Orange can determine a terrorist’s exact location and track him. Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, one of the planners of the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole, was tracked in this way and killed with a Hellfire missile. By 2006, Task Force Orange had grown larger. It was divided into units that carried out signals intelligence, human spying, and commando operations. The Pentagon added a new division in 2006: Computer Network Operations.

One thing now remained: finding a way for the CIA and NSA to share Internet café intercepts. The CIA Baghdad station had a habit of not sharing tips. But JSOC, the Agency, and the NSA eventually worked out an agreement. The Joint Interagency Coordination Group, operating out of Balad, now circulates intelligence.

With all these pieces in place, the hunt for al-Zarqawi was on. Targeting the Internet cafés turned up al Qaeda operatives, who were then followed. The process: match e-mails from an al Qaeda member with cell phones that were in the vicinity of the café at the same time. The NSA collected the phone numbers, intercepted them, and identified the speakers.

The procedure created a list of al-Zarqawi’s followers, including his successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Task Force Orange, using its fleet of mobile ground interceptors and aircraft, tracked these followers. It was listening when an Islamic religious advisor to al Qaeda talked of visiting al-Zarqawi.

Spies and spy aircraft followed him. When he traveled to al-Zarqawi’s hideout near Baquba, north of Baghdad, JSOC’s hands-on commander, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, had his man. The Baghdad command quickly summoned two Air National Guard pilots, and an F-16 put bombs right on target.

Al-Zarqawi lay dying as U.S. personnel arrived less than an hour later. Among the people identifying the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was McChrystal. President Bush was so impressed that he singled out McChrystal and his organization at a White House press conference.

McChrystal, handpicked by Rumsfeld, was a new kind of JSOC commander. He spent little time at his Fort Bragg headquarters—or at any headquarters, for that matter. He was a three-star general who designed raids and then went on them alongside the enlisted men.

The hit on al-Zarqawi had been a perfect operation, from Rumsfeld’s point of view: military intelligence leading to a military manhunt leading to a military air strike. “Rumsfeld wanted to go over the heads of the CIA if he had to,” a military officer told me. “Now he had JSOC to do what the CIA did.”

JSOC had had a dry run before nabbing al-Zarqawi. Insurgents kidnapped American Jill Carroll, a freelance journalist writing an article for the Christian Science Monitor. When an American is nabbed in Iraq, JSOC goes into overdrive. In this case Task Force Orange picked up the communications of men linked to the kidnappers.

Delta Force and SEALs started breaking down doors, killing and capturing terrorists. One raid led to information for the next raid. They later determined Carroll was usually held at a farmhouse in Baquba.

JSOC, along with British Secret Air Service operatives, raided the farmhouse, capturing twenty terrorists and killing five. Carroll was not there, but Task Force Orange was getting closer—as was proved when Carroll’s captors suddenly released her. She was too hot, and JSOC was too good. As one special operator told me, the kidnappers had decided: “Here, you take her. Get off our backs.”

ABOUT "SABOTAGE": The articles in this series are drawn from “Sabotage,” a book appearing this week from Regnery Publishing. Author Rowan Scarborough, The Examiner’s national security correspondent, tells the story of a CIA bureaucracy that badly damaged the Bush administration with leaks, false allegations and sheer incompetency. He interviewed scores of intelligence and defense sources to paint a picture of an agency that fell into disarray under former President Bill Clinton and that is still rebuilding in the sixth year of the War on Terror. Scarborough is author of a previous book, “Rumsfeld’s War,” also published by Regnery.

Read other "Sabotage" excerpts | Order the book

Listen to Rowan Scarborough discuss his book on the radio at 11 am EST Friday on the American Family Radio Network.

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