Operation Hotel California, The Clandestine War Inside Iraq

by anderson

Listen to The Marc Steiner show as Marc talks with former CIA operative Charles "Sam" Faddis about his new book, <Operation Hotel California, The Clandestine War Inside Iraq. The section on how the White House nixed support for taking out a major al Qaeda cell in Iraq is fascinating.

(discussion begins at 14:45 into the program, drag the tracker there to skip the first segment.)

Synopsis: In July of 2002, 8 Americans crossed the Harburr River from Turkey into Kurdistan. Their mission? To strike and kill Al-Qaeda, and take down Saddam Hussein's Baathist dictatorship.

Charles "Sam" Faddis was the leader of that operation. In a new book written with Mike Tucker, he delivers a blistering indictment of the national security blunders made by the Bush administration-and for the first time, tells the story of that operation, which had profound consequences for the Iraq War.

Transcript snippet:

Steiner: This was a White House operation … this was part of a plan to go after terrorists inside Iraq.

Faddis: When we originally stood up the team, in early 2002, February, 2002 — meaning we're now pulling together guys, pulling together equipment, we're training, we're getting ready to go — number one item on our list of missions on our operational task is, begin preparation for the invasion of Iraq. So, that's the first critical thing that I think people should understand here. In February, 2002, we stood up this team because the decision had been made, we are going to invade Iraq.

Steiner: … everything we went through with the UN, all the back and forth, the machinations with the Bush administration, was poppycock. You were sent over there in advance of an invasion they already knew was going to take place.

Faddis: Apparently so.

The extent to which this is true is really kind of hard to imagine. But, in fact, when we stood up the team, and we were, say March, April, we hoped to be on the ground inside Iraq, we were originally being briefed that this whole thing would be over in about sixty days. In other words, we should only plan on being in country for sixty days. …

I can remember vividly being inside Iraq much later when this whole diplomatic initiative was launched, we went to the United Nations, and talking to people at headquarters and saying, I'm sorry, I don't understand what's going on. You sent me here months and months and months ago, telling me the decision's been made, but now we're at the United Nations, acting like we haven't made the decision and their response was, don't worry about it, nothing's changed, we're still going.