need-to-know principle may sound persnickety or even obsessive, but it works for a reason.
All agencies feel an obligation to an asset working for them in a very high-risk situation, no matter how ignoble that asset may be as a human being. The fact that Jericho was clearly a mercenary and no high-minded ideologue was not the point. The fact that he was cynically betraying his country and its government was irrelevant. The government of Iraq was perceived to be repulsive anyway, so one rogue was playing traitor to another bunch.
The point was, apart from his obvious value and the fact that his information might well save Allied lives on the battlefield, Jericho was a high-value asset, and both the agencies running him had kept his very existence known only to a tiny circle of initiates. No government ministers, no politicians, no civil servants, and no soldiers had been formally told that any Jericho existed. His product therefore had been disguised in a variety of ways. A whole range of cover stories had been devised to explain where this torrent of information was coming from.
Military dispositions were supposed to stem from a series of defections by Iraqi soldiers from the Kuwait theater, including a nonexistent major being extensively debriefed at a secret intelligence facility in the Middle East but outside Saudi Arabia.
Scientific and technical information regarding weapons of mass destruction was said to have been gleaned from an Iraqi science graduate who had defected to the British after studying at Imperial College, London, and falling in love with an English girl, and an intensive second run-through of European technicians who had worked inside Iraq between 1985 and 1990.
Political intelligence was attributed to a mix of refugees pouring out of Iraq, covert radio messages from occupied Kuwait, and brilliant signals intelligence and electronic intelligence—sigint and elint—listening-in, and aerial surveillance.
But how to explain a direct report of Saddam’s own words, however bizarre their claim, conducted within a closed meeting inside his own palace, without admitting to an agent in the highest circles of Baghdad?
The dangers of making such an admission were appalling. For one thing, there are leaks. There are leaks all the time. Cabinet documents leak, civil service memoranda leak, and interdepartmental messages leak.
Politicians, so far as the covert community is concerned, are the worst.
To believe the nightmares of the master spooks, they talk to their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, hairdressers, drivers, and bartenders.
They even talk confidentially to each other with a waiter bending over the table.
Add to that the fact that Washington and London have press and other media veterans whose investigative talents make the FBI and Scotland Yard seem slow on the uptake, and one has a problem explaining away Jericho’s product without admitting to a Jericho.
Finally, London still had hundreds of Iraqi students—some certainly agents of Dr. Ismail Ubaidi’s Foreign Intelligence arm of the Mukhabarat—prepared to report back anything they saw or heard.
It was not just a question of someone denouncing Jericho by name; that would be impossible. But one hint that information had come out of Baghdad that should not have come, and Rahmani’s counterintelligence net would go into overdrive to detect and isolate the source. At best, that could ensure Jericho’s future silence as he clammed up to protect himself; at worst, his capture.
As the countdown for the start of the air war rolled on, the two agencies recontacted all their former experts in the matter of nuclear physics and asked for a rapid reassessment of the information already given. Was there, after all, any conceivable possibility that Iraq might have a greater and faster isotope separation facility than previously thought?
In America experts at Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos were consulted again and in Britain experts at Harwell and Aldermaston. Department Z at Livermore, the people who constantly monitor Third World nuclear proliferation, was especially pressed.
The experts came back, rather testily, to reconfirm their advice. Even taking a worst-case scenario, they said—assuming not one but two entire gas diffusion centrifuge cascades operating not for one but for two years— there was no way in creation Iraq could have more than half the uranium-235 she would need for a single medium- yield device.
That left the agencies with a menu of options.
Saddam was mistaken because he had been lied to himself.
Conclusion: unlikely. Those responsible would pay with their lives for such an outrage against the Rais.
Saddam had said it, but he was lying. Conclusion: quite feasible—to boost morale among his flagging and apprehensive supporters. But why confine the news to the innermost fanatics, who were not flagging and who were not apprehensive? Morale-boosting propaganda is for the masses and abroad. Unanswerable.
Saddam did not say it. Conclusion: the whole report was a farrago of lies. Secondary conclusion: Jericho lied because he is greedy for money and thinks with the war coming his time will soon be over. He had put a million- dollar price tag on his information.
Jericho lied because he has been unmasked and has revealed all.
Conclusion: also possible, and this option posed horrendous personal hazard to the man in Baghdad to maintain the link.
At this point the CIA moved firmly into the driver’s seat. Langley, being the paymaster, had a perfect right to do so.
“I’ll give you the bottom line, Steve,” said Bill Stewart to Steve Laing on a secure line from the CIA to Century House on the evening of January 14. “Saddam’s wrong or he’s lying; Jericho’s wrong or he’s lying. Whatever, Uncle Sam is not going to pay a million greenbacks into an account in Vienna for this kind of trash.”
“There’s no way the unconsidered option might be right after all,
Bill?”
“Which one’s that?”
“That Saddam said it and he’s right.”
“No way. It’s a three-card trick. We’re not going to swallow it. Look, Jericho’s been great for nine weeks, even though we’re now going to have to recheck what he gave us. Half has already been proved, and it’s good stuff. But he’s blown it with this last report. We think that’s the end of the line. We don’t know why, but that’s the wisdom from the top of the mountain.”
“Creates problems for us, Bill.”
“I know, pal, and that’s why I’m calling within minutes of the end of the conference with the Director. Either Jericho has been taken and has told the goon squad everything, or he’s up and running. But if he gets to know we’re not sending him any million dollars, I guess he’ll turn nasty. Either way, that’s bad news for your man in there. He’s a good man, right?”
“The best. Hell of a nerve.”
“So get him out of there, Steve. Fast.”
“I think that’s what we’ll have to do, Bill. Thanks for the tip. Pity—it was a good op.”
“The best, while it lasted.”
Stewart hung up. Laing went upstairs to see Sir Colin. The decision was made within an hour.
By the hour of breakfast on the morning of January 15 in Saudi Arabia, every aircrew member, American, British, French, Italian, Saudi, and Kuwaiti, knew that they were going to war. The politicians and the diplomats, they believed, had failed to prevent it. Through the day all air units moved to prebattle alert.
The nerve centers of the campaign were located in three establishments in Riyadh.
On the outskirts of Riyadh military air base was a collection of huge air-conditioned tents, known because of the green light that suffused them through the canvas as the Barn. This was the first filter for the tidal wave of air intelligence photographs that had been flowing in for weeks and that would double and triple in the weeks to come.
The product of the Barn—a synthesis of the most important photographic information pouring in from so many reconnaissance sorties—went a mile up the road to the headquarters of the Royal Saudi Air Force, a great chunk of which had been made over to Central Air Force, or CENTAF.
A giant building of gray mottled concrete and glass built on piles a hundred fifty meters long, the headquarters has a basement running its full length, and it was here, one level below ground, that CENTAF
