Capturing Saddam Hussein alive was easier than it would be to apprehend the Bush administration’s No. 1 fugitive, Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said Sunday.
Both Hussein and bin Laden spent huge sums of money preparing to elude an American-led dragnet. But bin Laden, who has hidden from U.S. forces for more than two years, has advantages Hussein didn’t enjoy, according to U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts. The leader of Al Qaeda has an apparent hideout deep within the recesses of a vast and lawless mountain range.
U.S. officials say that cash payments they have been spreading around Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in an effort to buy information about both fugitives is more attractive to Iraqis than to tribal chieftains.
Hussein’s supporters, the U.S. intelligence community has suggested, believed in recent weeks that they were part of a dying regime. Bin Laden’s stature, however, continues to rise among a growing base of supporters who appear willing to fight to the death to defend him, several U.S. officials said.
“In the frontier area, we seem to have no traction, and our money doesn’t work,” said one U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with the hunt for the bin Laden. “Saddam supporters probably thought they were part of a dead enterprise. Bin Laden’s don’t think they are part of a dead enterprise.”
