Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing for their own safety All Foreign Nationals including journalists and inspectors should leave Iran hey you think you get Saddam should get him yet like he didn't know and I looked at him I go well it'd be a good Christmas present wouldn't it oh weapon slung because I'm putting the charge on the door but I pulled my pistol out and I just stuck it up in his face and I
said in English basically I had mouth open the door and he looked at me and he went no it's him it's moose lit it's the golden ticket and he and he's spilling his guts and one of the team members come back like a fish in the freezer to the top Saddam loved fish I was like oh [Music] surely after that they uncovered the rug with the Rope to the cork plug and the hole pulled the cork out saw this looking down on a guy pulled them out of the hole and it was set up [Music]
but I looked down and I said okay you'll be dead soon the month of November we caught it was like whack-a-mole it was like we'd get some Intel hit here there some guy that was connected I mean we were all over the country trying to catch Saddam uh it got to the point where it was comical like where we were laughing about it you know we would pre-stage at this point they've got fobs established in various points of the country so we would pre-stage at these fobs do a broad daylight Hilo assault to an objective
and then that evening we'd get another hit and we'd do a you know ground-based vehicle in fill and hit a Target in Baghdad and then we'd fly back to vermati and we'd hit a Target in ramadi it was like one after another after another 24-hour Ops we were literally exhausted and then lo and behold uh early December so it was December 12th of 2003 um we got a hit on a guy uh came up it doesn't matter how they figured it out but signal intelligence a guy popped up and on a phone and it was
a guy that we had been tracking named Mohammed Ibrahim al-muslit and mooslit is who our intelligence analyst uh it's not unlike the bin Laden story in that there was really one person that had been working the problem set from day one and they were really the key person for tracking down an individual we had an Intel guy that that tirelessly poured over information and details and data and background in history and had a pretty good idea of how and where Saddam would be who would be connected to him and then had further developed how he
was getting information out giving orders out whatever and who was hiding him and mooslit was the key to this he was the key Courier or messenger if you will that probably knew where Saddam was and was responsible for giving saddam's orders out to you know the the sort of network that was spread around Iraq uh so we called him the golden ticket and so they told us that we had a possible for moose lit and it was in Baghdad um which we were surprised it actually wasn't far from where we were based out of our
mission support site the house that we lived in in Baghdad in the green zone and so we rolled out on vehicles um we hit the initial Target it was a troop plus so it was three teams plus a team from from another troop um that hit the initial Target and it was a dry hole like the most wasn't there nothing of value was there they didn't know anything but while we were there you know we were dead silent it wasn't like we blew doors and all that stuff it was a pretty quiet hit I think
they got it they gotta hit another hit and they narrowed down this location and it was a couple of blocks away so we moved it was a kind of four apartments in one house so it was two upstairs two downstairs with a stairwell that ran up the middle and then split so you had one apartment on the right one apartment on the left I ended up being the the lead team on the apartment on the right and I was a breacher at the time and another team had the door on the left um just putting
a charge up on the exterior door it was a dual door so I had to open the exterior and put a charge in between the two to get them to blow both directions so I'd open the door place my charge the team behind me on the other door had done the same and somebody in there had like bumped something and made a noise so I was on a knee and just put the charge on the door and a guy came to my door and like looked at me and I'm weapon slung because I'm putting the
charge on the door but I pulled my pistol out and I just stuck it up in his face and I said in English basically I had mouth open the door and he looked at me and he went and so he opened the door I basically just rode the door into him as soon as he turned the handle pushed him against the wall and just held him there as the teammate entry behind me cleared the room cleared the first room I think it had a bathroom and maybe one or two bedrooms off of it all secure
nothing you know nobody in the house progress to SSE so we're talking to the guy that I've had had against the wall cuffed that dude they're doing a little Battlefield interrogation with him and the other guys are going through portions of the house and we hear a call from one of the back bedrooms and it's a teammate he's like hey I need I need a guy there's somebody under the bed back here that was a good one you know the night before the night before we had a hit come up in Baghdad and it was
like hey it's one of saddam's Keepers and we've been chasing Saddam for a while let me back up let me back up to Thanksgiving proud of Thanksgiving I get called in by the star major in the talk now there's some guy in there and swimming clothes with one of those scarves on his neck you can tell yo you're new to Iraq that's a cool scarf right so that's still cool to you and he's standing there he's like hey Tom this guy's uh secret service from Texas he's one of President Bush's private security when he's in
Texas um the president has is going to dump his Security in DC he's going to go to Texas for Thanksgiving and they're going to take a secret flight over here and I want your troop to pull protection at you know buy out the Baghdad International Airport it's like okay all right uh what do you want me to do and so guy Tony took his own life after that took me out showed me everything you wanted to do then we brought the teams out or the team guys out and he's like hey uh what can I
tell him what can I because he told me not to tell him he was the president until the last second so I devised a story that was a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders coming in to entertain the troops and we got to protect them like hell yeah I'll do that right so they were motivated we went out to the airport we practiced our vehicle lineups and everything so we're out there Thanksgiving night you can hear that plane coming in and we're all waiting on the end of the runway and all of a sudden you see Air Force
One spiraling down and they all look over and I'm like all right I think now's a good time to tell you who's coming in it's not the cheerleaders I know it's going to piss you up but it's the president United States he's going to come serve some food and talk to the boys they were pissed but then it picks up and they're like all right this is cool you know as soon as we're chasing Air Force One down the runway for no reason other than to catch up with it later you know and like why
don't we just stay down this end of the runway we get out I mean we really didn't have much to do with it there was a few Secret Service Condoleezza Rice was there and she's a little firecracker piled him in drove him over to the mess tent we followed him over surrounded him and then I'm not his AIC but I'm close to him you know and we're backstage and he's gonna go talk to the Troops someone's talking about and you know who loves you the most blah blah blah building him up because I don't think
they knew he was there yet because it was a surprise visit no one ever knew about and we're standing backstage and he's like all right hey you think you get Saddam did you get him yet like he didn't know and I looked at him I go well it'd be a good Christmas present wouldn't it well yeah that'd be real nice you know I think I'll go talk to these boys now and he took off and it was Secret Service leans over and he goes did you just promise the president United States you'd have Saddam by
Christmas and I go I hope not said I hope I didn't do that I hope he didn't take it that way he goes you don't say anything to president unless it's a positive sentence said okay okay good to know now you know so he rolls out and we roll back and and then move on a few more well about a month or so you know Baghdad that night get a get a hit coming in hey one of saddam's handlers we think is coming into town we think he's going to be at this house we think
and then maybe we can find out where Saddam is and we had guys who were Illinois with you know other agencies down the street and I thought well they won't they'll want to be in on this I'll go grab them bring them back um that was the next day never mind we roll up plan to do the hit and as we're rolling in I see some guy walking down the street I just noticed you know black coat whatever walking down the street and win another gate I thought okay I logged it in Gate color I
don't know why went and hit the house really nothing there I'm like here we go again nothing nothing we call it chasing Elvis right never catching Saddam then we started taking fire from like far away at the back side of the house and I thought why are they are they trying to draw Us in why would you know why would someone shoot at us with our armored vehicles from that far away so I said hey I sent a team down I said there was a guy went in the gate told me call the gate and
it might have been Chris's team but Chris was on that team I think poured down that street and I told the story before about the goddamn they went in they cleared the place and found him underneath the bed with the plastic AK almost killed him had they killed him we wouldn't know where Saddam was right but they didn't so we caught him but to hear it later I think somebody met him at the gate and scared the [ __ ] out of him like they were trying to get in the gate and some guy opened
the gate and he was standing right there and freaked him out and I took in and then everything else was the same after that but they pulled him back brought him to the Target like all right never mind let's roll on back I didn't even talk to that guy it was just uneventful but we brought him back for suspicious reasons because well he had the toy AK and he almost got smoked and why would you have a toy AK and you know underneath a mattress in someone else's house took him back sent him to balad
for the other guys to have had their way with him and I went to bed everybody went to bed halfway through the day now you know hey hey we got a Saddam hit and I go yeah yeah when don't we have a Saddam hit I'm gonna finish sleeping no no it's a good one get up a guy wet pulled the mattress up and land underneath the bed on the floor was a guy like this as flat as he could be and he had a toy a plastic AK-47 laying next to him a toy a toy
a kid's toy sure you're not and so pick this guy up he didn't look like the photos we had a moose lit um we didn't think we on the ground didn't think it was him ah whatever it's another one of those dry holes but they were both a little weird and a little shady and there was a few things on target that didn't make sense um and one of them was in the SSC and muslim's wallet he had you know a couple thousand dollars worth of cash and it was in U.S hundreds the U.S hundreds
were sequential so the serial numbers on the bills were literally in order so like wow zero zero eight five one zero zero eight five two zero zero eight five three you guys figured that out right there on the spot yeah so the the you don't see that right like unless it came out of a large sum of money that was withdrawn from an institution at one time that just doesn't happen but regardless like it didn't look like a guy we didn't think I was guy and then we'd been chasing Saddam for a year so we're
like it's just another dry hole so we drove the detainees back to buy app handed them after our Intel analysts and some of the interrogators that had set up shop there at Baghdad International Airport uh and we went home and like I said 24-hour Ops you know at the time it was commonplace to like pop an Ambien when you got back from a mission so you knew you could get three or four hours of sleep before they woke us up to go do the next one so I think we popped an Ambien maybe had a
beer or two we're like up another dry hole and we went to bed about four hours went by our Intel guy comes running back in to the MSS he comes back to where our troops rooms are because we were the ones that had just pulled this dude out and he goes it's him man it's totally him and we're like What well you're ridiculous there's no way it's him yeah no it's him it's moose lit it's the golden ticket and he is spilling his guts he knows where he is he knows who's with him you guys
need to get your [ __ ] on get ready we're going into crit and we're like all right so we had a our another one of our troops our record troop actually was into crit so they stuck Muslim on a helicopter and buy app they flew him up did you create hand it off to them we loaded up in vehicles and started the drive a couple hour drive up to create from Baghdad uh they took moose lit out and did a close Target reconnaissance in a couple different areas um and what it was was what
our Intel analysts thought all along he was going to be near to create near Samara or whatever the town he grew up in was that he was going to only have a tight-knit group of people around him that he was going to be near the river because Saddam loved fish like any he had a real strict diet and he only ate fish and he had a personal chef and that Chef had a family farm and Walt always believed that those were going to be the people closest to Saddam because he was paranoid and this dude
had been with him forever so we identified The Cook's house and we identified The Cook's Farm the house was in town the family farm was outside of town and we came up with a plan after those two were pointed out based on the reconnaissance where we were going to split up as a squadron my troop was going to take the house in town the other troop plus snipers was going to take the farm and we did a simultaneous hit on both those places while we were doing the hit on the house in town uh I
think the guys finished up on the farm about the same time and the call came back from the farm that it was a dry hole that it wasn't the right place it wasn't the cooks family like something was off but we had cased the chef and he identified himself as case although he didn't say he was saddam's personal chef Battlefield interrogation right there very quickly led to yep I'm case the cook I'm saddam's personal chef and yeah he's been hiding out with my family I want to wake everybody up like I don't wake anybody up
let me look at it first before you wake everybody up you know start looking at it planning yeah he's pointing out this house to create this town a fish farm he's in a he's in a bunker and I'm like all right wake the team leaders up man maybe man we'll bring them in here woke them up everybody gets excited wake the teams up come up with a plan there's another troop you know up into crit our air was Baghdad and South and collusion on that they were to crit and up in that area so as
we rolled into link up with them and link up with the fourth ID they got to choose which Target they would hit because that was their area so they chose the fish farm the fish camp on the river and I'm like okay we'll take the house in town because that's probably where he's at right roll in with a fourth ID they surround the town like it's a normal Patrol we roll in behind them the other guys are rolling into the fish farm we blow the door open in this house and I go in there's like
I don't know five or six little babies laying on the right in front of the door on the ground I'm like like jumping over babies and none of them they're all still asleep and then there's this 90 year old guy come stumming up put him down on the ground and then my boss comes in oh what's going on I go watch your babies you know I'm starting moving babies out of the way and this guy comes at some old old guy and then one of the team members come back like a fish in the freezer
to the top Saddam love fish and I was like huh uh-huh so we're starting to talking to this guy not interrogating talking to this guy and um finds out he cooks for Saddam he's his cook and he knows where he's at and he starts having a heart attack like they all do when you're gonna roll them up right everyone has a heart attack or women start having babies like I don't care what you're doing you're still going with me right and I'm on the on the radio going Hey listen I'm going to do a follow-on
mission I'm gonna tape or tie this cook to the front of the panda he's gonna point it out and we're gonna go and they're like return to base like listen you don't get it I'm gonna put him up he's going to point we're gonna drive there I'm gonna get Saddam he goes return to base so mad so mad I told the guys you know I probably accustomed hey he's blowing this whole thing we're gonna ruin it blah blah roll back to the Palace that we ran when we started found my boss and started to chew
his ass because I was so mad and he goes shut up and come here so what had happened was moose lit in a last-ditch effort to defend Saddam had pointed out the wrong Farm knowing he was on another one um so after some work and driving the guy out and confirming locations they realized they were one Farm off well luckily C1 had hit the first Farm Total Blackout no charges no flashbangs no nothing they had done it completely silent so they hadn't spooked anybody uh they shifted over and hit the next Farm uh and then
yeah shortly after that they uncovered the rug with the Rope to the cork plug and the whole uh pulled the cork out and saw this looking down on a guy pull them out of the hole and it was Saddam no [ __ ] yeah were you surprised he came back alive uh yeah yeah I mean it was uh you know during that phase of the war you're you're marching orders were killer capture um you had Rules of Engagement that warranted either one um I think when Saddam it was understood that that we weren't bringing him
back um that being said it's a unit operator and we're the good guys and they pulled the cork out of the hole and there was an unidentified male with his hands over his head yeah the guys aren't going to put a bullet in them and they certainly going to pull him out look at him and put a bullet in them because that's not what we do so um yeah I mean friends of mine guys so this is second hand I'm still in town going man I hope this is it yeah you know what I mean
we're like sitting in the vehicle at this point just waiting on the radio call and uh but yeah they pulled them out of the hole holy [ __ ] at Saddam um and yeah that was kind of it so the radio call came and uh I think the squadron commander at the time said I have a possible for BL number one holy [ __ ] I followed him into this room and it was one of those things where I opened the door and I looked to the left I'm like salt and pepper beard out to
here with a leaf in it and just standing in her handcuffed at a plastic table mic he shuts the door and I go holy [ __ ] that's him he goes yeah I go it looks like dirty Uncle Fester right he's apparently spoke a little English and knew who Fester was or just didn't like me and spit on me he spit on yeah Saddam spit on yeah yeah what'd you do I imagined myself knocking him out right but I looked at him I said okay you'll be dead soon a nice turn to walk down and
the boss came out behind me and I go damn that was it I mean that's it that's it literally it I had this whole plan move in flying put him on an aircraft carrier you know so no one can go and get him everything changed he went on biops stayed in the house and I'll buy it with two tanks right outside of it you know and then went on trial but I remember driving back in the back of the vehicle everybody's asleep I got the SAR major with me and and he's talking to him and
he's just got a smile on his face pretty cool we caught him huh he goes nah I no longer have a retention problem because he knew guys were happy they finally caught somebody and I'm like oh yeah and then you get home you go to bed and the next day someone's hey hey hey and you know it's not a Saddam hit but it's next and that's when it hits you it doesn't matter does it we're all excited we caught Saddam hey we killed Bin Laden yay they were both removed from Power really not doing much
by the time we got them all anyway so it's just next it just never ends it just keeps going you're like so excited Saddam said I'm if we ever caught him blah blah blah and you catch him you're like that's just another dude isn't it just another dude and this one's nasty and dirty and living in a hole you know living in a hole in the ground with a lot of money and a lot of cigars Invincible cigars which I gotta box those at home they're probably dry rotted did you see them yeah yeah I
mean a few cool things happen like there's some pictures that exist there's some pictures that made it out from that um but uh one of the cool things that happened was we brought him back to takrit and we had him in our Detention Facility there we had next to the house the guys were staying in there and they let us basically all come into the open Hall of this house um when we walked him out to put him on the Hilo to fly him down to buy app so there was an opportunity for everybody that
was a part of the operation to physically see him and be close to him and understand the significance of the vet and I thought that was a cool call by the leadership uh the pictures that made it out were actually taken by a by a interpreter that worked for a three-letter agency um a lot of pictures were taken that day and the understanding was these are for years and years only and they don't they're not for public release but she immediately emailed those to someone and they ended up finding their way onto the internet but
uh it's ancient history now so it doesn't matter but at the time it was a big deal yeah I can imagine but yeah so flew him down to buy up and and uh yeah he stayed there um it was a different animal than years later with Bin Laden but Saddam sat basically in a prison cell for a year till they hung him after publicly trying him and the whole thing that happened after that did you did you feel anything when when they had him even when they kicked him off what a two or three story
thing and yeah I mean when they hung him you know there's an element of wanting to be there yeah um I mean we personally witnessed a lot of the horror that that guy was responsible for like we had seen the scars from it we you know it was he was a ruthless ruthless dictator and right wrong or indifferent you know as a soldier as a service member you're an extension of U.S foreign policy right and you are there to do what they ask you to do and we were asked to complete a mission and we
did and so even years later with all the hindsight on the Iraq War I still think that what we did is the right thing even if the reasons for getting us there weren't necessarily just he was a horrible awful person responsible for brutally murdering thousands of people do you want to talk about any of the stuff that you saw because I'm gonna I'm gonna share some of my experience I didn't see anything when I deployed uh I didn't see anything that he had directly caused when I was in the SEAL Teams in Iraq and it
wasn't until actually my last deployment at the agency um when I got to see just a site where things happened and um I mean I knew that he had tortured people I knew he killed and murdered thousands and thousands of people in my last deployment I went to uh to hook and right around there there was this compound that he with these hooks that came out of the walls and he would take pregnant women and hang him on the hook and they would just be hanging there on the wall until they [ __ ] bled
out and died yep then inside this is like a just a square or maybe a rectangle two or three stories I actually had pictures of it and there was like no railing or anything on the top floor and then directly off the drop off were these huge like concrete blocks and we were with an interpreter and I was like what are the what are these blocks all around for and and he said that they would put heads they would put you know a body right up lean them over the block have their head on that
concrete block and they would throw cinder blocks off the third story Crush people's heads and that you know I I saw a lot of traumatic [ __ ] whatever it's combat right I didn't see anything I never encountered anything like that and um just hearing that and being in that in that [ __ ] place was made me realize how evil that son of a [ __ ] actually was when I was interviewing Chris Van Zandt we took a break and uh I have one of the original decks of cards you know in that cabinet
I think he saw it and he still smokes you know he's we're out back I'm gonna talk to him about that we're out back having a chat and um he had told me he goes you know we got damn near that entire deck of cards every night and uh he had said you know people ask how many how many guys we got you know during our time over there and and uh I think he thought I could relate to him but I can't and uh he just he said I don't even I have no idea
how many guys we killed over there I couldn't tell you and uh that's a lot of work man hey everybody I'm Sean Ryan click here to subscribe to the Sean Ryan Show YouTube channel for the hottest and most compelling interviews that you will not see anywhere else I've also made a playlist of all the previous SRS episodes so they're easy to find you can find that right here
