Guarding Saddam: hats, doubles and food-tasters

BAGHDAD, Iraq — His hat? Kevlar-coated for bulletproofing. His meals? Nibbled by food-tasters first, sampling for poison. And is it really Saddam Hussein anyway — or one of his many reported doubles, hired to fool would-be assassins?

Saddam Hussein is taking elaborate steps against being eliminated — networks of bunkers, sleeping compartments on trucks, even unusual headgear — according to those who've dealt with him and Western intelligence agencies.

Americans have "been trying and trying for 30 years, and they couldn't do anything. They tried in 1991, and they couldn't do anything," said Parliament member Mohammed Mudhafr al-Adhamy, referring to intermittent U.S. talk of assassination.

President Bush's administration has been outspoken in its aim of ridding Iraq of Saddam, at a U.S.-estimated price of $9 billion a month for war — or perhaps for much less.

"The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said early this month, drawing some heat for the direct call for an assassination.

Saddam did not go out in public during last week's referendum vote that extended his military rule for seven years.

Only his eldest son, Odai, made a fleeting appearance in the flesh. At a polling station in front of reporters, he drove up in a luxury car, handed a ballot out the window for a 6-year-old stranger to cast for him, and then sped off.

Odai himself barely survived an assassination attempt in December 1996.

Ever since, the Saddam family has avoided motorcades, even well-guarded ones — relying instead on the anonymity of unmarked cars as they dart among dozens of palaces and family homes.

Said Aburish, a Palestinian who worked as a lobbyist for the Iraqi government with the West in the 1980s, an Iraqi ex-intelligence chief and others in exile have detailed how far Saddam goes to safeguard himself.

Meals are prepared in each of his palaces, to conceal until the last minute where the Iraqi leader will be dining.

Food-tasters sample the dishes.

Visitors to the president are driven about for disorienting hours before arriving at meetings, at mystery locations.

Several Saddam doubles were reported in the 1980s and 1990s — filling in for the real Saddam during lesser events, sometimes, reportedly, drawing assassins' fire.

The real Saddam, in his last appearances before his people, dressed in the manner of an English country gentleman to review his troops — wearing a wide-brimmed fedora unusual for Arab leaders. Kevlar-coated, Aburish says.

Thousands in the security forces are trained just to protect Saddam. Drawn from his world of the Sunni Muslim underclass, they are coached against subversion — and made to study every coup and revolution of the 20th century.

In the Gulf War, Saddam rode out the American-led attacks in undisclosed homes of average citizens in Baghdad for many nights — shunning his own palaces, more visible targets, personal secretary Lt. Gen. Abed Hammeed Mahmoud later wrote.

U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies point to Saddam's underground military installations and to reports of fleets of trucks with sleeping compartments — allowing Iraqi leaders to run and hide at the same time.