FBI Notes: Saddam Hussein Sought Familiar Refuge

File - December 13th 2003 Saddam Hussein after his capture by US troops from an underground hole on a farm in the village of ad-Dawr, near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq.

(Getty Images)

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein stayed in Baghdad until he saw "the city was about to fall." Months later, he was caught hiding at the same farm where he had fled in 1959 after taking part in an attempt to kill the country's prime minister.

Unclassified FBI interviews conducted during his incarceration at a U.S. detention center offered new details Thursday about the late Iraqi dictator's life on the run — both before and after he was ousted.

The documents also confirm previous reports that Saddam falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — the main U.S. rationale behind the war — because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.

Saddam was captured by American soldiers on Dec. 13, 2003, just over eight months after his regime was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion. An Iraqi tribunal convicted him of crimes against humanity, and he was hanged at the end of 2006.

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He said he was never in the neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad that was bombed on March 19, 2003, in an attempt to kill the Iraqi leader at the start of the war. The U.S. military had received a tip that he was hiding there.

Saddam made his last public appearance in Azamiyah on April 9, 2003, the day a bronze statue of him was brought down in a central Baghdad square in what became the defining image of his overthrow.

But, he said, he stayed in Baghdad until April 10 or 11 when "it appeared that the city was about to fall." He held a final meeting with leaders from his inner circle and told them, "We will struggle in secret."

Then he fled the capital, gradually shedding his bodyguards along the way to avoid attracting attention, telling them they had fulfilled their duty.

The new details were among more than 100 pages of notes written by George Piro, an FBI special agent who interviewed Saddam after he was found huddling in a so-called "spider hole" on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad.