Where Saddam Was Seen Before Bombs Hit

B A G H D A D, Iraq, April 15, 2003 -- For all the talk of Saddam Hussein's luxury palaces perched above underground bunkers, a modest building in Baghdad's Mansur neighborhood may have been a more important safe house than any of his palaces.

The house may have been where Saddam was staying on the night that U.S. forces, tried, but apparently failed, to kill the Iraqi leader. ABCNEWS' Brian Ross discovered the safe house today, when he and an investigative team went to the site that the United States targeted April 7.

Behind a popular Baghdad restaurant, four 2,000-pound bombs created a 60-foot deep crater, destroying four homes and killing 14 civilians. But neither Saddam nor his son Qusai were among the dead, neighbors said. The two were in the safe house, only a few steps away, and they apparently escaped.

Site of Saddam Speech

Inside the house is the room neighbors say Saddam used on the war's first night to tape a televised speech in which he wore glasses and read from notes. That room is bare now. Neighbors said that the blue curtain, the podium on the desk and the Iraqi flag seen in Saddam's speech were all set up in the room, but have since been looted.

The house had five separate phone lines, suggesting that it was used by Saddam or someone placed high in his regime. According to neighbors, even the very powerful in the area get at most only two phone lines. No regular house in Iraq would have five telephone lines in the same house.

Neighbors: No Americans Have Investigated Site

There were no signs whatsoever of the kind of underground bunkers U.S. officials said Saddam had built all over Baghdad.

Neighbors said the ABCNEWS team was the first group of journalists to visit the safe house, and there was no evidence that there had been any American presence there.

This surprised former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith, now an ABCNEWS consultant in Baghdad. "I'm astounded there was no American military presence there — that no one had been there. There are no people doing forensic analysis. If the military thought Saddam was here, you'd expect them to be digging to find the remains to prove he was dead," Galbraith said.

But neighbors insisted that Saddam and his son escaped the safe house in a government car, as the bombs fell on adjacent homes. U.S. officials said the bombs hit the precise target that the sources told them to hit, which appeared to be about 50 feet off the mark.

Neighbors said the home was rented by a friend of Qusai's about a year ago and stood empty except for occasional visits by large government cars in the middle of the night.

Saddam’s ‘Love Shack’

U.S. troops discovered what appears to have been another one of Saddam's safe houses over the weekend. The split-level, one-bedroom townhouse is in a Baath Party enclave in an upscale neighborhood in central Baghdad where generals and senior party officials lived.

U.S. officials set up command posts at the townhouse and searched surrounding homes, where they found more than 6,000 Beretta pistols, 650 Sig Sauer pistols, 248 Colt revolvers, 160 Belgian 7.65 mm pistols, 12 cases of Sterling submachine guns and four cases of anti-tank missiles.

The townhouse itself was curiously decorated in a 1960s style. It was furnished with beanbags, shag carpeting and artwork that might be better suited for the side of a late-1970s model van.

The king-sized bed was fitted into an alcove with mirrors on two sides and a fantasy painting on the third.

Officials concluded that the townhouse was used by Parisoula Lampsos, who claims to have been Saddam's mistress. She escaped to Lebanon in 2002.

"This must have been Saddam's love shack," said Sgt. Spencer Willardson.

The style throughout the townhouse resembled some of the same decorating styles used in the home of Odai Hussein, Saddam's eldest son.

As soldiers toured Odai's bombed house Monday, they found a bed that was painted in gold trim, and a bathroom that featured a sink and tub fitted with fixtures in a swan motif. They found naked pictures of women downloaded from the Internet. They also found and confiscated pictures of one of President Bush's daughters fully clothed in evening wear.

Odai's home was in a back corner of the Presidential Palace compound, a small city that boasts six-lane avenues, traffic lights and a hospital. U.S. soldiers now occupy the grounds.

Focus on Tikrit

The most recent reports on Saddam's whereabouts lead to an area around Tikrit, his ancestral home. Reports have indicated that Saddam might be headed out to the tribal areas to the west of Tikrit, where he had a long-standing relationship with some of the tribes.

Tikrit fell to U.S. forces on Monday without the bloody fight many expected.

ABCNEWS' Brian Ross contributed to this report.