Late September 2002: CIA Strikes Deal with Iraqi Religious Leader to Exploit High-Level Contacts in Iraqi Government for Intelligence

The CIA flies the leader of Iraq’s Sufi movement (Sufism is a mystic tradition of Islam) to Washington to discuss his possible involvement in the Anabasis project. One night at Marrakesh, a popular Moroccan restaurant, the Sufi asks Luis and John Maguire, the two CIA operatives who are heading the project, if the US is certain that it will remove Saddam Hussein. “You’re not just going to come to Iraq, poke Saddam in the eye, and leave, are you?” Maguire assures him that the US is serious this time. The CIA agrees to pay him $1 million a month in exchange for information from high-level Iraqi officials. Soon after the agreement, CIA officers in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq begin receiving high-quality intelligence from Iraqi insiders, including information on the movements of Saddam Hussein. The sources include Iraqi military officials who are more loyal to the Sufi leader than to Hussein. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 157]