Tampa Tribune (Florida) April 08, 2003
Buried Web May Be Escape Route
By Keith Epstein
WASHINGTON - While the machines of war ignite infernos, while commandos storm suspect buildings, while tanks rumble through the boulevards of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein may be comfortably ensconced in one of his safest palatial retreats - underground.
He could be watching CNN or Al Jazeera from the bathroom, or perhaps a DVD. In luxurious James Bond style, he could be following the war from a command and control center or relaxing with one of his wives in a bedroom appointed with fake antiques and gold-plated fixtures.
Hundreds of feet beneath the Earth, the U.S. military's most wanted man could be sequestered from the storms of war - at least until confronted by commandos in a final room-by-room subterranean showdown.
According to the boasts of German and Serbian engineers, and construction records obtained by U.S. intelligence and military agencies during the past decade, Saddam fashioned a highly impenetrable labyrinth of hide-outs and connecting tunnels up to 300 feet beneath presidential palaces, private homes, the airport, perhaps even schools and hospitals.
These secret passageways beneath ancient Baghdad link technologically sophisticated rooms and routes of escape. They are sealed with bombproof blast doors and surrounded by sufficient concrete and steel to safeguard occupants from up to 572 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt tin or lead and roughly the temperature of the heat within the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
U.S. forces on Monday found a possible chemical weapons site, toppled statues and other icons of the Iraqi regime and even occupied two of the Iraqi dictator's Versailles-like presidential palaces - breathtaking advances that seemed to reinforce not only the reason for war but the nearness of war's end.
But some analysts inside and outside the military say U.S. forces may find themselves bedeviled by the difficult task of flushing out Iraqi leaders from their warrens within the ground.
"The Iraqis are tremendous engineers. It wouldn't surprise me to find that rooting them out would be very difficult indeed," said Marines Brig. Gen. Jack Gary, who retired from Tampa-based U.S. Central Command in 1986.
The rooms, Gary noted, "can hold large numbers of people, supplies and ammunition. It could also be used as infrastructure to support guerrilla activities."
But, he added, "we'll find a way to get to them - just as in the [al-Qaida] caves in Afghanistan where we delivered ordinance designed to penetrate rock."
Still Guessing About Saddam
Nobody knows, of course, where the Iraqi dictator is, or even whether he is still alive. His use of look-alikes keeps people guessing, and in the days before U.S. forces rolled into Iraq, he never slept in the same bed.
He used taxis and beat-up Volkswagens to move around town, relied on couriers to keep in touch with other leaders and sometimes was said to dress in traditional robes and tribal headdresses.
Since the outset of the war and an attack on one of his underground hide-outs in Baghdad with a "bunker buster" bomb, the world has been guessing about the dictator.
Most war specialists inside and outside the Pentagon worry that if Saddam is alive, he probably has gone underground to sanctuaries that might be next-to-impenetrable by weapons the United States would most likely use to destroy them.
"Nobody knows what's going to happen right now," said Patrick Garrett, a GlobalSecurity.org defense analyst. "The war could end with some huge surrender ceremony, the U.S. declaring victory. Or the war could go on, the Special Republican Guard still fighting, and U.S. forces have to deal with all these underground bunkers. Having to go room-by-room is definitely a possibility."
Commanders would prefer to use the most destructive bombs in the U.S. arsenal, but not on targets in civilian neighborhoods or beneath hospitals brimming with injured patients.
New 5,000-pound "bunker busting" GBU-28 bombs can destroy several floors above ground and demolish shelters under the ground. They can punch through 20 feet of concrete, 100 feet of earth and rock, and then explode devastatingly.
But images of such munitions plying through schools or hospitals would not play well on television, or with the Iraqi people, and could claim large numbers of civilian lives.
"It might take more subtle methods - special forces or others finding ways to break in and storming the rooms," Garrett said. "Of course, the best option might be to wait them out. They'll run out of food sometime. They need air, and there can only be so many air shafts. It's much easier to lay siege to a building than to an entire city."
Thus, the United States has been careful even at seized presidential palaces to keep soldiers positioned and ready, occupying key locations.
Shelter "Project 305'
It was called at the time, secretly, "Project 305."
Wolfgang Wendler, a German civil engineer working for a Dusseldorf company, Boswau and Knaur, supervised construction of a $66 million, 15,000-square foot, 14-room shelter for Saddam.
He told Newsweek in its April 7 edition that he doubted an aerial attack could destroy it. Beneath a palace known as the "305 Guest House," reinforced with concrete, lies the shelter, 30 feet beneath the ground, with walls five feet thick. The 15 rooms were sufficient to hold two months of supplies.
"The presidential shelter survived despite substantial bombardment with modern technology and the occupants protected from attacks" during the first Persian Gulf War, another engineer on Project 305, Karl Bernd Esser, boasts on the Web site of his German shelter-building company, Sheltex.
The company has posted several photos from inside the shelter, including a Cabinet-like meeting room, a bedroom and one of the thick, bombproof blast doors that look like entries to a bank vault.
Esser states on his Web site that he has designed bunkers around the world since 1980, continuing "an old family tradition since 1939 in the building of fortresses."
The Sheltex Web site claims its bunkers, capable of holding up to 90 people, can withstand direct hits by conventional bombs of up to 550 pounds and protect inhabitants from attacks involving nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
Esser could not be reached for comment but told the German ZDF television network recently that he did not regret building the bunker for Saddam, noting that the Iraqi leader was not considered an enemy when the underground complex was built in 31 months between 1982 and 1984.
"Bunkers don't shoot people," Esser said.
A former Yugoslav Army officer, Lt. Col. Resad Fazlic, has also been describing shelters built in Iraqi cities, including some made by Aeroinzenjering, a Serbian engineering company.
Among accomplishments described on the company's Web site: A huge "special airport underground fortification" - in an unspecified location - for military personnel and equipment.
Saddam built his first bunker after visiting former Communist dictator Tito.
He predicted to the news agency Reuters in a recent interview, "If Saddam does not leave [Iraq], they will find him in one of these facilities."
(CHART) (C) UNDERGROUND BUNKER
What lies beneath Saddam Hussein's presidential palace at Tikrit is shrouded in uncertainty. This diagram is based on written and verbal reports of Tikrit and other palaces. It presents a general picture of what the bunkers may contain and how they are designed to support Saddam, his family and staff for up to 30 days in a conventional attack and for five days in a nuclear attack.
1. Visitors report meeting Saddam in a red-tiled reception hall that had only one hallway leading to the bunker entrance.
2. Multiple air supply vents lead to elaborate series of filters, baffles to block radioactive substances, poisons, nerve agents.
3. Reinforced concrete walls that can be 6 feet thick and designed to withstand up to 572-degree heat surround a five-story inner structure cushioned against blasts by giant steel springs.
4. Living quarters include communications center, closed-circuit water supply, self-contained power supply, food and provisions for about 100 people.
5. Tunnels are equipped with blast doors designed to sever in response to severe external shock.
Graphic by Knight Ridder/Tribune; Source; GlobalSecurity.org, Defense Watch, Washing Post, Washington Times; ABC News, CBS News, National Journal
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (2C) CHART (C)
Knight Ridder/Tribune
(C) Soldiers search tunnels below Baghdad International Airport on Sunday. Saddam Hussein reportedly has a labyrinth connecting his palace, the airport and possibly hospitals and schools.
The Associated Press
(C) Military experts say the hunt for Saddam may come down to a room-by-room search of his underground hide-outs.
Copyright © 2003, The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune
