Word: zarqawi
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...almost as soon as they took up position, the commandos feared they were about to lose him. A special-operations source tells TIME that the surveillance team was worried that there wasn't enough time to assemble a ground assault force to raid the house and capture al-Zarqawi; the commandos at the site lacked sufficient manpower and weaponry to attack on their own. As dusk neared, the team fretted al-Zarqawi might slip away if they waited too long. A knowledgeable Pentagon official says the Delta team "saw one group come into the house and one group exit...
...wasn't taking chances. During the three-year hunt for him, al-Zarqawi was a maddeningly elusive target--a master of disguise who could pass as a woman in a burqa one day, an Iraqi policeman the next. He traveled in groups of women and children to lower suspicion and frequently moved with ease through checkpoints in Iraq. Although military commanders believe they came close to capturing al-Zarqawi on at least half a dozen occasions in the past two years, few had reason to anticipate an imminent breakthrough. But military and intelligence officials in Washington, Baghdad and Amman tell...
...bravado, al-Zarqawi knew he could be caught at any time. In January 2004, U.S. intelligence officers intercepted a 17-page letter addressed to Osama bin Laden in which al-Zarqawi expressed concern for his longevity. "[Iraq] has no mountains in which we can take refuge and no forests in whose thickets we can hide," he wrote. "Our backs are exposed and our movements compromised. Eyes are everywhere...
...that time, hunting al-Zarqawi and his senior aides was the primary responsibility of a secretive special-operations task force whose number designation changed constantly (it was recently called Task Force 145). It was made up of military intelligence operatives, counterterrorism commandos of the Delta Force, and the Navy's SEAL Team 6, plus Army Rangers. Although the task force had helped capture Saddam in December 2003, the search for al-Zarqawi proved more frustrating. In late 2004, Iraq security forces caught him near the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, but the al-Qaeda leader was able to talk...
...early this year, the secret task force's luck began to change. Tips came in from Iraqi insurgents, former Baath Party members loyal to Saddam, some of whom objected to al-Zarqawi's viciousness and attacks against Shi'ites. U.S. officials say they also received valuable assistance from the government of Jordan, al-Zarqawi's home country. A Jordanian security official tells TIME that one month after the November 2005 suicide attacks on three hotels in Amman, which killed 60 people, Jordanian King Abdullah II ordered his intelligence officials to set up a new security branch, the Knights...