I think we are getting closer to that. Somebody said do you think there will be a president by that time if young enough maybe. Thank you very much, barney frank. [applause] its a hard thing to believe that the United States of america is spending nearly 1 billion per week in iraq and here in new orleans, the United States we are being neglected. Why do we have to beg and plead when our president , our congressman, our elected leaders when we tell them we need help when its on the media everyday. [applause] this is the United States of america. The young lady mentioned earlier that we rebuilt japan after destroying japan. This is new orleans, a very specific cultural society. I love new orleans. We have purchased a total of 107 trailers on four different sites but when you walk across the street here you will see 42 of them set out for teachers and their Staff Members and that was the only way especially back in november that i could get a staff of the school to teach the children because there was no place to live. Anyway so you see that trailer community adjacent to the park and not of one of our Elementary Schools and if you go further behind it into that subdivision you are going to save complete and utter devastation. You will see very few people actually living there, gutted homes, some not guided as of yet, some totally destroyed. Youll see some trailers in front of the homes where people are working on them but you are not going to see the vibrant community it once was. Representative Steve Russell of oklahoma recalls his experience in the army as the commander of the battalion to captured iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003. That interview about his book we got him is next on booktv. Host congressman Steve Russell republican of oklahoma according to general raymond odierno, you were one of two individuals most directly responsible for the capture of Saddam Hussein. Why is that . Guest i think im in the title of the book is we got him not i got him but when they go back and look at the series of events and where we saw possibilities, people didnt imagine that we were actually putting pieces together and developing a human intelligence that proved so crucial later. It was very high praise from a man that i respect a great deal, very unusual to have a sitting chief of staff in the army right a forward to anything while they are still serving, so i was very humbled by the comments and jim hickey who now serves on the Senate Armed Services staff which is interesting that we are both here now, but at the time there was this sense that we might be able to get on his trail and with a team of teams if we all worked together maybe somebody could get him. Host where were you . Y. Rieu in iraq . Guest i was and to create iraq in the spring of 2003. I got there a little later than the division because the original plan was to go through turkey and to attack Republican Guard elements from the north as the 101st airborne in the 173rd airborne did operations around mosul and we would go and hit the objectives and the Republican Guard around to create. That was always the plan but then the Turkish Parliament said you cant come through turkey everything got rerouted. I joined the unit in may of 2003 the 1st battalion 22nd infantry of the first brigade Fourth Infantry Division and we were given orders to occupy the city of tikrit which was saddams hometown. Geography is what put us even in the sphere of being involved with saddam. Host were you in army careerist . Guest i was a Battalion Task force commander at the time id roughly 1000 soldiers under my command. It was a powerful organization with a lot of infantry squads and platoons and formed Rifle Companies and also had a tank Company Engineers artillery. It was a very powerful organization that was initially focused on fighting saddams army and then later we adapted to fighting insurgents in a fairly sizable city that was very much not in favor of us being there. They were very prosaddam, unlike other parts of a country which were thrilled that hed been overthrown. That was not the case in sub by. Host you talked a minute ago about human intelligence. Who were ahmed and rashidi . Guest these were two businessmen they were very savvy im often asked who helped finger saddam and was in the reward given . There was no reward because ultimately the man that fingered saddam was a man named Mohammed Alou said that the two people that put us onto this Family Network like a mafia don with saddam being the dawn and half a dozen families was ahmed and not had. They had suffered greatly under saddam. Their property had been seized. They were instrumental in giving us the information and it was one of those moments where early on and this was in the may june timeframe in 2003 and it was one of those times where god saves you from yourself. I didnt have time to fool with them and i didnt want to talk to them. I was checking on security and outposts. They had some information they said they wanted to give and they said they wouldnt give it to anyone unless it was me and i thought oh great here we go, more histrionics whatever. Im merely nearly dismiss them outright but something in my gut said what if its something important . For the next two and a half hours they laid out in great detail on sheets of butcher paper this elaborate network of families and i thought this is the most elaborate lie ive ever heard or theres got to be something to some of this. They were instrumental to a lot of our intelligence early on so one nearly netted saddam on the farm where we got 10 million ultimately. Saddam, many of his family documents saddam family photo albums, 2 million worth of jewelry that belonged to his wife and a lot of different things. These two iraqi businessmen were instrumental in putting us on that path. Host when was the first time he ever saw Saddam Hussein . Guest we did not see saddam, anyone until the night he was captured. I did not see him the night he was captured. I think one of the things that people dont realize is that saddam, i mean we may have seen him and just didnt realize it. Where he was ultimately caught was not far from this farm but i just mentioned to you on the other bank of the tigris river. You literally could stand on one bank and see the other farm. They were visible to one another and you could even see his mansion from that location so he didnt go very far. He was protected right there, living very humbly so he did not circulate. There were rumors that he was in the area, we got a bunch of that but early on one of the things that he did do was we worked handinhand with a number of organizations, special Operations Forces that were in the area at that time. Initially the first team we worked with was focused on specific prewar targeting of key leaders. They left toward the end of may, the beginning of june timeframe transition and the new team can end by a guy that i will call jack. We worked very closely together on a lot of the raids and a lot of the intel. I basically told him my task force is yours. Anything you need will help because they have limited resources that they had great reach and priority and we knew was going to have to be a cooperative effort. Colonel hickey my command of the same thing in general odierno also during that time he fell saddam is likely in the area just from the flood of reports that we were getting. We knew that if anyone was going to ultimately find him it had to be through collaborative efforts both conventional forces in an unconventional and that was one of the things that i think a lot of people learned from early on in the war, looking at our operations with both conventional and unconventional or says is a model for much of what happened later. Host congressman wrestle you also talk about going down in the spider hole. What was that like . Guest the hole was not very big. It it would be like crawling under under a sixfoot bull paee blended mentioned sitting under it. Im not a big guy. I had to strip off my combat gear to make the clearance of the entrance of it. It was square, had her work. It was very ingenious. Had a styrofoam top that was carved to the shape and it had a recess on the top for soil. It actually gave equal to how the ground would feel when he stepped on it so which is formed like a giant cork on top of the square birkhold and when it was covered up with the earth and the foote laid on top you could walk across it and never know was there. It had a light, a fan for air and it had carpet down there and that was it. He did live there. Was just a place to hide. He lived in a three room hut that was above him. Would the was brought in where was he brought to . Guest the raid that got him started on a series of events, we had gotten very very close but one of the special operations teams that wields really worked with was a Different Team led by a guy i will call john. He was at different unit that had rotated in the october timeframe. We worked very closely with him. We were doing a number of simultaneous raids. One thing that we learned by the Family Network was that because of the intermarriage and the large families, multiple wives culture you might have eight to 10 firstperson blood relatives that would be a possibility for him to hide. For example 10 brothers so there were any number of places for him to hide and much like playing whackamole he would hit one and they would pop up somewhere else so once we learned some of the Family Network we would try to identify as many of these locations at once and then we would do a half a dozen or eight simultaneously. There was a series of raids that we were able to do in the first week of december that were very successful in that regard on the fourth of december we did one with johns team and others and we were able to get on the trail and even closer to this mohammad. The last public appearance of saddam in april 2003 saddam shows up in the town square and stands on top of the car and being the benevolent dictator putting his arm out and everybody cheering. The guy driving him and the guy that gets up on the car as his bodyguard with a pistol in his hand if you look at the iraqi footage, think it was april 9. Thats mohammad. We know he was related to saddams wife and he became the most crucial guy to find and the family was one of the key families throughout that was organizing the resistance. I was often not understood as well. The resistance many people misinterpreted. There were reporters and others felt reporters were using heavyhanded tactics and thats just a bucket of nonsense. Saddam knew he couldnt get the u. S. Army to prevent us from getting into iraq. He knew that would happen. He also knew we would ultimately defeat his armed forces and we know now from the f. T. I interviews that his plan all along was once they take it over we will have a key Republican Guard and most trusted special security operators they would form the insurgency and his strategy was if he created enough casualties and they could get it on tv that we would lose will at home politically and like somalia we would leave and he would make a play for power and the baathists would restore him. That was his plan, not unfeasible but he really was the master of miscalculation and he didnt realize how much to the extreme would take to try to find him. So by tracking down these families and going after social networks to put us on this path of rapid succession and ultimately mohammed abu said was found. Eric maddox was key in that. He identified them and a group of captives in baghdad. He was one of the interrogators working with the special Operations Forces, fingered him. We were ecstatic because we found if he was ever captured he had to know saddams location and he did. He was brought up the next morning of december 13 to tikrit iraq and colonel hickey immediately alerted all of us and he said not only do we have bourgeois but we likely will have the location of where saddam is in a matter of hours. He alerted all of us to get everything ready. So the rate ultimately that captured saddam was so sophisticated it was planned on a sheet of butcher paper with magic markers. John and colonel hickey and brian reid jour things on a sheet of butcher paper and that became the element of what the raid was. Two farm hudson orchard on the bank of the tigris river on the east bank across from his birth village. I had troops in osha and occupied sub ivan had responsibility for much of the area but further rate colonel hickey because he was across the river this location was across the river he just had the forces so the plan was that johns team would need reinforced by two other special operations teams and they would hit the specific farms. Daily with his recon troop would meet them on the ground as they came in by little bird helicopters and they would all wake up in the orchard. Prior to that we would court around the orchard says saddam had no place to run and ultimately the hope was that they would stay there as long as we needed to believing the intel was the best that we had and colonel hickey told us plan on staying for three or four days. We need to breathe prepared to do this and we believe hes in the area and where to find him, not knowing what exactly it was. Musa had led out information that he was in an underground something or other. We dont know fellows oconnell. It was a real player what it was but we knew he was underground. That was kind of the sketchy details we got throughout the course of the day. The two farms, john took musa and did a close for cognizance. Iraqis are not good with maps so you had to take them to the locations and say is this it. They finally located the orchard in the farming areas and had a pretty good idea of which one you might be on but it was possible he could be with on one or even another. 8 00 all the forces were set. Both farms were seized. There were three teams that came in from the special ops unit. Little bird helicopters attack aviation from the fourth entrant thing Infantry Division and the cord on that colonel hickey had placed around and he was in overall command of operation red don. Two men tried to flee through the orchard and didnt get very far. A sergeant named john iversen from texas spotted something in the woods and went to intercept him at turned out to be saddams cook and his brother. Part of that inner circle of bodyguards. They didnt come up with any goods. They were reluctant and john got information from them. They were going to get anything. To a case for found by the guards, really not much and a lot of time passed, maybe 20, 25 minutes from this initial action and john went out to the humvee where musa has been brought along and he just said where is he . And he says hes there, trust me keep looking. Instead they grabbed him and brought him to this farm location. Not very big, patio area nondescript home. The bank of the tigris river was maybe not quite 150 feet from where the farm was to the edge of the embankment. And it was all date palms and citrus there were growing their. They pressured him. When musla saw he and his brother there was a little bit of shock that they were there so they pressured musla and he said where is he and he said hes here . Emotions towards a foote that look like something you have on your porch. He was very nervous and wanted to get out of there. When they got musla and the individuals off of the patio area two of johns guys pulled back the footpad and there were bits of rope and dirt and they brushed it away. As they pulled the top off not knowing whats in there they had a flash grenade ready to toss. It turns out that ultimately is where of course saddam was found and im not going to give away all of the details but i think the thing that people misunderstood on the raid that god saddam was while the raid was the trail getting there was not. We lost a lot of good guys and two gals getting to that trail. We had scores wounded and a lot of people, thats the story they dont know which was really my motivation for trying to tell our piece of the story. It is from my view. There there are others have certainly commanded other units and had their view during that time but you gain a real good perspective from a commanders view of the events that unfolded that led to that raid and also the aftermath which very few people are aware of what happened in the aftermath and how deadly it was. Host where it is mohammed almuslit today . I sent a freedom of information act request interestingly enough on the location i was told that he was held in prison until 2006 and then he was released and the last word i had as of 2011 was that he was living in syria. I have no idea where he is today. Host or what side he is on . Guest there are a lot of former aphis fighting under isis banners. We saw that in tikrit. Host is a former and retired colonel was it a t. Pacification of the state . Guest its a cheap shot. I know that general gardner and others, people have said we never should have disbanded the iraqi army but let me clarify that. It disbanded itself. I mean it literally melted away. We made contact with some of the last fighting elements around april 26 to may 1 in the north tikrit where the Republican Guard corp. Was. They completely faded away. Many of the fights we had at that late stage of the game were spotty meaning that they were in civilian clothes trying to steal armory weaponry and get it out of there and we had a couple of clashes that were related to Republican Guard soldiers trying to make off with weapons from the area. The army disbanded it so this notion somehow that there was going to be formal surrenders and lines of german troops and the conference and they would have big surrenders that was never even a remote possibility to begin with. Host how long were you in iraqs . Guest i was in iraq for a year from 2003 to 2004. Host what month of 2003 . Guest i got there in may and i left in april. Host why do you refer to to the special ops guys as guest many of these guys are still serving and i dont want to give away their identities. Some i was able to on the conventional side. The folks on the unconventional side have been respectful to them and