CIA To Grill Saddam

The Central Intelligence Agency is taking the lead role in the interrogation of deposed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

CIA chief George Tenet will decide who will interrogate Saddam and what information they will seek, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference.

Rumsfeld would not say whether Saddam had offered any information of value.

"Characterizing his general relationship with his captors, probably the best word would be resigned," Rumsfeld said.

Hussein is "dressed in a G.I.- issued white Arabic-style robe with a blue jacket," according to one official who's seen him, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart. He is "not in handcuffs or restraints" and "has few requests."

Conscious that Hussein will likely have a public trial someday, officials say the dictator is "being treated well, but not deferentially."

The chief tactic appears to be stress and sleep deprivation, reports Stewart.

"Sleep deprivation," one official pointedly observed, is "within the rules."

Also, "no decision" has been made yet "whether to allow Iraqi interrogators to be present." And although "Hussein has shown a decent command of English ... the interrogation is all in Arabic."

Intelligence and weapons experts doubt that the interrogation of Saddam will yield much useful information about guerrilla fighters or Iraq's alleged illegal arsenal.

So far, Saddam has denied to his interrogators that his regime had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda, U.S. officials said. He has also denied knowledge of the fate of Scott Speicher, the Navy fighter pilot who disappeared over Iraq during the first Gulf War.

He has greeted his initial interrogation with a mix of sarcasm and defiance, the officials said, discussing the questioning only on the condition of anonymity. Some of his responses are regarded as an attempt to rationalize and justify his actions, the officials said.

Saddam has complied with simple commands to stand up and sit down, but officials said he has not provided much useful information on the guerrilla war or other matters.

The interrogation is taking place at an undisclosed location in Iraq. U.S. officials say the denials are expected, particularly in the early stages of an interrogation, before his interrogators establish a rapport with him.

Even if the questioners do build that bond, former CIA director James Woolsey was not optimistic that the deposed leader would become more forthcoming.

"I think we'll be lucky to get anything useful out of him," Woolsey told the CBS News Early Show, noting that Saddam could not be tortured or even subjected to some of the interrogation tricks used on al Qaeda suspects. "But even liars sometimes can point you in a useful direction by what they lie about and the way they lie, so we may learn some useful thing."

Woolsey added that Saddam had little incentive to cooperate, with the death penalty a near certainty.

Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus told CBS Radio that he doubts Saddam is going to tell his interrogators much about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

For one thing, Ekeus believes Iraq was relatively free of banned weapons before the war, although it had not given up ambitions to produce them. Ekeus also believes Saddam may have little to offer because the deposed president considered knowing the operational details to be beneath him.

Saddam's denials on the WMD question match those of other senior regime figures who were arrested and interrogated previously, The New York Times reports.

Appearing on NBC, acting Secretary of State Richard Armitage cautioned that, "The information that comes from Saddam Hussein is going to be very closely held and it has to be checked out very closely because he is, in addition to being the terrible tyrant that we all knew, an unmitigated liar. So I would caution everyone to be very careful on what you see being speculated about."

U.S. intelligence and military officials say their first priority is to focus on the resistance and the whereabouts of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and other remaining senior regime officials and insurgent leaders.

But it is unclear how much knowledge he has of those matters. Intelligence officials say they believe he has been too concerned with survival to serve than much more than an inspiration to the resistance.

The initial questioning is a race against the clock, because his information grows more outdated by the hour, and other regime leaders and cells change locations or take other security precautions to avoid capture.

It is unclear what evidence, if any, troops uncovered of Saddam's possible operational control over the resistance. There was skepticism that Saddam and the insurgency had any firm connections. Officials announced they found no communications equipment, maps or other evidence of a guerrilla command center at Saddam's hiding place.

However, it was possible that Saddam communicated with lieutenants via a courier. He did have $750,000 in cash with him that might have funded attacks.

On Monday, a U.S. general said Saddam's capture is already providing intelligence that allowed U.S. soldiers to capture several key regime figures and uncover rebel cells in the capital.

The intelligence that led the military to the men came from interrogations stemming from Saddam's capture, and a briefcase of documents Saddam carried with him at the time of his arrest, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling.

Down the road, once Saddam is cooperative or broken, interrogators will try to answer the many unresolved questions about Iraq's efforts to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and ties to terrorists, officials said.

Thus far, the hunt has not come up with much that would validate the prewar assertions by Mr. Bush and the U.S. intelligence community that Saddam had such weapons ready to unleash on short notice.

Perhaps Saddam could point to a hidden stockpile of weapons, if any exist — although none of his followers have done so.

His knowledge of Iraq's weapons programs may even be inaccurate. Some Iraqi scientists have said Saddam was misled by fearful minions into believing that Iraq's weapons programs were more advanced than they actually were.