In the months leading up to March 2003, fresh from its swift and heady victory in Afghanistan, the Bush administration mobilized the United States armed forces to overthrow the government of Iraq. Eight months after the president declared an end to major combat operations, Saddam Hussein was captured in a farmhouse in Al-Dawr. And yet neither peace nor democracy has taken hold in Iraq; instead the country has plunged into terrorist insurgency and guerrilla warfare, with no end in sight. What went wrong?

In The Secret History of the Iraq War, bestselling author Yossef Bodansky offers an astonishing new account of the war and its aftermath -- a war that was doomed from the start, he argues, by the massive and systemic failures of the American intelligence community. Drawing back the curtain of politicized debate, Bodansky -- a longtime expert and director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare -- reveals that nearly every aspect of America's conflict with Iraq has been misunderstood, in both the court of public opinion and the White House itself. Among his revelations:

• The most authoritative account of Saddam Hussein's support for Islamic terrorist organizations -- including extensive new reporting on his active cooperation with al-Qaeda in Iraq long after the fall of Baghdad
• Extensive new information on Iraq's major chemical and biological weapons programs -- including North Korea's role in building still-undetected secret storage facilities and Iraq's transfer of banned materials to Syria, Iran, and Libya
• The first account of Saddam's plan for Iraq, Syria, and Iran to join Yasser Arafat's Palestinian forces to attack Israel, throw the region into turmoil, and upend the American campaign


• The untold story of Russia's attempt to launch a coup against Saddam before the war -- and how the CIA thwarted it by ensuring that Iraq was forewarned
• Dramatic details about Saddam's final days on the run, including the untold story of a near miss with U.S. troops and the stunning revelation that Saddam was already in custody at the time of his capture -- and was probably betrayed by members of his own Tikriti clan
• The definitive account of the anti-U.S. resistance and uprising in Iraq, as the American invasion ignited an Islamic jihad and Iran-inspired intifada, threatening to plunge the region into irreversible chaos fueled by hatred and revenge
• Revelations about the direct involvement of Osama bin Laden in the terrorism campaigns in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East -- including the major role played by Iran and HizbAllah in al-Qaeda's operations

Drawing upon an extraordinary wealth of previously untapped intelligence and regional sources, The Secret History of the Iraq War presents the most detailed, fascinating, and convincing account of the most controversial war of our times -- and offers a sobering indictment of an intelligence system that failed the White House, the American military, and the people of the Middle East.

There is a unique, and exceptionally well-defended upper-class compound in the al-Jazair neighborhood of Baghdad. It is a retirement community, but its residents are no ordinary senior citizens. They include retirees from Iraqi intelligence, former senior security officials, and a host of terrorists, most of them Arabs, who have cooperated with Baghdad over the years.

Since 2000, Sabri al-Banna -- better known as Abu Nidal -- had been one of the preeminent members of this community. Then, on the night of August 16, 2002, a few gunmen made their way through the well-protected gates and into a three-story house where they swiftly killed Abu Nidal and four of his aides. They then walked out without uttering a word. None of the guards or security personnel attempted to interfere with the assassination, because the assassins, like the guards themselves, worked for the Mukhabarat -- Iraq's internal security and intelligence service.

Abu Nidal had been one of the world's most brutal terrorist leaders since rising to prominence in the 1960s. His people were involved not only in countless assassinations and bombings, but also in comprehensive support operations for diverse terrorist groups all over the world -- from Latin America to Northern Ireland to Japan. He was the mastermind of some of the most lethal terrorist strikes in history, and his organization was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians around the world.

Over the years, Abu Nidal closely cooperated with any number of intelligence services, including those of the Soviet Union, Romania, North Korea, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, and Iraq. But in August 2002 the sixty-five-year-old murderer was old and infirm, bound to a wheelchair by heart disease and cancer. There seemed to be no logic to Baghdad's decision to assassinate Abu Nidal at the height of its crisis with America; at the very least, the assassination reminded friends and foes alike of the shelter and sponsorship the Iraqi government provided to the world's terrorist elite.

Like all aspects of the war in Iraq, the undercurrents surrounding the assassination are far more important than the action itself. And like many other facets of this crisis, they still leave more questions than answers. Quite simply, Saddam Hussein, who personally authorized the assassination of his longtime personal friend, had little reason for doing so. The act was merely an attempt to please two close allies, Hosni Mubarak and Yasser Arafat, who were desperate to ensure that American forces entering Baghdad would not be able to interrogate Abu Nidal.

Mubarak was anxious to conceal the fact that during the late 1990s Egyptian intelligence used Abu Nidal's name to run a series of covert assassinations and "black operations" against Egyptian al-Qaeda elements. Posing as Abu Nidal's terrorists, Egyptian intelligence operatives ruthlessly destroyed British and other intelligence networks standing in their way. They killed Egyptian Islamists Cairo knew to be spying for some of Egypt's closest allies and benefactors. At the same time, Egyptian intelligence was receiving comprehensive assistance from the CIA. Egypt had sworn that it was not involved in these black operations, since the United States considers them illegal and the CIA is not permitted to cooperate with any country performing them, even indirectly. Egypt also adamantly denied that Abu Nidal was being sheltered in Cairo at the time, although he was receiving medical care in return for his cooperation with Egyptian intelligence.