- [Narrator] Imagine a small rural village in Iraq in the middle of the night in 2003. A man is hiding inside an underground hole. Its entrance covered with styrofoam. And suddenly, the streetlights in the entire village go out and hundreds of U.S. soldiers begin sweeping through the town. As the troops reach the farmhouse, a soldier starts to unearth a rope, discovering that it leads to the hidden trap door. They open it and prepare to throw a grenade into the hole just to be safe. But just before the pin is pulled, everyone freezes as a pair of hands emerge from the hole, followed by a bearded man. With his hands in the air, he declares to those around him. "My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate." - Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. (gentle music) - [Narrator] Whether you've heard the story of Saddam's hiding place because of the countless memes circulating online, or whether you lived through this time and think you remember it, I doubt you ever heard the full story. And so for this video, I will be exploring just that. This is how Saddam Hussein was found. (dramatic music) The hunt for Saddam began with the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. - My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. - [Narrator] The U.S. had started a coalition to overthrow the Iraqi president, and the reason they presented to the world for doing so was that they claimed Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction. - There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. - [Narrator] A claim that would later turn out to be false. - You know, when we first got in there and started looking around and didn't find anything, get that kinda sinking feeling that uh-oh. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] The invasion itself went fast as the United States, along with troops from the U.K., Australia, and Poland fought their way to the capital city of Baghdad, which fell just three weeks after the initial invasion. But still, the troops were not able to find the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. - [Reporter] To the very heart of Baghdad, U.S. tanks and troops finally arrive, spelling the end for the Iraqi regime. The next task, to hunt down the men who fought and defended the city for a fortnight. - [Narrator] And in the middle of a public square in the city, American forces join Iraqis near a massive statue dedicated to Saddam, whose rule has come to an end. And to declare their victory, American soldiers placed an American flag over the face of the statue. This was much to the dismay of the Iraqi citizens who had gathered with them, as raising an American flag seemed to represent the U.S. controlling the Iraqi people. And after realizing the image this created, the soldiers quickly replaced their flag with an Iraqi one, and then the statue was toppled. (crowd cheering) But though his likeness was brought to the ground, the real Saddam was still at large. Locating him and other high ranking members of his regime became a top priority for the U.S. military. And to keep track of the targeted former officials, a special deck of playing cards is created that features the 52 most wanted officials. This way, soldiers who regularly play games during breaks will be able to easily pick up high value targets and recognize the faces of those on the hunt. And Saddam Hussein remains priority number one, the Ace of Spades, along with his sons, Uday and Qusay right below him. - [Reporter] In the skies and on the ground they have one order, to find Saddam. The word is he never stays in one place for more than a few hours, constantly on the move probably by car. - [Narrator] Several months pass after the fall of Baghdad. And many targets are found and apprehended, but none of them lead the U.S. to where Saddam or his sons are hiding. To gather more information, a $15 million bounty was placed on each brother, and a $25 million bounty was put forth for Saddam. - Senator, is today's $25 million on the head of Saddam gonna change anything? - [Reporter] With a reward of $25 million, American troops are increasingly confident that they will soon have the ace in their pack. - [Narrator] And this incentive gives the American military the exact break they had been looking for as four months after the start of the war, a man enters a military base in Mosul, claiming that he's sheltering Uday and Qusay in his home. (suspenseful music) Almost unable to believe it, troops are dispatched the next day to the man's house located in Mosul, the second largest city of Iraq. And to their surprise, Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay are actually inside the building, hiding in a mansion that is now being surrounded by U.S. troops. And as the brothers are not willing to come quietly, gunfire breaks out. The U.S. troops retreat and call in reinforcements. Not only do they get additional manpower, but also a missile strike is called on the house the brothers are hiding in, destroying most of the house. And after the dust is cleared, soldiers are able to enter the house, but the brothers had already been killed. - Everybody agrees that it would've been better if the brothers had been captured alive. - I would never consider this a failure. Our mission is to find, kill or capture. (gentle techno music) - [Narrator] Even though it is perhaps unlikely his sons would've given any information to the Americans about where Saddam is hiding, with both of them gone, the road to finding him remains unclear. But what the raid on the safe house did is it triggered Saddam to release a sign of life himself as an audio tape surfaces and is broadcast on which Saddam can be heard mourning the loss of his two sons. (Saddam speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] The existence of this tape confirms that Saddam is still alive. And the other thing this whole situation showed is that the bounty had resulted in someone coming forward and providing helpful information. - Secretary Powell today approved the payment of $30 million reward to the individual who provided the critical piece of information. - [Narrator] Therefore, the U.S. decides to pay the full reward to the informant. $30 million in addition to being relocated to the United States. Their hope is that once Iraqi citizens see that the U.S. is serious about their bounties, it would encourage more people to step forward with information. - We're trying to look for Saddam Hussein. We have his two sons and we already took care of them, but we need Saddam Hussein. We're urging the Iraqi people to help us out any way that they can. - [Reporter] There's no shortage of information. But with a $25 million reward on offer, much is unreliable. - [Narrator] But as the months rolled by with many unsuccessful raids to capture Saddam, it begins to seem less and less likely that anyone will come forward. (door thudding) - [Reporter 1] Three civilians were shot during last night's raid. Innocent victims of this frantic search. - [Reporter 2] An elite secretive unit known as Task Force 20 is leading the hunt. There is no clear indication tonight that his capture is imminent. - The Americans are not about to apologize for all of this. - [Reporter 1] A trail of destruction left in the wake of the special task force that's hunting down Saddam Hussein. (soft percussive music) - [Narrator] With many of the raids leading to absolutely nothing, the focus again shifts. And the U.S. military puts their attention towards completing the deck by tracking down prior officials from Saddam's regime. Several high ranking officials that worked directly under Saddam were captured with the hope that they might be able to provide information. Surprisingly though, none of them can point to their former president's hiding place. And while the bulk of the military remained focused on hunting targets from the deck of cards, one Staff Sergeant Eric Maddox decides to go into a completely different direction. Maddox realizes that the targets they are focused on represent the old regime that had fallen from power. These are people that were given positions because they were related to Saddam, and so their power came from him. Right now, what Saddam needs is people with the power to protect him, and that can only come from one place, his bodyguards. While in power, Saddam had a system of personal protection comprised of three different tiers. The outermost level of guards were assigned to fixed locations, such as his various palaces across the country. Above them was a level of guards that would travel ahead of Saddam to secure locations in various areas. And finally, above these guards were the Hamaya, the innermost layer of elite guards. Those who would stay with Saddam at all times. Maddox theorizes that these guards are likely the ones currently protecting Saddam. And in order to find them, he begins his work in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. Tikrit had already been thoroughly searched and it is largely believed that Saddam isn't hiding here. However, it is still a hotbed for another family group, the Al-Muslit. And most of Saddam's elite bodyguards came from exactly this family. As Maddox begins his interrogations, he notices that one name keeps popping up. Muhammad Ibrahim Omar Al-Muslit. And the more Maddox learns about Muhammad Ibrahim, the more convinced he feels that he is on the right track. Not only was Muhammad Ibrahim one of Saddam's most trusted inner circle bodyguards, but it seems like he is currently leading the entire resistance against the U.S. occupation. He had installed several lieutenants in charge of certain areas of Iraq to coordinate attacks against coalition forces. And he is the one coordinating funds for counter attacks. - [Reporter] Saddam's loyalists here had taken off their uniforms and tried to fight the Marines with guerilla tactics. - [Narrator] And if Muhammad Ibrahim is really running operations in Saddam's stead, then he has to know where Saddam is hiding. And so, Muhammad Ibrahim becomes a prime target. To get to him, Maddox Interrogates a nephew of Muhammad Ibrahim, who then reveals the names and locations of two close business associates, as well as the name of Muhammad's driver, Basim Latif. Basim along with family members of these business associates are interrogated and the U.S. is able to begin filling in the gaps of Muhammad's movement. So far that they even find out the location of Muhammad's son, Muslit, who is interrogated next. Initially, it seems that Muslit isn't able to be of much help. He didn't have much involvement in the resistance, but what he did reveal is that he used to often go fishing with his father. And even though they don't go anymore, he knows that his father still fishes at a pond he owns in the city of Samarra. This may seem like a trivial piece of information, but Maddox thought back to an interrogation he had before with a prior housekeeper of Saddam. He remembers that the housekeeper had mentioned that Saddam loved Masgouf, a type of fish that is popular in Iraq. Suddenly, the trail seemed red hot and Maddox was certain that Muhammad would be able to lead him to Saddam. (bright lilting music) To find out more, U.S. forces raid the fish farm Muhammad was known to use. Two fishermen were located, but neither of them were Muhammad. And when these fishermen are questioned, Maddox finds out that one of them was a cousin to a lieutenant in the resistance. And the fisherman also mentions an uncle they shared who had a house in Baghdad. Perhaps Muhammad could be hiding there. If so, he would be hiding in plain sight in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad that had been under the control of the U.S. led coalition for months. But with no better lead to follow, the decision is made to raid the house in Baghdad. When you think about it, what led them here is a series of rather weak links. As U.S. troops are about to raid an apartment of an uncle of a fisherman from a place where the son of the suspect remembers fishing with his dad. And so, it comes as a surprise to the special forces when inside the apartment they find their suspect. Muhammad Ibrahim Omar Al-Muslit is captured. (helicopter blades whirring) Still, there was no guarantee that Muhammad would be willing to talk. Maddox himself questions him and he offers him protection for himself and his family. And with that assurance, Muhammad begins to talk and he reveals that Saddam is hiding in the small farming village of Ad-Dawr, bringing us back to the scene from the very beginning of this video. As the U.S. troops searched a town, Muhammad Ibrahim is there with them as a prisoner. Based on his information, they search two unassuming farmhouses just east of the Tigris River. But when both of them are searched, their target is still nowhere in sight. Beginning to think this rate is just a dead end, the troops are about to give up. But then, Muhammad Ibrahim points out another building just to the north of the second farmhouse. The building is little more than a shack with two rooms, and no one is inside here either. It seems as though Muhammad Ibrahim has a good idea of where Saddam is, but the soldiers are not catching on. And there must have been some final mental block that prevents Muhammad Ibrahim from straight up telling them. He is willing to help, but he also doesn't wanna be the one giving Saddam away directly. And so, Muhammad Ibrahim begins kicking at a piece of rope half buried in the ground outside the hut. Now, the soldiers understand. They find the trap door and Saddam. - Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. (crowd cheering and applauding) - United States military forces captured Saddam Hussein alive. In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived. (screen whooshing) (somber music) - [Narrator] Even though Saddam Hussein was captured, it didn't end the Iraq War. Coalition forces had no exit strategy once Saddam's reign had ended and instability continued for years as the country struggled to rebuild what the invasion had destroyed. The image of Saddam hiding though became one of the most iconic ones in modern history, ingrained not just in the timeline of global events, but also in pop culture. It even became somewhat of a meme with people finding Saddam hiding in all kinds of random places. Wikipedia even struggled with vandalism as Saddam kept hiding in all kinds of random graphs. But this is where it is important to remember that this moment didn't become iconic by itself. (gentle spirited music) After Saddam was captured in this hole, the U.S. military invited lots of journalists to tour his hiding place, ensuring the world saw where Saddam had been cowering. - Today, I had the chance to clamber into the tyrant's last hiding place. It's a miserable hiding place, particularly for a man who built some of the most ostentatious palaces in the Middle East. - [Narrator] They publicized photos of his arrest, showing him frail and utterly defeated. They also conducted a medical examination of Saddam, where a doctor checked his teeth as though his dental hygiene was a concern after his capture. But this video also was released publicly. And really, this story isn't just about finding Saddam. It is also a tale of the power of different narratives. On the U.S. side, there is the narrative that there were weapons of mass destruction later proven to be false. Both the U.S. and Saddam understood that images can carry immense power. Saddam had spent decades fostering a cult of personality, saturating the country with his image, using state-controlled media to build a larger than life persona while brutally oppressing any form of opposition. And the U.S. military felt a need to erode that myth. With the support for the war quickly waning both in the U.S. and globally, an easy solution was to make Saddam the face of the war. Saddam was undeniably one of the most brutal leaders of the modern era, and the image he projected was built on propaganda. But the carefully staged presentation of his downfall, the fact that this very image became so well known was no less a form of such. (gentle somber music) Telling stories like this is at the core of what I try to do with this channel. Revisiting events that shaped our world and recreating how exactly they played out. And it is precisely what I did for my next video, focusing on the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe. - On April 20th, an explosion ripped through BP Deep Water Horizon drilling rig. (explosion booming) - Far offshore, the rig is still burning out of control. - It's the worst oil spill in U.S. history. - [Narrator] For this video, I have created extensive 3D animations to better visualize the sheer amount of oil lost during the disaster. And the video explains how engineers try to pluck a hole more than 5,000 feet deep in the ocean. - Because there's never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. (bell clanging) - [Narrator] One month from now, this video will come to YouTube, but you can already watch it right now on Nebula. That is because I publish all my videos to Nebula first. One video ahead of the YouTube uploads. And I created an entire video series that is completely exclusive to Nebula called "Under Exposure." It is a show I am incredibly proud of as I was able to focus on darker subject matters that would otherwise risk getting demonetized on YouTube. For example, if you enjoyed this video about Saddam Hussein, you will probably also enjoy my exclusive video about the Kuwaiti Oil Fires. An unbelievable story of what happened when Saddam Hussein's troops set thousands of oil wells on fire in the neighboring country of Kuwait. And besides my original series, Nebula is filled with exclusive content from lots and lots of talented creators. With exclusive game shows, full length documentaries, and even feature films. So, sign up on nebula.tv/neo. And if you use this link, you will actually get a 40% discount of the annual plan. That comes out to just $3 a month to access all of Nebula where you can watch all my videos early. So, thanks for your support and thanks for watching. (gentle rhythmic music)