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By Robert Green, Senior Editor

During the final years of his regime, Saddam Hussein employed a computer hacker who claimed to have penetrated U.S. military satellites and other Coalition systems. Identified only as “Usama,” and a nephew one of Saddam’s wives, the computer science masters degree-holder apparently disappeared shortly after the Iraq war began and remains at large.

Usama’s existence was turned up by the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group as part of the controversial hunt for weapons of mass destruction and was first reported in Addenda to ISG’s 2004 findings in April of this year.

According to the report, Usama was headquartered at the high-tech Al  Battani State Company, an aerospace research center that was a branch of Saddam’s Military Industrial Commission (MIC). In the final days of the regime, Usama was tasked with jamming U.S. signals, providing advanced warning of an attack, and penetrating the US Airborne Warning and Control System.

Witnesses said that in the days leading up to the Coalition invasion of Iraq, Usama was routinely running streaming video on his desktop that he claimed was intercepted from encrypted U.S. satellites feeds and which he said showed activity at US bases in Kuwait and elsewhere. The ISG report suggested Usama more likely had picked up unencrypted feeds from U.S. UAVs operating in the Persian Gulf region.

By then, Usama had apparently taken over an entire building of the MIC plant for his operations and created a command and control center of sorts. His chief task was to provide warning to Saddam that an attack was launched. But shortly after Operation Iraqi Freedom began, an envoy of the dictator visited the Al Battani facility only to find Usama had fled. The hacker had provided no advanced warning, witnesses told the ISG.

In the years leading up to the war Usama had reportedly proven his skills by penetrating the firewall of an Iraqi Air Force-owned, French-made F-1 aircraft simulator, and by hacking an encrypted telephone system produced by MIC itself previously thought to be impenetrable.

Photo: Courtesy of CNN;© 2005