WASHINGTON - Intelligence experts raced Thursday to analyze tapes of Saddam Hussein's TV appearance hours after a missile strike on his suspected Baghdad hide-out, hoping to answer a key question: Did he survive the attack or did a look-alike fill his shoes?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials questioned the authenticity of the tape, showing a weary, puffy-faced Saddam urging his countrymen, in defiant tones, to resist the invaders.
By day's end, some government experts had concluded that it was in fact the Iraqi dictator delivering the seven-minute address, not one of the doubles he is known to use as decoys.
Others were less certain and said the analysis was not complete.
"I would say there are a lot of people who are wishfully hoping," said one U.S. government official, speaking on condition he not be named.
Even if it were Saddam on the taped message, U.S. officials said, that would not prove whether he survived the pre-dawn attack on a compound where he was believed to be staying, possibly with his sons. Although the speaker made reference to the date of the attack, the tape could well have been recorded earlier, the officials said.
"We have reached no conclusions about that videotape as to whether that is or is not Saddam Hussein or what time that may or may not have been prerecorded," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Analyses were under way at the CIA and other intelligence agencies. But the government also consulted Parisoula Lampsos, who claims that she was Saddam's mistress in Iraq for many years. Lampsos has distinguished Saddam from his doubles in more than a dozen cases, and this time she said he was not the man in the broadcast, a Defense Department official told The Washington Post Thursday.
Reports of Saddam doubles "have almost reached mystical status where he has dozens of these guys," the U.S. official said. "That's why they are looking at this tape."
Biometrics experts who consult with the government said the tape was being run through a series of tests: computerized facial-recognition programs; computerized voice-print analysis; and facial-measurement techniques performed by hand.
The facial-recognition and voice-print analysis constitute the technical part of the evaluation, with computers comparing facial measurements and voice spectral ranges from the latest tape against earlier photos and recordings.
"The spectral characteristics of a person's voice are very hard to fake," said Bradley Horowitz, founder of Virage, a California company that provides biometric analysis technology to the government. "They really are a function of the physical geometry of the person's throat and mouth and nasal passages."
Still, another biometrics expert, who asked not to be identified because he works closely with the federal government, said voice-print analysis can be complicated if the microphone or the transmission method for the recordings to be compared are different.
"At this point, I'd have more faith in Dan Rather's judgment than in any technical analysis given the difficulties of that tape," the expert said, referring to the CBS anchorman who interviewed Saddam last month.
The third part of the evaluation is a human one that supplements the facial-recognition technology.
Analysts surely have hand-measured key points of the face on the latest Saddam tape - particularly the ear, where individual characteristics are quite pronounced - and are comparing those measurements to those from known pictures of the Iraqi leader, the biometrics experts said.
Complete analysis involves a melding of science and art, some said.
"Technical analysis is just one prong," Horowitz said. "They use them in concert. It's not that they plug the video into a computer system and out the other side spits `It's him.' There's detailed analysis with hand analysis, cultural analysis with domain experts who have spent time with Saddam before. They will really use a very multipronged approach."
Few facts were offered by government officials Thursday about the Iraqi leader's fate, perhaps because much remained unknown.
If the dictator is killed in battle and his body recovered, U.S. officials will use DNA technology to determine whether they've got the right man. The technique has become a common one, with officials taking DNA samples from suspected Taliban and al-Qaida operatives who fell in battle in Afghanistan in hopes of identifying them. And government officials sought DNA samples from Osama bin Laden's family.
The pre-dawn strike on the bunker believed to house Saddam was the result of intelligence that CIA Director George Tenet and others viewed as extremely solid. Tenet brought the information to President Bush during a meeting Wednesday, resulting in the surprise attack.
Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism official, said he suspects
the Defense Department engaged in psychological warfare by floating the possibility that Saddam's location was revealed by a confidante.
"Anything we can do to sow suspicion and distrust within Saddam Hussein's ranks, we will do," he said.
© 2003, The Dallas Morning News.
Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http://www.dallasnews.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
