For more than a decade, the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have tried to develop plans to divide and crack the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
During the first days of the war, those plans have not gone as well as some intelligence officials envisioned, despite some successful recruiting of human intelligence sources close to the Iraqi leader and a host of high-technology efforts that have helped prepare the battlefield.
Setbacks, including the apparent failure to kill Saddam on the first night of the war or to cut off communications between the leadership and its forces, have also revived simmering tensions between the CIA and the Pentagon.
Optimism about the fragility of Saddam's government was shared by policymakers at the White House, the Pentagon and even within the CIA, though some longtime intelligence analysts say they had warned of the stiff opposition US forces might face.
Senior officials now acknowl-edge that few Iraqis in the leader-ship, the military or even in towns and villages seem prepared to resist Saddam's rule of terror until they are certain he is really dead or driven from power.
"This is the head-of-the-snake conundrum," said one senior official who was deeply involved in the planning for a post-Saddam Iraq.
"No one wants to commit themselves until it is clear regime change is happening," the official said.
The CIA and Special Operations forces are playing crucial roles in the war, both on the battlefield and in ongoing efforts to disrupt Saddam's leadership.
However, the CIA's role is markedly different than it was during the war in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, in part because American intelligence has had many years to gather on-the-ground information about Iraq since the first Gulf War, in part because US intelligence has had many years to assemble on the ground information about Iraq.
Using e-mail messages and cell phones, American intelligence and military officials have kept up efforts to persuade Saddam's inner circle to defect, recruiting family members, college classmates and even overseas business associates of Iraq's top officials in the effort, government officials said.
Individual military intelligence officers, with the help of the National Security Agency, prepared files on Iraqi officers identified for some of these communications. Military planners have spared portions of Iraq's telephone and communications networks from the bombing so that it can be used as part of this program to undermine Saddam's regime.
Meanwhile, new intelligence collected by the FBI from Iraqis questioned in the US about where Iraqi leaders may be hiding, as well as which buildings have been "masked" as cover for military operations, has been sent to the Pentagon to aid in the war, officials said Tuesday.
The CIA has already set up a Baghdad station outside of Iraq -- awaiting only a final order to move into Iraq, officials said.
A series of Special Operations missions undertaken in the early hours of the war to destroy communications and observation positions that intelligence reports said were vital Saddam's ability to command Iraq's military forces apparently succeeded in severely eroding Baghdad's ability to communicate with its main military commanders.
However, the Iraqi leadership's ability to communicate has not been totally shattered.
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