DIEHARDS

A Pentagon intelligence report says many bombings against Americans and their allies in Iraq, and the more sophisticated of the guerrilla attacks in Fallujah, are organized and carried out by members of Saddam Hussein's secret service, who planned for the insurgency even before the fall of Baghdad.

The report says officers of Saddam's Special Operations and Anti-terrorism Branch, known as M-14, are responsible for planning roadside explosives and some of the larger car bombs that have sown chaos across Iraq.

In addition, suicide bombers have worn explosives-laden vests made before the war under the direction of M-14 officers, according to the report, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Its findings were based on interrogations of high-ranking M-14 members who are in U.S. custody, as well as on documents found by the Iraq Survey Group...

"They carefully laid plans to occupy the occupiers," said a U.S. official who has read the report. "They were prepared to try and hijack the country. The goal was to complicate the stabilization mission, and democratization."