As an All Source Intelligence Technician with 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, Iraq, from March 2003 to March 2004, Chief Warrant Officer Bryan Gray provided the brigade commander, Colonel James Hickey, with tactical intelligence concerning everything from terrorist cells and weapons trafficking rings to improvised explosive device layers, makers, financiers, and a plethora of high-value targets, including Saddam Hussein's senior bodyguard and personal secretary, General Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, as well as the former Iraqi dictator himself. In fact, in this interview, Gray describes the intelligence gathering, the planning and the ultimate execution of Operation Red Dawn - the mission that resulted in Hussein's capture - in great detail and, above all, stresses the importance of cultivating human intelligence, which he estimated accounted for between 80 and 90 percent of all intelligence products. "I feel good about using intelligence to either capture or kill individuals that were killing our soldiers,” said Gray. “Whether it was the guys actually firing the weapons, the guys financing it or the guys who were making IEDs, I know that our intelligence shop made a difference in finding those individuals who were harming our soldiers.” Most satisfying, he added, were the times “when you present an intelligence product and you’ve done all the work to lead to that point to show the commander, and he says, ‘You know what, we’re going to conduct a raid.’ And he goes to do the raid and there are results: either somebody got killed or captured or there’s more information that came from it, it means it was a successful operation, and we had many, many successful operations.”

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