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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Trip Through Tikrit

Aired April 13, 2003 - 00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: You are looking at a live picture via videophone from Tikrit, where our own Brent Sadler has just arrived, a CNN exclusive.
Brent, what's the latest where you are?

BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, as you can see we're just approaching the southern gate. That archway in front you, that square with the dome on the top that is the southern entranced to Tikrit. Now, we passed through this area down this road about 12 hours ago just before sunset and edged around the outside of Tikrit. And I can tell you this is a very different place to places like Kirkuk, Mosul and obviously Baghdad.

This is still Saddam Hussein's control area as it were. We have not seen any of the pictures in this area. And if we get the cameraman to swing to the right, you'll see a picture once we get the video from across here a picture of Saddam Hussein picture. Note, no destruction, none of the pictures of Saddam Hussein in this area, the Sunnite heartland of Saddam Hussein's former regime have been destroyed. And it's been like this all the way around the outskirts of Tikrit.

Now, we've got within about three miles of the city center late last night and we're going to go down this road now and see what we come across. And I can tell you that we're having unconfirmed reports that Mujahideen al Khalq, which is the organization, which was the resistance to Iran supported by Iraq, is apparently said to be defending the center of Tikrit as well as Saddam Fedayeen.

Now, we haven't thankfully bumped into any of those people within the last twelve hours but I can tell you when we tried to park up in the desert to find a location to hide out that we did get approached by unarmed men who identified themselves as Baath Party.

So, we're going through this gate now. This is the southern entrance to Tikrit, one of the best-defended parts of Iraq during all the many decades of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Now what I can tell you is around the approaches to Tikrit a lot of significant, military complexes heavily damaged by U.S. air strikes. When we came in from the northern entrance of Tikrit overnight before sunset, we saw massive areas: warehouses, artillery pieces, tanks, armored personnel carriers destroyed. Obviously, a lot, a lot of coalition bombing in this area. Now, if we swing to the left and look at the lamppost, this is another sign of the kind of area that we're now passing through. On each one of these lampposts, there still is hanging up there pictures, small pictures of Saddam Hussein still intact bolted to the lamppost along this esplanade, this very well constructed four lane highway that leads into Tikrit.

So, we understand from what we've seen on the ground, Anderson, no presence whatsoever in this vicinity of any coalition forces. We did have an unconfirmed report from locals who told us there have been a move, a small perhaps, reconnaissance move by U.S. forces 24 hours ago. There have been a brief firefight in Tikrit and that the coalition, one presumes the Americans have withdrawn. I can't confirm that with my own eyes but these are the reports that I'm hearing from eyewitnesses on the ground here.

Now, it's obviously an area where, I guess you'd say, the Iraqi government of old still controls. There are people here knowing that we are a western TV crew who said, look you're not safe here because of Saddam Fedayeen. You should go to Samarra, which is the next big town south of Tikrit. They said you'd be fine there; that's in government hands.

Now, in absence of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party hands, then you understand the implications for us with relations to that, not a good place to go. So, we have spent the night with a seven-vehicle convoy as we move slowly down this road hiding down a culvert underneath the main four-lane highway because one you have the problem of loosing control here. Two, you know there are reports of Saddam Fedayeen. And three, more importantly last night, a seven car convoy going along this road when coalition aircraft are still active is obviously another complicating factor.

I have heard constant air activity through the hours of darkness. I've continued to hear air activity this morning. I've seen some plumes of smoke in the distance, nothing intense whatsoever, but certainly activity. And certainly a big question mark hanging over the future of Tikrit as we move along this highway -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, again do you have any sense of exactly what lies down this road? I mean how far are you from the city center? And talk again just a little bit about what sort of forces may be in that city center.

SADLER: Well, this is exactly what we don't know, the strength of forces in the city itself. We came down this road just at the end of daylight hours yesterday. And I know to the right of this picture in the not too distance future, you will be able to see Tikrit from a distance. This is a bypass road if you like, a very well constructed, a very, quick bypass road that helps you zip pass Tikrit and head up to the northern areas of Kirkuk and Mosul. We saw the city last night, we didn't hear any gunshots, we didn't hear anything that was sounding anything like any battles going on in there. And there were some cars moving through and asking about the safety of this area.

But you know at the moment it's still very, very obviously unpredictable. We don't know if any elements of Saddam Hussein's regime, the hierarchy have taken refuge in Tikrit. We do not believe there any significant numbers of U.S. forces in this area, certainly close to Tikrit.

I'm seeing -- just passing the road, I'm seeing some discarded military boots, soldiers' boots on the floor there. When we came past this road last night, we did see deserting Iraqi soldiers, conscript regulars passing through this area as we've seen 48 hours ago. The men we saw walking down this road, former Iraqi soldiers said they were from the 5 Corp, which had surrendered, I think it about 36 hours ago in Kirkuk.

So, as we go along here, it's difficult to see but, more boots on the ground as we're passing. And thankfully, another car on our left there. It's always good to see other cars passing along roads as you go into un-chartered territory.

But it's important to note also, that this area around Tikrit really gives you an idea of the amount of money that was spent on Saddam Hussein's military; vast, vast military complexes, warehouses. We saw warehouses that had been hit, surviving ammunition, ammunition that hadn't been destroyed and people looting that ammunition.

Now, on the right here -- this is interesting. Actually what we're seeing now, you'll see you'll pass that road sign. Now, we've got a picture there of Saddam Hussein, you'll see there Anderson. Now that obviously being here, now that's the only one I've seen for a long time that's actually been destroyed. Looks like either a tank shell got it or an RPG -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, what is your plan of action right now? Where are you headed? What is your intention here?

SADLER: Right. We're going to -- if we can get a map of it all, it would be helpful. We're going to skirt the western side of Tikrit and hopefully, we'll be able to give you a shot of that soon. But skirt the western side of Tikrit and head north to a town called Bhaji. Now Bhaji, B-H-A-J-I is where we understood U.S. forces -- Special Forces have been in and out over the period past of several days. And we think that in that area -- in fact, we know in that area that's under the control of tribal chiefs. Bhaji, north of Tikrit is under the control of tribal chiefs; they of course were loyal amongst the most diehard loyalists to Saddam during his decades in power. They weren't particularly friendly as we passed through, they weren't particularly unfriendly as we spoke to them in Bhaji, north of Tikrit last night.

But certainly, this is a completely different perspective of Iraq if you looked at what's been happening in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, all these other areas where the coalition have been. This is largely untouched apart from the fact obviously, that there were no people moving around.

I think another important point perhaps to make here, is that we haven't seen any looting. I've been through two or three towns, villages; I don't see any looting going on here. It's as if the clock had stood still in these areas around Tikrit.

So, we're moving north -- just to recap Anderson. Moving north, skirting the western side of Tikrit -- some road signs coming up ahead of us -- and making our way around this area, which is really largely untouched by coalition a part from continuing air activity.

We know from Central Command that there have been continuing air strikes against targets in this vicinity. We know because I heard them with my own ears, coalition aircraft in the last 24 hours being active, but no bombing, but no bombing to speak of.

On the way into Tikrit, may be 30 miles north into Tikrit, I did see the road had been hit by a bomb or a missile. The road had been cut off.

And we're now approaching some new road signs and you'll see there Tikrit. There it is, Tikrit pointing off to the right. Mosul, straight on. There's the geography. Tikrit, to the right. Now, we're not going to take (AUDIO GAP) and you'll understand why that right hand turn there because we don't know quite what's down there. I expect, from what I hear, resistance is still may be three or four miles down that road.

Another Saddam picture there. The actual picture itself seems to be -- the image seems to be largely intact but everything around it seems to be destroyed. Can't explain how or why.

As we go through this underpass here, we should pretty soon (AUDIO GAP) some pictures of Tikrit. But we're very, very close. Very close as you see Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, these are just remarkable pictures as well as remarkably dangerous for you. We are going to stay with you and with the pictures we want to bring in Colonel Mike Turner, retired -- Mike Turner from the U.S. Air Force.

Colonel Turner, as you look at these remarkable pictures Brent Sadler is bringing us for the first time in this CNN exclusive, what goes through your mind?

COL. MIKE TURNER (RET), U.S. AIR FORCE: Well, Anderson and Brent, both. I'm struck by the lack of military activity.

Brent, has there been any hint of active forces or armed personnel moving about, or any of the military equipment that is manned at this time? It appears to be almost abandoned, this very compelling footage.

SADLER: Absolutely, right. Bang on. And no significant military movement. In fact, no military movement in vehicles. In fact, I've seen gunmen with young men; we saw a pickup truck with soldiers late yesterday afternoon, just before we went into our hidey- hole in the culvert under the road. But no troops at all.

And you'll know better than I do perhaps General that this area here -- in fact, if you look at that shot now in the distance. Christian, if you can zoom beyond those warehouses. There you go. There goes Tikrit over there now. So, I guess -- and you'll see a dug out and a truck hiding behind those little fan hills there.

So, that is Tikrit. That's as close as I judge it possible to get to right now. But no movement, no military trucks, no hardware moving around.

We're stopping here now because we not quite sure what's ahead of us. I'm just going to get my binoculars up and have a look. That's our vehicle up ahead. You'll see a vehicle up there with some men around it. We don't know what that is at the moment. I don't see any guns. Let me check with our guys in the front.

Will, do you see a gun? No guns.

OK, what you have often we found along this road last night -- again, now you're seeing it right here live. You'll seeing people moving and not knowing who's in control or what's going on. This is all by word of mouth.

So, going back to the original question. No, seeing no real soldier movement here of any significance. Just as we passed through a great deal of destruction to the huge military complexes that are in this vicinity -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, you mentioned that some people believed to be Baath Party, people who came up to you, sort of approached you; I'm curious to know what they said to you? And also, did they have a sense of the larger picture of what is going on in Iraq?

SADLER: No, Anderson. They did not.

There you go. There's a good shot now of Tikrit. This is an elongated development following the road is a strip city, if you like. And you can see the parts of the center of it there just easy within eyeball range.

In terms of the people around here, they -- that's right this is a tribal heartland. They have prospered well under the years of Saddam Hussein's rule. They basically were paid off for their support. They can control this area. They would pay lip service to the government and they would be rewarded for that with jobs, positions in the Baath Party and financial support for social development, this kind of thing. So, this is a loyalist -- a loyalist area.

Many of the army's officer corps in the Iraqi army came from the Tikrit area and north of Tikrit.

So, these people really are going about their lives as if from a day-to-day perspective, nothing's change. I mean you know, we were in the desert last night, probably three or four miles from any location, two in the morning, men from the Baath Party came up and challenged us to find out who were. I mean this is the kind of apparatus that kept Saddam Hussein in power for all those years, eyes and ears, literally in every nook and cranny of this very, large and opened spaced country.

I mean can you believe it? After the war, after the fall of Baghdad; men identifying themselves as Baath Party and obviously posing as a potential threat to our location there. Which is why we spent quite some time finding a location to hide out.

So, there is still structure existing but by no means the same as before in terms of its repressive ability. And certainly not the same as it was before in terms of its ability to crack down on everything. But certainly there is a functioning system here.

Now, we've stopped again and I've got my eyeglasses up and we're looking at four men on the left of the road. These could be soldiers again from the defeated army. I don't see any weapons on those men.

Do you, Will? You see a weapon?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're carrying weapons (OFF MIKE)

SADLER: OK, there is a weapon on one of them men but not at the ready. They could be soldiers they haven't defeated -- they haven't surrendered, rather. They could be soldiers just walking away from Tikrit.

I mean this gives you an idea; this is a very good example, General and Anderson just really how uncertain, how unpredictable this area is. And Tikrit itself obviously, is a no go area as far as we're concerned. We did see cars going through.

Actually, they're waving. That's always a good sign. These people are waving. We have waved at people in this area and they have simply glared back, they have not waved. That gives you a pretty good indication that they're not very pleased to see people like us around here.

So, as we progress along this road, Tikrit on my right, steadily moving along, we see more people there. And this is what we saw really for a couple of hours yesterday as we came into Tikrit from the northern entrance, the outskirts of Tikrit. Men of fighting age walking slowing along the road in civilian clothing. And we'll see if these men are goes a wave at us, because as I say, that's always a good sign.

COOPER: And Brent, as we look at these pictures, I'm curious...

SADLER: OK.

COOPER: I see a wave there.

I'm curious to know what sort of signs of fighting; past or present have you seen? We saw the one sign of Saddam Hussein, there seems to be some sort of signs of fighting around. Are you seeing any indications of heavy bombardments, any artillery strikes, any ground fighting.

SADLER: No, Anderson, I'm not. On this approach from south to north -- there's a good shot of Tikrit on the right hand side there.

We're not seeing a great deal of military installations here. The heavy stuff was on the northern entrance, which we'll get to not for quite some time; may be 20, 30 minutes up the road. But that was a vast area.

You're seeing there a trench, obviously. May be you can't see that but there is a berm and a trench that stretches as far as the eye can see that might be part of defensive fortifications.

OK, all right. OK, I'm seeing some military equipment in the distance now through my eyeglasses, through my binoculars. I don't know if you're picking that up. Yes, yes. Dug out positions, smashed artillery pieces. Yes, I see it now. Dugouts, fuse boxes, bunkers. Largely looks as though -- a bit difficult because my binoculars are shaking. A bit difficult to see exactly what was there, but certainly the subject of attacks. Air attacks, I would guess from what I can see at this range -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, as always we're continued to be joined by Colonel Mike Turner.

Colonel Turner, as you look at these pictures, I guess Brent just seeing some smashed artillery pieces and the likes, some military embankment where there looks like there was some activity in the past. I guess what we don't see is what is going on inside the city, inside the center of Tikrit and that being the big question, I suppose.

TURNER: Yes, obviously it is. This is very, very compelling video. And Brent, be very careful in this process because this very dangerous, what you're doing. And we certainly appreciate the images.

Obviously, as I've said before, the Special Forces have been operating here, that the amount of destruction in place that Brent suggests we've been hitting this very hard.

I know Tikrit was on the target list in Desert Storm with a number of targets. I'm sure it was on the target list, the fixed target list before during the war and this operation. And all of those operations would have taken place in the heart of the city against key military targets.

The fact that Brent is encountering so much destroyed military equipment, I think bodes well for the ultimate reduction of Tikrit. And we'll just have to wait and see how that develops. But I'm sure Special Forces are operating in and around this whole region.

COOPER: And Brent, have you seen any sign in your travels thus far of Special Forces in the area.

SADLER: Not in this area, no. We were talking to Special Forces in the area east of Tikrit, right on the other side 24 hours ago. And they were really briefing us as to what might happen next. They were suggesting that any ground ops had been put on hold, air would continue and the hope would be that under continuing air strikes and pressure from coalition warplanes bombing that the Tikrit defenses would implode.

Now, as we're passing along the outskirts of Tikrit here, it's impossible to say what's inside there. What I can tell you is as we attempted this run along this road last night, we were just setting up the videophone, when security expert who was with us, he's at the wheel, Will Scully saw a man, which appeared to be a drop off for a sniper. He eyeballed a sniper rifle, a pickup truck with three men in it dropping him off and then the man slowly move into a building. That was enough to persuade us that we should to leave immediately. So, we went there went to a safer location and hid out for the night.

So there it is, it would appear a structure of something here. But my guess -- Colonel Mike Turner, you could help me better with this perhaps. My guess is because we're so close to Tikrit and because I am not seeing anything touched with of an offensive nature that we would -- that one could expect that to be perhaps nothing left in terms of any formal resistance.

And as we come up here, there's an artillery piece on the left there. Yes, it's an artillery piece, I think it's a 1-0 -- what is that Will?

OK, it's free artillery piece that doesn't appear to be destroyed. It was probably being dragged away northwards just on the side of the road there.

Colonel Mike Turner, can you answer my question? The fact that we're so close to Tikrit would suggest that -- yes.

TURNER: I was just going to suggest that might be an anti- aircraft piece there. It's difficult to see as you drove by.

SADLER: No, it's definitely; definitely artillery piece and we'll be coming up to some more junk now.

But Colonel Mike Turner, the fact we're so close to Tikrit, we're seeing you know destroyed or abandoned military equipment leads me to perhaps believe that Tikrit can't be that heavily defended. May be remnants, may be elements, may be danger but no real, substantial organizational defense. What do you think?

TURNER: I think that's a reasonable -- a reasonable assumption Brent, albeit it a cautious one. You know, the fact that you haven't even been challenged yet this close to Tikrit, in my judgment, is at least a circumstantial indications that the defenses are not nearly what we might have expected at this point. I would have expected checkpoints, and military activity and certainly, challenging a reporter who is obviously providing frankly, very, valuable intelligence information in real time. I just would have expected more of a challenge. So, I think it's reasonable assumption. It's still a good idea to keep your head down Brent. This is pretty amazing.

COOPER: And Colonel Turner, you say that because if there was some sort of sizable, organized military positioning inside of Tikrit, they would set up roadblocks in advance to get a sense of any one who might be in the area?

TURNER: Well, if you're going to -- if you expect to be besieged and if you're going to set up defensive positions then clearly you need to have some sort of indication when someone begins to probe and test your perimeter.

There's another aspect to this. It's entirely possible that the conventional military has been destroyed in place and simply left. That could still leave the Fedayeen and the Mujahideen and those extremist loyalist, we saw them in civilian clothes in the southern cities that could be waiting for us in the center of the city. And they would not pose a conventional military threat perhaps on the outskirts of town but would still pose a very significant threat in the heart of the city. So, that is a real possibility and Brent were to see that obviously.

COOPER: Brent, I'm curious. With the Special Forces personnel you talked to the other day, did they give any indication of what they thought was inside the city center of Tikrit in terms of you know, we heard the reports that Tariq Aziz for instance, had gone back to Tikrit. There was talk of many other senior Iraqi leaders going back to Tikrit. Any sense on the ground there of that?

SADLER: Absolutely not Anderson. No, I mean you'll understand that we're not in the heart of the city. It's my judgment from what I've heard and seen and Colonel Mike Turner is absolutely right, you know. While we have danger obviously going along this highway, we came last night and there were no checkpoints. Not one single -- and this is really incredible. Not one single checkpoint from the southern part of Mosul all the way down to Tikrit. Not one vision of a coalition force, no eyeballing of any checkpoints for about three hours of driving on this highway from Mosul down to Tikrit. Now, that's a highway that takes you to the desert rather than through towns leading to Tikrit from Mosul. Which shows that deliberately to keep us away from possibility of village and city checkpoints.

But on this main road, four lane highway which I would say was built for military purposes in the first place because it would enable Saddam Hussein to send you know, military vehicles up to the north -- the Kurdish north when he needed to have fire power up there. So, this is a very, fast road I think would have been built originally for military purposes.

But in terms of checkpoints, last night nothing from Mosul all the way down. Nothing from Mosul to Tikrit. Nothing from Tikrit 30 miles south of Tikrit towards Samarra, which is only 50 miles from Baghdad. Nothing, no checkpoints, no military positions, no coalition forces.

We've been talking for several days now about the U.S. having you know, a presence in the north now, not a lot but presence building in the north. And obviously we know about the south and in the middle, a vacuum. And goodness, gracious me, what a vacuum this is.

And you'll see now as we're coming down this road, more men not carrying any belongings. I would certainly say judging from what I've seen in my experience over the past few days, these again are soldiers who've either surrendered, possibly from the 5 Corp. in the north, or perhaps part of the Tikrit defense themselves. Impossible to say unless I go and talk to them and I don't intend to do that at the moment. But certainly, it fits in with the pattern of what I've seen over the past few days here.

And as I scan left and right, again this vacuum, this middle section of Iraq where there are no coalition forces is just extraordinary -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, you know you talk about the no checkpoints and yet in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. when you were camping out and these Baath Party officials came over and sort of confronted you. Do you get a sense of how they got the information that you were in the position you were in? And also, what did they want? What did they say to you? Did they act like they were still in control of that area?

SADLER: In answer to those questions, first of all, try and let me try and explain how it works out here. It's the village drums if you like, seven vehicles, headlights on. We had to have headlights on unfortunately. We only had one piece of night vision with us. Headlights in village areas, remote parts of Iraq that's going to set the telegraph wires tapping away. It did, it was about 30 minutes before they came to us. We didn't see weapons on them but they certainly behaved in the way I've seen Baath Party officials behaving about wanting identification, who we were.

Our cameraman, Christian Stride who's giving you these remarkable pictures as we drive along here, is German and was speaking German to them. W got the impression that they were OK about Germans but certainly not happy about Americans. So we decided, I think prudently to leave that location immediately before the drums beat any louder and it brought anything else into our direction -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, your remarkable pictures not just being seeing in the United States but on "CNN INTERNATIONAL" around the world. Michael Weisskop with "Time" magazine is in Doha, Qatar, he's been looking at these pictures you've been bringing us, he joins us also on the phone with our continuing discussion with Brent Sadler and also with Colonel Mike Turner.

Michael Weisskop, as you look at this what goes through your mind?

MICHAEL WEISSKOP, "TIME" MAGAZINE: The extraordinary collapse of the Iraqi army. Either this a great rope a dope strategy by Saddam with amassing artillery and of troops within the city gates, or one of the more extraordinary disappearance of a significant army.

COOPER: Colonel Turner your thoughts on a possible rope a dope strategy or is it as what you've been talking about the possible disintegration of the last vestiges of holdout?

TURNER: I'd to agree with Michael on this one Anderson. At least all the obvious evidence of this here is that it would really -- it would have to be an amazingly well coordinated, secretive strategy particularly, for our forces to have no knowledge of this. I think what you see is what you get in this case most likely. We certainly hope that it would save a lot of heartburn on a lot of people's minds right now and for the planners back at Central Command

COOPER: Michael Weisskop, as you are in Doha, Qatar, where Centcom is, what have you hearing about what they think is going on in Tikrit. Have they been saying anything about their efforts in this region?

WEISSKOP: They've been noting pretty privately that American bombardment of Tikrit has certainly softened up resistance there. They don't know exactly what to expect. They're sending advanced elements of the Fourth I.D. as we speak and hoping to find out first hand.

COOPER: The Fourth Infantry Division of course, often referred to as one the most highly tech divisions in the U.S. military. That division was supposed to come in through the north, through Turkey had to actually had to come in through Kuwait City.

Brent, it looks like you're slowing down or stopping. What's going on?

SADLER: Just really stopping here to take a look at the geography again. Tikrit is the cutoff to the right, as you'll see there, we're on that now. Mosul is dead ahead. So, we're coming now to the northern end of Tikrit. And what I'm hoping to do is as we carrying on talking is to go through the northern gate, and then we're going try and get you to these amazing scenes of the aftermath of the coalition bombing up the road here.

So let's -- Will Scully at the wheel there. Let's roll on down this road and see if we can get out of the vicinity to quit to the northern gate out towards Mosul and see if we can get you to where all this destruction is that we saw last night -- Anderson.

COOPER: Because the area you are headed to now, the northern access points to the city that is where most of the bombings that has gone in Tikrit has been focused?

SADLER: That's right I would say judging on the basis of this journey. But the concentration of bombing was extensively in the north of Tikrit because that's just where most of the warehousing, bunkers, barracks -- I mean there were kilometers, miles and miles of barracks. There's one on the right here if we swing round. Just massive complexes, damage on the outside of that one you'll see -- a blue truck racing out probably looting.

And these are huge, huge complexes you're seeing the Baath Party star on the top of that wall. That's the insignia of the Baath; you see that everywhere throughout Iraq. And you'll see at that the end of this compound construction going on there. But this wall stretches for as far as the eye can see.

And as we proceed along this road, you know, more and more stragglers; soldiers who surrendered coming down the highway.

Also, I noted just north of Tikrit as we came in, an oil facility seem to be working in the sense of the smoke stack blazing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) gases. We've got some smoke on the horizon there that could be the oil facility I was just referring to. It could be something else but we'll get to it -- Anderson.

COOPER: Mike, as we continue to just look at these extraordinary city, and as Brent is heading to sort of the northern reaches of the city to show us some of the extensive damage that he believes and he has seen has occurred there, we go back to Michael Weisskop in Doha Qatar.

Michael, I know you've been following the story of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. There has been some talk of Tikrit as possibly location for some of these weapons if they do in fact exist. What are you hearing right now about the ongoing search for WMD?

WEISSKOP: Well, if Tikrit is any bit like Baghdad, as a repository of documents and of scientist, it could be the holy grail for the weapon's hunt. Our military sources our saying that in going through these cratered Saddam palaces in Baghdad, and making initial...

(CROSSTALK)

SADLER: Anderson, just something to add. Can I...

COOPER: Go ahead Brent. Sorry Michael. Go ahead Brent.

SADLER: OK. Sorry. This is the gate. Well, let us carry on Will.

This is where you would see a checkpoint if there was going to be one in Tikrit. These are the two arches to the northern entrance. And we are going to just stop off just maybe fifteen meters ahead of them, and just show you what is around here.

Just stop here Will, can you?

You'll see here the two arches there. You've got the Saddam Hussein ubiquitous poster, unmarked in the center two gal post on the side to side and obviously nobody here. This under normal circumstances would have been checking cars, would have had people here 7 by 24.

So, this is the northern extremity of the Tikrit stronghold, if we can call it that. And a stronghold it certainly is and as you'll see once we continue to move north and try and get to these heavily bombed, vast military complexes.

As to what's going on in the center of Tikrit itself, we're getting nowhere. Can't get any eyewitness accounts of that but we'll work on it as this extraordinary day unfolds -- Anderson.

COOPER: Remarkable. Brent, just to see that guard -- that place that should have been a guard post, always has been. Should have been a major checkpoint to the northern access route to the city just completely unmanned. Hard to tell what it means, but just remarkable to see it.

SADLER: Absolutely. I've traveled many, many times over the past 20 years into and out of Iraq, and traveling into Iraq from Jordan from the western side of the country. I always had a great sense of relief as a journalist leaving those kinds of gateways. And there was a gateway at the international border at Erbil in Iraq to go to Lawahsha (ph) in Jordan. I would always cast a look over my shoulder and be thankful that I was leaving Iraq and looking at Saddam Hussein as I was going down the road away and to drive through one of those unmanned gateways right now in Tikrit, in the very, very heart of Saddam Hussein loyalist stronghold, to me is a personally dramatic moment -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, we're staying obviously with you and your pictures. And any time you want to jump in, feel free. Obviously, you know you take priority here. I'm going to Michael Weisskop, just on the phone joining from Doha, Qatar.

Michael, you're talking about weapons of mass destruction, this Tikrit being the possible Holy Grail, if in fact they do exist. If in fact, they are in existence, this is one of the places they are kept and/or evidence of them is kept.

WEISSKOP: Yes, Anderson I would expect to see a place like Tikrit a part of the paper trail. And this is what military forces in Baghdad are turning up new clues off as they go through government offices and bombed out residences of Saddam. They are finding documents, which may be leaving indicators of weapons, specific weapons and their locations. At the same time, scientists are beginning to come forward now that they believe they no longer face the same kind of reprisals from this regime, and may be providing the first inkling themselves of where these weapons are.

COOPER: Are you hearing anything from military officials either on the record or off the record about if in fact, WMD, weapons of mass destruction do exist in Iraq, why they weren't used?

WEISSKOP: The thinking here and you do hear this in hallways more than publicly is that the agility and speed of U.S. forces basically ended up becoming so stunning to Saddam. He didn't have time to distribute these weapons if they exist.

The thinking is that they were well hidden from U.N. inspectors and so as to get them to the hands of people who would execute the attacks, takes some time and he didn't have that time.

COOPER: Brent, I was just thinking about that guard post that you went through a short time ago, the guard post that looked relatively untouched. You would think if -- if there was some sort of significant military force inside Tikrit at this point that that guard post would at least be a place they would man to have -- because if it's been un-hit, there is some sort of level of communication between that guard post and whatever is still in city center of Tikrit. SADLER: Yes, my assessment is Anderson that there is no significant -- this is just an assessment on the basis of what I can see. But what I've learned in the last 24 hours, my assessment is there is no significant force in terms of conventional military inside Tikrit. I think reports we've had from people who've been in there that there is resistance. I think define resistance as Fedayeen and Mujahideen al Khalq.

Now, what we're going to try and do right now is let's try and pull off the road here Will, and go into this base.

Here we have a significant military base. I have no idea of what it is called. There is an intact poster of Saddam Hussein there. And we're going to swing round into this base and have a look but not before security expert gets out of the car. And you'll see him doing this, and takes a look at what we have here.

Now -- are we OK Will? OK, we're OK. Here we go.

Now, I've seen a lot of bomb damage just before we swung into here, these tanks are monuments, not active tanks. And you'll appreciate of course, Anderson as we come through here this is breaking new ground. Guard post abandoned, the armchairs are in there; so no looting, no looting. And if you think of what we've seen in Kirkuk, Mosul and Baghdad, this barracks would have been stripped by now by people coming out in their droves. Obviously not happened here.

I suspect because we saw two tanks mounted on plinths (ph) of monuments, this is probably a tank division headquarters. Poster untouched. So, no one's been here either looting it seems or shooting the place up as acts of retribution against Saddam Hussein's control.

So, here we go. Let's see what's happening. Anderson, why don't carry it on -- carry on while we just look around here and talk to our guests?

COOPER: All right, Brent. I'm curious also whenever you have a chance, to know whether it looks there have been scenes of any sort of Arab bombardment or any sort of attack beyond looting that would have occurred before any looting to see obviously just as a military base it would seem to be on the face of it, a prime target for coalition bombing?

Colonel Turner as you look at these pictures -- Colonel Mike Turner, remarkable, Brent Sadler is entering a military base basically on his home outside and very close to the ancestral homeland of Saddam Hussein.

TURNER: I'm stunned, Anderson. This looks like a ghost town; I don't see people walking around. I don't see any movement. Brent hasn't reported any movement. It doesn't appear to be a particular amount of damage. It just looks like they walked away. I'm -- you know, unless we've known this and it's just because it's on the outskirts, I'm just stunned. I would have expected at least a challenge at some point in this very, remarkable journey. COOPER: And we all are very thankful that there has not been a challenge for Brent Sadler and the crew he is with.

TURNER: Absolutely.

COOPER: As you look at this Colonel Turner, the significance -- I mean we're seeing inside a military base inside on the outskirts of Tikrit, a place we have heard so much about. We have heard it the last stronghold of Saddam Hussein, perhaps the place if he and his sons are still alive, perhaps they fled to. Perhaps the place other high high-ranking Iraqi leadership would have fled to.

If these pictures are any indications, what does it tell you?

TURNER: Well, early on as we began to move into Baghdad and we past the so-called ring of steel, I think we began to all begin to perceive that one of two things was rapidly going to develop or rapidly going to develop. And that was either it would be the last ditch stand as we cross this ring of steel or there would simply be an evaporation of obvious resistance. And we obviously saw the resistance just evaporate. Just essentially, the conventional resistance anyway, tend to move on out of the city, and make it difficult for us to really perceive any sort of military control inside of the city; despite the fact that there was some severe and still are some very severe battles going on.

But as you look at that now and move into Tikrit now with this remarkable footage, you really begin to get this sense that perhaps this regime simply has evaporated and is just no more. There's been discussion all day long about who will surrender at this point. This at least, circumstantially suggests that that's in fact a very real issue now. It looks as if the regime has just gone away.

COOPER: Yes, go ahead. "Time" magazine's Michael Weisskop also joining us from Doha, Qatar.

Michael, I mean, as I look at this as I saw Brent Sadler turning into an Iraqi military base outskirts of Tikrit, I just kind of -- I couldn't believe it.

WEISSKOP: This is like, Anderson like, answering the layers of bank robbers who are trying to -- who ran out a step ahead of the oncoming police. It's pretty extraordinary. It emphasizes to me and is a good reminder of the extent to which this has been a society and that an army run by a man on horseback. The man on horseback has either been shot down or left my his own steam, there's no one left and everything crumbles beneath it.

COOPER: Yes, I'm actually reminded of the "Wizard of Oz" at the end scene when the wizard is confronted and there's a little man behind the curtain; and he keeps saying don't look behind the curtain. Brent Sadler has just pushed back the curtain entering this base and there is nothing there, there's nobody home.

And we should point out just to our viewers who are just joining us, Brent Sadler -- CNN's Brent Sadler and his team are basically in a vehicle on their own, more or less in a seven car convoy. But they are not embedded; they do not have coalition forces with them. They are not with Peshmerga fighters. They are on their own pushing back the curtain, going -- I mean you talk about being on the front lines; this is ahead of the front lines. This is uncharted territory.

WEISSKOP: I fear Anderson...

COOPER: Go ahead.

WEISSKOP: I fear Anderson for...

SADLER: Anderson, let me just chop in here if I can...

COOPER: Brent, go ahead.

SADLER: Let me cut in here.

OK, Christian (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Pictures forward.

OK, look. Pictures now remarkable. This is actually the garage, a garage area or a workshop area of this obviously, an armored division. And you'll see here, these are bombed out vehicles. These are just derelict, abandoned vehicles. Look, we've got some armor on the left hand side over there.

Let me just try and take a look at this armor over here. Let me get out in fact. At three, I can't get out too far. Let me try to get out the car here. No, I'm stuck to my cables.

That is an APC. We are not talking about destruction here gentlemen; we're talking about wholesale abandonment. This is the parking area for all sorts of vehicles; fuel bowers, I see vehicles on blocks, I see -- this is a scrap yard. I mean basically, may be one serviceable vehicle in a scarp yard of junk. And this is clearly an armored unit, a brigade or may be even (AUDIO GAP) and Tikrit (AUDIO GAP)

If it comes under here. Well, if you could try not to go under cover we'll loose the signal.

Are you still with us Anderson?

COOPER: Yes, we still have you Brent?

SADLER: OK, we've got a tank here. Christian, let's try and drive past this tank Will.

OK. Now, let's take a look at that. This is under a cover but no damage. Look, that tank is intact. Crews long gone, the tracks in piece, the barrels, turret, all intact. Nobody here.

This is just getting more and more bizarre with every passing minute.

Will, let's swing to the left and see what's over there if you can. May be not, no. Carry on. So, I don't know when this was abandoned Anderson, but you were talking about the "Wizard of Oz" analogy. I mean this is clearly is it. I mean you wouldn't know from the highway that this compound here, this very large barrack was basically in such a shocking state of neglect and disrepair and collapse, even before the conflict had started.

So, perhaps now as we pull back the curtain, as we pull back the layers of Saddam Hussein's regime, we can perhaps see what a thin ice you know -- thin lines of defenses rather, that were actually protecting his regime from external threat.

I mean this really just sums up what we've known all along. That he spends his money on the forces to maintain his own regime intact.

Look, there's a vehicle here, this is another a tank. Looks like an old one. Perhaps Mike Turner, maybe you can tell me what that is, perhaps a T-55. I don't know. This whole place is a scrap yard.

TURNER: Yes, I was going to say probably a T-55; it doesn't look like modern equipment.

Brent, do you have any feel for at all for recently abandoned? I mean you just referred to the fact that it appeared to be abandoned before the war. This looks like pretty old abandonment. Would you agree?

SADLER: You know, it's difficult to say. I think it's -- I think it was abandoned last week, last month, or five years ago. You know, I've been to many areas of Iraq and you can't tell sometimes how recently they were in use. My sense is that this is not, if you like, an old, old junkyard because I've seen those on the way down here.

Now, look at these vehicles for example, these are pretty good vehicles. Look, they're put in little sand -- sorry, mounds. They're defended by mounds, those are good trucks. That doesn't suggest to me that those were abandoned long ago. But nor do I see evidence of wholesale destruction from aerial bombardment.

But there's an awful lot of equip -- Ah, there's some destruction over there on the left. I see tank transporters that looks in pretty good condition -- very good condition; wheels are all solid. So, I wouldn't say this was abandoned for years. I would say it is a mixture of the both.

But if we go -- Will, try to get around the outside so we don't loose the signal by going under the standings.

We're going to try and circumnavigate here and you'll see a lot of damage, which I was talking about before round the back of here. Just bare with me, there we go; that obviously significant damage from coalition air strikes.

COOPER: Right.

SADLER: An old, old piece of armor there. It's like a museum piece. But if you look ahead now, we're driving into some significant damage.

Back to you, Colonel Mike Turner.

TURNER: Yes, Brent I would agree. It's really difficult to assess. What just amazes me is there's not even a human being in sight as near as I can see.

COOPER: Yes, there's not even a dog running around, you know as you often see in a lot of places, places like this.

Colonel, how surprised -- I mean if this is the situation throughout Tikrit, and we can't extrapolate that simply because we don't know what's happening in downtown Tikrit in the city center. But if things have fallen a part completely, if there is no there there, no man behind the curtain, so to speak, why aren't U.S. forces already there in significant numbers on the ground?

TURNER: U.S. forces have to assume worst case. They can be pleasantly surprised and not loose anybody. If they assume best case, even based on Brent's remarkable footage, and they're surprised, you can loose a lot of people.

So, they have to assume worst case. It doesn't hurt them in any way for them to be cautious and to probe carefully. Again, Special Forces will move into the city. I suspect if they have their television sets turned on that this is pretty interesting footage and they will adjust accordingly. And they may already know this. We don't know that. They may have already determined this. We just have to wait and see.

But certainly caution is the watchword here and it makes perfect sense when there are lives at stake.

COOPER: Well, from what Brent has told us thus far, it appears no large-scale U.S. force troops or U.S. forces moving -- having moved through that area.

But Colonel Turner, you wouldn't be surprised if Special Forces have perhaps been operating in this area already.

TURNER: When this is all over and the dust is settled, there will be some remarkable stories and some historic tales of valor. And I suspect that Special Forces have probably achieved a stunning and historic victory. And because of the nature of the people that are in the Special Forces, we may never know about it. But for anyone in the military that sees the results, they can very easily surmise the level of valor that's been displayed by U.S. and coalition Special Forces in this operations.

If this is abandonment, total abandonment and the regime has ended with a whimper rather than a bang, we can attribute a great deal of that success to the courage of the Special Forces in this operation.

COOPER: Well, Colonel Turner if what we've see seems to be what we're seeing, what happens next in terms of military movements on the coalition's side?

TURNER: Well, I'm not aware of any other major areas of resistance. Mosul is in a state of civil chaos right now, as is Baghdad to a large extent. Well, I've been watching the coverage for three hours now and I haven't heard of any major firefights that have been in or around Baghdad. And if Tikrit is essentially now a done deal -- and that's a big if, we have to caution that's a big if. But if its, then clearly we have crossed the threshold of what I would have to say is approaching or very close to approaching the end of the war.

This I thought was probably the last holdout and it doesn't appear to be much of a bastion right now from the footage that Brent is providing us.

COOPER: We're going to go back to Brent for a moment. And for any viewers who are just joining us, Brent Sadler has been for the last hour or so providing nothing short of remarkable pictures, exclusive pictures in and around Tikrit.

Brent, where are you now? Are you still on the military base you were on?

SADLER: Yes, we've just swung round inside this tank battalion or tank division. We can't tell you how many men would have served here, but certainly an armored unit. And we've looked around here, seen a lot of destruction from coalition bombing on some of the warehouses. But generally speaking, the sense I get is disrepair, disorder and collapse even before the coalition bombs got to work in this area. This is very run down tank regiment, very run down indeed.

Just passing there a possible maintenance tent with an NACP on the top of it. And tanks scattered here and there; and most of them hulks but some in working -- working order.

The vehicle ahead, is that moving?

A vehicle moving towards us here, a military vehicle, this is interesting. Military vehicle and with military colors, civilian at the wheels. Let's see if they're friendly. OK, a quick wave. May be a looter.

So, we've been in here just passing a soft course here on my right hand side as we go through here. Shooting range on the left.

You know, I have not seen one single symbol of authority in the past hour of transmission and 24 hours of being in this location a part from civilian interests from a group of men who said they were Baath Party officials.

So, we're going to move out of this tank regiment headquarters, and get back on the main road, and reassess and may be take a look at Tikrit itself.

What are we looking at here? OK. We have here in Arabic "Down, Down USA," look at that on the back of that dugout there in Arabic and English. So, obviously someone was here and recently.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Colonel Turner, go ahead.

TURNER: Brent, this is Mike Turner again. Do you have a sense of how far you are? As the crow flies from the center of Tikrit, it looks from your images to be three to five miles or thereabouts?

SADLER: Bang on Mike. I'd say about seven or eight clicks by my GPS, about five miles from the center of Tikrit.

Now you know, I mean we pose as a significant target with seven vehicles in our CNN convoy here. I mean you know, we'll reassess and may be we'll try to get into Tikrit itself. I mean this is just such an opened season for going into Iraqi territory. It may be do-able but we won't do it until we get a bit more intelligence here on the ground. But you know we are a significant movement, it's not as if you can't mistake what we are. We are a large group of vehicles, seven vehicles you know, moving around. If there was anybody defending this areas, we'd be, I guess from their gunfight, a legitimate target given they know that American forces will sooner or later in strength be coming in this direction. We can easily be mistaken for a Iraqi patrol.

TURNER: Well, Brent, this is Mike Turner again. What concerns me is if there are forces in the city and they're watching CNN right now. You need to be aware of that.

SADLER: Oh, I'm aware of it Mike, thank you. But we were going to attempt it last night and backed off. And it was a sobering experience to spend the night under a culvert in a drainage ditch with the road overhead. But that was prudent given the air strikes and the possibility of blue on the blue friendly fire with our location because obviously, the coalition, as far its planning is concerned, and you're obviously right, this is still unfriendly territory. A seven-vehicle convoy in unfriendly territory, two and two makes four. We could be easily mistaken for hostile forces. So as extraordinary as it is, the wisdom of the day will probably not to try Tikrit, unless we get some more hard evidence.

COOPER: Well, Brent, on that subject, do you having anything that distinguishes your vehicles, from the sky perhaps, from civilian vehicles?

SADLER: Yes, we have TV clearly marked on them. And we did pass on our coordinates 24 hours ago to CENTCOM that we were a seven- vehicle convoy moving about in this area. We are now, I think, gong to, are we going to pull off and take a look in here. We are. We are going to pull off and take a look at a -- gate closed. We can't go in that one. Look at that. The gate is closed and, obviously, with a piece of metal around the gate to stop anyone going in. I mean, just remarkable. Where is everybody? Where are the soldiers? Where is the final elements of the Republican Guard division? I think it was the Adnan division which is supposed to be here. And this just, literally, almost in mortar range from the center of Tikrit.

COOPER: Yes. Colonel Turner, just to remind our viewers who are just joining us, the significance of all of this, of course Tikrit, the hometown, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, supposed to be the last bastion of his power, a sight apparently at one point guarded by much vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard, the pictures seem to tell a different story.

TURNER: Well, they certainly do. And you would think if Tikrit was the last strong point, the last holdout, the point of final resistance, that there would at least be some semblance of what they call a ring of steel around Tikrit. But, clearly, Brent has gone over the red line, if we can borrow that analogy from Baghdad, once again, and there doesn't appear to be anybody home. It is really shocking.

COOPER: If this is a ring of steel, it appears more ring of steel wool and Brent Sadler is sort of pulling apart as we watch. Brent, we saw some cars passing by, civilian vehicles?

SADLER: It looks like civilian vehicles. And so we are just doing a tape change in the camera. So if the camera does some strange things, just bear with us, as we move off. Christian Strive (ph) on the camera, just putting a new tape in there. The taxi passing my left-hand side, no one really showing any hostile intent here. It feels better, actually, than it did late yesterday afternoon. But we won' t know for sure until we can penetrate the center of Tikrit as to whether or not there are any fighting elements of any groups, regular army, Republican Guard, Saddam Fedayeen or Mujahedeen Harakat (ph) these extremists diehards who might make a last stance in Tikrit. But, certainly, no evidence of coalition forces here whatsoever. Surprising really, given the kind of briefings I was having just a couple of days ago about such a force presence around here.

Now, look, we have just come behind an APC vehicle there, intact, in the dug out, by the road, one of a line of them, a machine gun on turret, I believe. Yes, machine gun on turret, abandoned, walked away. They didn't even bother moving it. They just clearly ran away from it.

COOPER: And that is an APC?

SADLER: Quite extraordinary.

COOPER: That APC was not one that had ...

SADLER: Yes, it would have come up for this one.

COOPER: Go ahead.

SADLER: What I am going to do, Anderson, is we pull up to this vehicle, I am going to keep my radio mike on. And I'm going to get out of my vehicle, so you won't be able to talk to me until I get back to the vehicle. Let me just get out of the vehicle. We'll look around obviously for any -- well, if you would like to come with me. I am going to go off my earpiece and go in front of the camera. You should still be able to hear me. So I am leaving he vehicle now, our vehicle, and just going to take a look over here and see what I can find. What about that door? Can you get in that door? Quite remarkable. The gun is intact, in position. There is ammunition around the front here. The gun, obviously, in working order. Bullets in the breech. Let me climb up.

Extraordinary. The hatch is open. The machine gun, obviously, working. Bullets in the breech. The hatch open here. Let me just peak inside and see if there is anything in here. Just total abandonment. Total abandonment. Absolutely incredible. How long ago this was manned, it is obviously impossible to say. But really this is quite remarkable revelations. It seems that Tikrit's armed forces -- the so-called last stand has simply gone away. Where three, four miles I guess from the center of Tikrit, this would have been a well- defended position dug out with APCs, all the way along this area. No troops. They are gone.

So I am going to climb back in my vehicle now, Anderson. I hope you can still hear me. And I am going to climb back onto my earpiece. And in a second, you will be able to talk to me. Let me just put the plug back in. Anderson, can you hear me?

COOPER: Yes, we hear you Brent. This is just an extraordinary. You mentioned this line. How many APCs can you see in the area? We just saw two which seem to be dug in, and as you said, they seem to be intact. The bullets were in the machine gun and, yet, completely abandoned. Are there just those two or do they extend onwards?

SADLER: Yes, they are all over the place. There are mounds -- every mound you see in front of us now, is along the foreground. Look, there are mounds in the background. I think Tikrit has fallen without a single shot being fired on the ground here. Look at this, look. Front line equipment , dug in, nobody here. The back of that APC open, they're one. They fled and they fled in a hurry. Look at this. Look over there. This whole area is full of dug out and abandoned active, loaded vehicles with entrances (ph) and rear doors open, in some cases. Here is another one coming up. These are not just one of two spots, these are dug in defenses.

COOPER: Colonel Turner, I want to bring you in here for a second. I mean, a military who cares about what they are fighting for, if they are going to abandon their vehicles, they would at least blow them up, would they not?

TURNER: If they had time. It depends on how fast they had to move. The signs here are that they had to move pretty fast, as Brent alluded to. Brent, I am curious, the revetments, the berms that you are looking at, do they command the -- overlook the major highway coming into the military complex?

SADLER: Sure thing, Mike, they do, indeed. The one you are seeing on the -- dead ahead now, that's probably 100 yards from that main highway. So, these guns -- that machine gun there would be facing eastwards.

COOPER: What does that tell you Colonel Turner?

TURNER: Well, they are obviously defensive positions. They were obviously meant to stop vehicles like Brents from doing precisely what he is doing.

SADLER: West, west, west.

TURNER: Yes, that would have been my guess is west, based on the way you came in. But, obviously, these were put there to stop vehicles such as the seven-vehicle convoy that Brent is in from doing precisely what he is doing right now. It's -- these are, obviously, purely defensive positions that have been completely abandoned. And that looks like state-of-the-art equipment for the Iraqi military. That doesn't look like much like that older vehicles that we saw in the garage that he went through first.

COOPER: Would those be Republican Guard vehicles?

TURNER: I would say, if I were going to gamble and have to say yes or no, I would say, yes, they look to be in fairly good shape. Brent, do you have some feel, you looked inside. Are they in pretty good shape? Do they look to be well maintained?

SADLER: These are pretty old Soviet versions of their APC.

TURNER: Oh, are they?

SADLER: Standard vehicle. I wouldn't think they were Republican Guard equipment. I didn't see any red triangles normally a telltale sign of Republican Guard designation vehicles.

TURNER: Right, right.

SADLER: But I would say that they were, certainly, defensive positions. I agree with that, recently abandoned. I would guess they're -- not yet, I can see they are abandoned very recently. And in terms of the insides, you know, old but functioning. These are killing machines. There is no doubt about this. These aren't wrecks or abandoned junk. These were killing machines.

COOPER: Brent, a couple of days ago, I think it was two nights ago or so, you brought us these remarkable pictures and interviews with these hundreds of thousands of men walking down the road, former soldiers, where were they in relation to where you are now?

SADLER: OK, that would have been northeast towards the Iranian border. Those men who were going back home, drifting south, were part of Saddam Hussein's northern army, the three army corps he had up there. They were infantry canon fodder, if you like, conscripts, mostly Shiites heading south. But a long, long way away from here. The few stragglers you are seeing coming along the highway the past hour or so, different units they will be from for certain, two different parts of the battle theater I've been in the past 24 hours. So, what I am surprised about, having seen the fact that so many people were on the move after the immediate fall of Kirkuk and Mosul, you saw thousands of people on the road, it seems to suggest to me, and Colonel Mike Turner, I would be interested to hear your view, that this hasn't just happened in the last few hours, this has happened maybe in the last 24, 36, perhaps slightly longer. That, otherwise, all these troops would be on the move. They probably already fled to Baghdad.

TURNER: I think that is exactly right Brent. In fact, I remember when we were talking and we hadn't crossed the red line yet going into Baghdad, there was this palpable sense that there will be time at psychologically the resistance, just the capacity to resists of the conventional military, and possibly even some of the hardcore elements of the resistance would simply crumble, and that would be a cascading and ever-accelerating effect. If that timing was right, and that occurred a week to maybe a week and a half ago, and rippled across the countryside, then it would make sense that this would have occurred within four or five days ago, perhaps, as that psychological barrier was crossed. And they realized this was a hopeless cause. And they would have left. I agree you would have encountered something.

COOPER: Colonel Turner, those armored personnel carriers that we just saw Brent Sadler climbing around, reporting from, which were in dug in positions, from the air, form the coalition standpoint flying over, can you tell that things have been abandoned. I mean, as you look at the kind of aerial surveillance you get?

TURNER: Probably not. There are some pretty amazing photos you can get. We attacked Republican Guard tanks from the Hammurabi and the Tawakalna and any number of other divisions in and around Kuwait who had, in a similar fashion, embedded themselves behind berms, and attacked those. And it's difficult to tell -- now that was technology. Twelve years ago when you looked down from infrared imaging or onboard systems of any kind, laser finders and those sorts of things, and television cameras, it is difficult to tell whether it was abandoned or not. And usually you can tell whether it is destroyed or not and, if it's not, then you go after it.

But these don't appear to have been struck. And it is just a little bit of a mystery as to why they would not have been struck, unless there were just higher priority targets that we had to hit. And we would encounter these in the battlefield air campaign when we got closer to the city. But it is just hard to say.

COOPER: I just want to briefly review for viewers who have been joining us just in the last several minutes of so, we have been over the last hour and 15 minutes or so, privileged to following Brent Sadler as he and his team from CNN push back the curtain on what has long been considered the last stronghold of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit, the city where Saddam Hussein was born. The place often described as his ancestral homeland, power base. The last place, I believe, to be in the old regime of Saddam Hussein still in their hands.

But Brent Sadler has been showing us as he takes enormous risk driving around and through regions into Tikrit. Brent Sadler basically showing us that the forces are gone, at least in the areas he has traveled in. We are not able to see exactly what is happening in the city center. But if this is any indication, what is in Tikrit now is certainly now what we had anticipated, what we had been led to believe over the last several days with the situation in Tikrit. Brent, where are you now?

SADLER: We are just passing a group of tanks, unserviceable tanks from what I can see. But what I would like to do is get to where these camouflage nettings are. Those were really tanks that have been dead for quite some time. What you see ahead of you is a bus. Now, that bus is a green one. It is used as a troop transporter, obviously, soft, not armored. But I know that this bus because I've been in them myself during the Iran-Iraq war. So that has been put behind a barricade. And this whole area, as you can see in front of us, is just dotted with dugout and APCs put into them.

Now, I think it is also interesting that as we are so close to Tikrit why, perhaps, these weren't taken out by coalition aircraft. But I think that Colonel Mike Turner was absolutely right. There were more higher priority targets. These were not offensive dugouts here. These are defensive positions. And it seems that the targeting has gone for command and control, rather than this pretty ineffectual hardware which is dug into the ground here. We are going across some pretty rough terrain right now, trying to get to one of these dugouts that has a camouflage net all over it. But, certainly, the Iraqis have gone to a lot of trouble to give the appearance of an army that was capable of defending itself in the face of coalition air or ground attacks. The fact of the matter is it is obviously paper tissue thin, in terms of its defensive comparability. This armor it seems never took part in any battle -- Anderson.

COOPER: It's just remarkable. Colonel Turner, how much of this is for the benefit, is for the effect it might have on coalition aircraft flying overhead, the placement of these batteries, the dug in positions. How much thinking on the part of the Iraqis goes into what the coalition might be seeing from the sky?

TURNER: Well, you know, Anderson, as Brent was saying that that was exactly the thought I had. This whole thing may have been staged. And I don't mean staged in the sense that it's rouse, as Michael put it, a rope-a-dope, it may have been an effort for deception and concealment to present a supposed military target, without loaded military equipment and defensive revetments in and around Tikrit to draw off air strikes. And it's possible that U.S. special forces have already discerned that this is not a high priority target and moved on to other things, which would explain why none of this equipment has been destroyed. That is one possible explanation. It would certainly draw off air assets if they thought that this was a serious threat array. And it appears that they didn't, because these are not destroyed from the air. It doesn't look like it.

COOPER: Brent, all the people you have seen in the last hour or two, from our vantage point, it is a little grainy, a little hard to tell, but they all seem to be men of military age. Do you see any young people, any old people, any women, people who are clearly civilians?

SADLER: No, Anderson, no women, no children. These are men of fighting age quite clearly. And I'm pretty certain, without speaking to them, that they will be men from Iraqi military units, who have either been told to lay down their arms by commanders and just melted away or have run away. What we are going to have to do, Anderson, is lose the picture of awhile. We need to change a battery, otherwise, we are going to go down for a long period of time. So can we just switch off and come back to you in a couple of minutes?

COOPER: Absolutely, Brent. Just let us know when you are back. We will still be here waiting for you. We are going to continue our discussion right now with Colonel Mike Turner. Colonel Turner, I've said it before a couple of times over the last hour or so, but these pictures are just remarkable. What surprises you most, of all of what you have seen in the last hour and 20 minutes or so?

TURNER: Well, I was just about to ask Brent, he's seen a lot more of this close up, certainly, a lot closer than I and a lot of other people have in the world. And I'm sure that we are fascinated by what we are looking at. But one of the questions that occurs to me is as we pass those few individuals on the road, my expectation for individuals who are fleeing from a hardcore Fedayeen, for example, central core in Tikrit, because they're caught between forces that are converging for a major conflict, the body language of those kinds of refugees, if you will, or people in transit, I would suspect would have been wholly different. And I am sure Brent has seen instances of that in this war and other wars that he has covered. And, yet, these people did not seem to demonstrate the body ...

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TURNER: ... moving around, I got the distinct impression that they were headed south through that military conflict. I would like to confirm that when he is back up. He appears to be moving closer to the center of the city. And it doesn't appear like there is any increased vigilance on anyone's part as he does that.

COOPER: He certainly also seems to be flirting with the notion of actually going into the center of Tikrit. Let's talk a little bit about the dangers that are inherent in that. Simply, the bottom line is he doesn't know what is right now in the center of Tikrit.

TURNER:: Well, that's true. And, you know, the problem, if it's an unconventional force in the center of Tikrit, let alone coalition unconventional forces operating in that area, but what the danger is here, the threshold, the ramp up, if you will, to use a military term from a benign situation and a non-threatening situation to extreme danger will be lightening fast. That's what concerns me is that he is sort of alone, unarmed and unafraid up there. And if he encounters someone who is armed, it only takes a few seconds to be in a very dire situation. So that's a serious concern.

COOPER: I think it bears noting, especially to our viewers who are just joining us, we have almost become blase in seeing these remarkable images in the last 20 or so days of this conflict. We have seen Walter Rodgers charging -- the tip of the spear -- with the 7th Cavalry charging through the desert, hearing shots going off. Brent Sadler, if there is a tip of the spear, Brent Sadler is far ahead of the tip of the spear. He is not traveling with any coalition forces. He is not traveling with Peshmerga Kurdish fighters.

He is traveling in a CNN convoy of some seven vehicles, basically, marked with strips of tape that probably say "TV" on them. But that's about it. That's the only security he has. So there is danger, and then there is danger. It is not to at all be taking lightly. What he is doing, has done, and may be doing in the coming hours, as we continue to look at these pictures taken just moments ago from the vehicles that Brent Sadler has been in. What might lie ahead in the center of Tikrit? I mean, there is a variety of possibilities from Iraqi Special Republican Guard irregular fighters, the Fedayeen, so-called Fedayeen to even Mujahedeen elements from neighboring countries.

TURNER: All of those, although I would say very lightly that the Republican Guard is probably no more. Based on everything that we have seen in Baghdad and the movement of forces. I want to say it was the Nebuchadnezzar Guard unit that tried to move down from Tikrit to Baghdad during the early days of the battle of Baghdad. So I would be surprised if there were any Republican Guard forces of any kind left in Tikrit. You might see resistance such that we saw in Nasiriya and Najaf, with the Fedayeen embedded with the civilian population. But there doesn't seem to be much of any population at this point. Granted we are still quite some miles from the center of town. But I -- this is curiouser and curiouser to steal a phrase. It just seems strange that we haven't seen any semblance of resistance or tension at all in this entire odyssey.

COOPER: Yes, that is, of course, the question, what has happened to those Iraqi Republican Guard units we have heard so much about. And as you point out Colonel Turner there had been reports about a week or so ago, around the time that when the beginnings of the battle for Baghdad began, of some of those Republican Guard units moving south to bolster the Medina division among others who had been so eroded by the coalition bombing, we are back live with the pictures from Brent Sadler. We are glad to have him back. Brent, we will come to you in a moment. We do watch your pictures. Is there anything right now you need to tell us Brent?

SADLER: No, nothing new really. We are just going past another section of this tank regiment that we have been in for the past half an hour or so. Just to let you know, our security expert on the ground here, his assessment is that the Iraqis didn't have time, or didn't want, or didn't have the inclination rather to worry about, or to bother about booby traps. So, you know, it seems in terms of those kinds of threats, booby traps, mines, anti-personnel mines, it seems to be on the basis of what our security experts say on the ground here, that it's OK, with caution, to go into these recently abandoned locations, these dug out positions, and take a really close look at he armor that is still here

COOPER: Well, Brent, these pictures that you have been brining us are being seen not just across the United States at this late hour but across the world, also no doubt in corridors of power where decisions are being made. I want to check in with Kathleen Koch who is at the Pentagon, who has been watching the pictures as well. Kathleen, it has been a remarkable hour and 27 minutes. KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It certainly has, Anderson. And I can tell you that the officials here at the Pentagon are just as riveted as we are by these images. And I can also say just as concerned as some of us are about Brent Sadler's safety. But, indeed, in many ways this does prove some of what we were beginning to hear from the Pentagon yesterday, that they had increasing intelligence information that was leading them to believe that there may not be any sort of defense of Tikrit. Apparently, there were some reports of aerial reconnaissance drones that weren't spotting masses of troops. They weren't spotting defensive preparations. So this is increasingly not coming as a complete surprise.

Still, you know, this is also a very different city from Baghdad. And I think we have to keep that in mind. This is a city of only some 30,000 inhabitants, compared to Baghdad's five million. Now, it is true that military analysts often refer to this as Fortress Tikrit because Saddam Hussein's regimes had invested very, very heavily in building up military fortifications around this city. There were anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missile launchers, radar units ringing the city, observation posts in key locations. So, there was, indeed, that possibility that there could be some sort of a last stand. But it certainly isn't looking like this right now.

COOPER: Yes, certainly, and Kathleen, I want to come back to you in a moment.

Brent, I noticed you got out of the vehicle, checked what appeared to be some sort of a warehouse. What were you looking at?

SADLER: Anderson, that was an ammunition warehouse. This are around here is lined with very large storage facilities. And you will see a lot of them have been blasted by coalition air strikes. The one I was taking a peak in has missiles, ammunition boxes stacked high. Goodness gracious knows what's in these warehouses, which are all numbered. There is all sorts of military equipment, boxes, long boxes. I can see we are just passing perhaps missiles, the kind of shape I recognize as being perhaps just a missile box. These, obviously, the subject down this road here of intense air activity by coalition aircraft. That there hanger or storage facility empty. But in terms of others, it is difficult to know what was in some of them. And let's just stop there a second, just pull back. There is something here I just want you to take a look at. This bear with me.

COOPER: Colonel Mike Turner ...

SADLER: One just doesn't know what's in it. Stop there, Wolf. And if you take a look over here, let me just get out here. Chris, are you on that? Now, in here, just take a look at this, you get through there. Anderson, I can still hear you. We've got a bit more cable now. We have a pumping system, a cylinder, a valve on top of the cylinder, other bits ripped out here, tubing in a military complex. Ammunition over there. Destruction there. Something, goodness knows what, it doesn't look as though it is part of a generating plant. But a cylinder and pumping equipment. Now, what could that be I wonder -- Anderson.

COOPER: And all this equipment just laying around unlooted, Brent.

SADLER: Absolutely, unlooted, totally. There is nobody here. No soldiers obviously, they have long gone. And no civilians. And I would deduce from that that either, A, Tikrit is still under the control of some extremist elements, therefore, people can't move around, or b; the whole of Tikrit has been abandoned. We may found out more this day, I don't know. At the moment we've got quite enough on our hands just to tell you this story right now. Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, certainly do. Now this base is separate from than the base you were on about 10 or 15 minutes ago, is that correct?

SADLER: This is a continuation of the same base. It's taken us all that time to get from those tanks you saw about half an hour ago, to here. We're still in the same base. That gives you an idea of this size, the magnitude of these areas. Now look at that here. That's a destroyed warehouse full, packed with serviceable equipment, serviceable armament. Look, they're all lined up in there. Can you see that, Anderson?

COOPER: Yes ...

TURNER: Brent, this is Mike Turner. Have you seen any T-72s? I haven't on the footage, have you?

SADLER: I have not seen any of the T-72s yet, no, which in the beg of the question, where are they? But there's certainly a lot of hardware here. Maybe it was hiding; I mean I just don't know why it wasn't dispersed out anywhere else. I assume because there weren't men to run it. I mean, I just don't know. It's just remarkable. This is like the old Mary Celeste, the boat that was adrift at sea and everyone's abandoned it. It's, you almost think you'll see a smoking cigarette in an ashtray somewhere in a minute.

COOPER: A T-72 of course being one of the Iraqi tanks, the other being the T-55, those two tanks we see the most of. Brent, obviously that building's been destroyed, I'm assuming by some sort of aerial bombardment. Any sense of how long ago that might have occurred? The smell of any sort of burning things in the air, or do you see any smoke? It looks like it's been gone for a while now.

SADLER: Yes, Anderson I'd agree with that judgment. I've spent much of the last 20 years looking at the results of bombing in various parts of the world, and complete destruction, I'd say this undoubtedly air strike, many, many air strikes on this compound, this military complex, and I would say quite some time ago. Sometime ago, days ago I would say. I see no evidence of any smoke or anything to suggest that it was any more recent than that.

COOPER: Colonel Turner, it looks like that to you as well?

TURNER: Yes, I was just thinking this is very conceivably part of the shock and awe campaign of the first few days. I know for a fact that we had a number of targets in and around Tikrit on the fixed target list in Desert Storm. It would be inconceivable that we didn't have those same targets on the list for the start of Iraqi Freedom, so it would make sense that these were two to three weeks old.

COOPER: And Brent, I'm not seeing large, gaping impressions in the earth. Does it look like precision-guided bombing to you?

SADLER: Well, I would say this was precision-guided bombing. Yes, these are individual warehouses picked off one by one. I don't see any massive craters. Our way is blocked at the moment, but you can see beyond the debris in the foreground, yet more hardware in the distance; whether it's serviceable or not, I don't know.

But there's just a, I can't really describe just how big this place is. A (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to tell you, it goes as far as the eye can see on all points of the compass. The size of this complex that I'm in right now, just maybe five miles or less probably, four miles fro the center of Tikrit. This is where we all expected there to be a possible last stand, the very bastion of Saddam Hussein's support in his tribal areas, the heartland of his paid for support in terms of tribal allegiance over his decades of rule. This is where it was expected that perhaps levels, senior levels of the Iraqi government, the old Iraqi government, the regime would come and hide out perhaps to resist the fall of Tikrit and perhaps who knows, to even negotiate surrender.

But it seems from what we're gathering, over the past couple of hours, that there is no longer any form of conventional defense of Tikrit, and we won't know for sure of course till we get in. What concerns me is the fact that I'm not seeing, and maybe we're on the wrong side of Tikrit, I'm not seeing looters, any movement of population that would suggest it's in any way safe for civilians to come to Tikrit. Mike Turner, what's your view?

TURNER: Brent, I would agree with that. It's so abnormal at this point, that you know after a while the warning flags start to pop up because it's just to, it's too easy, it's just too abnormal here, and that's generally not a good sign. So I think you're, I think you're, you're intuitive sense is right on target.

COOPER: To not just not only no military forces there, but no, no sleepy watchmen at a gate, no you know, it's 9:30 in the morning, no one at least not even one person sitting around kind of watching the place; no dogs even meandering around for scraps. It is, it is the old cliche, eerily calm, eerily quiet, certainly seems to apply here. Brent.

SADLER: Absolutely Anderson. Here's another park, parking area for again serviceable, the tracks are in tact, the guns are on top of the turrets, ATCs maybe, maybe 50 of them just in this little parking area alone. I would say there are hundreds of armed vehicles in this area, this vast military complex as we slowly inch our way through it, and area that was obviously heavily bombed by the coalition at some stage of the campaign.

But in terms of any security, no. There's nobody here. No security, no sign even recent security or control. And in terms of the abnormal, having spent most of the past 20 years being in theaters of war in one part of the world or another, I've never seen anything quite like this. I've seen defeated armies, I've seen abandoned equipment, but not on this shear scale, and at the same time as the war is not over, coalition aircraft are still active here, targets are still being attacked. This is still an active battlefield. I've never seen anything quite like this, and it's making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

COOPER: Just remarkable pictures as we just continue to follow Brent Sadler's journey, probing right now on an old military base in Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit. Brent Sadler just probing around in this area that has been the focus of so much activity, so much attention really since this war began. So many questions unanswered, slowly throughout this morning, Brent Sadler seems to be answering some of those questions. Colonel Turner, what happens next? What is the next step in terms of where coalition forces go?

TURNER: Well, you know it's really pretty hard to say at this point. This is, this is fairly extensive intelligence information and it's going to have be absorbed and analyzed and assessed at least for a while. I couldn't even begin to tell you. I'll be perfectly honest with you, I truly don't know. This is surprising information and I'm sure my colleagues at Central Command and back in the Pentagon are scratching their heads right now and either that, or they know all this and they're way ahead of us and we're just now finding it out. But it's certainly interesting and will have to factor into whatever happens in the days ahead.

COOPER: Brent, I'm interested in the again, some of our viewers who've just joined us may not have been here when you were telling the story of what happened to you last night, camping out, miles away from anything, under, in a covert in the desert, and all the sudden at 2:00am, some Baath Party officials came up and came up to your encampment. If you could, just recount a little bit of that and in particular I'm interested to know, did they act as if they were still in control of this area? And did they confront you about what you were doing? Did they ask for documents or what did they want from you?

SADLER: Well, we came in to this area from Mosul, skipped through the Southern part of Mosul, that's in the North of Iraq, a good 120-30 miles North from this location. Not expecting to tell you the truth, to get anywhere near Tikrit. That was last night. Not only did we get near to Tikrit, we got within just two or three miles of the outskirts of the city, the turn off to Tikrit for the main highway. Now that was just as the sun was setting. We had about an hour of light left. And decided that we would stay in this location because there was a chance of going back to Mosul and getting caught there in rising and Arab-Kurdish conflict in terms of the looting that's been going on over there. So we passed through some Arab vigilantes defending their property; that was pretty spooky getting down here in the first place.

Then we got to the outskirts of Tikrit, took up a position, began to start working and our security expert with us, with our seven vehicle convoy, spotted what appeared to be a sniper being dropped off by a Toyota pickup and taking up a position on the second floor of a roof about 70 or 80 meters from our working location. We beat a very hasty retreat from that area, and just drove to a town called Bahji, sorry a town south of Tikrit on the way to Samarra. Really, not knowing who was in control.

We spoke to people on the ground, people told us you can go to the next town called Samarra, which is about 50-60 miles north of Baghdad, you'll be fine, you can check into a hotel there, you'll be safe because they government is in control. And I said what government? And they looked at me and said Saddam Hussein Baath Party in control. Now obviously that wasn't a place for Western journalists for CNN in particular to go if that was the case. So we chose not to go south, but to double back towards Tikrit and we found a place first of all, in the middle of nowhere we thought.

We'd been settled for about 20 minutes in the middle of nowhere and several men came up to us, identified themselves as Baath Party officials; did not appear to have arms with them and challenge us as to our, who we were, and challenged us as to what we were doing there. We told them that we were going to spend the night there, we were a Western crew. Our cameraman, Christian Stribe (ph) is German. He spoke to them in German to be them off the scent, because clearly they were anti-American. They told us they were anti-George Bush, ant- American.

And then we stopped the conversation and high-tailed it out of that location; drove for another half an hour till we found a culvert under the main highway between Tikrit and Samarra. A seven vehicle convoy, there was just enough room to hide all vehicles, all seven vehicles in this culvert just clearing the roof space and we hid out there for the nine hours of darkness. We hid out there because we had two problems. One local elements, perhaps extremists, Saddam Fedayeen, certainly Baath Party officials harassing us, but also a possibility of friendly fire; coalition aircraft active during that night, active early this morning, and we were concerned we would be misidentified as a hostile, with a seven car convoy operating in Tikrit. So we went underground, like a crab under a stone if you like, and stayed there for the hours of darkness, and then came out early this morning.

To take you around an incredible journey of revelations about Tikrit. Apparently the army whatever elements were supposed to be defending Tikrit, having evaporated on the outskirts of the city, Saddam Hussein's stronghold, his hometown, his die-hard loyalists here, and in these last two hours, we've been watching remnants of defeated soldiers, some you just saw there, walking down the road. And then driving through abandoned military barracks with massive destruction from coalition bombing and abandoned machines, fighting machine in dug out defensive positions, covering vast areas around the outskirts of Tikrit. We have not penetrated into the center of Tikrit yet; we have to make more assessments of that. We've not seen any coalition forces for 24 hours in this area, and the war is not over. We're driving around in an active battlefield area, and really for the first time, exclaiming, showing first-hand, live, exclusive evidence here that it would appear that Tikrit is there for the taking. Anderson.

COOPER: And just looking again at these remarkable pictures, a sign of Saddam Hussein driving by. We just saw some people you drove by a little while ago. Colonel Mike Turner and I were talking earlier, while you were changing the camera; I take it that's a Saddam Hussein statue?

SADLER: Anderson, this is Brent. Yes, we're going to go and take a look at that statue. Again, two tanks on the side of the road leading to a barracks, an in-tact Saddam Hussein statue, you don't see those in Kirkuk, Mosul, or Baghdad anymore, but you still see them here in the Tikrit area. We're about five, five, six, maybe six-seven miles outside Tikrit now, and we'll just take a short drive down this road, the entrance again I suspect to another tank battalion or regiment. And there you can see Saddam Hussein on his (UNINTELLIGIBLE) intact -- Anderson.

COOPER: A statue that looks very similar to the one we saw being torn down in Baghdad earlier this week. Now this is a different military base I take it, than the one you were on before, or is an extension of the same.

SADLER: No, this is a new entrance, a new base, right slap-bang next door to the other one. You only have to go maybe a half a mile and then there's this entrance further down. This one may have more importance given that it's got a very huge, bronze statue there of Saddam Hussein in front of it. It's the only statue I've seen in these military compounds, plenty of pictures of murals, of images, but not a statue of this size before. So we'll go and take a look I think, down this road. There's a car coming up towards us, Christian (ph). Just to let you know, and we'll see what's behind this facade, Anderson.

COOPER: We are just watching, I was just watching that vehicle go in front of you. Characterize for us if you can, the people you have seen passing you by, go ahead.

SADLER: OK. Anderson, let me tell you. This is a sign; sorry you lost us there. I've just (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a red triangle on the outside of the gate that would indicate that this a Republican Guard section, a Republican Guard complex. The one down the road wasn't. This if that red triangle is anything to go by, I just saw on the gate as we came in, that would indicate Republican Guard. It would also explain why there's that big statue of Saddam Hussein outside. In fact, that adds up. It makes sense. I think we're now in a Republican Guard headquarters tank, part of the tank regiment or a tank division. Colonel Mike Turner, what's your assessment of what I've just seen, said?

TURNER: I think you're, I think that would be absolutely correct, Brent. That would be my guess too. Let's see what's inside here, but be particularly careful. This appears to be at least from the surface from what we're seeing here, the base appears to be in better shape than the last one.

SADLER: Absolutely. This is just on the outside. Let's get some speed up, Will, can we? This is just literally few hundred meters beyond that statue that we just saw. A lot pictures, no significant damage. In fact, I can see warehouse in the distance, untouched. A vast area again. But does not seem to have been, not in this area at least, the subject of any interest by target aircraft. I've also, can also see left and right of me here. In the dug out compared to the previous location, and this would make sense; the dugouts here are all empty. You can take a look at that. There are no defensive positions here in what seems to be a Republican Guard tank regiment. And one wonders then, where all those vehicles have gone? Where that fighting equipment would have gone? If this is Republican Guard, in good condition, I see the red triangles everywhere now. For sure this is Republican Guard.

So where, where, I don't know which section it is of the Republican Guard, or where are they? Where are the men who were part of this unit, and where are their machines? Anderson.

COOPER: That is of course the question a lot of people would like to know and perhaps we will be finding out in the coming minutes and hours as we stay with Brent Sadler traveling in and around Tikrit, probing ahead of any coalition forces that we can see. Ahead of any Peshmerga fighters. Brent Sadler, ahead of the tip of the spear so to speak. Now that appears to be another building there?

SADLER: Yes, this looks like the inner-core if you like. This is the same road that we've been on since seeing that statue. And this now seems to be another level of security. So I think you can tell by the building, look at the, yes, Republican Guard triangle on the top; 100 percent we had an Arabic reader, we could work out which unit. That little click as we go, losing the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) second. And this would be, appear to be the command center of this Republican Guard unit. And I'm seeing some damage on the left over there; perhaps some bombing damage.

Nothing significant. Abandoned. Nobody here. But unlike the previous location, I get the sense here again some more destruction just on the right there, I get the sense that this unit or this brigade or section of a regiment, left here in tact; went with its vehicles. There are no in contrast to the other barracks, no artillery here, no tanks, no armored personnel carriers; everything has moved. But destruction certainly at this Republican Guard headquarters.

TURNER: Brent, this is Mike again. You're on about five miles or so on the Northwest corner of Tikrit. Have I got that, that placement right?

SADLER: Absolutely right. Northwest I'd say. Will, can you give me a position; how many kilometers say? Six kilometers is that Will? OK. Four miles Northwest of Tikrit on our GPS.

TURNER: OK.

SADLER: Due north. Correction. Due north.

TURNER: OK.

COOPER: So Colonel Turner, the possibilities of if Brent is correct, that it was some sort of movement by a unit out of this position. The question of course, where did they go?

TURNER: Well obviously I would have to believe that U.S. intelligence sources, if in fact these are Republican Guard T-72 tanks, which is the modern Russian battle tank, that our intelligence sources would have detected them by now, and the most likely supposition in my judgment, would be that they would, they had moved to Baghdad for the defense of Baghdad. You can't hide T-72 tanks in downtown Tikrit from U.S. intelligence sources without a fairly extraordinary effort. So that would be my guess.

COOPER: But we still don't know what is in, the U.S. intelligence may know, but we the public, do not yet know what is in downtown Tikrit. Is that right?

TUNERS: That's right.

COOPER: So theoretically it is possible there ...

TURNER: Sure.

COOPER: ... could be Republican Guard units who have pulled back in to the city itself?

TURNER: Sure. That's a possibility. Yes.

COOPER: And Brent, you are basically, I mean you do not know what lies ahead of you. You are basically probing and what we are seeing is what you are seeing for the first time?

SADLER: Absolutely. We're in this together as it were. What you eyeball, I eyeball. And as Colonel Mike Turner just said, ahead of the tip of the tip of the spear, doesn't feel that comfortable. But I think I see enough with my eyes on the ground here, to lead me to believe that this area, I wouldn't say it's safe, but it's certainly in a state of abandonment and that there are no hostile threats in this vicinity.

What we're going to do now is move out of this Republican Guard complex, and head back south again. And it would be useful if you have a map there, just to head back South again towards Tikrit, which will be on our left side this time, and we'll try and talk to some people that may be coming off the highway turn off into Tikrit. Try and flag somebody down and try and get some eyes and ears on what's happening in the center of Tikrit. So we can keep the picture up as we're trying to do this, Anderson.

COOPER: Absolutely, Brent. We are following you second by second here. It is just extraordinary, and again we have been seeing those pictures all morning long that Brent has been bringing us of military age men walking a long the sides of the main road that Brent was previously traveling on; walking as Mike Turner as you said, in a sort of lackadaisical fashion, not necessarily looking as if they are fleeing to or running to some place?

TURNER: Absolutely. You would expect if civilian populations or military personnel who abandoned their weapons sense this coming clash of Titans if you will, between two robust military forces. Even if one of those was unconventional and extremist Fedayeen in the center of the city, that the body language of the passers-by would be more urgent, is the only way I can describe it. Brent certainly would have picked that up on the ground. A sense of fleeing, a sense of urgency, and possibly panic. And there's none of that with any of the people that he's passed. It's almost looks like a regular, a calm day in the Iraqi countryside.

COOPER: Calm and yet as Brent pointed out, sort of eerily calm, strangely quiet, ...

TURNER: Right.

COOPER ... no certainly no, military troops as far as we can see, but no caretakers, no people on any of these bases, just abandoned. But we do see it, some sort of a vehicle. Brent, do you get any sense, you've seen a couple of vehicles and I remember as you came upon this base -oh there's one or two people there. Do you get any sense of where these vehicles are going, or we've seen some trucks. Are they, is it possible they are looters or civilians, do you know?

SADLER: That pickup truck you just saw was clearly a looter; wasn't much on there. Those vehicles you're seeing in front of us now parked up on the roadside; that's our CNN convoy with our satellite dish on the top of the first vehicle. So obviously at some stage I'll hopefully get live, real time pictures rather than videophone on this remarkable day.

We are seeing as this morning progresses, more vehicles coming along the road; empty heading towards Tikrit; empty heading away from Tikrit. So that doesn't suggest that there's a wholesale looting spree going on. But our plan now is to really have a discussion with Will Sculley (ph), our security manager here, and just try work out a plan and perhaps if we just screen around, Will, what do you think we should do now? What's your assessment?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been listening to the local radio, and talking to people exiting Tikrit, and also our crew and they've heard some explosions in the center of Tikrit.

SADLER: Explosions in the center of Tikrit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct, yes. So we assess that they're still attacking Tikrit. So at this moment, it's not a good time to move.

SADLER: What are these people doing? They're leaving Tikrit are they?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're exiting Tikrit with their, with their belongings.

SADLER: OK. So we have people not looting; taking their personal possessions away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct, yes.

SADLER: And they're reporting hearing explosions? Eyesight or ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eyesight on the road here, while's we've been going around the camp here, have heard some explosions in the center of Tikrit.

SADLER: Right. Can we get down to that Tikrit turn off? And perhaps flag someone down who's coming out of the city?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. We can do that.

SADLER: Is that OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that would fine.

SADLER: But leave the main convoy where?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well we'll have to take the whole convoy down there, we can't leave them strayed on the side of the road. So we'll find a base, park them up and creep forward.

SADLER: OK. If you heard that, Anderson. I'll just give you the details. Just to summarize on that. We're hearing reports of explosions; we've heard some explosions in the distance, coming from the Tikrit direction. People who are leaving Tikrit appear to be leaving with their belongings away from Tikrit, heading North. So that would make sense.

We're going to turn our convoy around, head back towards the Tikrit turn off, and try and talk to some more people, try and get some more information about what's going on inside. So let's swing around Christian (ph) and head off. Anderson.

COOPER: Well we will continue to stay with you as you go to talk to more people; try to gain a sense of what is going on in the ground, on the ground in city center of Tikrit, and that of course is the focus of so much interest, so much attention. What is there? What is happening? You said there were some explosions, but the questions remain; what forces if any are still on the streets in Tikrit? And what positions have they taken? And what forces are they? Are they Republican Guard, are they Fedayeen, are they some form of Mujahideen? Those questions all of course remain unanswered; questions we will continue to try to get answers to in the next couple of minutes here, and minutes and hours.

And if you has the viewer have just been joining us, if you have ever wondered what it is like to be a reporter, you are seeing live, a remarkable minute by minute progression of Brent Sadler through this area, ahead of anyone else. Really, going solo here. He and the other CNN personnel he is with; just trying to gather information. Are you stopping Brent?

SADLER: No, we're carrying on Anderson. We're just trying to pick up information as we're going along. You'll see there is a truck overtaking as empty. This is now the road, the highway, the main highway from Mosul in the North of Iraq, heading towards Tikrit, so we've turned 360, and we're now heading back towards Tikrit. The turn off to Tikrit will throw us left, so I think we'll stop off at that turn off, at that road junction. That'll take us within less than two miles of the center of Tikrit. Now our drivers I now understand, our drivers heard what they thought were explosions. Now that's all we've got to go on at the moment. Not a lot. All we've got to go on apart from that is what we see with our eyes and what we hear with our ears. That incidentally, that truck we just passed, we saw that, I saw the red triangle of the Republican Guard on the back of that. So that was Saddam Hussein's top level of his so-called elite fighting force, the Republican Guard. But that barracks we just went to, that compound, deserted of all fighting machines.

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Aired April 13, 2003 - 00:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: You are looking at a live picture via videophone from Tikrit, where our own Brent Sadler has just arrived, a CNN exclusive.
Brent, what's the latest where you are?

BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, as you can see we're just approaching the southern gate. That archway in front you, that square with the dome on the top that is the southern entranced to Tikrit. Now, we passed through this area down this road about 12 hours ago just before sunset and edged around the outside of Tikrit. And I can tell you this is a very different place to places like Kirkuk, Mosul and obviously Baghdad.

This is still Saddam Hussein's control area as it were. We have not seen any of the pictures in this area. And if we get the cameraman to swing to the right, you'll see a picture once we get the video from across here a picture of Saddam Hussein picture. Note, no destruction, none of the pictures of Saddam Hussein in this area, the Sunnite heartland of Saddam Hussein's former regime have been destroyed. And it's been like this all the way around the outskirts of Tikrit.

Now, we've got within about three miles of the city center late last night and we're going to go down this road now and see what we come across. And I can tell you that we're having unconfirmed reports that Mujahideen al Khalq, which is the organization, which was the resistance to Iran supported by Iraq, is apparently said to be defending the center of Tikrit as well as Saddam Fedayeen.

Now, we haven't thankfully bumped into any of those people within the last twelve hours but I can tell you when we tried to park up in the desert to find a location to hide out that we did get approached by unarmed men who identified themselves as Baath Party.

So, we're going through this gate now. This is the southern entrance to Tikrit, one of the best-defended parts of Iraq during all the many decades of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Now what I can tell you is around the approaches to Tikrit a lot of significant, military complexes heavily damaged by U.S. air strikes. When we came in from the northern entrance of Tikrit overnight before sunset, we saw massive areas: warehouses, artillery pieces, tanks, armored personnel carriers destroyed. Obviously, a lot, a lot of coalition bombing in this area. Now, if we swing to the left and look at the lamppost, this is another sign of the kind of area that we're now passing through. On each one of these lampposts, there still is hanging up there pictures, small pictures of Saddam Hussein still intact bolted to the lamppost along this esplanade, this very well constructed four lane highway that leads into Tikrit.

So, we understand from what we've seen on the ground, Anderson, no presence whatsoever in this vicinity of any coalition forces. We did have an unconfirmed report from locals who told us there have been a move, a small perhaps, reconnaissance move by U.S. forces 24 hours ago. There have been a brief firefight in Tikrit and that the coalition, one presumes the Americans have withdrawn. I can't confirm that with my own eyes but these are the reports that I'm hearing from eyewitnesses on the ground here.

Now, it's obviously an area where, I guess you'd say, the Iraqi government of old still controls. There are people here knowing that we are a western TV crew who said, look you're not safe here because of Saddam Fedayeen. You should go to Samarra, which is the next big town south of Tikrit. They said you'd be fine there; that's in government hands.

Now, in absence of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party hands, then you understand the implications for us with relations to that, not a good place to go. So, we have spent the night with a seven-vehicle convoy as we move slowly down this road hiding down a culvert underneath the main four-lane highway because one you have the problem of loosing control here. Two, you know there are reports of Saddam Fedayeen. And three, more importantly last night, a seven car convoy going along this road when coalition aircraft are still active is obviously another complicating factor.

I have heard constant air activity through the hours of darkness. I've continued to hear air activity this morning. I've seen some plumes of smoke in the distance, nothing intense whatsoever, but certainly activity. And certainly a big question mark hanging over the future of Tikrit as we move along this highway -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, again do you have any sense of exactly what lies down this road? I mean how far are you from the city center? And talk again just a little bit about what sort of forces may be in that city center.

SADLER: Well, this is exactly what we don't know, the strength of forces in the city itself. We came down this road just at the end of daylight hours yesterday. And I know to the right of this picture in the not too distance future, you will be able to see Tikrit from a distance. This is a bypass road if you like, a very well constructed, a very, quick bypass road that helps you zip pass Tikrit and head up to the northern areas of Kirkuk and Mosul. We saw the city last night, we didn't hear any gunshots, we didn't hear anything that was sounding anything like any battles going on in there. And there were some cars moving through and asking about the safety of this area.

But you know at the moment it's still very, very obviously unpredictable. We don't know if any elements of Saddam Hussein's regime, the hierarchy have taken refuge in Tikrit. We do not believe there any significant numbers of U.S. forces in this area, certainly close to Tikrit.

I'm seeing -- just passing the road, I'm seeing some discarded military boots, soldiers' boots on the floor there. When we came past this road last night, we did see deserting Iraqi soldiers, conscript regulars passing through this area as we've seen 48 hours ago. The men we saw walking down this road, former Iraqi soldiers said they were from the 5 Corp, which had surrendered, I think it about 36 hours ago in Kirkuk.

So, as we go along here, it's difficult to see but, more boots on the ground as we're passing. And thankfully, another car on our left there. It's always good to see other cars passing along roads as you go into un-chartered territory.

But it's important to note also, that this area around Tikrit really gives you an idea of the amount of money that was spent on Saddam Hussein's military; vast, vast military complexes, warehouses. We saw warehouses that had been hit, surviving ammunition, ammunition that hadn't been destroyed and people looting that ammunition.

Now, on the right here -- this is interesting. Actually what we're seeing now, you'll see you'll pass that road sign. Now, we've got a picture there of Saddam Hussein, you'll see there Anderson. Now that obviously being here, now that's the only one I've seen for a long time that's actually been destroyed. Looks like either a tank shell got it or an RPG -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, what is your plan of action right now? Where are you headed? What is your intention here?

SADLER: Right. We're going to -- if we can get a map of it all, it would be helpful. We're going to skirt the western side of Tikrit and hopefully, we'll be able to give you a shot of that soon. But skirt the western side of Tikrit and head north to a town called Bhaji. Now Bhaji, B-H-A-J-I is where we understood U.S. forces -- Special Forces have been in and out over the period past of several days. And we think that in that area -- in fact, we know in that area that's under the control of tribal chiefs. Bhaji, north of Tikrit is under the control of tribal chiefs; they of course were loyal amongst the most diehard loyalists to Saddam during his decades in power. They weren't particularly friendly as we passed through, they weren't particularly unfriendly as we spoke to them in Bhaji, north of Tikrit last night.

But certainly, this is a completely different perspective of Iraq if you looked at what's been happening in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, all these other areas where the coalition have been. This is largely untouched apart from the fact obviously, that there were no people moving around.

I think another important point perhaps to make here, is that we haven't seen any looting. I've been through two or three towns, villages; I don't see any looting going on here. It's as if the clock had stood still in these areas around Tikrit.

So, we're moving north -- just to recap Anderson. Moving north, skirting the western side of Tikrit -- some road signs coming up ahead of us -- and making our way around this area, which is really largely untouched by coalition a part from continuing air activity.

We know from Central Command that there have been continuing air strikes against targets in this vicinity. We know because I heard them with my own ears, coalition aircraft in the last 24 hours being active, but no bombing, but no bombing to speak of.

On the way into Tikrit, may be 30 miles north into Tikrit, I did see the road had been hit by a bomb or a missile. The road had been cut off.

And we're now approaching some new road signs and you'll see there Tikrit. There it is, Tikrit pointing off to the right. Mosul, straight on. There's the geography. Tikrit, to the right. Now, we're not going to take (AUDIO GAP) and you'll understand why that right hand turn there because we don't know quite what's down there. I expect, from what I hear, resistance is still may be three or four miles down that road.

Another Saddam picture there. The actual picture itself seems to be -- the image seems to be largely intact but everything around it seems to be destroyed. Can't explain how or why.

As we go through this underpass here, we should pretty soon (AUDIO GAP) some pictures of Tikrit. But we're very, very close. Very close as you see Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, these are just remarkable pictures as well as remarkably dangerous for you. We are going to stay with you and with the pictures we want to bring in Colonel Mike Turner, retired -- Mike Turner from the U.S. Air Force.

Colonel Turner, as you look at these remarkable pictures Brent Sadler is bringing us for the first time in this CNN exclusive, what goes through your mind?

COL. MIKE TURNER (RET), U.S. AIR FORCE: Well, Anderson and Brent, both. I'm struck by the lack of military activity.

Brent, has there been any hint of active forces or armed personnel moving about, or any of the military equipment that is manned at this time? It appears to be almost abandoned, this very compelling footage.

SADLER: Absolutely, right. Bang on. And no significant military movement. In fact, no military movement in vehicles. In fact, I've seen gunmen with young men; we saw a pickup truck with soldiers late yesterday afternoon, just before we went into our hidey- hole in the culvert under the road. But no troops at all.

And you'll know better than I do perhaps General that this area here -- in fact, if you look at that shot now in the distance. Christian, if you can zoom beyond those warehouses. There you go. There goes Tikrit over there now. So, I guess -- and you'll see a dug out and a truck hiding behind those little fan hills there.

So, that is Tikrit. That's as close as I judge it possible to get to right now. But no movement, no military trucks, no hardware moving around.

We're stopping here now because we not quite sure what's ahead of us. I'm just going to get my binoculars up and have a look. That's our vehicle up ahead. You'll see a vehicle up there with some men around it. We don't know what that is at the moment. I don't see any guns. Let me check with our guys in the front.

Will, do you see a gun? No guns.

OK, what you have often we found along this road last night -- again, now you're seeing it right here live. You'll seeing people moving and not knowing who's in control or what's going on. This is all by word of mouth.

So, going back to the original question. No, seeing no real soldier movement here of any significance. Just as we passed through a great deal of destruction to the huge military complexes that are in this vicinity -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, you mentioned that some people believed to be Baath Party, people who came up to you, sort of approached you; I'm curious to know what they said to you? And also, did they have a sense of the larger picture of what is going on in Iraq?

SADLER: No, Anderson. They did not.

There you go. There's a good shot now of Tikrit. This is an elongated development following the road is a strip city, if you like. And you can see the parts of the center of it there just easy within eyeball range.

In terms of the people around here, they -- that's right this is a tribal heartland. They have prospered well under the years of Saddam Hussein's rule. They basically were paid off for their support. They can control this area. They would pay lip service to the government and they would be rewarded for that with jobs, positions in the Baath Party and financial support for social development, this kind of thing. So, this is a loyalist -- a loyalist area.

Many of the army's officer corps in the Iraqi army came from the Tikrit area and north of Tikrit.

So, these people really are going about their lives as if from a day-to-day perspective, nothing's change. I mean you know, we were in the desert last night, probably three or four miles from any location, two in the morning, men from the Baath Party came up and challenged us to find out who were. I mean this is the kind of apparatus that kept Saddam Hussein in power for all those years, eyes and ears, literally in every nook and cranny of this very, large and opened spaced country.

I mean can you believe it? After the war, after the fall of Baghdad; men identifying themselves as Baath Party and obviously posing as a potential threat to our location there. Which is why we spent quite some time finding a location to hide out.

So, there is still structure existing but by no means the same as before in terms of its repressive ability. And certainly not the same as it was before in terms of its ability to crack down on everything. But certainly there is a functioning system here.

Now, we've stopped again and I've got my eyeglasses up and we're looking at four men on the left of the road. These could be soldiers again from the defeated army. I don't see any weapons on those men.

Do you, Will? You see a weapon?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're carrying weapons (OFF MIKE)

SADLER: OK, there is a weapon on one of them men but not at the ready. They could be soldiers they haven't defeated -- they haven't surrendered, rather. They could be soldiers just walking away from Tikrit.

I mean this gives you an idea; this is a very good example, General and Anderson just really how uncertain, how unpredictable this area is. And Tikrit itself obviously, is a no go area as far as we're concerned. We did see cars going through.

Actually, they're waving. That's always a good sign. These people are waving. We have waved at people in this area and they have simply glared back, they have not waved. That gives you a pretty good indication that they're not very pleased to see people like us around here.

So, as we progress along this road, Tikrit on my right, steadily moving along, we see more people there. And this is what we saw really for a couple of hours yesterday as we came into Tikrit from the northern entrance, the outskirts of Tikrit. Men of fighting age walking slowing along the road in civilian clothing. And we'll see if these men are goes a wave at us, because as I say, that's always a good sign.

COOPER: And Brent, as we look at these pictures, I'm curious...

SADLER: OK.

COOPER: I see a wave there.

I'm curious to know what sort of signs of fighting; past or present have you seen? We saw the one sign of Saddam Hussein, there seems to be some sort of signs of fighting around. Are you seeing any indications of heavy bombardments, any artillery strikes, any ground fighting.

SADLER: No, Anderson, I'm not. On this approach from south to north -- there's a good shot of Tikrit on the right hand side there.

We're not seeing a great deal of military installations here. The heavy stuff was on the northern entrance, which we'll get to not for quite some time; may be 20, 30 minutes up the road. But that was a vast area.

You're seeing there a trench, obviously. May be you can't see that but there is a berm and a trench that stretches as far as the eye can see that might be part of defensive fortifications.

OK, all right. OK, I'm seeing some military equipment in the distance now through my eyeglasses, through my binoculars. I don't know if you're picking that up. Yes, yes. Dug out positions, smashed artillery pieces. Yes, I see it now. Dugouts, fuse boxes, bunkers. Largely looks as though -- a bit difficult because my binoculars are shaking. A bit difficult to see exactly what was there, but certainly the subject of attacks. Air attacks, I would guess from what I can see at this range -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, as always we're continued to be joined by Colonel Mike Turner.

Colonel Turner, as you look at these pictures, I guess Brent just seeing some smashed artillery pieces and the likes, some military embankment where there looks like there was some activity in the past. I guess what we don't see is what is going on inside the city, inside the center of Tikrit and that being the big question, I suppose.

TURNER: Yes, obviously it is. This is very, very compelling video. And Brent, be very careful in this process because this very dangerous, what you're doing. And we certainly appreciate the images.

Obviously, as I've said before, the Special Forces have been operating here, that the amount of destruction in place that Brent suggests we've been hitting this very hard.

I know Tikrit was on the target list in Desert Storm with a number of targets. I'm sure it was on the target list, the fixed target list before during the war and this operation. And all of those operations would have taken place in the heart of the city against key military targets.

The fact that Brent is encountering so much destroyed military equipment, I think bodes well for the ultimate reduction of Tikrit. And we'll just have to wait and see how that develops. But I'm sure Special Forces are operating in and around this whole region.

COOPER: And Brent, have you seen any sign in your travels thus far of Special Forces in the area.

SADLER: Not in this area, no. We were talking to Special Forces in the area east of Tikrit, right on the other side 24 hours ago. And they were really briefing us as to what might happen next. They were suggesting that any ground ops had been put on hold, air would continue and the hope would be that under continuing air strikes and pressure from coalition warplanes bombing that the Tikrit defenses would implode.

Now, as we're passing along the outskirts of Tikrit here, it's impossible to say what's inside there. What I can tell you is as we attempted this run along this road last night, we were just setting up the videophone, when security expert who was with us, he's at the wheel, Will Scully saw a man, which appeared to be a drop off for a sniper. He eyeballed a sniper rifle, a pickup truck with three men in it dropping him off and then the man slowly move into a building. That was enough to persuade us that we should to leave immediately. So, we went there went to a safer location and hid out for the night.

So there it is, it would appear a structure of something here. But my guess -- Colonel Mike Turner, you could help me better with this perhaps. My guess is because we're so close to Tikrit and because I am not seeing anything touched with of an offensive nature that we would -- that one could expect that to be perhaps nothing left in terms of any formal resistance.

And as we come up here, there's an artillery piece on the left there. Yes, it's an artillery piece, I think it's a 1-0 -- what is that Will?

OK, it's free artillery piece that doesn't appear to be destroyed. It was probably being dragged away northwards just on the side of the road there.

Colonel Mike Turner, can you answer my question? The fact that we're so close to Tikrit would suggest that -- yes.

TURNER: I was just going to suggest that might be an anti- aircraft piece there. It's difficult to see as you drove by.

SADLER: No, it's definitely; definitely artillery piece and we'll be coming up to some more junk now.

But Colonel Mike Turner, the fact we're so close to Tikrit, we're seeing you know destroyed or abandoned military equipment leads me to perhaps believe that Tikrit can't be that heavily defended. May be remnants, may be elements, may be danger but no real, substantial organizational defense. What do you think?

TURNER: I think that's a reasonable -- a reasonable assumption Brent, albeit it a cautious one. You know, the fact that you haven't even been challenged yet this close to Tikrit, in my judgment, is at least a circumstantial indications that the defenses are not nearly what we might have expected at this point. I would have expected checkpoints, and military activity and certainly, challenging a reporter who is obviously providing frankly, very, valuable intelligence information in real time. I just would have expected more of a challenge. So, I think it's reasonable assumption. It's still a good idea to keep your head down Brent. This is pretty amazing.

COOPER: And Colonel Turner, you say that because if there was some sort of sizable, organized military positioning inside of Tikrit, they would set up roadblocks in advance to get a sense of any one who might be in the area?

TURNER: Well, if you're going to -- if you expect to be besieged and if you're going to set up defensive positions then clearly you need to have some sort of indication when someone begins to probe and test your perimeter.

There's another aspect to this. It's entirely possible that the conventional military has been destroyed in place and simply left. That could still leave the Fedayeen and the Mujahideen and those extremist loyalist, we saw them in civilian clothes in the southern cities that could be waiting for us in the center of the city. And they would not pose a conventional military threat perhaps on the outskirts of town but would still pose a very significant threat in the heart of the city. So, that is a real possibility and Brent were to see that obviously.

COOPER: Brent, I'm curious. With the Special Forces personnel you talked to the other day, did they give any indication of what they thought was inside the city center of Tikrit in terms of you know, we heard the reports that Tariq Aziz for instance, had gone back to Tikrit. There was talk of many other senior Iraqi leaders going back to Tikrit. Any sense on the ground there of that?

SADLER: Absolutely not Anderson. No, I mean you'll understand that we're not in the heart of the city. It's my judgment from what I've heard and seen and Colonel Mike Turner is absolutely right, you know. While we have danger obviously going along this highway, we came last night and there were no checkpoints. Not one single -- and this is really incredible. Not one single checkpoint from the southern part of Mosul all the way down to Tikrit. Not one vision of a coalition force, no eyeballing of any checkpoints for about three hours of driving on this highway from Mosul down to Tikrit. Now, that's a highway that takes you to the desert rather than through towns leading to Tikrit from Mosul. Which shows that deliberately to keep us away from possibility of village and city checkpoints.

But on this main road, four lane highway which I would say was built for military purposes in the first place because it would enable Saddam Hussein to send you know, military vehicles up to the north -- the Kurdish north when he needed to have fire power up there. So, this is a very, fast road I think would have been built originally for military purposes.

But in terms of checkpoints, last night nothing from Mosul all the way down. Nothing from Mosul to Tikrit. Nothing from Tikrit 30 miles south of Tikrit towards Samarra, which is only 50 miles from Baghdad. Nothing, no checkpoints, no military positions, no coalition forces.

We've been talking for several days now about the U.S. having you know, a presence in the north now, not a lot but presence building in the north. And obviously we know about the south and in the middle, a vacuum. And goodness, gracious me, what a vacuum this is.

And you'll see now as we're coming down this road, more men not carrying any belongings. I would certainly say judging from what I've seen in my experience over the past few days, these again are soldiers who've either surrendered, possibly from the 5 Corp. in the north, or perhaps part of the Tikrit defense themselves. Impossible to say unless I go and talk to them and I don't intend to do that at the moment. But certainly, it fits in with the pattern of what I've seen over the past few days here.

And as I scan left and right, again this vacuum, this middle section of Iraq where there are no coalition forces is just extraordinary -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, you know you talk about the no checkpoints and yet in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. when you were camping out and these Baath Party officials came over and sort of confronted you. Do you get a sense of how they got the information that you were in the position you were in? And also, what did they want? What did they say to you? Did they act like they were still in control of that area?

SADLER: In answer to those questions, first of all, try and let me try and explain how it works out here. It's the village drums if you like, seven vehicles, headlights on. We had to have headlights on unfortunately. We only had one piece of night vision with us. Headlights in village areas, remote parts of Iraq that's going to set the telegraph wires tapping away. It did, it was about 30 minutes before they came to us. We didn't see weapons on them but they certainly behaved in the way I've seen Baath Party officials behaving about wanting identification, who we were.

Our cameraman, Christian Stride who's giving you these remarkable pictures as we drive along here, is German and was speaking German to them. W got the impression that they were OK about Germans but certainly not happy about Americans. So we decided, I think prudently to leave that location immediately before the drums beat any louder and it brought anything else into our direction -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, your remarkable pictures not just being seeing in the United States but on "CNN INTERNATIONAL" around the world. Michael Weisskop with "Time" magazine is in Doha, Qatar, he's been looking at these pictures you've been bringing us, he joins us also on the phone with our continuing discussion with Brent Sadler and also with Colonel Mike Turner.

Michael Weisskop, as you look at this what goes through your mind?

MICHAEL WEISSKOP, "TIME" MAGAZINE: The extraordinary collapse of the Iraqi army. Either this a great rope a dope strategy by Saddam with amassing artillery and of troops within the city gates, or one of the more extraordinary disappearance of a significant army.

COOPER: Colonel Turner your thoughts on a possible rope a dope strategy or is it as what you've been talking about the possible disintegration of the last vestiges of holdout?

TURNER: I'd to agree with Michael on this one Anderson. At least all the obvious evidence of this here is that it would really -- it would have to be an amazingly well coordinated, secretive strategy particularly, for our forces to have no knowledge of this. I think what you see is what you get in this case most likely. We certainly hope that it would save a lot of heartburn on a lot of people's minds right now and for the planners back at Central Command

COOPER: Michael Weisskop, as you are in Doha, Qatar, where Centcom is, what have you hearing about what they think is going on in Tikrit. Have they been saying anything about their efforts in this region?

WEISSKOP: They've been noting pretty privately that American bombardment of Tikrit has certainly softened up resistance there. They don't know exactly what to expect. They're sending advanced elements of the Fourth I.D. as we speak and hoping to find out first hand.

COOPER: The Fourth Infantry Division of course, often referred to as one the most highly tech divisions in the U.S. military. That division was supposed to come in through the north, through Turkey had to actually had to come in through Kuwait City.

Brent, it looks like you're slowing down or stopping. What's going on?

SADLER: Just really stopping here to take a look at the geography again. Tikrit is the cutoff to the right, as you'll see there, we're on that now. Mosul is dead ahead. So, we're coming now to the northern end of Tikrit. And what I'm hoping to do is as we carrying on talking is to go through the northern gate, and then we're going try and get you to these amazing scenes of the aftermath of the coalition bombing up the road here.

So let's -- Will Scully at the wheel there. Let's roll on down this road and see if we can get out of the vicinity to quit to the northern gate out towards Mosul and see if we can get you to where all this destruction is that we saw last night -- Anderson.

COOPER: Because the area you are headed to now, the northern access points to the city that is where most of the bombings that has gone in Tikrit has been focused?

SADLER: That's right I would say judging on the basis of this journey. But the concentration of bombing was extensively in the north of Tikrit because that's just where most of the warehousing, bunkers, barracks -- I mean there were kilometers, miles and miles of barracks. There's one on the right here if we swing round. Just massive complexes, damage on the outside of that one you'll see -- a blue truck racing out probably looting.

And these are huge, huge complexes you're seeing the Baath Party star on the top of that wall. That's the insignia of the Baath; you see that everywhere throughout Iraq. And you'll see at that the end of this compound construction going on there. But this wall stretches for as far as the eye can see.

And as we proceed along this road, you know, more and more stragglers; soldiers who surrendered coming down the highway.

Also, I noted just north of Tikrit as we came in, an oil facility seem to be working in the sense of the smoke stack blazing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) gases. We've got some smoke on the horizon there that could be the oil facility I was just referring to. It could be something else but we'll get to it -- Anderson.

COOPER: Mike, as we continue to just look at these extraordinary city, and as Brent is heading to sort of the northern reaches of the city to show us some of the extensive damage that he believes and he has seen has occurred there, we go back to Michael Weisskop in Doha Qatar.

Michael, I know you've been following the story of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. There has been some talk of Tikrit as possibly location for some of these weapons if they do in fact exist. What are you hearing right now about the ongoing search for WMD?

WEISSKOP: Well, if Tikrit is any bit like Baghdad, as a repository of documents and of scientist, it could be the holy grail for the weapon's hunt. Our military sources our saying that in going through these cratered Saddam palaces in Baghdad, and making initial...

(CROSSTALK)

SADLER: Anderson, just something to add. Can I...

COOPER: Go ahead Brent. Sorry Michael. Go ahead Brent.

SADLER: OK. Sorry. This is the gate. Well, let us carry on Will.

This is where you would see a checkpoint if there was going to be one in Tikrit. These are the two arches to the northern entrance. And we are going to just stop off just maybe fifteen meters ahead of them, and just show you what is around here.

Just stop here Will, can you?

You'll see here the two arches there. You've got the Saddam Hussein ubiquitous poster, unmarked in the center two gal post on the side to side and obviously nobody here. This under normal circumstances would have been checking cars, would have had people here 7 by 24.

So, this is the northern extremity of the Tikrit stronghold, if we can call it that. And a stronghold it certainly is and as you'll see once we continue to move north and try and get to these heavily bombed, vast military complexes.

As to what's going on in the center of Tikrit itself, we're getting nowhere. Can't get any eyewitness accounts of that but we'll work on it as this extraordinary day unfolds -- Anderson.

COOPER: Remarkable. Brent, just to see that guard -- that place that should have been a guard post, always has been. Should have been a major checkpoint to the northern access route to the city just completely unmanned. Hard to tell what it means, but just remarkable to see it.

SADLER: Absolutely. I've traveled many, many times over the past 20 years into and out of Iraq, and traveling into Iraq from Jordan from the western side of the country. I always had a great sense of relief as a journalist leaving those kinds of gateways. And there was a gateway at the international border at Erbil in Iraq to go to Lawahsha (ph) in Jordan. I would always cast a look over my shoulder and be thankful that I was leaving Iraq and looking at Saddam Hussein as I was going down the road away and to drive through one of those unmanned gateways right now in Tikrit, in the very, very heart of Saddam Hussein loyalist stronghold, to me is a personally dramatic moment -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brent, we're staying obviously with you and your pictures. And any time you want to jump in, feel free. Obviously, you know you take priority here. I'm going to Michael Weisskop, just on the phone joining from Doha, Qatar.

Michael, you're talking about weapons of mass destruction, this Tikrit being the possible Holy Grail, if in fact they do exist. If in fact, they are in existence, this is one of the places they are kept and/or evidence of them is kept.

WEISSKOP: Yes, Anderson I would expect to see a place like Tikrit a part of the paper trail. And this is what military forces in Baghdad are turning up new clues off as they go through government offices and bombed out residences of Saddam. They are finding documents, which may be leaving indicators of weapons, specific weapons and their locations. At the same time, scientists are beginning to come forward now that they believe they no longer face the same kind of reprisals from this regime, and may be providing the first inkling themselves of where these weapons are.

COOPER: Are you hearing anything from military officials either on the record or off the record about if in fact, WMD, weapons of mass destruction do exist in Iraq, why they weren't used?

WEISSKOP: The thinking here and you do hear this in hallways more than publicly is that the agility and speed of U.S. forces basically ended up becoming so stunning to Saddam. He didn't have time to distribute these weapons if they exist.

The thinking is that they were well hidden from U.N. inspectors and so as to get them to the hands of people who would execute the attacks, takes some time and he didn't have that time.

COOPER: Brent, I was just thinking about that guard post that you went through a short time ago, the guard post that looked relatively untouched. You would think if -- if there was some sort of significant military force inside Tikrit at this point that that guard post would at least be a place they would man to have -- because if it's been un-hit, there is some sort of level of communication between that guard post and whatever is still in city center of Tikrit. SADLER: Yes, my assessment is Anderson that there is no significant -- this is just an assessment on the basis of what I can see. But what I've learned in the last 24 hours, my assessment is there is no significant force in terms of conventional military inside Tikrit. I think reports we've had from people who've been in there that there is resistance. I think define resistance as Fedayeen and Mujahideen al Khalq.

Now, what we're going to try and do right now is let's try and pull off the road here Will, and go into this base.

Here we have a significant military base. I have no idea of what it is called. There is an intact poster of Saddam Hussein there. And we're going to swing round into this base and have a look but not before security expert gets out of the car. And you'll see him doing this, and takes a look at what we have here.

Now -- are we OK Will? OK, we're OK. Here we go.

Now, I've seen a lot of bomb damage just before we swung into here, these tanks are monuments, not active tanks. And you'll appreciate of course, Anderson as we come through here this is breaking new ground. Guard post abandoned, the armchairs are in there; so no looting, no looting. And if you think of what we've seen in Kirkuk, Mosul and Baghdad, this barracks would have been stripped by now by people coming out in their droves. Obviously not happened here.

I suspect because we saw two tanks mounted on plinths (ph) of monuments, this is probably a tank division headquarters. Poster untouched. So, no one's been here either looting it seems or shooting the place up as acts of retribution against Saddam Hussein's control.

So, here we go. Let's see what's happening. Anderson, why don't carry it on -- carry on while we just look around here and talk to our guests?

COOPER: All right, Brent. I'm curious also whenever you have a chance, to know whether it looks there have been scenes of any sort of Arab bombardment or any sort of attack beyond looting that would have occurred before any looting to see obviously just as a military base it would seem to be on the face of it, a prime target for coalition bombing?

Colonel Turner as you look at these pictures -- Colonel Mike Turner, remarkable, Brent Sadler is entering a military base basically on his home outside and very close to the ancestral homeland of Saddam Hussein.

TURNER: I'm stunned, Anderson. This looks like a ghost town; I don't see people walking around. I don't see any movement. Brent hasn't reported any movement. It doesn't appear to be a particular amount of damage. It just looks like they walked away. I'm -- you know, unless we've known this and it's just because it's on the outskirts, I'm just stunned. I would have expected at least a challenge at some point in this very, remarkable journey. COOPER: And we all are very thankful that there has not been a challenge for Brent Sadler and the crew he is with.

TURNER: Absolutely.

COOPER: As you look at this Colonel Turner, the significance -- I mean we're seeing inside a military base inside on the outskirts of Tikrit, a place we have heard so much about. We have heard it the last stronghold of Saddam Hussein, perhaps the place if he and his sons are still alive, perhaps they fled to. Perhaps the place other high high-ranking Iraqi leadership would have fled to.

If these pictures are any indications, what does it tell you?

TURNER: Well, early on as we began to move into Baghdad and we past the so-called ring of steel, I think we began to all begin to perceive that one of two things was rapidly going to develop or rapidly going to develop. And that was either it would be the last ditch stand as we cross this ring of steel or there would simply be an evaporation of obvious resistance. And we obviously saw the resistance just evaporate. Just essentially, the conventional resistance anyway, tend to move on out of the city, and make it difficult for us to really perceive any sort of military control inside of the city; despite the fact that there was some severe and still are some very severe battles going on.

But as you look at that now and move into Tikrit now with this remarkable footage, you really begin to get this sense that perhaps this regime simply has evaporated and is just no more. There's been discussion all day long about who will surrender at this point. This at least, circumstantially suggests that that's in fact a very real issue now. It looks as if the regime has just gone away.

COOPER: Yes, go ahead. "Time" magazine's Michael Weisskop also joining us from Doha, Qatar.

Michael, I mean, as I look at this as I saw Brent Sadler turning into an Iraqi military base outskirts of Tikrit, I just kind of -- I couldn't believe it.

WEISSKOP: This is like, Anderson like, answering the layers of bank robbers who are trying to -- who ran out a step ahead of the oncoming police. It's pretty extraordinary. It emphasizes to me and is a good reminder of the extent to which this has been a society and that an army run by a man on horseback. The man on horseback has either been shot down or left my his own steam, there's no one left and everything crumbles beneath it.

COOPER: Yes, I'm actually reminded of the "Wizard of Oz" at the end scene when the wizard is confronted and there's a little man behind the curtain; and he keeps saying don't look behind the curtain. Brent Sadler has just pushed back the curtain entering this base and there is nothing there, there's nobody home.

And we should point out just to our viewers who are just joining us, Brent Sadler -- CNN's Brent Sadler and his team are basically in a vehicle on their own, more or less in a seven car convoy. But they are not embedded; they do not have coalition forces with them. They are not with Peshmerga fighters. They are on their own pushing back the curtain, going -- I mean you talk about being on the front lines; this is ahead of the front lines. This is uncharted territory.

WEISSKOP: I fear Anderson...

COOPER: Go ahead.

WEISSKOP: I fear Anderson for...

SADLER: Anderson, let me just chop in here if I can...

COOPER: Brent, go ahead.

SADLER: Let me cut in here.

OK, Christian (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Pictures forward.

OK, look. Pictures now remarkable. This is actually the garage, a garage area or a workshop area of this obviously, an armored division. And you'll see here, these are bombed out vehicles. These are just derelict, abandoned vehicles. Look, we've got some armor on the left hand side over there.

Let me just try and take a look at this armor over here. Let me get out in fact. At three, I can't get out too far. Let me try to get out the car here. No, I'm stuck to my cables.

That is an APC. We are not talking about destruction here gentlemen; we're talking about wholesale abandonment. This is the parking area for all sorts of vehicles; fuel bowers, I see vehicles on blocks, I see -- this is a scrap yard. I mean basically, may be one serviceable vehicle in a scarp yard of junk. And this is clearly an armored unit, a brigade or may be even (AUDIO GAP) and Tikrit (AUDIO GAP)

If it comes under here. Well, if you could try not to go under cover we'll loose the signal.

Are you still with us Anderson?

COOPER: Yes, we still have you Brent?

SADLER: OK, we've got a tank here. Christian, let's try and drive past this tank Will.

OK. Now, let's take a look at that. This is under a cover but no damage. Look, that tank is intact. Crews long gone, the tracks in piece, the barrels, turret, all intact. Nobody here.

This is just getting more and more bizarre with every passing minute.

Will, let's swing to the left and see what's over there if you can. May be not, no. Carry on. So, I don't know when this was abandoned Anderson, but you were talking about the "Wizard of Oz" analogy. I mean this is clearly is it. I mean you wouldn't know from the highway that this compound here, this very large barrack was basically in such a shocking state of neglect and disrepair and collapse, even before the conflict had started.

So, perhaps now as we pull back the curtain, as we pull back the layers of Saddam Hussein's regime, we can perhaps see what a thin ice you know -- thin lines of defenses rather, that were actually protecting his regime from external threat.

I mean this really just sums up what we've known all along. That he spends his money on the forces to maintain his own regime intact.

Look, there's a vehicle here, this is another a tank. Looks like an old one. Perhaps Mike Turner, maybe you can tell me what that is, perhaps a T-55. I don't know. This whole place is a scrap yard.

TURNER: Yes, I was going to say probably a T-55; it doesn't look like modern equipment.

Brent, do you have any feel for at all for recently abandoned? I mean you just referred to the fact that it appeared to be abandoned before the war. This looks like pretty old abandonment. Would you agree?

SADLER: You know, it's difficult to say. I think it's -- I think it was abandoned last week, last month, or five years ago. You know, I've been to many areas of Iraq and you can't tell sometimes how recently they were in use. My sense is that this is not, if you like, an old, old junkyard because I've seen those on the way down here.

Now, look at these vehicles for example, these are pretty good vehicles. Look, they're put in little sand -- sorry, mounds. They're defended by mounds, those are good trucks. That doesn't suggest to me that those were abandoned long ago. But nor do I see evidence of wholesale destruction from aerial bombardment.

But there's an awful lot of equip -- Ah, there's some destruction over there on the left. I see tank transporters that looks in pretty good condition -- very good condition; wheels are all solid. So, I wouldn't say this was abandoned for years. I would say it is a mixture of the both.

But if we go -- Will, try to get around the outside so we don't loose the signal by going under the standings.

We're going to try and circumnavigate here and you'll see a lot of damage, which I was talking about before round the back of here. Just bare with me, there we go; that obviously significant damage from coalition air strikes.

COOPER: Right.

SADLER: An old, old piece of armor there. It's like a museum piece. But if you look ahead now, we're driving into some significant damage.

Back to you, Colonel Mike Turner.

TURNER: Yes, Brent I would agree. It's really difficult to assess. What just amazes me is there's not even a human being in sight as near as I can see.

COOPER: Yes, there's not even a dog running around, you know as you often see in a lot of places, places like this.

Colonel, how surprised -- I mean if this is the situation throughout Tikrit, and we can't extrapolate that simply because we don't know what's happening in downtown Tikrit in the city center. But if things have fallen a part completely, if there is no there there, no man behind the curtain, so to speak, why aren't U.S. forces already there in significant numbers on the ground?

TURNER: U.S. forces have to assume worst case. They can be pleasantly surprised and not loose anybody. If they assume best case, even based on Brent's remarkable footage, and they're surprised, you can loose a lot of people.

So, they have to assume worst case. It doesn't hurt them in any way for them to be cautious and to probe carefully. Again, Special Forces will move into the city. I suspect if they have their television sets turned on that this is pretty interesting footage and they will adjust accordingly. And they may already know this. We don't know that. They may have already determined this. We just have to wait and see.

But certainly caution is the watchword here and it makes perfect sense when there are lives at stake.

COOPER: Well, from what Brent has told us thus far, it appears no large-scale U.S. force troops or U.S. forces moving -- having moved through that area.

But Colonel Turner, you wouldn't be surprised if Special Forces have perhaps been operating in this area already.

TURNER: When this is all over and the dust is settled, there will be some remarkable stories and some historic tales of valor. And I suspect that Special Forces have probably achieved a stunning and historic victory. And because of the nature of the people that are in the Special Forces, we may never know about it. But for anyone in the military that sees the results, they can very easily surmise the level of valor that's been displayed by U.S. and coalition Special Forces in this operations.

If this is abandonment, total abandonment and the regime has ended with a whimper rather than a bang, we can attribute a great deal of that success to the courage of the Special Forces in this operation.

COOPER: Well, Colonel Turner if what we've see seems to be what we're seeing, what happens next in terms of military movements on the coalition's side?

TURNER: Well, I'm not aware of any other major areas of resistance. Mosul is in a state of civil chaos right now, as is Baghdad to a large extent. Well, I've been watching the coverage for three hours now and I haven't heard of any major firefights that have been in or around Baghdad. And if Tikrit is essentially now a done deal -- and that's a big if, we have to caution that's a big if. But if its, then clearly we have crossed the threshold of what I would have to say is approaching or very close to approaching the end of the war.

This I thought was probably the last holdout and it doesn't appear to be much of a bastion right now from the footage that Brent is providing us.

COOPER: We're going to go back to Brent for a moment. And for any viewers who are just joining us, Brent Sadler has been for the last hour or so providing nothing short of remarkable pictures, exclusive pictures in and around Tikrit.

Brent, where are you now? Are you still on the military base you were on?

SADLER: Yes, we've just swung round inside this tank battalion or tank division. We can't tell you how many men would have served here, but certainly an armored unit. And we've looked around here, seen a lot of destruction from coalition bombing on some of the warehouses. But generally speaking, the sense I get is disrepair, disorder and collapse even before the coalition bombs got to work in this area. This is very run down tank regiment, very run down indeed.

Just passing there a possible maintenance tent with an NACP on the top of it. And tanks scattered here and there; and most of them hulks but some in working -- working order.

The vehicle ahead, is that moving?

A vehicle moving towards us here, a military vehicle, this is interesting. Military vehicle and with military colors, civilian at the wheels. Let's see if they're friendly. OK, a quick wave. May be a looter.

So, we've been in here just passing a soft course here on my right hand side as we go through here. Shooting range on the left.

You know, I have not seen one single symbol of authority in the past hour of transmission and 24 hours of being in this location a part from civilian interests from a group of men who said they were Baath Party officials.

So, we're going to move out of this tank regiment headquarters, and get back on the main road, and reassess and may be take a look at Tikrit itself.

What are we looking at here? OK. We have here in Arabic "Down, Down USA," look at that on the back of that dugout there in Arabic and English. So, obviously someone was here and recently.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Colonel Turner, go ahead.

TURNER: Brent, this is Mike Turner again. Do you have a sense of how far you are? As the crow flies from the center of Tikrit, it looks from your images to be three to five miles or thereabouts?

SADLER: Bang on Mike. I'd say about seven or eight clicks by my GPS, about five miles from the center of Tikrit.

Now you know, I mean we pose as a significant target with seven vehicles in our CNN convoy here. I mean you know, we'll reassess and may be we'll try to get into Tikrit itself. I mean this is just such an opened season for going into Iraqi territory. It may be do-able but we won't do it until we get a bit more intelligence here on the ground. But you know we are a significant movement, it's not as if you can't mistake what we are. We are a large group of vehicles, seven vehicles you know, moving around. If there was anybody defending this areas, we'd be, I guess from their gunfight, a legitimate target given they know that American forces will sooner or later in strength be coming in this direction. We can easily be mistaken for a Iraqi patrol.

TURNER: Well, Brent, this is Mike Turner again. What concerns me is if there are forces in the city and they're watching CNN right now. You need to be aware of that.

SADLER: Oh, I'm aware of it Mike, thank you. But we were going to attempt it last night and backed off. And it was a sobering experience to spend the night under a culvert in a drainage ditch with the road overhead. But that was prudent given the air strikes and the possibility of blue on the blue friendly fire with our location because obviously, the coalition, as far its planning is concerned, and you're obviously right, this is still unfriendly territory. A seven-vehicle convoy in unfriendly territory, two and two makes four. We could be easily mistaken for hostile forces. So as extraordinary as it is, the wisdom of the day will probably not to try Tikrit, unless we get some more hard evidence.

COOPER: Well, Brent, on that subject, do you having anything that distinguishes your vehicles, from the sky perhaps, from civilian vehicles?

SADLER: Yes, we have TV clearly marked on them. And we did pass on our coordinates 24 hours ago to CENTCOM that we were a seven- vehicle convoy moving about in this area. We are now, I think, gong to, are we going to pull off and take a look in here. We are. We are going to pull off and take a look at a -- gate closed. We can't go in that one. Look at that. The gate is closed and, obviously, with a piece of metal around the gate to stop anyone going in. I mean, just remarkable. Where is everybody? Where are the soldiers? Where is the final elements of the Republican Guard division? I think it was the Adnan division which is supposed to be here. And this just, literally, almost in mortar range from the center of Tikrit.

COOPER: Yes. Colonel Turner, just to remind our viewers who are just joining us, the significance of all of this, of course Tikrit, the hometown, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, supposed to be the last bastion of his power, a sight apparently at one point guarded by much vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard, the pictures seem to tell a different story.

TURNER: Well, they certainly do. And you would think if Tikrit was the last strong point, the last holdout, the point of final resistance, that there would at least be some semblance of what they call a ring of steel around Tikrit. But, clearly, Brent has gone over the red line, if we can borrow that analogy from Baghdad, once again, and there doesn't appear to be anybody home. It is really shocking.

COOPER: If this is a ring of steel, it appears more ring of steel wool and Brent Sadler is sort of pulling apart as we watch. Brent, we saw some cars passing by, civilian vehicles?

SADLER: It looks like civilian vehicles. And so we are just doing a tape change in the camera. So if the camera does some strange things, just bear with us, as we move off. Christian Strive (ph) on the camera, just putting a new tape in there. The taxi passing my left-hand side, no one really showing any hostile intent here. It feels better, actually, than it did late yesterday afternoon. But we won' t know for sure until we can penetrate the center of Tikrit as to whether or not there are any fighting elements of any groups, regular army, Republican Guard, Saddam Fedayeen or Mujahedeen Harakat (ph) these extremists diehards who might make a last stance in Tikrit. But, certainly, no evidence of coalition forces here whatsoever. Surprising really, given the kind of briefings I was having just a couple of days ago about such a force presence around here.

Now, look, we have just come behind an APC vehicle there, intact, in the dug out, by the road, one of a line of them, a machine gun on turret, I believe. Yes, machine gun on turret, abandoned, walked away. They didn't even bother moving it. They just clearly ran away from it.

COOPER: And that is an APC?

SADLER: Quite extraordinary.

COOPER: That APC was not one that had ...

SADLER: Yes, it would have come up for this one.

COOPER: Go ahead.

SADLER: What I am going to do, Anderson, is we pull up to this vehicle, I am going to keep my radio mike on. And I'm going to get out of my vehicle, so you won't be able to talk to me until I get back to the vehicle. Let me just get out of the vehicle. We'll look around obviously for any -- well, if you would like to come with me. I am going to go off my earpiece and go in front of the camera. You should still be able to hear me. So I am leaving he vehicle now, our vehicle, and just going to take a look over here and see what I can find. What about that door? Can you get in that door? Quite remarkable. The gun is intact, in position. There is ammunition around the front here. The gun, obviously, in working order. Bullets in the breech. Let me climb up.

Extraordinary. The hatch is open. The machine gun, obviously, working. Bullets in the breech. The hatch open here. Let me just peak inside and see if there is anything in here. Just total abandonment. Total abandonment. Absolutely incredible. How long ago this was manned, it is obviously impossible to say. But really this is quite remarkable revelations. It seems that Tikrit's armed forces -- the so-called last stand has simply gone away. Where three, four miles I guess from the center of Tikrit, this would have been a well- defended position dug out with APCs, all the way along this area. No troops. They are gone.

So I am going to climb back in my vehicle now, Anderson. I hope you can still hear me. And I am going to climb back onto my earpiece. And in a second, you will be able to talk to me. Let me just put the plug back in. Anderson, can you hear me?

COOPER: Yes, we hear you Brent. This is just an extraordinary. You mentioned this line. How many APCs can you see in the area? We just saw two which seem to be dug in, and as you said, they seem to be intact. The bullets were in the machine gun and, yet, completely abandoned. Are there just those two or do they extend onwards?

SADLER: Yes, they are all over the place. There are mounds -- every mound you see in front of us now, is along the foreground. Look, there are mounds in the background. I think Tikrit has fallen without a single shot being fired on the ground here. Look at this, look. Front line equipment , dug in, nobody here. The back of that APC open, they're one. They fled and they fled in a hurry. Look at this. Look over there. This whole area is full of dug out and abandoned active, loaded vehicles with entrances (ph) and rear doors open, in some cases. Here is another one coming up. These are not just one of two spots, these are dug in defenses.

COOPER: Colonel Turner, I want to bring you in here for a second. I mean, a military who cares about what they are fighting for, if they are going to abandon their vehicles, they would at least blow them up, would they not?

TURNER: If they had time. It depends on how fast they had to move. The signs here are that they had to move pretty fast, as Brent alluded to. Brent, I am curious, the revetments, the berms that you are looking at, do they command the -- overlook the major highway coming into the military complex?

SADLER: Sure thing, Mike, they do, indeed. The one you are seeing on the -- dead ahead now, that's probably 100 yards from that main highway. So, these guns -- that machine gun there would be facing eastwards.

COOPER: What does that tell you Colonel Turner?

TURNER: Well, they are obviously defensive positions. They were obviously meant to stop vehicles like Brents from doing precisely what he is doing.

SADLER: West, west, west.

TURNER: Yes, that would have been my guess is west, based on the way you came in. But, obviously, these were put there to stop vehicles such as the seven-vehicle convoy that Brent is in from doing precisely what he is doing right now. It's -- these are, obviously, purely defensive positions that have been completely abandoned. And that looks like state-of-the-art equipment for the Iraqi military. That doesn't look like much like that older vehicles that we saw in the garage that he went through first.

COOPER: Would those be Republican Guard vehicles?

TURNER: I would say, if I were going to gamble and have to say yes or no, I would say, yes, they look to be in fairly good shape. Brent, do you have some feel, you looked inside. Are they in pretty good shape? Do they look to be well maintained?

SADLER: These are pretty old Soviet versions of their APC.

TURNER: Oh, are they?

SADLER: Standard vehicle. I wouldn't think they were Republican Guard equipment. I didn't see any red triangles normally a telltale sign of Republican Guard designation vehicles.

TURNER: Right, right.

SADLER: But I would say that they were, certainly, defensive positions. I agree with that, recently abandoned. I would guess they're -- not yet, I can see they are abandoned very recently. And in terms of the insides, you know, old but functioning. These are killing machines. There is no doubt about this. These aren't wrecks or abandoned junk. These were killing machines.

COOPER: Brent, a couple of days ago, I think it was two nights ago or so, you brought us these remarkable pictures and interviews with these hundreds of thousands of men walking down the road, former soldiers, where were they in relation to where you are now?

SADLER: OK, that would have been northeast towards the Iranian border. Those men who were going back home, drifting south, were part of Saddam Hussein's northern army, the three army corps he had up there. They were infantry canon fodder, if you like, conscripts, mostly Shiites heading south. But a long, long way away from here. The few stragglers you are seeing coming along the highway the past hour or so, different units they will be from for certain, two different parts of the battle theater I've been in the past 24 hours. So, what I am surprised about, having seen the fact that so many people were on the move after the immediate fall of Kirkuk and Mosul, you saw thousands of people on the road, it seems to suggest to me, and Colonel Mike Turner, I would be interested to hear your view, that this hasn't just happened in the last few hours, this has happened maybe in the last 24, 36, perhaps slightly longer. That, otherwise, all these troops would be on the move. They probably already fled to Baghdad.

TURNER: I think that is exactly right Brent. In fact, I remember when we were talking and we hadn't crossed the red line yet going into Baghdad, there was this palpable sense that there will be time at psychologically the resistance, just the capacity to resists of the conventional military, and possibly even some of the hardcore elements of the resistance would simply crumble, and that would be a cascading and ever-accelerating effect. If that timing was right, and that occurred a week to maybe a week and a half ago, and rippled across the countryside, then it would make sense that this would have occurred within four or five days ago, perhaps, as that psychological barrier was crossed. And they realized this was a hopeless cause. And they would have left. I agree you would have encountered something.

COOPER: Colonel Turner, those armored personnel carriers that we just saw Brent Sadler climbing around, reporting from, which were in dug in positions, from the air, form the coalition standpoint flying over, can you tell that things have been abandoned. I mean, as you look at the kind of aerial surveillance you get?

TURNER: Probably not. There are some pretty amazing photos you can get. We attacked Republican Guard tanks from the Hammurabi and the Tawakalna and any number of other divisions in and around Kuwait who had, in a similar fashion, embedded themselves behind berms, and attacked those. And it's difficult to tell -- now that was technology. Twelve years ago when you looked down from infrared imaging or onboard systems of any kind, laser finders and those sorts of things, and television cameras, it is difficult to tell whether it was abandoned or not. And usually you can tell whether it is destroyed or not and, if it's not, then you go after it.

But these don't appear to have been struck. And it is just a little bit of a mystery as to why they would not have been struck, unless there were just higher priority targets that we had to hit. And we would encounter these in the battlefield air campaign when we got closer to the city. But it is just hard to say.

COOPER: I just want to briefly review for viewers who have been joining us just in the last several minutes of so, we have been over the last hour and 15 minutes or so, privileged to following Brent Sadler as he and his team from CNN push back the curtain on what has long been considered the last stronghold of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit, the city where Saddam Hussein was born. The place often described as his ancestral homeland, power base. The last place, I believe, to be in the old regime of Saddam Hussein still in their hands.

But Brent Sadler has been showing us as he takes enormous risk driving around and through regions into Tikrit. Brent Sadler basically showing us that the forces are gone, at least in the areas he has traveled in. We are not able to see exactly what is happening in the city center. But if this is any indication, what is in Tikrit now is certainly now what we had anticipated, what we had been led to believe over the last several days with the situation in Tikrit. Brent, where are you now?

SADLER: We are just passing a group of tanks, unserviceable tanks from what I can see. But what I would like to do is get to where these camouflage nettings are. Those were really tanks that have been dead for quite some time. What you see ahead of you is a bus. Now, that bus is a green one. It is used as a troop transporter, obviously, soft, not armored. But I know that this bus because I've been in them myself during the Iran-Iraq war. So that has been put behind a barricade. And this whole area, as you can see in front of us, is just dotted with dugout and APCs put into them.

Now, I think it is also interesting that as we are so close to Tikrit why, perhaps, these weren't taken out by coalition aircraft. But I think that Colonel Mike Turner was absolutely right. There were more higher priority targets. These were not offensive dugouts here. These are defensive positions. And it seems that the targeting has gone for command and control, rather than this pretty ineffectual hardware which is dug into the ground here. We are going across some pretty rough terrain right now, trying to get to one of these dugouts that has a camouflage net all over it. But, certainly, the Iraqis have gone to a lot of trouble to give the appearance of an army that was capable of defending itself in the face of coalition air or ground attacks. The fact of the matter is it is obviously paper tissue thin, in terms of its defensive comparability. This armor it seems never took part in any battle -- Anderson.

COOPER: It's just remarkable. Colonel Turner, how much of this is for the benefit, is for the effect it might have on coalition aircraft flying overhead, the placement of these batteries, the dug in positions. How much thinking on the part of the Iraqis goes into what the coalition might be seeing from the sky?

TURNER: Well, you know, Anderson, as Brent was saying that that was exactly the thought I had. This whole thing may have been staged. And I don't mean staged in the sense that it's rouse, as Michael put it, a rope-a-dope, it may have been an effort for deception and concealment to present a supposed military target, without loaded military equipment and defensive revetments in and around Tikrit to draw off air strikes. And it's possible that U.S. special forces have already discerned that this is not a high priority target and moved on to other things, which would explain why none of this equipment has been destroyed. That is one possible explanation. It would certainly draw off air assets if they thought that this was a serious threat array. And it appears that they didn't, because these are not destroyed from the air. It doesn't look like it.

COOPER: Brent, all the people you have seen in the last hour or two, from our vantage point, it is a little grainy, a little hard to tell, but they all seem to be men of military age. Do you see any young people, any old people, any women, people who are clearly civilians?

SADLER: No, Anderson, no women, no children. These are men of fighting age quite clearly. And I'm pretty certain, without speaking to them, that they will be men from Iraqi military units, who have either been told to lay down their arms by commanders and just melted away or have run away. What we are going to have to do, Anderson, is lose the picture of awhile. We need to change a battery, otherwise, we are going to go down for a long period of time. So can we just switch off and come back to you in a couple of minutes?

COOPER: Absolutely, Brent. Just let us know when you are back. We will still be here waiting for you. We are going to continue our discussion right now with Colonel Mike Turner. Colonel Turner, I've said it before a couple of times over the last hour or so, but these pictures are just remarkable. What surprises you most, of all of what you have seen in the last hour and 20 minutes or so?

TURNER: Well, I was just about to ask Brent, he's seen a lot more of this close up, certainly, a lot closer than I and a lot of other people have in the world. And I'm sure that we are fascinated by what we are looking at. But one of the questions that occurs to me is as we pass those few individuals on the road, my expectation for individuals who are fleeing from a hardcore Fedayeen, for example, central core in Tikrit, because they're caught between forces that are converging for a major conflict, the body language of those kinds of refugees, if you will, or people in transit, I would suspect would have been wholly different. And I am sure Brent has seen instances of that in this war and other wars that he has covered. And, yet, these people did not seem to demonstrate the body ...

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TURNER: ... moving around, I got the distinct impression that they were headed south through that military conflict. I would like to confirm that when he is back up. He appears to be moving closer to the center of the city. And it doesn't appear like there is any increased vigilance on anyone's part as he does that.

COOPER: He certainly also seems to be flirting with the notion of actually going into the center of Tikrit. Let's talk a little bit about the dangers that are inherent in that. Simply, the bottom line is he doesn't know what is right now in the center of Tikrit.

TURNER:: Well, that's true. And, you know, the problem, if it's an unconventional force in the center of Tikrit, let alone coalition unconventional forces operating in that area, but what the danger is here, the threshold, the ramp up, if you will, to use a military term from a benign situation and a non-threatening situation to extreme danger will be lightening fast. That's what concerns me is that he is sort of alone, unarmed and unafraid up there. And if he encounters someone who is armed, it only takes a few seconds to be in a very dire situation. So that's a serious concern.

COOPER: I think it bears noting, especially to our viewers who are just joining us, we have almost become blase in seeing these remarkable images in the last 20 or so days of this conflict. We have seen Walter Rodgers charging -- the tip of the spear -- with the 7th Cavalry charging through the desert, hearing shots going off. Brent Sadler, if there is a tip of the spear, Brent Sadler is far ahead of the tip of the spear. He is not traveling with any coalition forces. He is not traveling with Peshmerga Kurdish fighters.

He is traveling in a CNN convoy of some seven vehicles, basically, marked with strips of tape that probably say "TV" on them. But that's about it. That's the only security he has. So there is danger, and then there is danger. It is not to at all be taking lightly. What he is doing, has done, and may be doing in the coming hours, as we continue to look at these pictures taken just moments ago from the vehicles that Brent Sadler has been in. What might lie ahead in the center of Tikrit? I mean, there is a variety of possibilities from Iraqi Special Republican Guard irregular fighters, the Fedayeen, so-called Fedayeen to even Mujahedeen elements from neighboring countries.

TURNER: All of those, although I would say very lightly that the Republican Guard is probably no more. Based on everything that we have seen in Baghdad and the movement of forces. I want to say it was the Nebuchadnezzar Guard unit that tried to move down from Tikrit to Baghdad during the early days of the battle of Baghdad. So I would be surprised if there were any Republican Guard forces of any kind left in Tikrit. You might see resistance such that we saw in Nasiriya and Najaf, with the Fedayeen embedded with the civilian population. But there doesn't seem to be much of any population at this point. Granted we are still quite some miles from the center of town. But I -- this is curiouser and curiouser to steal a phrase. It just seems strange that we haven't seen any semblance of resistance or tension at all in this entire odyssey.

COOPER: Yes, that is, of course, the question, what has happened to those Iraqi Republican Guard units we have heard so much about. And as you point out Colonel Turner there had been reports about a week or so ago, around the time that when the beginnings of the battle for Baghdad began, of some of those Republican Guard units moving south to bolster the Medina division among others who had been so eroded by the coalition bombing, we are back live with the pictures from Brent Sadler. We are glad to have him back. Brent, we will come to you in a moment. We do watch your pictures. Is there anything right now you need to tell us Brent?

SADLER: No, nothing new really. We are just going past another section of this tank regiment that we have been in for the past half an hour or so. Just to let you know, our security expert on the ground here, his assessment is that the Iraqis didn't have time, or didn't want, or didn't have the inclination rather to worry about, or to bother about booby traps. So, you know, it seems in terms of those kinds of threats, booby traps, mines, anti-personnel mines, it seems to be on the basis of what our security experts say on the ground here, that it's OK, with caution, to go into these recently abandoned locations, these dug out positions, and take a really close look at he armor that is still here

COOPER: Well, Brent, these pictures that you have been brining us are being seen not just across the United States at this late hour but across the world, also no doubt in corridors of power where decisions are being made. I want to check in with Kathleen Koch who is at the Pentagon, who has been watching the pictures as well. Kathleen, it has been a remarkable hour and 27 minutes. KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It certainly has, Anderson. And I can tell you that the officials here at the Pentagon are just as riveted as we are by these images. And I can also say just as concerned as some of us are about Brent Sadler's safety. But, indeed, in many ways this does prove some of what we were beginning to hear from the Pentagon yesterday, that they had increasing intelligence information that was leading them to believe that there may not be any sort of defense of Tikrit. Apparently, there were some reports of aerial reconnaissance drones that weren't spotting masses of troops. They weren't spotting defensive preparations. So this is increasingly not coming as a complete surprise.

Still, you know, this is also a very different city from Baghdad. And I think we have to keep that in mind. This is a city of only some 30,000 inhabitants, compared to Baghdad's five million. Now, it is true that military analysts often refer to this as Fortress Tikrit because Saddam Hussein's regimes had invested very, very heavily in building up military fortifications around this city. There were anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missile launchers, radar units ringing the city, observation posts in key locations. So, there was, indeed, that possibility that there could be some sort of a last stand. But it certainly isn't looking like this right now.

COOPER: Yes, certainly, and Kathleen, I want to come back to you in a moment.

Brent, I noticed you got out of the vehicle, checked what appeared to be some sort of a warehouse. What were you looking at?

SADLER: Anderson, that was an ammunition warehouse. This are around here is lined with very large storage facilities. And you will see a lot of them have been blasted by coalition air strikes. The one I was taking a peak in has missiles, ammunition boxes stacked high. Goodness gracious knows what's in these warehouses, which are all numbered. There is all sorts of military equipment, boxes, long boxes. I can see we are just passing perhaps missiles, the kind of shape I recognize as being perhaps just a missile box. These, obviously, the subject down this road here of intense air activity by coalition aircraft. That there hanger or storage facility empty. But in terms of others, it is difficult to know what was in some of them. And let's just stop there a second, just pull back. There is something here I just want you to take a look at. This bear with me.

COOPER: Colonel Mike Turner ...

SADLER: One just doesn't know what's in it. Stop there, Wolf. And if you take a look over here, let me just get out here. Chris, are you on that? Now, in here, just take a look at this, you get through there. Anderson, I can still hear you. We've got a bit more cable now. We have a pumping system, a cylinder, a valve on top of the cylinder, other bits ripped out here, tubing in a military complex. Ammunition over there. Destruction there. Something, goodness knows what, it doesn't look as though it is part of a generating plant. But a cylinder and pumping equipment. Now, what could that be I wonder -- Anderson.

COOPER: And all this equipment just laying around unlooted, Brent.

SADLER: Absolutely, unlooted, totally. There is nobody here. No soldiers obviously, they have long gone. And no civilians. And I would deduce from that that either, A, Tikrit is still under the control of some extremist elements, therefore, people can't move around, or b; the whole of Tikrit has been abandoned. We may found out more this day, I don't know. At the moment we've got quite enough on our hands just to tell you this story right now. Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, certainly do. Now this base is separate from than the base you were on about 10 or 15 minutes ago, is that correct?

SADLER: This is a continuation of the same base. It's taken us all that time to get from those tanks you saw about half an hour ago, to here. We're still in the same base. That gives you an idea of this size, the magnitude of these areas. Now look at that here. That's a destroyed warehouse full, packed with serviceable equipment, serviceable armament. Look, they're all lined up in there. Can you see that, Anderson?

COOPER: Yes ...

TURNER: Brent, this is Mike Turner. Have you seen any T-72s? I haven't on the footage, have you?

SADLER: I have not seen any of the T-72s yet, no, which in the beg of the question, where are they? But there's certainly a lot of hardware here. Maybe it was hiding; I mean I just don't know why it wasn't dispersed out anywhere else. I assume because there weren't men to run it. I mean, I just don't know. It's just remarkable. This is like the old Mary Celeste, the boat that was adrift at sea and everyone's abandoned it. It's, you almost think you'll see a smoking cigarette in an ashtray somewhere in a minute.

COOPER: A T-72 of course being one of the Iraqi tanks, the other being the T-55, those two tanks we see the most of. Brent, obviously that building's been destroyed, I'm assuming by some sort of aerial bombardment. Any sense of how long ago that might have occurred? The smell of any sort of burning things in the air, or do you see any smoke? It looks like it's been gone for a while now.

SADLER: Yes, Anderson I'd agree with that judgment. I've spent much of the last 20 years looking at the results of bombing in various parts of the world, and complete destruction, I'd say this undoubtedly air strike, many, many air strikes on this compound, this military complex, and I would say quite some time ago. Sometime ago, days ago I would say. I see no evidence of any smoke or anything to suggest that it was any more recent than that.

COOPER: Colonel Turner, it looks like that to you as well?

TURNER: Yes, I was just thinking this is very conceivably part of the shock and awe campaign of the first few days. I know for a fact that we had a number of targets in and around Tikrit on the fixed target list in Desert Storm. It would be inconceivable that we didn't have those same targets on the list for the start of Iraqi Freedom, so it would make sense that these were two to three weeks old.

COOPER: And Brent, I'm not seeing large, gaping impressions in the earth. Does it look like precision-guided bombing to you?

SADLER: Well, I would say this was precision-guided bombing. Yes, these are individual warehouses picked off one by one. I don't see any massive craters. Our way is blocked at the moment, but you can see beyond the debris in the foreground, yet more hardware in the distance; whether it's serviceable or not, I don't know.

But there's just a, I can't really describe just how big this place is. A (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to tell you, it goes as far as the eye can see on all points of the compass. The size of this complex that I'm in right now, just maybe five miles or less probably, four miles fro the center of Tikrit. This is where we all expected there to be a possible last stand, the very bastion of Saddam Hussein's support in his tribal areas, the heartland of his paid for support in terms of tribal allegiance over his decades of rule. This is where it was expected that perhaps levels, senior levels of the Iraqi government, the old Iraqi government, the regime would come and hide out perhaps to resist the fall of Tikrit and perhaps who knows, to even negotiate surrender.

But it seems from what we're gathering, over the past couple of hours, that there is no longer any form of conventional defense of Tikrit, and we won't know for sure of course till we get in. What concerns me is the fact that I'm not seeing, and maybe we're on the wrong side of Tikrit, I'm not seeing looters, any movement of population that would suggest it's in any way safe for civilians to come to Tikrit. Mike Turner, what's your view?

TURNER: Brent, I would agree with that. It's so abnormal at this point, that you know after a while the warning flags start to pop up because it's just to, it's too easy, it's just too abnormal here, and that's generally not a good sign. So I think you're, I think you're, you're intuitive sense is right on target.

COOPER: To not just not only no military forces there, but no, no sleepy watchmen at a gate, no you know, it's 9:30 in the morning, no one at least not even one person sitting around kind of watching the place; no dogs even meandering around for scraps. It is, it is the old cliche, eerily calm, eerily quiet, certainly seems to apply here. Brent.

SADLER: Absolutely Anderson. Here's another park, parking area for again serviceable, the tracks are in tact, the guns are on top of the turrets, ATCs maybe, maybe 50 of them just in this little parking area alone. I would say there are hundreds of armed vehicles in this area, this vast military complex as we slowly inch our way through it, and area that was obviously heavily bombed by the coalition at some stage of the campaign.

But in terms of any security, no. There's nobody here. No security, no sign even recent security or control. And in terms of the abnormal, having spent most of the past 20 years being in theaters of war in one part of the world or another, I've never seen anything quite like this. I've seen defeated armies, I've seen abandoned equipment, but not on this shear scale, and at the same time as the war is not over, coalition aircraft are still active here, targets are still being attacked. This is still an active battlefield. I've never seen anything quite like this, and it's making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

COOPER: Just remarkable pictures as we just continue to follow Brent Sadler's journey, probing right now on an old military base in Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit. Brent Sadler just probing around in this area that has been the focus of so much activity, so much attention really since this war began. So many questions unanswered, slowly throughout this morning, Brent Sadler seems to be answering some of those questions. Colonel Turner, what happens next? What is the next step in terms of where coalition forces go?

TURNER: Well, you know it's really pretty hard to say at this point. This is, this is fairly extensive intelligence information and it's going to have be absorbed and analyzed and assessed at least for a while. I couldn't even begin to tell you. I'll be perfectly honest with you, I truly don't know. This is surprising information and I'm sure my colleagues at Central Command and back in the Pentagon are scratching their heads right now and either that, or they know all this and they're way ahead of us and we're just now finding it out. But it's certainly interesting and will have to factor into whatever happens in the days ahead.

COOPER: Brent, I'm interested in the again, some of our viewers who've just joined us may not have been here when you were telling the story of what happened to you last night, camping out, miles away from anything, under, in a covert in the desert, and all the sudden at 2:00am, some Baath Party officials came up and came up to your encampment. If you could, just recount a little bit of that and in particular I'm interested to know, did they act as if they were still in control of this area? And did they confront you about what you were doing? Did they ask for documents or what did they want from you?

SADLER: Well, we came in to this area from Mosul, skipped through the Southern part of Mosul, that's in the North of Iraq, a good 120-30 miles North from this location. Not expecting to tell you the truth, to get anywhere near Tikrit. That was last night. Not only did we get near to Tikrit, we got within just two or three miles of the outskirts of the city, the turn off to Tikrit for the main highway. Now that was just as the sun was setting. We had about an hour of light left. And decided that we would stay in this location because there was a chance of going back to Mosul and getting caught there in rising and Arab-Kurdish conflict in terms of the looting that's been going on over there. So we passed through some Arab vigilantes defending their property; that was pretty spooky getting down here in the first place.

Then we got to the outskirts of Tikrit, took up a position, began to start working and our security expert with us, with our seven vehicle convoy, spotted what appeared to be a sniper being dropped off by a Toyota pickup and taking up a position on the second floor of a roof about 70 or 80 meters from our working location. We beat a very hasty retreat from that area, and just drove to a town called Bahji, sorry a town south of Tikrit on the way to Samarra. Really, not knowing who was in control.

We spoke to people on the ground, people told us you can go to the next town called Samarra, which is about 50-60 miles north of Baghdad, you'll be fine, you can check into a hotel there, you'll be safe because they government is in control. And I said what government? And they looked at me and said Saddam Hussein Baath Party in control. Now obviously that wasn't a place for Western journalists for CNN in particular to go if that was the case. So we chose not to go south, but to double back towards Tikrit and we found a place first of all, in the middle of nowhere we thought.

We'd been settled for about 20 minutes in the middle of nowhere and several men came up to us, identified themselves as Baath Party officials; did not appear to have arms with them and challenge us as to our, who we were, and challenged us as to what we were doing there. We told them that we were going to spend the night there, we were a Western crew. Our cameraman, Christian Stribe (ph) is German. He spoke to them in German to be them off the scent, because clearly they were anti-American. They told us they were anti-George Bush, ant- American.

And then we stopped the conversation and high-tailed it out of that location; drove for another half an hour till we found a culvert under the main highway between Tikrit and Samarra. A seven vehicle convoy, there was just enough room to hide all vehicles, all seven vehicles in this culvert just clearing the roof space and we hid out there for the nine hours of darkness. We hid out there because we had two problems. One local elements, perhaps extremists, Saddam Fedayeen, certainly Baath Party officials harassing us, but also a possibility of friendly fire; coalition aircraft active during that night, active early this morning, and we were concerned we would be misidentified as a hostile, with a seven car convoy operating in Tikrit. So we went underground, like a crab under a stone if you like, and stayed there for the hours of darkness, and then came out early this morning.

To take you around an incredible journey of revelations about Tikrit. Apparently the army whatever elements were supposed to be defending Tikrit, having evaporated on the outskirts of the city, Saddam Hussein's stronghold, his hometown, his die-hard loyalists here, and in these last two hours, we've been watching remnants of defeated soldiers, some you just saw there, walking down the road. And then driving through abandoned military barracks with massive destruction from coalition bombing and abandoned machines, fighting machine in dug out defensive positions, covering vast areas around the outskirts of Tikrit. We have not penetrated into the center of Tikrit yet; we have to make more assessments of that. We've not seen any coalition forces for 24 hours in this area, and the war is not over. We're driving around in an active battlefield area, and really for the first time, exclaiming, showing first-hand, live, exclusive evidence here that it would appear that Tikrit is there for the taking. Anderson.

COOPER: And just looking again at these remarkable pictures, a sign of Saddam Hussein driving by. We just saw some people you drove by a little while ago. Colonel Mike Turner and I were talking earlier, while you were changing the camera; I take it that's a Saddam Hussein statue?

SADLER: Anderson, this is Brent. Yes, we're going to go and take a look at that statue. Again, two tanks on the side of the road leading to a barracks, an in-tact Saddam Hussein statue, you don't see those in Kirkuk, Mosul, or Baghdad anymore, but you still see them here in the Tikrit area. We're about five, five, six, maybe six-seven miles outside Tikrit now, and we'll just take a short drive down this road, the entrance again I suspect to another tank battalion or regiment. And there you can see Saddam Hussein on his (UNINTELLIGIBLE) intact -- Anderson.

COOPER: A statue that looks very similar to the one we saw being torn down in Baghdad earlier this week. Now this is a different military base I take it, than the one you were on before, or is an extension of the same.

SADLER: No, this is a new entrance, a new base, right slap-bang next door to the other one. You only have to go maybe a half a mile and then there's this entrance further down. This one may have more importance given that it's got a very huge, bronze statue there of Saddam Hussein in front of it. It's the only statue I've seen in these military compounds, plenty of pictures of murals, of images, but not a statue of this size before. So we'll go and take a look I think, down this road. There's a car coming up towards us, Christian (ph). Just to let you know, and we'll see what's behind this facade, Anderson.

COOPER: We are just watching, I was just watching that vehicle go in front of you. Characterize for us if you can, the people you have seen passing you by, go ahead.

SADLER: OK. Anderson, let me tell you. This is a sign; sorry you lost us there. I've just (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a red triangle on the outside of the gate that would indicate that this a Republican Guard section, a Republican Guard complex. The one down the road wasn't. This if that red triangle is anything to go by, I just saw on the gate as we came in, that would indicate Republican Guard. It would also explain why there's that big statue of Saddam Hussein outside. In fact, that adds up. It makes sense. I think we're now in a Republican Guard headquarters tank, part of the tank regiment or a tank division. Colonel Mike Turner, what's your assessment of what I've just seen, said?

TURNER: I think you're, I think that would be absolutely correct, Brent. That would be my guess too. Let's see what's inside here, but be particularly careful. This appears to be at least from the surface from what we're seeing here, the base appears to be in better shape than the last one.

SADLER: Absolutely. This is just on the outside. Let's get some speed up, Will, can we? This is just literally few hundred meters beyond that statue that we just saw. A lot pictures, no significant damage. In fact, I can see warehouse in the distance, untouched. A vast area again. But does not seem to have been, not in this area at least, the subject of any interest by target aircraft. I've also, can also see left and right of me here. In the dug out compared to the previous location, and this would make sense; the dugouts here are all empty. You can take a look at that. There are no defensive positions here in what seems to be a Republican Guard tank regiment. And one wonders then, where all those vehicles have gone? Where that fighting equipment would have gone? If this is Republican Guard, in good condition, I see the red triangles everywhere now. For sure this is Republican Guard.

So where, where, I don't know which section it is of the Republican Guard, or where are they? Where are the men who were part of this unit, and where are their machines? Anderson.

COOPER: That is of course the question a lot of people would like to know and perhaps we will be finding out in the coming minutes and hours as we stay with Brent Sadler traveling in and around Tikrit, probing ahead of any coalition forces that we can see. Ahead of any Peshmerga fighters. Brent Sadler, ahead of the tip of the spear so to speak. Now that appears to be another building there?

SADLER: Yes, this looks like the inner-core if you like. This is the same road that we've been on since seeing that statue. And this now seems to be another level of security. So I think you can tell by the building, look at the, yes, Republican Guard triangle on the top; 100 percent we had an Arabic reader, we could work out which unit. That little click as we go, losing the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) second. And this would be, appear to be the command center of this Republican Guard unit. And I'm seeing some damage on the left over there; perhaps some bombing damage.

Nothing significant. Abandoned. Nobody here. But unlike the previous location, I get the sense here again some more destruction just on the right there, I get the sense that this unit or this brigade or section of a regiment, left here in tact; went with its vehicles. There are no in contrast to the other barracks, no artillery here, no tanks, no armored personnel carriers; everything has moved. But destruction certainly at this Republican Guard headquarters.

TURNER: Brent, this is Mike again. You're on about five miles or so on the Northwest corner of Tikrit. Have I got that, that placement right?

SADLER: Absolutely right. Northwest I'd say. Will, can you give me a position; how many kilometers say? Six kilometers is that Will? OK. Four miles Northwest of Tikrit on our GPS.

TURNER: OK.

SADLER: Due north. Correction. Due north.

TURNER: OK.

COOPER: So Colonel Turner, the possibilities of if Brent is correct, that it was some sort of movement by a unit out of this position. The question of course, where did they go?

TURNER: Well obviously I would have to believe that U.S. intelligence sources, if in fact these are Republican Guard T-72 tanks, which is the modern Russian battle tank, that our intelligence sources would have detected them by now, and the most likely supposition in my judgment, would be that they would, they had moved to Baghdad for the defense of Baghdad. You can't hide T-72 tanks in downtown Tikrit from U.S. intelligence sources without a fairly extraordinary effort. So that would be my guess.

COOPER: But we still don't know what is in, the U.S. intelligence may know, but we the public, do not yet know what is in downtown Tikrit. Is that right?

TUNERS: That's right.

COOPER: So theoretically it is possible there ...

TURNER: Sure.

COOPER: ... could be Republican Guard units who have pulled back in to the city itself?

TURNER: Sure. That's a possibility. Yes.

COOPER: And Brent, you are basically, I mean you do not know what lies ahead of you. You are basically probing and what we are seeing is what you are seeing for the first time?

SADLER: Absolutely. We're in this together as it were. What you eyeball, I eyeball. And as Colonel Mike Turner just said, ahead of the tip of the tip of the spear, doesn't feel that comfortable. But I think I see enough with my eyes on the ground here, to lead me to believe that this area, I wouldn't say it's safe, but it's certainly in a state of abandonment and that there are no hostile threats in this vicinity.

What we're going to do now is move out of this Republican Guard complex, and head back south again. And it would be useful if you have a map there, just to head back South again towards Tikrit, which will be on our left side this time, and we'll try and talk to some people that may be coming off the highway turn off into Tikrit. Try and flag somebody down and try and get some eyes and ears on what's happening in the center of Tikrit. So we can keep the picture up as we're trying to do this, Anderson.

COOPER: Absolutely, Brent. We are following you second by second here. It is just extraordinary, and again we have been seeing those pictures all morning long that Brent has been bringing us of military age men walking a long the sides of the main road that Brent was previously traveling on; walking as Mike Turner as you said, in a sort of lackadaisical fashion, not necessarily looking as if they are fleeing to or running to some place?

TURNER: Absolutely. You would expect if civilian populations or military personnel who abandoned their weapons sense this coming clash of Titans if you will, between two robust military forces. Even if one of those was unconventional and extremist Fedayeen in the center of the city, that the body language of the passers-by would be more urgent, is the only way I can describe it. Brent certainly would have picked that up on the ground. A sense of fleeing, a sense of urgency, and possibly panic. And there's none of that with any of the people that he's passed. It's almost looks like a regular, a calm day in the Iraqi countryside.

COOPER: Calm and yet as Brent pointed out, sort of eerily calm, strangely quiet, ...

TURNER: Right.

COOPER ... no certainly no, military troops as far as we can see, but no caretakers, no people on any of these bases, just abandoned. But we do see it, some sort of a vehicle. Brent, do you get any sense, you've seen a couple of vehicles and I remember as you came upon this base -oh there's one or two people there. Do you get any sense of where these vehicles are going, or we've seen some trucks. Are they, is it possible they are looters or civilians, do you know?

SADLER: That pickup truck you just saw was clearly a looter; wasn't much on there. Those vehicles you're seeing in front of us now parked up on the roadside; that's our CNN convoy with our satellite dish on the top of the first vehicle. So obviously at some stage I'll hopefully get live, real time pictures rather than videophone on this remarkable day.

We are seeing as this morning progresses, more vehicles coming along the road; empty heading towards Tikrit; empty heading away from Tikrit. So that doesn't suggest that there's a wholesale looting spree going on. But our plan now is to really have a discussion with Will Sculley (ph), our security manager here, and just try work out a plan and perhaps if we just screen around, Will, what do you think we should do now? What's your assessment?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been listening to the local radio, and talking to people exiting Tikrit, and also our crew and they've heard some explosions in the center of Tikrit.

SADLER: Explosions in the center of Tikrit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct, yes. So we assess that they're still attacking Tikrit. So at this moment, it's not a good time to move.

SADLER: What are these people doing? They're leaving Tikrit are they?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're exiting Tikrit with their, with their belongings.

SADLER: OK. So we have people not looting; taking their personal possessions away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct, yes.

SADLER: And they're reporting hearing explosions? Eyesight or ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eyesight on the road here, while's we've been going around the camp here, have heard some explosions in the center of Tikrit.

SADLER: Right. Can we get down to that Tikrit turn off? And perhaps flag someone down who's coming out of the city?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. We can do that.

SADLER: Is that OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that would fine.

SADLER: But leave the main convoy where?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well we'll have to take the whole convoy down there, we can't leave them strayed on the side of the road. So we'll find a base, park them up and creep forward.

SADLER: OK. If you heard that, Anderson. I'll just give you the details. Just to summarize on that. We're hearing reports of explosions; we've heard some explosions in the distance, coming from the Tikrit direction. People who are leaving Tikrit appear to be leaving with their belongings away from Tikrit, heading North. So that would make sense.

We're going to turn our convoy around, head back towards the Tikrit turn off, and try and talk to some more people, try and get some more information about what's going on inside. So let's swing around Christian (ph) and head off. Anderson.

COOPER: Well we will continue to stay with you as you go to talk to more people; try to gain a sense of what is going on in the ground, on the ground in city center of Tikrit, and that of course is the focus of so much interest, so much attention. What is there? What is happening? You said there were some explosions, but the questions remain; what forces if any are still on the streets in Tikrit? And what positions have they taken? And what forces are they? Are they Republican Guard, are they Fedayeen, are they some form of Mujahideen? Those questions all of course remain unanswered; questions we will continue to try to get answers to in the next couple of minutes here, and minutes and hours.

And if you has the viewer have just been joining us, if you have ever wondered what it is like to be a reporter, you are seeing live, a remarkable minute by minute progression of Brent Sadler through this area, ahead of anyone else. Really, going solo here. He and the other CNN personnel he is with; just trying to gather information. Are you stopping Brent?

SADLER: No, we're carrying on Anderson. We're just trying to pick up information as we're going along. You'll see there is a truck overtaking as empty. This is now the road, the highway, the main highway from Mosul in the North of Iraq, heading towards Tikrit, so we've turned 360, and we're now heading back towards Tikrit. The turn off to Tikrit will throw us left, so I think we'll stop off at that turn off, at that road junction. That'll take us within less than two miles of the center of Tikrit. Now our drivers I now understand, our drivers heard what they thought were explosions. Now that's all we've got to go on at the moment. Not a lot. All we've got to go on apart from that is what we see with our eyes and what we hear with our ears. That incidentally, that truck we just passed, we saw that, I saw the red triangle of the Republican Guard on the back of that. So that was Saddam Hussein's top level of his so-called elite fighting force, the Republican Guard. But that barracks we just went to, that compound, deserted of all fighting machines.

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