April Fool is the codename for a spy who played a key role in the downfall of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

According to General Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S. military in the 2003 Iraq war, April Fool, an American officer, was approached by an Iraqi intelligence agent working undercover as a diplomat. April Fool then sold to the Iraqi false "top secret" invasion plans provided by Franks' team. This decoy deception successfully misled the Iraqi military into deploying major forces in Northern and Western Iraq in anticipation of attacks via Jordan, which never took place. This greatly reduced the defensive capacity in the rest of Iraq and significantly facilitated the actual attacks via Kuwait and the Persian Gulf in the southeast. Inadequately defended, Baghdad fell to the invaders within a few weeks and Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed.

See also

• April Fool's Day
• counter intelligence

External links

• Franks says 'double agent' sold Saddam bogus war plans (http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-iside02.html) from Chicago Sun-Times, August 2, 2004
• American 'double agent' sold Baghdad false war plans (http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/02/wirq102.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/02/ixhome.html), Telegraph.co.UK, August 2, 2004
• Double agent fooled Saddam (http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2004/08/01/f200.raw.html), from Halifax Herald, August 1, 2004