Time has run out for the CIA to organize a coup against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, leaving conventional warfare as the main instrument to achieve the U.S. goal of "regime change" in Baghdad, intelligence experts say.

"Given the timeline here it's unlikely you're going to be able to put together a successful coup in a couple of months," said one former intelligence official.

Added a U.S. official: "It would always be very, very difficult to do."
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Saddam has tight control over his inner circle and would kill anyone suspected of plotting a coup. "This guy has historically killed off anybody anywhere around him, including members of his immediate family, who look like they're sticking their heads up," said James Woolsey, a former CIA director.

The Iraqi leader has also been known to test loyalty.

"He does double, triple plots. He'll have people talk about a coup and he'll find out who is sympathetic and he'll have them killed," said a U.S. government source. "How do you insert yourself into that process? We can't even recruit a decent al Qaeda person let alone get inside Saddam's circle."
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In spy terminology Iraq is a "denied area" with no U.S. access to insiders, no U.S. offices in the country and limited opportunities to contact Iraqi officials when they travel abroad because they are usually accompanied by minders.

"Anybody who even appears to be anti-regime is probably going to be detected by Iraqi intelligence before we detect them, and they're probably going to be dead before we realize they're a possible ally," said Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Current covert activities center on propaganda to send a message to the Iraqi military and citizens not to resist American forces, trying to lure high-level defectors and organizing opposition among the Kurds in northern Iraq and other groups to aid any U.S. invasion, experts said

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