This is I spy. Show from foreign policy. Where spies tell their story.

Saddam Hussein was one of the most brutal dictators of our modern time. Saddam was one of the very few dictators in history to ever use chemical weapons against the civilian population.

But I was able to find something in common with Saddam. The thing that we first connected on was our love, appreciation and admiration for our moms.

From foreign policy, welcome back to I spy. On each episode we get one former intelligence operative to tell the story of one operation.

I'm Margot Martin Dale. American troops captured the deposed dictators Saddam Hussein in December of 2003, about nine months after the United States invaded Iraq.

By then, it was clear that the Bush administration's intelligence assessment of Iraq had been wrong. American troops found no weapons of mass destruction in the country.

But with Saddam now in custody, here was an opportunity to find out what exactly the dictator had been plotting.

Within days on Christmas Eve 2003, FBI special agent George Pirro got a call from his boss and was told he would be heading to Iraq.

Pirro spent the next seven months interrogating Saddam Hussein, building a rapport with the former leader and uncovering his secrets. Here's his story.

When I received a call, I didn't realize that I was even being considered for the assignment. So at that time as I recall, we had roughly over 12,000 FBI special agents posted around the world.

As the FBI went through its agent population and tried to identify all of its Arabic speakers, the Bureau very quickly realized that native speakers they had roughly about 12 as the number I was told.

I happened to be one of the 12 so you can see how my chances dramatically increased at that point.

Of course being a good interrogator was a requirement. I had done several key interrogations while I was in the FBI. And of course prior to joining the FBI I was a police officer for nearly 10 years, was a detective and had really developed my interrogation skills and abilities.

So I began diving into everything and anything that I could get my hands on to understand Saddam both classified unclassified. For example, I watched the Dan Rather interview of Saddam Hussein that was conducted before the war.

All of those things to where I could observe Saddam's mannerism, the way he communicated, things he said, as well as his history and upbringing. And I believe it was around January 13th or so.

We finally were able to physically travel to Iraq so we could start the operation.

My first meeting with Saddam Hussein was actually unscheduled. Now looking back on it, I'm somewhat glad that it was unplanned because it really didn't give me a lot of time to overthink it, get nervous about it, things like that.

So that evening we were at Camp Cropa which was the facility where Saddam was being housed. We had had our first logistical meetings and as I was leaving, the Colonel in charge of the facility came up to me and said, hey, he's not feeling very well.

He asked to see the doctor. We don't have anyone with the clearance to translate for the doctor. You wanted to be in charge. Here you go. It's your problem now.

I hadn't even thought about how I was going to introduce myself. What was I going to say that first introduction or the first opinion really is so critical in anything?

So I wanted to make sure that first impression was going to be a very effective one. The doctor was walking toward the facility and I was told you better catch up to him because he's going in.

So before I knew it, I found myself standing in front of the prison cell of Saddam Hussein. I purposely knocked on the door to give him the opportunity just to have notice that we were coming in. And when we opened the door, he was standing right there in front of the door inside of the cell.

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