From the original UPI article:

"One former long-time CIA operative said it was the Delta men, already in country, who made the breakthrough for the U.S. attack by infiltrating a key Baghdad telecommunications center and tapping a fiber optic telephone line."

This tells us the CIA had bugged a secure telephone line with no RF emissions that was trusted by Saddam. From this we can infer that Saddam was an "open book" to the CIA for months before the war began. No wonder Bush and Powell were so dead sure that Saddam had WMDs, connections with Al Qaida and was a threat to the US! Also an intelligence asset this important could not be compromised by revealing it to pseudo-allies like the French and the Russians (only the Brits and Australians could be trusted with information like this). Those three Iraqis were executed shortly after the failed attempt to kill Saddam. This indicates that the Saddam's henchmen were able to almost immediately "connect the dots" and locate the breach in their security. Too bad for the three guys. They should gone undercover the moment the war started.

Gary