lawyers, and collected about a dozen commendation letters from other members of the US military who had worked with Mr Khafajee. He assured US officials that he would provide financial support for Mr Khafajee and his family. Capt Iscol also tried his hand at lobbying, making a trip to Washington from his base in North Carolina to try to make contact with influential members of Congress. In Amman, Mr Khafajee could only wait. He was acutely aware that his work made him a marked man among some members of the Iraqi exile community. "There were too many people there who liked Saddam Hussein and considered him a hero. I could not tell anybody that I had worked with the American forces because that meant I could get hurt at any time," he said. But by January, Capt Iscol had made the crucial connection; he was invited to testify to Congress about Mr Khafajee's life in limbo in Jordan. During the hearings, an embarrassed administration announced it was prepared to admit people fleeing post-2003 Iraq as refugees, and in Amman, the wheels of bureaucracy began to turn. For Ms Khal, the connection was Vincent. By the summer of 2005, when Vincent made his third and fatal trip to Iraq, the journalist and translator had both begun receiving threatening calls on their mobile phones after his stories appeared about Shia militia death squads in Basra. Vincent, in a panic about what might happen to his translator once he left, decided to take