AlBaghdadi sought safety in shrinking domain

In his last months on the run, Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr alBaghdadi was agitated, fearful of traitors, sometimes disguised as a shepherd, sometimes hiding underground, always dependent on a shrinking circle of confidants.

Associates paint a picture of a man obsessed with his security and wellbeing and trying to find safety in towns and deserts in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border as the extremists’ domains crumbled. In the end, the brutal leader once hailed as “caliph” left former IS areas completely, slipping into hostile territory in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province run by the radical group’s alQaidalinked rivals. There, he blew himself up during an Oct. 26 raid by U.S. special forces on his heavily fortified safe house.

For months, he kept a Yazidi teen as a slave, and she told The Associated Press how he brought her along as he moved, traveling with a core group of up to seven close associates. Months ago, he delegated most of his powers to a senior deputy who is likely the man announced by the group as his successor.

WASHINGTON — In a striking reversal, a top diplomat revised his testimony in the House impeachment inquiry to acknowledge that U.S. military aid to Ukraine was being withheld until the foreign ally promised to investigate corruption as President Donald Trump wanted.

The threepage update from U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, tucked beneath hundreds of pages of sworn testimony released Tuesday, provides new insight into Trump’s push for Ukraine to investigate Democrats and Joe Biden in what the Democrats call a quid pro quo at the center of the House inquiry.

Specifically, Sondland said he now recalls telling a top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on the sidelines of a Warsaw meeting with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, that military aid to the country “would likely not occur” until Ukraine had provided a public anticorruption statement “as we have been discussing for many weeks.”

Trump has denied any quid pro quo, but Democrats say that is the singular narrative developing from the president’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy. In that call, Trump, asked for “a favor,” the spark for the impeachment inquiry.

Rep. Adam Schiff, DCalif., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the House panels conducting the inquiry are releasing the wordbyword transcripts of the past weeks’ closeddoor hearings so the American public can decide for themselves.

“This is about more than just one call,” Schiff wrote Tuesday in an oped in USA Today. “We now know that the call was just one piece of a larger operation to redirect our foreign policy to benefit Donald Trump’s personal and political interests, not the national interest.”

Pushing back, Trump Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham issued a statement saying the transcripts “show there is even less evidence for this illegitimate impeachment sham than previously thought.”

House investigators released transcripts from Sondland, a wealthy businessman who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and is the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and from Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine. The panels also announced they want to hear from Trump’s acting chief of staff, reaching to the highest levels of the White House.

The documents include dozens of pages of text messages as the diplomats tried to navigate the demands of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who they soon learn is running a back channel U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine.