Related: Germany denies passing Iraq defense plan to US

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's plan to defend the Iraqi capital, and a German official passed the plan on to American commanders a month before the invasion in March 2003, The New York Times reported Monday, citing a classified study by the U.S. military.

    In providing the Iraqi document, German intelligence officials offered more significant assistance to the United States than their government has publicly acknowledged, the report said.

    The plan gave the American military an extraordinary window into Iraq's top-level deliberations, including where and how Saddam Hussein planned to deploy his most loyal troops, the report said.

    The German role is not the only instance in which nations that publicly cautioned against the war privately facilitated it, according to the report. Egypt and Saudi Arabia provided more help than they have disclosed, with Egypt giving access for refueling planes and Saudi Arabia allowing American special operations forces to initiate attacks from its territory, U.S. military officials were quoted as saying.

    The German government has said that it had intelligence agents in Baghdad during the war, but it has insisted it provided only limited help to the U.S.-led coalition.

    German officials said in a report released Thursday much of the assistance was restricted to identifying civilian sites so they would not be attacked by mistake, but the classified American military study, the Times report said, documents the more substantive help from German intelligence. Enditem