Posted on 07/16/2003 10:18:30 AM PDT by Matchett-PI
Many of you know that Laurie Mylroie is a Middle East expert and regularly testifies before Congressional committees on terrorism matters. She is an adjunct scholar at The American Enterprise Institute and author of Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack & Saddam Hussein's War against America.
I sent an email to her this past Sunday, 7-13-03 after having seen her on Fox's John Gibson's program on Friday, 7-11-03 during the 5 PM hour. Something she said really caught my attention, so here is what I wrote to her:
Greetings Laurie,
I found the link to your email address HERE
If there is no charge for your email newsletter, "Iraq News", I would like to subscribe to it, please.
I appreciate the work you're doing and am eagerly awaiting your next book at the end of this month, "Bush -vs- The Beltway - How the CIA and State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror".
I saw you on FOX Friday with John Gibson and noted what you said about what a former CIA agent told you in Fox's Green Room shortly after 9-11, just before you were to go on the air: "[We] can go to war [in Iraq] on the basis of WMD, but not on the basis of terrorism.".
The enemy within is much more dangerous than the enemy without.
Keep up the good work!
[name/city and state]
Laurie gave me written permission to post her response:
From: "Laurie Mylroie" sam11@erols.com
To: [Matchett-PI]
Subject: Re: Subscription to Iraq News Newsletter Please
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 12:52:30 -0400
Dear [Matchett-PI],
Thanks very much for your exceedingly kind comments. And I'm most appreciative that you picked up that remark: You can go to war on the basis of the WMD, but not on the basis of terrorism.
That is why Bush has been unable to explain why we fought this war. You're absolutely right about the enemy within.
I've added you to the "Iraq News" list, but I'm going on vacation shortly, so you might not receive anything for a while.
Free Republic is a great place--a lot of people read it. This is a very important issue and I appreciate you're doing what you can to make people aware of it.
Best wishes,
Laurie Mylroie
Of course, when the retired CIA agent told her that "we can go to war on the basis of WMD, but not on the basis of terrorism", the implication (and reality of the matter) is that if we went to war on the basis of terrorism it would open a huge can of worms about our ineffective intelligence agencies and the Clinton Administration .
In connection to the above, Laurie mentioned Khalid Shaykh Mohammed when she was on John Gibson's program, too. He has been captured since Laurie gave this interview (excerpted) with PBS in 2001:
10-18-01 PBS FrontLine interview with Laurie Mylroie entitled: "Gunning for Saddam" [excerpts]:
Questions for Laurie:
Q: If you were going to go in to see President George Bush and lay down on his desk one piece of evidence that would convince him that indeed, Iraq is tied to terrorism, what would that one piece of evidence be?
A: I would take the British file on Abdul Basit, because they maintained a Home Office file; the Kuwaiti file on Abdul Basit, which was tampered with; and the American immigration file, INS file, on Ramzi Yousef. And I would use that information to show that the Kuwaiti file was tampered with, that the information in the British file contradicts the information in the Kuwaiti file.
Q: And just so that it's very clear -- what do you think happened? Iraqi intelligence went in to the Kuwaiti files, realizing they had this man, Ramzi Yousef, who they were going to use in the years to come. So therefore they were setting up a circumstance where they would create a mole, basically, whose identity would be certified by Kuwaiti files. What do you assume happened?
A: When Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, it used some Kuwaiti files to create false identities for key agents. It tampered with those files. It tampered with Abdul Basit Karim's files to create a false identity for Ramzi Yousef.
Questions also exist about Abdul Hakim Murad, who was convicted with Yousef in the plane bombing plot [Ed. Note: a plan to bomb 12 U.S. airplanes in the Philippines] and also claims to be born in Kuwait.
Questions also exist about Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, also involved in the plane bombing, a fugitive who also claims to be born in Kuwait. People should check those files to see if they've been tampered with.
Q: On all of this, it's all circumstantial evidence, but a lot of people believe it. Why?
A: Well, Jim Fox, then head of the New York FBI himself believed that Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing. Why? Because he recognized that the Muslim extremists were not capable of carrying out this plot on their own. There was something major behind it. Two, there were Iraqis all around the fringe of the plot. One of those Iraqis, Abdul Rachman Yasin, came from Baghdad before the bombing, returned to Baghdad afterwards.
The bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the Gulf War ceasefire approximately, and the Gulf War was not a distant memory at the time. People had it very vividly in their minds. The defendants themselves -- Mahmud Abu Halima, an Egyptian -- believed that Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing, and understood perfectly well what had happened.
Q: And had used them?
A: And had used them. That's right.
Q: What did he say about that?
A: There was an Egyptian in jail with Mahmud Abu Halima, and that Egyptian told the FBI that Halima said that Ramzi Yousef came to the United States, transformed the conspiracy, and left them behind to be arrested and take the blame. The Egyptian asked Halima, "Are the authorities going to catch Ramzi Yousef?" and Abu Halima said, "No, don't ask. Can't catch a Ramzi Yousef." Abu Halima's brother told the same Egyptian man that Muhammad Salameh ([Note: Salameh is another defendant in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing] had dealt with Iraqi intelligence.
Q: Yasin -- what was his role, and how do we know that?
A: Abdul Rachman Yasin was indicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the Trade Center. He's still a fugitive. The indictment of Yasin states explicitly that he helped mix chemicals for the bomb.
Q: How was national security, in your view, endangered by the locking up of the evidence in this case, or in general, in looking at terrorist cases as cases that can be dealt with in the court? ...
A: ... The reason that the Clinton administration did not want the evidence of Iraqi involvement coming out in the Trade Center bombing was because, in June of 1993, Clinton had attacked Iraqi intelligence headquarters. It was for the attempt to kill George Bush. But Clinton also believed that that attack on Iraqi intelligence headquarters would take care of the bombing in New York, that it would deter Iraq from all future acts of terrorism.
And by not telling the public what was suspected of happening -- that New York FBI really believed Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing -- Clinton avoided raising the possibility the public might demand that the United States do a lot more than just bomb one building. And Clinton didn't want to do more. Clinton wanted to focus on domestic politics, including health policy. .....
... The Clinton administration's unwillingness to identify Iraq as the suspected sponsor of the Trade Center bombing was a terrible blunder. Not only did the 1993 attack on Iraqi intelligence headquarters not deter Saddam forever; indeed, Saddam was back already in January of 1995 with that plot in the Philippines.
It didn't deter Saddam forever, and equally important, it generated a false and fraudulent explanation for terrorism called "the loose network theory" -- that terrorism is no longer carried out by states, that the Trade Center bombing was a harbinger of a new terrorism carried out by individuals or loose networks without the support of state.
And once that notion took hold, Saddam could easily play into it by working with Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden, putting them front and center, leaving a few bin Laden operatives to be arrested. That also played into this fraudulent theory and led directly to the events of September 11. ...
Q: Is your opinion that bin Laden basically was the front man for Saddam Hussein?
A: Bin Laden and Saddam are working together; they're both in it together. But between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda, the far more important party is Iraqi intelligence.
Bin Laden also worked with Sudanese intelligence. That came out in the trial for the 1998 embassy bombing. Bin Laden works with the Taliban. He's not as important as we think. He does not work independently of a state, of a government. But because we have not seen the links, or perhaps not wanted to see the links between Osama bin Laden and various governments, we ourselves have attributed to him capabilities that he alone does not possess. [end of excerpts]
Click HERE to read all of the interview
The War Against America - Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks: A Study of Revenge by Laurie Mylroie, R. James Woolsey - Paperback, November 2001.
Her new book will be coming out at the end of this month [July 2003]:
Bush vs. the Beltway - How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror" by Laurie Mylroie Paperback, July 2003
Here is one of the articles she wrote for the WSJ on 6-28-93, which was posted on Free Republic by a FReeper just 5 days after 9-11:
Yes we do.
"The enemy within is much greater than the enemy without"
THAT is an EXCELLENT observation, especially since there is a good possibility the Minikes email hoax to the WT may have been sent from his State Dept email account or the State Department's server by someone who faked his account.
Saddam is known to people who study the region as a strong supporter, financier and exporter of terror, and State has regularly glossed it over. Like you, I can't wait to read her book.
Just keep that armadillo to yourself and everything will be okay. ;^)
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