CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak [Memo reveals Iraq-Al Qaeda link Dems said was impossible

Washington Post ^ | Tuesday, November 18, 2003 | By Walter Pincus

[JohnHuang2]

By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 18, 2003; Page A18

The CIA will ask the Justice Department to investigate the leak of a 16-page classified Pentagon memo that listed and briefly described raw agency intelligence on any relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, according to congressional and administration sources.

In addition, the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), are considering making their own request for a Justice investigation. The top-secret memo was attached to an Oct. 27 letter to them from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. Feith was answering a request that he support his assertion during a closed-door hearing in July that there was intelligence to support a longtime relationship between the Iraqi leader and the terrorist group.

Excerpts from the memo were first published Saturday in the issue of the Weekly Standard dated Nov. 24. Under the headline "Case Closed," the article described the memo as documenting "an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003" between bin Laden and Hussein. It describes the memo as containing "50 numbered points" that are "best viewed as sort of a 'Cliff's Notes' version of the relationship. It contains the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive."

[JohnGalt]

Osama actually contacted the House of Saud in 1990 and offered to form a division to fight the socialist Saddam (that is what Osama called him.)

It does make sense to me in the years after that perhaps there was some 'your enemy and my enemy' meetings there does not appear to be any thing rock solid just rumors. The media was very disinterested in a former paid Iraqi Agent, Denis Mahon, who just happened to know Andres Strassmeir (yet to be interviewed by the FBI) who just happened to get a phone call from Tim McVeigh a few days before 4/19/1995 that I just don't trust the media to ignore or report such things with any degree of certainty.

So I suspect that elements of AQ assuredly had meetings with elements of Iraq, however, then we need to have a whole conversation on what AQ is. The most recent intelligence reports I have read describe less a command and control organization, but more of a leaderless resistance organization with cells operating towards a common goal, but independently operating and funding itself.

It was not my intention to leave 'links' out of this post, but there are many I would need to put in, and I think you were asking a more thematic type question. If there is something here that peaks the interest, I'd be happy to find a source, however.

[anglian]

I suspect that elements of AQ assuredly had meetings with elements of Iraq, however, then we need to have a whole conversation on what AQ is. AL QAEDA-start at page 61 http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:cRgrEHOs8DgJ:www.september11classaction.com/Amended_Complaint-Final.

[b4its2late]

Former CIA director James Woolsey said over the weekend that there's no question Iraq and al Qaeda worked together to plan attacks against U.S. interests during the decade leading up to 9/11, saying the evidence of an operational relationship was "a slam dunk."

There's that clinton legacy thing continuing to build.......

[Ethyl]

You realize the Weekly Standard and Fox News are owned by the same person, and both share Fred Barnes

SO?

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

I could've sworn there was enough unclassified stuff about Salman Pak alone to cement the AQ-SH relationship. Wasn't there?

To rational, level-headed, clear-thinking Americans? Yes.

To the O.J. jurors in the press? Not a chance.

[gogipper]

Red meat for true believers? How about a direct refutation of Senator Levin who was on Fox news last sunday denying that there was any connection between Saddam and Al Queda, and he a (lying) member of the intelligence committee.

And how does this large amount of intelligence reflect on the Clinton administration, in particular their handling the first World Trade center bombing and the bombing of the Cole?? This is another reason why this trove of intelligence has been handled so delicately

[rwfromkansas]

bump to self to write an article about for the campus paper.

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

"Clearly, I have already made my judgement based on the prejudices, experiences, assumptions, world view I brought to the table before I even heard of this memo."

Yes, you did make your judgement before this memo.

I read this to mean that you made up your mind before any facts came out. I try not to do that.

[JohnGalt]

That is absurd.

Facts in the temporal world are not the same as facts in the spiritual world. We all make decisions and determination based on the assumptions etc we bring to the table before hand. I will tend to be skeptical (to say the least) of new government studies about global warming or smoking or fatty foods no matter how many 'facts' the purport to offer.

You are no different.

[JohnGalt]

I agree: they are all lying scoundrels.

[JohnGalt]

I was responding to a question of why only one outlet reported a story that was debunked by the Department of Defense the day it was released.

Has Fox News or the Weekly Standard printed a retraction yet?

[PeterPrinciple]

serial leaker in the Dem Party........

It is my observaton that liberals have infiltrated and taken over many good conservative organizations such as the YMCA.

If this was a conservative who has lived in liberal filth for a few years I congratulate him, I would never be able to do it.

[marty60]

Excuse me, but the evil ones have politicised this war. If the fact is that Al and Suddamn were working together, it should be known. The only reason to keep it secret is to help the evil ones.

[Quick_Rod]

Has everyone forgotten the address that Collin Powell gave at the UN back on 5 February 2003? In that speech Mr. Powell made the connection then concerning al-Qaida and Iraq.

"We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades-long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and al-Qaida. Going back to the early and mid-1990s when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an al-Qaida source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that al-Qaida would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early al-Qaida ties were forged by secret high-level intelligence service contacts with al-Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with al-Qaida.

We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service."

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm

Now my question would be why would FOXNews of the Weekly Standard have to give a retraction when the Dept. of State basically said the same thing?

[JohnGalt]

I agree with you: they are all liars.

[Quick_Rod]

Didn't say they are all liars so please don't put words into my post.

I don't know what the fuss is all about concerning this supposed leak because it's old news.

[InterceptPoint]

I don't know what the fuss is all about concerning this supposed leak because it's old news

Well some of it old news but I think you generalize a bit too much in calling it all old news. Have you really looked at every item in the Weekly Standard article and said to yourself that you have read this before? I follow this stuff pretty darn close and found the article very enlightening with much new information.

[Freee-dame]

Page A18

The Washington Post can say they printed it....but it sure looks like they hope nobody sees it.

[Quick_Rod]

Yes I have looked at every item in the article and no I have not read all of it anywhere until now.

The speech that Powell gave did not go into as much detail as this article/memo reported.

What I am saying is that I am not surprised at the connection between al-Qaida and Iraq. We were all told about this during that speech last February but what I am surprised at is all those who continue to deny that such a link ever existed.

Usama Bin Laden hated the Soviet Union during the Afghanistan War of the 80's and at the time he had no problem with the US supporting him in that fight, then Usama brought us 9/11.

So why is it that people continue to believe that he and Saddam would never corporate in this fight against us?