Saddam – bin Laden Connection

Project for the New American Century ^ | December 1, 2003 | Gary Schmitt

[RWR8189]

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Saddam – bin Laden Connection

Last Friday, David Ignatius published an op-ed in the Washington Post commenting on the Weekly Standard article by Stephen Hayes that drew on a Defense Department document detailing contacts between Saddam’s Iraq and Bin Laden’s al Qaeda. The crux of Ignatius’s criticism of Hayes claim of an Iraq – al Qaeda connection is that the CIA and British intelligence had “an unusually well-placed source in Iraq who told them before the war that in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had indeed considered such an operational relationship with bin Laden – and then decided against it.”

We don’t pretend to know either whether this source is as well-placed as Ignatius had been told or whether the source’s information is reliable. What we do know is that the CIA has been routinely duped by “high level” sources in the past, be it in Iran, Nicaragua, or Cuba. Given the amount of intelligence on Saddam that has not proven to be accurate over the past three years – including on the eve of the war – some skepticism is appropriate when it comes to an argument resting on a single source. The Department of Defense memo discussed in Hayes’s article, in contrast, draws on multiple sources.

[fhayek]

I seem likely to me that this 'well-placed' source could either knowingly, or unwittingly, be providing cover for Saddam. If I were Saddam Hussein in the late '90's, I would be eager to use al-Qaeda as a surrogate to carry out Iraq foreign policy aims. Clearly, al-Qaeda and Saddam had similar policy objectives. Saddam also wouldn't want his fingerprints on any al-Qaeda operations. To help distance himself, it should not be surprising if he had planted 'cover' stories from a 'well-placed' source. Is this stuff that difficult to figure out?