More info on KSM & Iraq, some redundant, some not.

9-11 mastermind Iraqi agent?
Author questions identity of captured al-Qaida operative

Posted: March 19, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Senior al-Qaida operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not the man he says he is, according to author Laurie Mylroie, who claims if U.S. authorities would do a little digging, they'd discover Mohammed is an Iraqi intelligence agent – a fact that would serve as smoking-gun evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the terror of Sept. 11.

Mylroie, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the book "The War Against America," laid out her claim in an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal.

Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, March 1 and has been providing interrogators with critical information about al-Qaida operations and ongoing attack plots, according to U.S. officials.

WorldNetDaily has reported that Mohammed is being subjected to ''stress and duress''-style interrogation techniques at the Bagram U.S. military base in Afghanistan and has been told that his sons are being held by the U.S.

As the operational leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network, Mohammed is said to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and is thought to have planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Mylroie maintains Mohammed is a Pakistani Baluch, along with Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The two collaborated with a third Baluch in 1995, Abdul Hakam Murad, in an unsuccessful plot to bomb 12 U.S. airplanes. The plot, called "Project Bojinka," involved ramming a fuel-laden airliner into the Pentagon.

Baluchs are Sunni Muslims who live in the desert regions of eastern Iran and western Pakistan – Baluchistan – and have longstanding ties to Iraqi intelligence. Wafiq Samarrai, former chief of Iraqi military intelligence who defected to the West in 1994, explains that Iraqi intelligence worked with the Baluch during the Iran-Iraq war.

WorldNetDaily also reported that information gleaned from the Mohammed interrogations sparked a major new hunt for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden that was centered around the Baluchistan region. Mohammed said he recently met with bin Laden in the area, and there reportedly have been numerous sightings of bin Laden in the area on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border.

Mylroie said Mohammed, Yousef and Murad, are part of a tight circle.

Their identities are based on documents from Kuwaiti files that predate Kuwait's liberation from Iraqi occupation. These documents form the basis of Mylroie's false-identity theory. When Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, it used some Kuwaiti files to create false identities for key agents, according to Mylroie.

There is evidence Yousef's file was tampered with. The front pages of his passport, including his picture and signature are missing. Extraneous information was also inserted: The notation that Yousef and his family left Kuwait on Aug. 26, 1990 – during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait – and traveled through Iraq on their way to Pakistani Baluchistan in Iran.

Mylroie points out people don't provide authorities with itineraries when crossing a border.

She concludes Yousef is an Iraqi agent who assumed the identity of Abdul Basit Karim, a Kuwaiti who disappeared during Iraq's occupation. Records show Yousef entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef, but fled on a passport in the name of Abdul Basit Karim.

According to Mylroie, New York FBI – particularly its director, Jim Fox – believed that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an Iraqi intelligence operation.

The Los Angeles Times uncovered critical family ties between Mohammed and Karim.

"What little is known about the sister [of Mohammed]," reports the paper, "includes one compelling piece of information: She is thought to be the mother of Abdul Karim Basit, better known as Ramzi Ahmed Yousef."

Mylroie deduces that Mohammed would know if someone was falsely passing himself off as his nephew, and therefore, must be an Iraqi operative as well.

According to documents, Mohammed was born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents on April 19, 1965. That puts Mohammed just under 38 years of age.

In a final point, Mylroie suggests the graying sideburns and heavy jowls in Mohammed's arrest photo circulated by federal agents belong to someone substantially older than 38.

Mylroie's deduction is in keeping with what she has argued for years: Saddam Hussein is likely behind the terrorism against U.S. interests that has occurred throughout the world since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“Don’t Look at Me”
Dick Clarke’s reversed reality.

By Laurie Mylroie

In 1992, when Richard Clarke assumed the counterterrorism portfolio in the White House, terrorism was not a serious problem. Libya's downing of Pan Am 103 four years before had been the last major attack on a U.S. target. Yet when Clarke left his post in October 2001, terrorism had become the single-greatest threat to America. Clarke would have us believe this happened because of events beyond anyone's ability to control. He argues, moreover, that the Bush administration has adopted a fatally wrong approach to the war on terror by including states, particularly Iraq, in its response to the 9/11 attacks.

Clarke's tenure as America's top counterterrorism official is essentially contemporaneous with the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton took what had been considered a national-security issue, in which the U.S. focused on punishing and deterring terrorist states, and turned it into a law-enforcement issue, focused on arresting and convicting individual perpetrators. That was certainly an easier response, but it was completely ineffectual. In fact, it had created a very serious vulnerability long before September 11, 2001. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies is, essentially, an attempt to blame the Bush administration for 9/11, while exonerating Clinton (and therefore Clarke). The reality is quite the reverse.

CLARKE VS. ME

An audacious series of terrorist attacks began in the 1990's, starting with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center — one month into Clinton's first term in office. New York FBI was the lead investigative agency, and senior officials there, including director Jim Fox, believed Iraq was involved. As Fox wrote, "Although we are unable to say with certainty the Iraqis were behind the bombing, that is certainly the theory accepted by most of the veteran investigators" (italics added).

Clarke vehemently rejects this view, calling it "the totally discredited Laurie Mylroie theory." While this theory is indeed the central thesis of my book, Study of Revenge, one wonders why Clarke would not attribute it to Fox and the other FBI agents who did the hard work to uncover the evidence of Iraq's role. Gil Childers, lead prosecutor in the first World Trade Center bombing trial, was considered by other U.S. officials the expert on that attack. Childers described Study of Revenge as "work the U.S. government should have done."

Clarke's office was obliged to review the book in the spring of 2001. He dismissed it then, as he does now. He systematically ignores or distorts the information suggesting an Iraqi link to the 1993 bombing, including the critical question of the identity of its mastermind, Ramzi Yousef; as well as the identity of Yousef's "uncle," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks; along with the identities of other key terrorists in that remarkable "family."

Clarke maliciously misrepresents my argument on these points. After stating the obvious — that Yousef is indeed the terrorist the government says he is, Clarke writes: "That did not stop author Laurie Mylroie from asserting that the real Ramzi Yousef was not in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan, but lounging at the right hand of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad."

Yet that is not my position: "Ramzi Yousef was arrested and returned to the United States on February 7, 1995" (Study of Revenge, p. 212). This very serious dispute relates instead to Yousef's real identity. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has observed, "For Clarke to say something like that is like the 13th chime of the clock. Not only is it bizarre in and of itself, it calls into question...everything from the same source."

But while Clarke totally rejects the possibility that Iraq was behind the first attack on the Trade Center, he nevertheless entertains the possibility of a foreign dimension to the Oklahoma City bombing: "Ramzi Yousef and [Terry] Nichols had been in the city of Cebu on the same days.... Could the al Qaeda explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American?... We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned. We also know that Nichols continued to call Cebu long after his wife returned to the United States."

Clarke might have added that Nichols met his (underage) wife, Marife, on an Asian sex tour. He insisted on marrying her, although Marife did not want to marry him. She had a boyfriend, Jo-Jo, but her parents, believing they would gain a rich American son-in-law, pushed her into the marriage. After the wedding, Nichols remained only a week in Cebu, leaving Marife with some money to see her through her lengthy wait for her U.S. visa. She ran off with Jo-Jo, became pregnant, and sent Nichols a letter asking for a divorce. Yet he still insisted on marrying her — even though he scarcely knew her. FBI agents involved in the investigation speculated in their reports about whether this marriage might be a cover for conspiratorial activities. The regular ongoing phone calls to Cebu certainly underline that possibility.

DETAILS, DETAILS…

Intelligence analysts need to have a reasonably good memory, but Clarke's book is riddled with errors. Libya bombed Pan Am 103 in 1988, during the Reagan administration, not in 1989 under Bush 41, as Clarke claims; El Sayyid Nosair murdered Meir Kahane in 1990, not 1992; the Khobar bombing was after April 1996 (in June), not before. The 1982 U.S. intervention in Lebanon was not prompted by events related to Iran: Israel had invaded Lebanon to expel the PLO, and the U.S. then intervened to oversee the PLO's evacuation to Tunisia and otherwise to help establish a new government in Beirut.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has protested that Clarke quotes him speaking at a meeting he did not attend. Clarke claims that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz rejected his view that Osama bin Laden's threats should be taken with the same seriousness as those of Adolph Hitler. Wolfowitz, however, disputes that characterization, asserting that he himself agrees that Hitler is the prime example of why such figures cannot be ignored.

To bolster his claim after 9/11 that he had vigorously pursued the possibility of Iraq's involvement in the first attack on the Trade Center, Clarke wrote a memo stating that "[W]hen the bombing happened," he "focused on Iraq as the possible culprit because of Iraqi involvement in the attempted assassination of President Bush in Kuwait in the same month." But as Wolfowitz noted during the 9/11 Commission hearings, Iraq's attempted assassination of Bush was two months after the Trade Center bombing.

One person who worked with Clarke in government explains that he was never very good with facts. Facts slow you down and otherwise got in the way of his hard-charging style. Perhaps for that reason, Clarke was also prone to making things up.

Most egregiously, Clarke maintains that when Clinton hit Iraqi intelligence headquarters in June 1993, that attack ended Iraq's involvement in terrorism. But if the 1991 Gulf War did not do so, why should one cruise-missile strike achieve that goal?

Clinton was aware at the time of New York FBI's suspicions that Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing. Although Clinton said publicly that his strike on Iraqi intelligence headquarters was punishment for the attempted assassination of Bush, he also meant it to answer for the terrorism in New York, just in case New York FBI was correct. Clinton believed, as Clarke writes, that that strike would deter Saddam from all future acts of terrorism. By not telling the public that it seemed Saddam may have tried to topple New York's tallest tower onto its twin, Clinton avoided the risk (from his perspective) of a public demand that he take much more vigorous action.

That initial decision to deal surreptitiously with suspicions of Iraq's involvement in a major terrorist attack was reinforced by the ad hoc, all-purpose explanation for such assaults against the U.S. that emerged: Such activity was the work of loose networks, not supported by any state. This theory represented a 180-degree revision of the previous understanding of terrorism, and it provided a cover not only for U.S. inaction but also for terrorist activity on the part of hostile governments, particularly Iraq.

This was the flawed analysis that led ultimately to the attacks of 9/11. This, almost certainly, explains Clarke's over-the-top denunciations of those who have argued that Iraq was involved in the first attack on the Trade Center, as well as his repeated assertions that he searched for such evidence, but it was just not there. At stake is the question of who was responsible for our vulnerability on that terrible day. Clarke apparently believes that the best defense is a good offense.

— Laurie Mylroie was adviser on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton campaign. She is author of Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terrorism. She can be reached through www.benadorassociates.com.

VERY AWKWARD FACTS
by Laurie Mylroie
Wall Street Journal
April 2, 2004

The credibility of Clinton counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has come under withering fire. He has been caught in error after error, omission after omission. I can attest to one error more: a highly revealing error that tells us a great deal about who Richard Clarke really is.

Mr. Clarke singles me out for special criticism in his book, "Against All Enemies." This is not surprising. He believes that Islamic terrorism is the work of a few individual criminals, many of them relatives. I have for years gathered the evidence that shows that terrorism is something more than a mom-and-pop operation: that it is supported by powerful states, very much including Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Mr. Clarke is a man famously intolerant of those who disagree with him. When he cannot win the argument, he cheats. And that is what he has done again in the pages of his book. In order to explain why he opposed the war with Iraq, Mr. Clarke mischaracterizes the arguments of those of us who favored it. The key mischaracterization turns on an important intelligence debate about the identity of the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This mastermind goes by the name of "Ramzi Yousef." But who was "Ramzi Yousef"?

The evidence suggests that "Ramzi Yousef" had close connections to the Iraqi security services. This evidence has impressed, among others, former CIA chief James Woolsey, and Richard Perle, former head of the Defense Policy Board. Mr. Clarke calls the Yousef-Saddam connection an "utterly discredited" theory, unworthy of serious debate. He likes the phrase so much, he even uses it on the dust jacket of his book. But let's review the facts:

• Fact #1: "Ramzi Yousef" entered the U.S. in September 1992 on an Iraqi passport, with stamps showing a journey beginning in Baghdad. This fact is attested by the inspector who admitted Yousef into the U.S. Yet Mr. Clarke contends that Yousef entered the U.S. without a passport.

• Fact #2: The sole remaining fugitive from the 1993 bombing, Abdul Rahman Yasin, is an Iraqi. After the attack, Yasin fled to Iraq. The Iraqi regime rewarded Yasin with a house and monthly stipend. Yet Mr. Clarke claims, incredibly, that the Iraqis jailed Yasin.

• Fact #3: Seven men were indicted in the 1993 attack. Two of the seven, Yousef and Yasin, have Iraqi connections. Yet Mr. Clarke inflates the number of participants to 12, so as to create the impression that the presence of one or two men with Iraqi connections was no big deal.

• Fact #4: The truth is, we don't really know much about the prisoner bearing the name "Ramzi Yousef." Judge Kevin Duffy, who presided over Yousef's two trials, observed at sentencing: "We don't even know what your real name is." Yet Mr. Clarke claims to know what the judge did not: Yousef, he writes, "was born Abdul Basit in Pakistan and grew up in Kuwait where his father worked."

To reach this conclusion, Mr. Clarke has to ignore a forest of awkward facts. In late 1992, according to court documents, Yousef went to the Pakistani consulate in New York with photocopies of the 1984 and 1988 passports of Abdul Basit Karim (those documents have Karim born in Kuwait). Yousef claimed to be Karim, saying he had lost his passport and needed a new one to return home. He received a temporary passport, in the name of Abdul Basit Karim, which he used to flee New York the night of the Trade Center bombing.

Karim was, indeed, a real person, a Pakistani reared in Kuwait. After completing high school in Kuwait, Karim studied for three years in Britain. He graduated from the Swansea Institute in June 1989 and returned home, where he got a job in Kuwait's Planning Ministry. He was there a year later, when Iraq invaded.

Kuwait maintained an alien resident file on Mr. Karim. That file appears to have been altered to create a false identity or "legend" for the terrorist Yousef. Above all, the file contains a fingerprint card bearing Yousef's prints. But Yousef is not Karim -- as Judge Duffy implied -- for many reasons, including the fact that Yousef is 6 feet tall, while Karim was significantly shorter, according to his teachers at Swansea. They do not believe their student is the terrorist mastermind. Indeed, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper, latent fingerprints lifted from material Mr. Karim left at Swansea bear "no resemblance" to Yousef's prints. They are two different people.

The fingerprint card in Mr. Karim's file had to have been switched. The original card bearing his prints was replaced with one bearing Yousef's. The only party that reasonably could have done so is Iraq, while it occupied Kuwait, for the evident purpose of creating a "legend" for one of its terrorist agents.

The debate over Yousef's identity has enormous implications for the 9/11 strikes. U.S. authorities now understand that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed masterminded those attacks. But Mohammed's identity, too, is based on Kuwaiti documents that pre-date Kuwait's liberation from Iraq. According to these documents, Mohammed is Ramzi Yousef's "uncle," and two other al Qaeda masterminds are Yousef's "brothers."

A former deputy chief of Israeli Military Intelligence, Amos Gilboa, has observed that "it's obvious" that these identities are fabricated. A family is not at the core of the most ambitious, most lethal series of terrorist assaults in U.S. history. These are Iraqi agents, given "legends," on the basis of Kuwait's files, while Iraq occupied the country.

When Mr. Clarke reported, six days after the 9/11 strikes, that no evidence existed linking them to Iraq, or Iraq to al Qaeda, he was reiterating the position he and others had taken throughout the Clinton years. They systematically turned a blind eye to such evidence and failed to pursue leads that might result in a conclusion of Iraqi culpability. These officials were charged with defending us "against all enemies." Their own prejudices blinded them to at least one of our enemies and left the nation vulnerable.

Ms. Mylroie, an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton campaign, is author of "The War Against America" (HarperCollins, 2001).

Excellent idea (one-stop shopping for AQ-Iraq links) and magnificent piece of work on your part.

Thanks also to the other contributors to the thread, especially cgk.

Bookmarking.

Iraq-al-Qaida links go back decade
CIA reports show nearly 100 examples of cooperation, says reporter

Posted: December 11, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern

CIA reports of Iraqi-al-Qaida cooperation number nearly 100 and extend back to 1992, according to a reporter for Vanity Fair whose sources include senior Pentagon officials.

David Rose, writing for the magazine and the United Kingdom's Evening Standard, says he is convinced of the links between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's Baghdad regime.

"My own doubts emerged more than a year ago, when a very senior CIA man told me that, contrary to the line his own colleagues were assiduously disseminating, there was evidence of an Iraq-al-Qaida link," Rose writes. "He confirmed a story I had been told by members of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress – that two of the hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, had met Mukhabarat officers in the months before 9-11 in the United Arab Emirates. This, he said, was a pattern of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida which went back years."

Rose reveals in the new issue of Vanity Fair that the Pentagon established a special intelligence unit to re-examine evidence of an Iraq-al-Qaida connection earlier this year. The CIA cooperated by supplying the unit with copies of its reports going back a decade.

"I have spoken to three senior officials who have seen its conclusions, which are striking," he writes. "'In the Cold War,' says one of them, 'often you'd draw firm conclusions and make policy on the basis of just four or five reports. Here there are almost 100 separate examples of Iraq-al-Qaida cooperation going back to 1992.'"

Assertions that Iraq is cooperating and supporting al-Qaida are supported by the findings of a new book by a top terrorism expert.

Yossef Bodansky, author of "The High Cost of Peace," says joint preparations by Hussein, Yasser Arafat and al-Qaida for a new wave of anti-U.S. terror began last spring. The model for the terrorism campaign is Arafat's Black September Organization of the 1970s.

The initiative for the alliance came from Palestinian Islamists based in Lebanon and Syria, according to Bodansky, the U.S. Congress' top terrorism adviser. The response from al-Qaida came April 2, says Bodansky.

"A group calling itself the bin Laden Brigades-Palestine issued a statement formally integrating the Islamist and Fatah wave of anti-Israel terrorism into bin Laden's global jihad," he writes in his new book. "The bin Laden Brigades announced that their forces were now at the disposal of 'Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and fighter commander Marwan al-Barghouti' to fight 'alongside the Brigades' fighters and the Islamic factions.' The statement emphasized that numerous Palestinian factions, specifically including al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, '[had] become part of the International Front for Fighting Jews and Christians, led by Osama bin Laden.' They now '[had] found the path of Islam and adopted the line of genuine resistance of the jihad movement and Islamic resistance, that is the path of jihad and martyrdom for the sake of God, and discarded forever the lies of the alleged peace and the myths of negotiations.'"

The anti-U.S. coalition also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

A communique issued on April 2 from the Unified Leadership of the Intifadah – an umbrella organization representing Arafat's Fatah groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other members of the Palestine Liberation Organization – called for attacks on U.S. interests.

"The United States is backing the Israeli assault on the Palestinians," it said. "Therefore, U.S. facilities, targets and interests throughout the world should be harmed."

Unit 999 of Iraqi intelligence has helped train both Arafat's shock troops and bin Laden's Islamists for suicide operations utilizing weapons of mass destruction. According to Bodansky's book, some of these terrorists have already "succeeded in infiltrating several Arab countries. They are provided with instructions, secret codes and advanced weapons."

According to Israeli sources, the Iraqis permitted the terrorist trainees to test chemical weapons in southern Kurdistan.

Iraq, Arafat, bin Laden coalition formed?
Terrorism expert reports joint offensive against West planned

Posted: October 28, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Iraq's Saddam Hussein's defense against an imminent attack by the U.S. will be a strong offense – including terrorist operations coordinated with Yasser Arafat and Osama bin Laden, writes a top terrorism expert in a new book.

Yossef Bodansky, author of "The High Cost of Peace," says joint preparations by Hussein, Arafat and al-Qaida for a new wave of anti-U.S. terror began last spring. The model for the terrorism campaign is Arafat's Black September Organization of the 1970s.

The initiative for the alliance came from Palestinian Islamists based in Lebanon and Syria, according to Bodansky, the U.S. Congress' top terrorism adviser. The response from al-Qaida came April 2, says Bodansky.

"A group calling itself the bin Laden Brigades-Palestine issued a statement formally integrating the Islamist and Fatah wave of anti-Israel terrorism into bin Laden's global jihad," he writes in his new book. "The bin Laden Brigades announced that their forces were now at the disposal of 'Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and fighter commander Marwan al-Barghouti' to fight 'alongside the Brigades' fighters and the Islamic factions.' The statement emphasized that numerous Palestinian factions, specifically including al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, '[had] become part of the International Front for Fighting Jews and Christians, led by Osama bin Laden.' They now '[had] found the path of Islam and adopted the line of genuine resistance of the jihad movement and Islamic resistance, that is the path of jihad and martyrdom for the sake of God, and discarded forever the lies of the alleged peace and the myths of negotiations.'"

The anti-U.S. coalition also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

A communique issued on April 2 from the Unified Leadership of the Intifadah – an umbrella organization representing Arafat's Fatah groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other members of the Palestine Liberation Organization – called for attacks on U.S. interests.

"The United States is backing the Israeli assault on the Palestinians," it said. "Therefore, U.S. facilities, targets and interests throughout the world should be harmed."

Unit 999 of Iraqi intelligence has helped train both Arafat's shock troops and bin Laden's Islamists for suicide operations utilizing weapons of mass destruction. According to Bodansky's book, some of these terrorists have already "succeeded in infiltrating several Arab countries. They are provided with instructions, secret codes and advanced weapons."

According to Israeli sources, the Iraqis permitted the terrorist trainees to test chemical weapons in southern Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, Christian Weber, a contributing editor of DefenseWatch, warns of gaps in U.S. war planning with regard to a pre-emptive and offensive strike by Hussein's forces. He predicts Hussein will order a two-pronged invasion of Jordan and Kuwait, rather than focus his forces on defending his country.

"Over 65 percent of the Jordanian population is Palestinian," he writes. "Hussein would be counting on their rising up to support him during an invasion."

Could such a plan account for the underlying significance of the Black September-style plans of Arafat, bin Laden and Hussein? Black September was the final phase of a war between Arafat's forces and those of Jordan in 1970.

"Iraq would be seeking an opportunity to turn the war into a regional conflict," writes Weber. "Hussein would attempt to draw Syria into the conflict against Israel, as well as fomenting destabilizing fundamentalist uprisings in West-leaning Egypt, Yemen and Turkey if they side against Iraq."

Weber predicts such an attack on Jordan would involve a chemical component. He even suggests there is a likely time period for such an attack – between Nov. 5 and Dec. 4, the lunar month of Ramadan.

"The Iraqi army is built for offense," he says. "When war is imminent, they push out on the southern and western fronts. The Iraqi military maneuvers cyclically have trained for assaults into Jordan and Kuwait."

Asked why Iraq would betray its traditional ally in Jordan, Weber responded: "Hussein will sacrifice the goodwill of the Hashemite kingdom for a strategic gamble."

The Saddam-Osama Memo (cont.)
A close examination of the Defense Department's latest statement.
by Stephen F. Hayes
11/19/2003 12:00:00 AM

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT late Saturday, November 15, issued a statement that began: "News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate."

The statement didn't specify the "inaccurate" news reports, but most observers have inferred that the main report in question was an article in the most recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD--Case Closed: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. "Case Closed" described an October 27 memorandum to the Senate Intelligence Committee from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, which included 50 numbered items of intelligence from a variety of sources and agencies on links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

The Pentagon's statement continues:

The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the Intelligence Community. The selection of the documents was made by DOD to respond to the Committee's question.

The Pentagon statement goes on to claim: "The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions."

This statement has confused, rather than clarified, the issues raised by the Feith memo. Indeed, it is not clear whether the author

of the Pentagon statement has read either the request made to Feith by the Intelligence Committee or the memo Feith sent in response.

There are four areas of confusion. What does the Pentagon mean by (1) "new" information, (2) "analysis," (3) "raw reports," and (4) "inaccurate"?

(1) Here's how "Case Closed" characterized the information in the memo: "Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old."

As is abundantly clear both in the memo and the article, most of the information reported to the Senate panel came from sources outside the Pentagon. When "Case Closed" refers to some of this as "new information," it is echoing Feith's own characterization. His memorandum was a response to a September 26, 2003 letter--also obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD--from Senators Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Their letter asked Feith to elaborate on his July 10, 2003 testimony to the committee.

From the letter: "In testimony before the Committee, you explained that Defense Department staffers 'discovered a set of reports on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda which were not reflected in finished intelligence products. In other cases, some older reports gained new significance in light of information obtained by debriefing detainees.' Please provide the reports that were used for these assessments."

(2) The memo can fairly be said to have refrained from drawing conclusions. Pentagon claims to the contrary, however, the Feith memo contains numerous analyses of the "substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." The part of the memo dealt with in the article was called "Summary of Body of Intelligence Reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda Contacts (1990-2003)," and it contains passages in bold and in normal typeface. A note at the bottom of the first page reads: "All bolded sentences contain information from intelligence reporting. Unbolded sentences represent comments/analyses."
Item #31, reprinted below, provides a good example.

31. An Oct 2002 [U.S. intelligence agency] report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that two al Qaeda members involved a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda personnel.
References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that Iraqi support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of 9-11. The US attack on Afghanistan deprived al Qaeda of its protected base and caused its operatives to disperse to many other regions where they would need weapons to arm themselves against the local government security and police apparatus (i.e. Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines). And since the US has been targeting al Qaeda's sources of funding, some cells may need additional money to continue operations.

(3) The Pentagon statement allows that some of the information in the document comes from "raw reports." The implication is that such reports might be wrong. True enough. That's why THE WEEKLY STANDARD article, for obvious reasons,

never claimed knowledge of the authenticity of all 50 enumerated intelligence data points. But most of the information in the memo appears to have multiple sources and to be internally consistent. Consider point 18 and the analysis that follows.

18. According to foreign government service sensitive CIA reporting, Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with several other Iraqi officials to meet with Bin Laden. The source claimed that Hijazi would have met Bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit direction.
Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17 and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al-Qaida operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings. The cover nature of the relationship would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.

(4) The Pentagon's charge that news reporting was "inaccurate" is therefore both vague and unsubstantiated. Most of the language in "Case Closed" is taken directly from the memo. The rest of the article provides readers with context for the writing of the memo and for events described in the memo. The conclusion of the article does speculate that the information in the Feith memo provides only a glimpse of the broader relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. This speculation is based in part on independent reporting, but also on the very title of the memo itself: "Summary of Body of Intelligence Reporting on Iraq-al Qaida Contacts (1990-2003)."

IF THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTING in the memo was left out of earlier "finished intelligence products" because the reporting is inaccurate, it seems odd that it would form the basis of briefings given to the secretary of Defense, the director of Central Intelligence, and the vice president. And it would be stranger still to include such intelligence in a memo to a Senate panel investigating the potential misuse of intelligence.

If, on the other hand, the information in the Feith memo is accurate, it changes everything. An operational relationship between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, as detailed in the memo, would represent a threat the United States could not afford to ignore. President Bush and his national security team could not have known everything in the memo, of course, since some of the reporting comes from postwar Iraq. But consider what they did know.

"We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy--the United States of America," said President George W. Bush on October 7, 2002. "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America."

On that same day, George Tenet provided an unclassified version of the relationship in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
--We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade.
--Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
--Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
--We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
--Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.

James Woolsey, CIA director under President Bill Clinton, made reference to the Tenet letter in an appearance this past weekend on "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." Tenet's enumeration of the links and the evidence in the Feith memo has Woolsey convinced.

"Anybody who says there is no working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence going back to the early '90s--they can only say that if they're illiterate. This is a slam dunk."

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.

Document links Saddam, bin Laden

By GILBERT S. MERRITT
For The Tennessean

Federal appellate Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of Nashville is in Iraq as one of 13 experts selected by the U.S. Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system.

Merritt, 67, has made trips to Russia and India to work with their judicial systems. He has been sending periodic reports to The Tennessean about his experiences in Iraq and filed this dispatch recently:

Through an unusual set of circumstances, I have been given documentary evidence of the names and positions of the 600 closest people in Iraq to Saddam Hussein, as well as his ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I am looking at the document as I write this story from my hotel room overlooking the Tigris River in Baghdad.

One of the lawyers with whom I have been working for the past five weeks had come to me and asked me whether a list of the 600 people closest to Saddam Hussein would be of any value now to the Americans.

I said, yes, of course. He said that the list contained not only the names of the 55 ''deck of cards'' players who have already been revealed, but also 550 others.

When I began questioning him about the list, how he obtained it and what else it showed, he asked would it be of interest to the Americans to know that Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I said yes, the Americans have, so far as I am aware, have never been able to prove that relationship, but the president and others have said that they believe it exists. He said, ''Well, judge, there is no doubt it exists, and I will bring you the proof tomorrow.''

So today he brought me the proof, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is right.

The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.''

The document shows that it was written over the signature of Uday Saddam Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein. The story of how the document came about is as follows.

Saddam gave Uday authority to control all press and media outlets in Iraq. Uday was the publisher of the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper.

On the front page of the paper's four-page edition for Nov. 14, 2002, there was a picture of Osama bin Laden speaking, next to which was a picture of Saddam and his ''Revolutionary Council,'' together with stories about Israeli tanks attacking a group of Palestinians.

On the back page was a story headlined ''List of Honor.'' In a box below the headline was ''A list of men we publish for the public.'' The lead sentence refers to a list of ''regime persons'' with their names and positions.

The list has 600 names and titles in three columns. It contains, for example, the names of the important officials who are members of Saddam's family, such as Uday, and then other high officials, including the 55 American ''deck of cards'' Iraqi officials, some of whom have been apprehended.

Halfway down the middle column is written: ''Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.'' (For more about the list, see accompanying article on this page.)

The lawyer who brought the newspaper to me, Samir, and another lawyer with whom I have been working, Zuhair, translated the Arabic words and described what had happened in Baghdad the day it was published.

Samir bought his paper at a newsstand at around 8 a.m. Within two hours, the Iraqi intelligence officers were going by every newsstand in Baghdad and confiscating the papers. They also went to the home of every person who they were told received a paper that day and confiscated it.

The other lawyer, Zuhair, who was the counsel for the Arab League in Baghdad, did not receive delivery of his paper that day. He called his vendor, who told him that there would be no paper that day, a singular occurrence he could not explain.

For the next 10 days, the paper was not published at all. Samir's newspaper was not confiscated and he retained it because it contained this interesting ''Honor Roll of 600'' of the people closest to the regime.

The only explanation for this strange set of events, according to the Iraqi lawyers, is that Uday, an impulsive and somewhat unbalanced individual, decided to publish this honor roll at a time when the regime was under worldwide verbal attack in the press, especially by us. It would, he thought, make them more loyal and supportive of the regime.

His father was furious, knowing that it revealed information about his supporters that should remain secret.

For example, at the same time this was published, Saddam was denying that he had any relationship with Osama. Therefore Saddam had all the papers confiscated, and he ordered that publication of the paper be stopped for 10 days.

That is the story of the ''Honor Roll of 600,'' and why I believe that President Bush was right when he alleged that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama and was coordinating activities with him.

It does not prove that they engaged together in any particular act of terror against the United States.

But it seems to me to be strong proof that the two were in contact and conspiring to perform terrorist acts.

Up until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims. Now I have changed my mind. There is, however, one big problem remaining: They are both still at large and the combined forces of the free world have been unable to find them.

Until we find and capture them, they will remain a threat — Saddam with the remnants of his army and supporters in combination with the worldwide terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden.

Addendum to article right above

The newspaper list of top Iraqi officials that Judge Merritt describes in the accompanying article was also the subject of a mid-May report in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. The list, published in an Iraqi newspaper before the U.S. invasion, has received little public attention elsewhere.

The magazine noted, as did Merritt, that one person on the list was characterized as being in charge of relations with Osama bin Laden at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan. The magazine also mentioned that the list was prefaced by this puzzling passage:

''This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them.''

Since the list was published in a newspaper run by Saddam Hussein's son, it was not clear why this passage would have been allowed to appear.

Officials at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA were asked by Gannett News Service for comment yesterday on the list.

Both agencies said they were aware of the list but declined to comment on its status or authenticity.

''There are innumerable lists,'' said one official at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who declined to be identified for publication. ''So you have to ask what does it mean to be on this list? It takes time to sort through all this. People give names all over the place.''

The Al Qaeda Connection, cont.
More reason to suspect that bin Laden and Saddam may have been in league.
by Stephen F. Hayes
07/11/2003 5:45:00 PM

THE INDISPENSABLE Glenn Reynolds has linked to an article in the Nashville Tennessean written by a Tennessee judge who believes he is in possession of documents linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

The judge is Gilbert S. Merritt, a federal appeals court judge invited to help Iraqis construct a legal system in postwar Iraq. He is, according to Reynolds, "a lifelong Democrat and a man of unimpeachable integrity."

Here is an excerpt of his account:

The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.''

The document shows that it was written over the signature of Uday Saddam Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein. The story of how the document came about is as follows.

Saddam gave Uday authority to control all press and media outlets in Iraq. Uday was the publisher of the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper.

On the front page of the paper's four-page edition for Nov. 14, 2002, there was a picture of Osama bin Laden speaking, next to which was a picture of Saddam and his ''Revolutionary Council,'' together with stories about Israeli tanks attacking a group of Palestinians.

On the back page was a story headlined ''List of Honor.'' In a box below the headline was ''A list of men we publish for the public.'' The lead sentence refers to a list of ''regime persons'' with their names and positions.

The list has 600 names

and titles in three columns. It contains, for example, the names of the important officials who are members of Saddam's family, such as Uday, and then other high officials, including the 55 American ''deck of cards'' Iraqi officials, some of whom have been apprehended.

Halfway down the middle column is written: ''Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.''

The story Judge Merritt relates is similar to an account reported in The Weekly Standard last May. Splashed across the front page of the November 16, 2002, edition of Uday Hussein's Babil newspaper were two "honor" lists, one of which included Aswod (spelled "Aswad") and identified him as the "official in charge of regime's contacts with Osama bin Laden's group and currently the regime's representative in Pakistan."

I stumbled upon this passage doing research for another piece. So I brought the article to the attention of administration officials, who hadn't yet seen it, and asked for comment. Intelligence analysts were perplexed, particularly because of a passage in the text preceding the list. It read: "We publish this list of great men for the sons of our great people to see." And below that: "This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them. A list of the leaders of Saddam's regime, as well as their present and previous posts."

The second description was clearly hostile in tone--"henchmen of the regime" and "woe unto them." Analysts weren't sure what to make of the introduction or the list, but suggested Uday Hussein may have simply republished a list of "henchmen" distributed by an Iraqi opposition group without realizing he was publicly linking his father to Osama bin Laden.
That still seems like the most plausible explanation to me. (Although Judge Merritt's report that the front page of the four-page newspaper carried side-by-side photographs of bin Laden and Saddam is interesting.) Still, some intelligence officials believe that Aswad--who publicly raised doubts after September 11 about whether Osama bin Laden is a terrorist--was an important link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

If the newspaper reports are interesting but inconclusive, two other recent reports are more compelling. Jessica Stern, a Harvard professor and Clinton administration national security official, discusses the links in a fascinating and sober analysis of the Al Qaeda threat in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Under the subheading, "Friends of Convenience," she writes:

Meanwhile, the Bush administration's claims that al Qaeda was cooperating with the "infidel" (read: secular) Saddam Hussein while he was still in office are now also gaining support, and from a surprising source. Hamid Mir, bin Laden's "official biographer" and an analyst for al Jazeera, spent two weeks filming in Iraq during the war. Unlike most reporters, Mir wandered the country freely and was not embedded with U.S. troops. He reports that he has "personal knowledge" that one of Saddam's intelligence operatives, Farooq Hijazi, tried to contact bin Laden in Afghanistan as early as 1998. At that time, bin Laden was publicly still quite critical of the Iraqi leader, but he had become far more circumspect by November 2001, when Mir interviewed him for the third time.

Hijazi has acknowledged meeting with al Qaeda representatives, perhaps with

bin Laden himself, even before the outreach in 1998. According to news reports and interviews with intelligence officials, Hijazi met with al Qaeda leaders in Sudan in 1994.

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the congressional commission investigating the September 11 attacks, added to the intrigue this week when he flatly declared, "there is evidence" of Iraq-al Qaeda links. Lehman has access to classified intelligence as a member of the commission, intelligence that has convinced him the links may have been even greater than the public pronouncements of the Bush administration might suggest. "There is no doubt in my mind that [Iraq] trained them in how to prepare and deliver anthrax and to use terror weapons."

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.

Militia defector claims Baghdad trained Al-Qaeda fighters in chemical warfare

Gwynne Roberts in Ankara Sunday Times (London); Overseas news; News; 23 July 14, 2002, Sunday

A FORMER colonel in Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen, one of Iraq's most brutal militias, has claimed that he trained with fighters from Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist network in secret camps near Baghdad. The defector, who fled to Turkey three years ago, says that as long ago as 1997 and 1998, Islamic extremists were being taught how to use chemical and biological weapons.
Their instructors, he says, were from a military intelligence organisation known as Unit 999, which ran a six-month course for "foreigners" including the Iranian opposition organisation Mojahedin-e Khalq and the Turkish-Kurdish PKK rebel movement as well as Al-Qaeda.

A former Stasi lieutenant-colonel said: "The courses emphasised chemical weapons which attack the nervous system. They were also taught how to deploy bacteriological weapons - influenza, anthrax and yellow fever."

Colonel "Abu Mohammed", whose real name is being withheld to protect him and his family near Ankara, says American officials who debriefed him in 1999 showed little interest in his information. If true, however, his story may acquire fresh significance as America seeks evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden that could help it to justify an attack on Baghdad. In recent months several defectors have spoken of secret training camps in Iraq where Arabs from all over the Middle East have been trained in sabotage techniques by Mukhabarat (intelligence) instructors.
Mohammed said he was recruited into Saddam's Fedayeen in 1997 and trained at two secret facilities - at Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad, and at the Unit 999 camp, northwest of the Iraqi capital. His first encounter with Bin Laden's fighters occurred at Salman Pak when he was on an induction course to become a Fedayeen officer, he said.
"We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queueing for food.
(The major) said to me: 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama Bin Laden's group and the PKK and the Mojahedin-e Khalq.
"They train for three months at Unit 999 and another three at the Mukhabarat school in Salman Pak. So there are two camps where they train Bin Laden's people."
Mohammed said he had attended another training course at Salman Pak and Unit 999 a year later, spending 15 days at each facility. Here, once again, he encountered Al-Qaeda fighters undergoing specialised sabotage training.
"There was training in the use of biological and chemical weapons there but they were not Iraqis doing it - only foreigners," he said.
"They were trained to put materials into small containers and study the biological effects. In the training areas there is a field especially for weapons of mass destruction. Here, experts hold lectures and conduct biological experiments - theoretical experiments, of course - on how to place explosives or how to pollute specific areas, water and public places and ventilation systems as well as power stations. They had maps of the USA, Britain, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia."
Mohammed's claims illustrate the challenge American officials face in determining the quality of information from defectors whose hatred of the Iraqi regime may lead them to embellish their accounts.
The intelligence services have struggled to find convincing evidence of links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Saddam's secular regime has little in common with Bin Laden except for a shared hatred of America and Israel.
However, Abbas al-Janabi, who spent 15 years as personal assistant to Uday, Saddam's son, before fleeing to the West in 1998 and who is regarded as one of the most reliable senior defectors, is convinced that there is a connection between Bin Laden and Saddam. Last week he said he had learnt that Iraqi officials had visited Afghanistan and Sudan to strengthen ties with Al-Qaeda. He also knew of a top secret centre near Baghdad where "foreigners" trained with Iraqis.
"This was a sort of factory for turning out instructors," Janabi said. "They trained both Iraqis and foreign nationals. Suicide squads were trained in sabotage techniques using weapons of mass destruction. They were well paid, well fed and their families well looked after." Janabi predicted that in the event of war with the West, Saddam would deploy bio-weapons including smallpox.
The training described by Mohammed and Jannabi raises the possibility that Iraq has been passing on expertise learnt from the East Germans during the cold war. At Massow, a camp just south of Berlin, secret police instructors taught Iraqis how to attack civilian targets using chemical and biological warfare agents.
A former Stasi lieutenant-colonel said: "The courses emphasised chemical weapons which attack the nervous system. They were also taught how to deploy bacteriological weapons - influenza, anthrax and yellow fever."
In a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya, northern Iraq, further corroboration of claims that Saddam and Bin Laden have co-operated has come from an Iraqi who has admitted working for the Mukhabarat. He said that Bin Laden's second-in-command, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, had met Saddam in Baghdad in 1992. "I was one of the people responsible for his protection," he claimed.
The prisoner seemed well informed about Unit 999. Men attached to Al-Qaeda had been dispatched, from there to Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan and to a base in Somalia from where they were reassigned, he said. Some fighters trained by the Iraqis had joined Al-Ansar Al-Islam, the Allies of Islam, a militant Islamic group based in eastern Kurdistan.
Acts of terror by this group are beginning to pose a serious threat to stability in the area. Al-Ansar is blamed for trying to assassinate Dr Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdish regional government, in April. Two would-be assassins were killed and a third was captured. During the subsequent investigation the captive reportedly admitted that Al-Qaeda had recruited him in Jordan.
There is also growing evidence that Bin Laden's supporters are crossing through Iran from Afghanistan to join AlAnsar. Inhabitants of Halabja, the town gassed by the Iraqi army in 1988, live in fear of Al-Ansar reprisals against anyone considered pro-western.
With the prospect of American intervention in northern Iraq looming, Al-Ansar could prove dangerous. Its objective is to overthrow the pro-western Kurdish regional governments and to set up an Islamic state modelled on the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan.

Transcript link to 5 pages of Saddam's Ultimate Solution. Video and photos also available.

After your service in the army, you worked for a secret part of the Iraqi government?

Some of it is not very secretive. But there's another part, which has a lot to do with international terrorism and this kind of operation -- this is very secretive.

Maybe you could tell me what this section is called, and who runs it. And what did it do?

It's called the Division of Special Operations. ... This whole camp where their training is run by the Iraqi [security service]... The government organization [that] basically possesses or have control of the camp is the Iraqi intelligence. But different training people who come, they are headed or sent by different people in the Iraqi government.

You say that this is a secret camp. But what was it like? Was it something you drove by and could see on the highway? Did you need special clearance to go there? How would you describe this place, this location?

If you're driving on those farm roads, you could probably see the edges of the camp, but you wouldn't realize this is a special camp. The camp is huge. And the locations for the training are far from anybody can see them from the outside. But even when we have visitors, even at the level of a minister, or even higher than a minister in the Iraqi government, they will have to drive around the camp or be driven in the camp inside very specific type of a vehicle. They will sit on the back seat, for example, of this vehicle and they would have ... in addition to the shaded windows, they will have to pull down curtains and they snap those curtains on the bottom, to make sure nobody can see anything outside this vehicle while they're driven around.

This is even government officials [who] are not allowed to see this kind of training?

Yes. At the very highest level, they cannot see this training.

What kind of training went on, and who was being trained?

Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism.

The people being trained were Iraqis in one group, and non-Iraqis, or foreign nationals, in another?

Non-Iraqis were trained separately from us. There were strict orders not to meet with them and not to talk to them. And even when they conduct their training, their training has to occur at times different from the times when we conduct the Iraqis our own training.

	Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak - Khodada's hand-drawn map of the camp (see below), an area south of Baghdad. In this translated interview, conducted in association with The New York Times on Oct. 14, 2001, Khodada describes what went on at Salman Pak, including details on training hijackers. He emigrated to the U.S. in May 2001. (Editor's Note: Although U.S. officials acknowledge terrorists were trained at Salman Pak, they say it is unlikely that these activities were related to the Sept. 11 attacks. It should also be noted that the two defectors interviewed for this report have been brought to FRONTLINE's attention by members of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a dissident organization seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein.)

So you were training Iraqis, Saddam's fedayeen, members of the militia in Iraq. And someone else, other groups, were training the non-Iraqis?

They were special trainers or teachers from the Iraqi intelligence and al-Mukhabarat. And those same trainers or teachers will train the fedayeen, the Iraqi fedayeen, and also the same group of those teachers will train the non-Iraqis, foreigners who are in the camp. Personally, my profession is not this kind of training. My profession is to train people on infantry, typical infantry training, such as training on machine guns, pistols, hand grenades, rocket launchers on the shoulder and this kind of training. The special training that I'm talking about, such as the kidnapping and so, is conducted by those trainers who are not from the army; they are from ... al-Mukhabarat.And there was a person who is very famous. They call him Al-Shaba. [ph]. This is Arabic word means "The Ghost," who was responsible for all the training, and those trainers or the teachers.

Why was he called the Ghost?

I don't know exactly why he's being called the Ghost. I came there and his name was the Ghost. But I know that he has conducted several terrorist operations in Lebanon and in other countries all over the world. And I know that he told us that he's been requested to be arrested by the Interpol. This is probably why he called himself the Ghost.

And the foreign nationals, the Arabs who are there, but who are not Iraqis -- what were they like? Were they Egyptians, Saudis? Do you know where they came from?

They look like they're mostly from the Gulf, sometimes from areas close to Yemen, from their dark skin and short bodies. And they also are Muslims. ...

Were they religious?

I don't know exactly because I saw them seldom very [briefly]. But some of them has beards, long beards, which is an indication of being a religious Muslim. ...

How long were you at this base, at this secret location?

Approximately six months.

What was your job?

Administrational things, such as providing food, leave of absence permissions, general training. Ammunition ... providing them with ammunition when needed.

How did you meet the Ghost? And what did he say?

I meet him several times a day. We usually meet in the morning when they go to training. We meet in the afternoon or the noontime when they come back from training. And several times, we'll meet at the evening to drink tea. And he will come, him and other teachers who always with him. They always talk about their operations proudly. For example, they were telling us about how they were able to penetrate the American forces during the 1990 Gulf War, where they went inside the Saudi Arabia territory, and they were able to bring exact coordinates of the Dharan airbase where it was hit by the Scud missiles and many Americans were killed.

He is an Iraqi, the Ghost?

Yes.

Did he explain what kind of training they were giving to the people who were there, especially to the non-Iraqis?

He tried not to talk about training as much as possible. I even, out of curiosity, asked him about those Arabs. Sometime he told me, "Don't ask about them. This is something we're not supposed to talk about."

So the Ghost said, "I can't talk to you about these Arabs who are training, or what we're training them in."

Yes.

So did you find out what kind of training was going on?

I don't necessarily know what kind of training they do, but they were trained exactly at the same locations, and they were trained by the same teachers who were training ... [the fighters for] Saddam. Training includes hijacking and kidnapping of airplanes, trains, public buses, and planting explosives in cities, sabotaging villages, sabotaging houses, assassinations.

And the training also included how to prepare for suicidal operations. For example, they will train them how to belt themselves around with explosives, and jump in a place and explode themselves out as part of the suicidal training. I think the trainings of the Arabs was much harsher, and much stricter, than the training of the Iraqis.

Why?

Because we know that Arabs, non-Iraqis who come to train in these kind of camps, are going to be sent to very dangerous and important operations outside Iraq; not inside Iraq. And they will be conducting very specific operations and dangerous operations in their own cities, or in their own countries, or other countries all over the world. Those Arabs are real volunteers. They come in small numbers, and they come with the intention to do some real suicidal operations. ...

There are other types of training, such as physical training, which we are all familiar with. But there's another kind of special training, which is called "self-confidence training." ... For example, a bunch of the fedayeen will be taken in a helicopter. They will fly them away to an unknown area, and they will be asked to jump out of the plane without knowing if there is underneath them a desert or a house or there's water. But they're supposed to jump. So, they will jump.

Another type of self-confidence training would be, for example, they will pull the pin of a hand grenade, and they will throw the hand grenade from one to another until the last one will throw it in the air and it will explode in the air. Another type of self-confidence training would be, they will put a hand grenade in a pipe, and they will pull the pin and throw it in the pipe, and stand near the pipe saluting the hand grenade until it explodes.

Other type of self-confidence training would be holding a rocket launcher, which is an Army GB-7, and holding it vertically, then shooting the rocket vertically, which is very unusual, but the backfire of this hand grenade will hit the ground next to you. And if you don't have self-confidence, you cannot do it. This is another kind of self-confidence training.

And they trained people to hijack airplanes?

Yes.

For what purpose?

... It has been said openly in the media and even to us, from the highest command, that the purpose of establishing Saddam's fighters is to attack American targets and American interests. This is known. There's no doubt about it.

All this training is directed towards attacking American targets, and American interests. The training does not only include hijacking of planes and sabotage. ... Some other people were trained to do parachuting. Some other areas were training on how to penetrate enemy lines and get information from behind enemy lines. But it's all for the general concept of hitting and attacking American targets and American interests.

Who controlled this operation?

In terms of training, they will train in this special camp. But after this training, they will go in small groups. These small groups are directly connected with Saddam, or to Saddam's son. For example, the Iraqi fighters, they will be spread all over the country. Occasionally those individual groups, very small groups, will be called for. They might encounter different kind of special training beyond this training on specific things. I'll give you an example. They were calling for some of these groups to train intensively to learn English language, Persian language, Hebrew language, to be sent out to different places of the world to conduct such kind of ... different kind of operations. I suspect that the higher level of training, or the additional training they encounter, has a lot to do with what happened. And there's a lot of similarity with what happened with New York and Washington on September 11.

That was your reaction on September 11 -- that some of these people might be involved?

I assure you, this operation was conducted by people who were trained by Saddam. And I'm going to keep assuring the world this is what happened.

Osama bin Laden has no such capabilities. Why? Because this kind of attacks must be, and has to be, organized by a capable state, such as Iraq; a state where they can provide high level of training, and they can provide high level of intelligence to do such training.

How could Osama bin Laden -- who's hiding in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan in small caves and valleys -- train people and gather information and send people to do such high-level operation? We all know this is a high-level operation. This cannot be done by a person who does not even own a plane in Afghanistan, who cannot offer such training in Afghanistan. This is definitely done by a mastermind like Saddam. ...

And the camp has a 707 that they train on?

Yes, there's a real whole 707 plane, a whole real plane, standing in the middle of the training area in this camp.

And they train people on how to get access to the cabin, to the crew?

Yes.

And how to take over the plane using weapons? How?

They will get trained on how to get weapons inside the plane. If there is a security weakness that they know of, they will prefer to get weapons. But I am sure that, before the attack of September 11, those people made a very thorough study. And they learned that getting weapons into the plane might not be a very good idea. But in this camp, I saw them getting trained on this kind of situations where security will not allow you to get weapons into the plane -- then what you need to do is to use all available methods and very advanced terrorizing method.

These methods are used to terrorize the passengers and the crew of the plane. They are even trained how to use utensils for food, like forks and knives provided in the plane. ... They are trained how to plant horror within the passengers by doing such actions. Even pens and pencils can be used for that purpose they were trained. They can do it, and they can overcome any plane because they are very well physically trained, and they are very strong, and they can do it. They can overtake a plane in a very efficient manner. ...

Recently, here in Washington, you met with the FBI.

Yes.

Did you tell them all of this?

Yes.

What was their reaction? Did they say they already knew about this, or did they act like this was all new to them?

No, they do not know about it. But I told them everything I know, hoping that they can make it useful to them. I did that to protect the peace, not only for America; the peace in America and the peace of the world. People must know such training and such preparation for terror is happening in Iraq. Otherwise, it's going to happen again and again. And it's up to those people, meaning the FBI, to take action about it. ...

Where is the camp located near? You could describe where it's geographically located.

Yes. It's southeast of Baghdad, about 25 kilometers from outside of Baghdad ... . I think the American government should have pictures of this camp from the air. I know for a fact that on January 1995, the United Nations came and took pictures of this camp. But they don't know -- neither the United Nations nor the American government -- what's going on inside this camp.

But they can see the 707, or the train?

On a Friday, which is equivalent to Sunday here, it's a holiday, was on January 1995. They came and the United Nations inspectors visited us. They went all the way inside the camp. They saw the plane, they saw the train, and they didn't care anything about it, because the story was, they told ... his commanders told the United Nation, "This is a camp to train police, anti-riots police."

Anti-riot police?

Yes.

And it really was a terrorist training camp?

Yes.

I can hear someone saying to me, "This is one person claiming that this happened. How are we going to check?" How do we prove or, if you will, test what you have to say?

... If you want to make sure about it, go back to pictures of your government, aerial pictures of your government, and go back all the documents that showed this camp is existing. And go back to my friend who is in Turkey, who could also tell you the same thing that I'm telling you now.

Addition to that, maybe you can find archives of Iraqi TV, showing on the Iraqi TV Saddam's fighters ... putting bombs belted on their bodies, wearing masks. Maybe you should be able to get these archives and see something what's shown openly on Iraqi TV.

The training of Saddam's militia was shown on Iraqi TV?

They will show some of their training. For example, they will show clips of their jumping from the helicopters. But there was also parades, military parades, and they will show off Saddam wearing this explosive around themselves with their masks on. ... I even heard it on Arabic BBC when they were saying, when they were describing them, not as Saddam's fighters -- they describe them as "the terrorists of Saddam" -- wearing explosives and looking like crocodiles, black crocodiles. I'm very surprised that you, in America, don't know about these things.

To you, then, the likely suspect here is the government of Iraq and Saddam in all this terrorism. And yet we're looking the wrong way?

I assure you, and I'm going to keep assuring you, that all these things are obvious. I don't know why you don't see it. When we were in Iraq, Saddam said all the time, even during the Gulf War, "We will take our revenge at the proper time." He kept telling the people, "Get ready for our revenge."

We saw people getting trained to hijack airplanes, to put explosives. How could anybody not think this is not done by Saddam? Even the grouping, those groups were divided into five to six people in the group. How about the training on planes? Some of these groups were taken and trained to drive airplanes at the School of Aviation, northern of Baghdad ... .Everything coincides with what's happening.

In addition to that, we heard in the news about meeting some of those hijackers with the Iraqi intelligence people in Prague, and even getting money to get trained on flying airplanes in the United States from the Iraqi intelligence.

[Did you hear that some of those training at the camp were working for] Osama bin Laden?

Nobody came and told us, "This is Al Qaeda people," but I know there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other people from other countries getting trained. They didn't tell us they were part of Al Qaeda; there's no such thing. ... In this camp, we know that those are Saudis, or Arabs are getting trained. Nobody will talk about Al Qaeda or any other organization.

They're just people.

Yes.

Who clearly wanted to ... or were interested in doing terror, becoming terrorists?

This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the whole world. ...

In the conversations that you had with the Ghost and with others, was it clear that they were involved in international terrorism -- that that's what the object here was, to send people out to do missions?

They all say it. On January 1, 1996, we all met with Saddam personally. And he told us we have to take revenge from America. Our duty is to attack and hit American targets in the Gulf, in the Arab world, and all over the world. He said that openly. When you volunteer to become Saddam's fighter ... they will tell you the purpose of your volunteer[ing] is to attack American targets and American interests, not only in Iraq, not only in the Gulf, [but] all over the world, including Europe and America. That's how Saddam was able to attract those Arabs and Muslims who came to train, because that's exactly what they want to do.

I just wanted to understand that in the camp itself, when you were sitting down with the trainers and they were describing what they were doing, did they say they were getting people ready for missions in Europe, in the United States?

Those people who are in the camp ... do the training, and the rest will be conducted by the higher command. For example, after you finish the training, there will be groups of five to six people, sometimes four people, but most likely between five to six people, not exceeding six. Maximum number will be six people.

Or they would be able, for example, to call for a specific group for a specific purpose to Baghdad. And nobody knows what this group is going to do. They will go to Baghdad. They will be briefed on what they're going to do, or trained about something specific. They will be sent, and we don't know where they go, and they come back to us. That's how it works. It's not like the trainers in the camp know what's going on. The operations are headed directly from the top.

But when someone would hear about an incident, like there was an attack on the U.S. military in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia in 1995, or the Khobar barracks was blown up in Saudi Arabia, you didn't hear anyone say, "We took part in that," or, "That was one of ours," during this period of time.

They don't talk specifics. The only specific thing they talked about in front of me is ... location coordinates during the Gulf War. But I hear them talking about operations in Saudi Arabia, operations other places, in Lebanon. But I never hear the details from them.

Any evidence of biological or chemical warfare training?

This type of training, if it happened, it occurred outside our camp...

Can you explain what's on this map that you drew?

The surrounding area around is an area for fitness training. This is a Boeing 707, where they trained how to hijack it. And also they were trained how to resist or stop hijacking operation.

Next to it, there's a double-decker bus in which they could do the same thing -- training, hijacking. And this is next to it, there is a village, built houses like a model of a village. They will train how to plant TNT and explosives. And very next to it, there's a single house, where they're trained how to enter it, or sabotage it or explode it.

The railway track is where the train is. That's where they would have the same training for hijacking of a train. I would like to also tell you that this is a village where farmers would live. Those farmers, by the way, are employees by the Iraqi intelligence -- all of them. They look like normal families, but they are not as you think. They are employees of the Iraqi intelligence to put cover and protection to the base. ...

What's the method that's taught, in terms of hijacking? It's not just taking on weapons, is it?

Training will include the way they would sit in the plane, how they enter the plane, provided they got the right documents from the top levels of Iraqi Intelligence, such as passports. ... They will, for example, sit in two's, and they will assign who will sit to the right of the other guy, and who will sit to the other side. Two will sit in the front, two will sit in the back, and two will sit, for example, in the middle. They are trained to jump all at one time, and make a declaration that "We are going to take over the plane. And nobody [move], don't move, don't make any moves."

They will probably use a pencil or a pen, or even sunglasses or prescription glasses. Somebody will hold the crew members of the plane from their chins upward tightly, and you will pull it on his neck. He will think you are going to slaughter him and kill him. Including in this training is terrorizing by making very, very loud noises and screaming all over the plane. That will take over the planned horror, and will terrorize the plane, including the crew.

Why are you coming forward with this information?

I'd like to tell the whole world, and American people, that I wish peace ... in this world. And I want to tell you that what you have seen is very little from what we have seen done to the Iraqi people by Saddam. If somebody use chemical weapons such as in Halabja on his own people, what do you think he would do to different parts of the world? I call for the world and the Iraqi people and every Muslim not to believe the propaganda by Saddam and bin Laden. Those are murderers, and they have nothing to do with Islam.

Here in the United States, as a Muslim, I was never been harassed or treated badly, and nobody stopped me from my prayers, or stopped me from being a Muslim. So what Saddam is doing is exactly what's against Islam, against the world, and against peace of the world.

Cross-linking Peach's thread Saddam Knew 9/11 Was Coming and Colluded with OBL for a Decade

Atta/Prague new information (Edward Jay Epstein)

Thank you for linking that most important article.

The New Republic Online
September 13, 2001

THE IRAQ CONNECTION
Blood Baath
by R. James Woolsey

R. JAMES WOOLSEY is a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C. He served as director of central intelligence from February 1993 to January 1995.

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden. And he may well be responsible. But intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.

To this end, investigators should revisit the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. A few years ago, the facts in that case seemed straightforward: The mastermind behind the bombing, who went by the alias Ramzi Yousef, was in fact a 27-year-old Pakistani named Abdul Basit. But late last year, AEI Press published "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America," a careful book about the bombing by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie. The book's startling thesis is that the original theory of the attack, advanced by James Fox (the FBI's chief investigator into the 1993 bombing until his replacement in 1994) was correct: that Yousef was not Abdul Basit but rather an Iraqi agent who had assumed the latter's identity when police files in Kuwait (where the real Abdul Basit lived in 1990) were doctored by Iraqi intelligence during the occupation of Kuwait. If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right, then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Center last time. Which makes it much more plausible that Iraq has done so again.

According to the theory of the 1993 bombing embraced by federal prosecutors and the Clinton administration, Yousef/Abdul Basit was just another Middle Eastern student who became radicalized in his early twenties. But it is worth noting that the only two publicly reported items suggesting that Yousef and Abdul Basit are the same man could very easily have been products of Iraqi tampering with Kuwaiti police files: a few photocopied pages from earlier Abdul Basit passports that had clearly been tampered with, provided by Yousef in New York in 1992 to get a Pakistani passport in Abdul Basit's name, and fingerprints matching Yousef's found in Abdul Basit's police file in Kuwait. It is also worth noting that Abdul Basit and his family, who lived in Kuwait, disappeared during the Iraqi occupation, and the family has never reappeared. Was this a random tragedy of war or part of an effort to set up a false identity for Yousef?

Moreover, the Fox/Mylroie theory--that Yousef, via Iraqi intelligence, stole Abdul Basit's identity--would explain a number of troubling differences between Abdul Basit in the summer of 1989 (when he left the United Kingdom after three years of study) and Yousef in September 1992 (when he arrived in New York). If the two are indeed the same man, then, over the course of three years, he would have: (a) grown four inches (from five foot eight inches to six feet) in his twenties; (b) put on between 35 and 40 pounds; (c) developed a deformed eye; (d) developed smaller ears and a smaller mouth; (e) gone from being an innovative computer programmer to being computer-challenged; (f) aged substantially more than three years in appearance; and (g) changed from being a quiet, smiling young man respectful to women to a rather different one (a sound file in Yousef's computer, for example, includes his voice saying "Fuck, fuck, fuck" and "Shut up, you bitch").

What incentive would the U.S. government have had to overlook these changes, stipulate that Abdul Basit and Yousef were the same person, and turn away from any suggestion that Saddam was behind the first WTC attack? One can only speculate. But by arguing that the 1993 WTC bombing and a separate, FBI-thwarted plot to bomb New York tunnels and buildings were connected as parts of a common conspiracy, prosecutors made convicting the participants, under the very broad seditious conspiracy law, far simpler. As for the Clinton administration itself, there would be less need to confront Saddam, and perhaps less need to make hard choices, if it didn't finger him as being behind the WTC bombing.

And indeed, ever since Fox's ouster, federal prosecutors and the White House have hewed to the line that most terrorist attacks on the United States are either the products of "loose networks" of folks who just somehow come together or are masterminded by the mysterious and unaccountable bin Laden. Explicit state sponsorship, especially by Iraq, has not been on the agenda. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, treated Saddam--in former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's famous metaphor--like the mole in an international version of the "Whack-a-Mole" carnival game: If you bopped him on the head, he'd stay in his hole for a while. But what has he been doing while he's down there? If Fox and Mylroie are right, quite possibly planning, financing, and backing terrorist operations against the United States.

As of yet, there is no evidence of explicit state sponsorship of the September 11 attacks. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Does it not seem curious that bin Laden issues fatwas, pushes videotapes, quotes poems, and orders his followers to talk loudly and often about his role in attacks on us? Does someone want our focus to be solely on bin Laden's hard-to-reach self, and not on a senior partner?

If we hope to answer that question, the 1993 WTC bombing is a good place to start looking. No one other than the prosecutors, the Clinton Justice Department, and the FBI had access to the materials surrounding that case until they were presented in court, because they were virtually all obtained by a federal grand jury and hence kept not only from the public but from the rest of the government under the extreme secrecy requirements of Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Now a new administration, a new attorney general, and a new FBI director should investigate the materials that Abdul Basit handled while in the United Kingdom in 1988 and 1989, which were taken into custody by Scotland Yard. If those materials have Yousef's fingerprints on them, then the Fox/Mylroie theory is likely wrong. But if they don't, then Yousef was probably a creature of Iraqi intelligence. Which means that Saddam still considered himself at war with the United States in 1993. And, tragically, he may still today.

Iraq suspected of sponsoring terrorist attacks

Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 9/21/2001
     Osama bin Laden was in contact with Iraqi government agents from his base in Afghanistan in the days leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
     Officials also told The Washington Times there are indications bin Laden, the leading suspect in the deadly attacks, is preparing to flee Afghanistan and set up operations in the African nation of Somalia.
     Bin Laden's contacts with the Iraqi government were detected before the attacks, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
     "This is the basis for signs of state sponsorship," said one official.
     Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday that foreign governments likely provided safe haven and support for the 19 terrorists who hijacked four U.S. airliners. Three of the airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; another crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers apparently fought their captors.
     Mr. Ashcroft did not identify what foreign governments are believed to be behind the attacks.
     Officials said the intelligence of direct Iraqi government contacts with bin Laden is one of several pieces pointing to Baghdad's involvement in the attacks.
     U.S. warplanes attacked air- defense sites in Iraq yesterday, but the Pentagon said the attacks are unrelated to U.S. anti-terrorism operations.
     President Bush and other U.S. officials have said bin Laden is the key suspect in masterminding last week's kamikaze attacks that killed more than 6,000 Americans.
     Mr. Bush told a joint session of Congress last night that all governments are on notice that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
     David Ivry, Israel's ambassador to the United States, said yesterday it was too soon to make conclusions about an Iraqi role in the attacks.
     "My opinion is the investigation is being done by the United States by professionals," Mr. Ivry told editors and reporters in a meeting at The Washington Times. "They are going to come to conclusions. We are going to try to assist as much as we are going to be asked. But I think it's too early to come up with a kind of fingering of somebody."
     Mr. Ivry said Iraq has been supporting Palestinian terrorists in Israel by giving financial aid to the families of suicide bombers who have launched attacks.
     Earlier this week, intelligence officials said one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in the months before the attack.
     The Bush administration is considering whether to target Iraq as part of an international campaign to destroy terrorists and their networks.
     Some Bush administration officials, especially within the Pentagon, favor attacking Iraq when operations against Afghanistan are begun, possibly within the next few weeks. Other administration officials are said to favor limiting the first strikes to Afghanistan.
     Asked about public calls for going after state sponsors of terrorism like Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said President Bush "has a clear idea in his mind and has given us our instructions as to how we will begin this campaign and what the focus of our efforts will be initially."
     "We welcome the views from everybody as to how we might go about this campaign," Mr. Powell said.
     Regarding bin Laden's future in Afghanistan, officials said the indications of his flight to Somalia were received in the past few days.
     "There are indications he is heading to Somalia," said one official.
     The indications are said to include plans for bin Laden to relocate himself and his wives and other family members from locations in Afghanistan to an undisclosed location in Somalia, the official said.
     Disclosure of the relocation comes as the ruling Taliban militia announced yesterday in Kabul that bin Laden would be asked to leave the country.
     A statement issued by the Ulema, or council of some 1,000 Taliban clerics, was not an order for bin Laden to leave. Afghan officials quoted by U.S. wire services stated that bin Laden would be given time to leave "whenever possible."
     Asked about the Taliban statement, Mr. Powell said the announcement was not enough.
     "Voluntarily or involuntarily, we believe that Osama bin Laden has to be put under control and turned over to authorities who can bring him to justice, and it should be done rather quickly," Mr. Powell said. "We want action, not just statements."
     Mr. Powell said bin Laden was responsible for "tragedies around the world."
     The Taliban must turn over bin Laden and "all of the other lieutenants and the infrastructure that exists within Afghanistan," Mr. Powell said.
     "This isn't a campaign against one individual, but also the network that he is the leader of," Mr. Powell said. "And when we have dealt with al Qaeda, the network, Osama bin Laden, the individual, we will then broaden our campaign to go after other terrorist organizations and forms of terrorism around the world. It is a long-term campaign. It will be done in a deliberate way. It will be done in a decisive way."
     A military source said bin Laden's relocation to Somalia would put that nation on the Pentagon's list of targets of planned military operations against international terrorists.
     Moving to Somalia would have symbolic value for bin Laden, who has called on his followers to kill Americans.
     The U.S. military withdrew from Somalia in 1993 following a deadly battle in Mogadishu that left 18 U.S. Army Rangers dead. The operation was part of a U.S. military humanitarian operation to help feed starving Somalis that degenerated into an effort to hunt down Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid.

The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com

Saddam link to attacks: INTELLIGENCE has suggested the prime mover behind the attacks was Saddam

Sunday, September 23, 2001
(Melbourne Herald Sun)

The former head of Israeli's Mossad secret service, Rafi Eitan, and a former CIA director, R. James Woolsey, said there are clear indications that the Iraqi president played a leading role in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

"I have no doubt whatsoever that the mastermind of this atrocity is none other than the Iraqi dictator," said Mr Eitan, a security adviser to three Israeli governments and mastermind of the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in May 1960.

This week's revelation that Mohamed Atta, 33, an Egyptian suspected of hijacking the first plane to strike the World Trade Centre, met an Iraqi intelligence official in Europe earlier this year, adds weight to the theory.

Officials have also suggested bin Laden was in contact with Iraqi agents from his base in Afghanistan in the days before the attacks.

Mr Eitan said bin Laden may have been a partner, or merely a pawn, in a plot by Baghdad to strike back following its Gulf War defeat and to show the world it is still capable of action despite 10 years' of crippling UN sanctions.

Some background info on Saddam the Secular:

August 30, 2002

The Iraqi Regime's Links to Terrorism

Dr. Ely Karmon

ICT Senior Researcher

Reprinted with permission from Policywatch, Analysis of Near East Policy from the Scholars and Associates of the Washington Institute.

On August 28, 2002, a U.S. federal grand jury issued a new indictment against five terrorists from the Fatah Revolutionary Command, also known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), for the 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan. Based on "aggravating circumstances," prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty for the attack, in which twenty-two people -- including two Americans -- were killed.

The leader of the ANO, the infamous Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal (Sabri al-Banna), died violently last week in Baghdad. But his death is not as extraordinary as the subsequent press conference given by Iraqi intelligence chief Taher Jalil Haboush. This press conference was the first time Haboush's name has appeared in the international media since February 2001.

Iraqi Objectives
What could possibly have motivated the Iraqi regime to send one of its senior exponents to announce the suicide of Abu Nidal and to present crude photographs of his bloodied body four days (or eight days, according to some sources) after his death? It should be noted that the earliest information about Nidal's death came from al-Ayyam, a Palestinian daily close to Abu Nidal's bitterest enemy -- the Palestinian Authority.At this sensitive moment in U.S.-Iraqi relations, Abu Nidal could have provided extraordinarily damaging testimony with regard to Saddam's involvement in international terrorism, even beyond Iraqi support of ANO activities in the 1970's and 1980's. In publicizing Nidal's death, the regime may have a number of motives, such as:

An attempt to present itself as fighting terrorism, by announcing that Iraqi authorities were attempting to detain Abu Nidal for interrogation in the moments before his death. "As is known to both friends and enemies, Iraq's record on the issue of terrorism and disrupting security, whether pan-Arab or foreign, is clean. Iraq is not involved with these practices," claimed the Iraqi chief of intelligence, who also informed reporters that Abu Nidal was expelled from Baghdad in 1983 after the regime "learned that [he] was engaged in activities that harm the Iraqi national security and the Arab national security." He omitted to mention that from 1974 to 1983 the ANO waged an intensive terrorist war against its perceived enemies from its headquarters in Baghdad. These enemies included Syria (Abu Nidal twice attempted to assassinate Abdul Halim Khaddam, the Syrian foreign minister at the time; Fatah, several of whose representatives in Europe were murdered; Jewish interests, such as synagogues in Vienna, Rome, and Brussels, a Jewish school in Antwerp, and a Jewish restaurant in Paris; Jordan several of whose diplomats were killed; and Israel. Abu Nidal's attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in London, whom ANO assassins wounded was the event that triggered the war in Lebanon. And this is only a partial list. (see below for some of ANO's attacks.)

The desire to send a signal to internal elements who might be tempted to cooperate with the United States and the Gulf kingdoms in a war against Iraq. The implied message is that Abu Nidal's fate was sealed because of his alleged contacts with an unnamed foreign country against Iraqi interests (possibly Saudi or Kuwaiti intelligence agents).

An attempt to convince the world that Abu Nidal had not been given shelter and safe haven in Iraq since 1999, but rather had entered the country illegally. Iraqi security forces were apparently "unable to trace him," although some Arab states had informed Iraqi authorities of his presence at the time.

Iraqi Support for Terrorism
Abu Nidal was known to be living in Iraq in 2001, when Jordan's state security court sentenced him to death by hanging, along with four of his followers, for his role in the January 1994 assassination of a Jordanian diplomat in Beirut (the last known terrorist attack by the ANO. Iraqi authorities refused to extradite him to Jordan. Nor has Iraq made any attempt to punish Abu Nidal for the numerous Americans, British and French citizens, and other nationals injured or killed in ANO attacks over the years.

In an interesting side note, Abu Nidal's former spokesman, Atef Abu Baker, has claimed in an interview with al-Hayat that Abu Nidal was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Abu Baker claims that Abu Nidal himself informed ANO leaders of his responsibility for the bombing (Nidal was living in Libya at the time). This statement contradicts verdict reached in the Lockerbie trial and has received some publicity in Europe. Nevertheless, it appears to be merely a cheap attempt to dismiss Libyan involvement in the bombing.

The death of Abu Nidal, and its announcement by the Iraqi intelligence chief appear to be part of another disinformation campaign by Iraqi intelligence. The most recent skirmish of that campaign was in May of this year, when Iraqi authorities granted permission for CBS reporter Lesley Stahl to interview the only participant in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing not in prison. Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for the bombing, but later escaped to Iraq. Stahl also interviewed Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, who claimed that Yasin had been in prison in Iraq since 1994. Aziz asserted that Iraq had offered to hand Yasin over to the United States in 1994 and later in October 2001, in order to prove that Iraq was not involved in the 1993 bombing. The Americans refused, Aziz stated. A U.S. intelligence official was quoted by CBS as saying that the Iraqis failed in their attempt to have the Americans sign a document confirming Yasin's whereabouts since 1993; apparently, U.S. officials did not agree with the Iraqi version of the facts.

Another example of Iraq's providing safe haven to a known terrorist leader is the case of Abu al-Abbas (Mahmoud Abbas), secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF). Abbas was responsible for the October 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, and the killing of elderly disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American citizen. In 1998, within the framework of the Oslo agreements, Israel permitted Abbas to return to the Gaza Strip. Fearing an extradition request by the United States, he chose the confines of Baghdad instead.

In October 2000, with the outbreak of the current Palestinian intifada, Abbas announced on Iraqi television that the PLF would resume confrontations with Israel; this, following the "call made by President Saddam Hussein to open the door for volunteering [which] is an order to fight for us." Iraq recruited and trained PLF activists in Iraqi camps and equipped them with weapons, which they then used to carry out terrorist attacks in Haifa (April 2001) and the West Bank (July 2001). In July 2001, Mohammed Kandil, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was arrested upon the discovery that he was recruited by Iraqi intelligence in order to build a terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank. Apparently, his operational plans included infiltrating Ben Gurion International Airport with a car bomb.

Lately, Iraq has also revived its proxy organization, the Arab Liberation Front (ALF), with the specific mission of encouraging suicide operations against Israel from the West Bank and Gaza. One of ALF's leaders, al-Hajj Rateb al-Amleh, is responsible for providing material support to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists. This support has included public events at which the presentation of $25,000 Iraqi checks payable to the families of "martyrs" is used to glorify Saddam Hussein and encourage solidarity between the Iraqi regime and the Palestinian people against their common "Zionist" and "imperialist" enemies.

Conclusion
It is ironic to read news articles with titles such as "Saddam Cuts Off Terror Links Following Abu Nidal's Death." The crude lies that the Iraqi chief of intelligence has proffered to the media constitute yet another attempt of the Saddam regime to hide its past -- and possibly present -- involvement in international terrorism. It took the United States five years to unearth juridical evidence connecting Iranian intelligence agents and the Lebanese Hizballah with the Khobar Towers bombing, even though the information had been available in 1996 at the beginning of the investigation. Notwithstanding this evidence, no political or military action followed. Hopefully, the terrorist nature of Saddam Hussein's regime and its belligerent ambitions will beaddressed more seriously and swiftly.

Partial list of Western victims of ANO attacks:

Two terrorists machine-gunned the Jewish “Goldenberg” restaurant in the heart of Paris, killing two Americans (Grace Cutler, 66 and Ann Van Zanten, 31) and 4 French and wounding another 22 people;

March 28, 1984, Kenneth Whitty, British Embassy cultural attach? was assassinated by a lone gunman in Athens;

November 26, 1984 a lone gunman shot Percy Norris, Britain's deputy high commissioner in India;

July 1985, bombing of the building housing the offices of TWA and British Airways in Madrid (an American and two British Airways employees were injured);

September 1985, grenade attack on a poolside recreation area at Hotel Glifadha, in an Athens suburb (18 deaf British tourists injured);

September 1985, bombing of the British Airways office in Rome (one British Airways employee killed);

November 1985, hijacking of Egyptair flight from Athens to Malta (the passengers included 30 Egyptians, 21 Filipinois, 17 Greeks, three Americans, three Canadians, two Israelis, two French, two Australians, two Mexicans, two Moroccans, one Ghanaian, one Spaniard, one Belgian, and one Tunisian. Six passengers, including an Israeli woman and two Americans, Jackie Nick and Scarlett Rogenkams were executed before an Egyptian commando stormed the plane. 61 people were killed in this event);

December 1985, four ANO terrorists attacked the El-Al check-in counter at Rome's Fiumicino Airport (of the 13 people killed in the attack, five were Americans: Donald Maland, 30, Natasha Sophie Simpson, 11, John Buonocore, 20, Frederick K. Gage, 29, and Elena Tommarello, 67. Seventy-three people were wounded, including 12 Americans};

July 11, 1988, machinegun and grenade attack on the “City of Poros,” a Greek ferryboat carrying 471 tourists in the Aegean Sea, killing eight (four French citizens, a Greek officer, a Danish tourist; a Swedish woman, an Hungarian) and injuring 98.

Ely Karmon is a senior researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, and the 2002 Shari and Herb Rosen visiting fellow at The Washington Institute.

CLARKE VS. ME

DETAILS, DETAILS…

VERY AWKWARD FACTSby Laurie MylroieWall Street JournalApril 2, 2004

Document links Saddam, bin Laden

Addendum to article right above

Iraq suspected of sponsoring terrorist attacks

The Iraqi Regime's Links to Terrorism

VERY AWKWARD FACTS
by Laurie Mylroie
Wall Street Journal
April 2, 2004