But Bush Believed Media
The networks pounced Wednesday night on one sentence on the fifth page of a 9-11 Commission report released earlier in the day, which declared: “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.” Picking up on that exaggeration of administration claims, on CNN’s NewsNight, David Ensor asserted: “The commission staff report says Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and backs that up with some evidence.” Of course, administration officials never claimed any Iraqi connection to the 9-11 attacks, just a mutually-advantageous relationship over the years.
Thursday’s morning shows highlighted the finding, but didn’t air separate stories on it as did the network evening shows the night before. Thursday newspapers also touted the commission assertion. “Al Qaeda-Hussein Link is Dismissed,” declared a June 17 Washington Post front page headline.
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann announced at the top of Wednesday’s Countdown: "Memo to the Vice President: 9/11 Commission finds, quote, 'no credible evidence,' unquote, of any link between al-Qaeda and Iraq.”
On the Wednesday CBS Evening News, John Roberts stressed how the commission’s claim undermines President Bush, describing the Iraq connection as “one of President Bush’s last surviving justifications for war in Iraq” and, he charged, “today it took a devastating hit when the 9-11 Commission declared there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.” Roberts concluded with a harsh judgment: “The report is yet another blow to the President’s credibility.”
“The 9/11 Commission contradicts the White House today,” NBC’s David Gregory contended on Nightly News, “particularly on claims that Iraq and al-Qaeda were linked before the war.” Gregory at least pointed out how “the report reveals for the first time that in 1994 an Iraqi intelligence official met Osama bin Laden in Sudan,” but he decided that “it’s clear this report is a blow to the President’s rationale for war.”
Over on ABC’s World News Tonight, Terry Moran proposed: “After the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq undermined President Bush’s main argument for going to war, this new finding by the 9-11 Commission challenges his case on another front.”
Unmentioned by ABC, how maybe the Bush administration believed there was a bin Laden-Saddam connection because they believed ABC News. In a story aired in a prime time news magazine show on Thursday, January 14, 1999, then-ABC News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reported how a few months after the embassy bombings in Africa and U.S. retaliation against Sudan, bin Laden “reaches out to his friends in Iraq and Sudan.” MacVicar trumpeted how “ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief, named Farouk Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad.”
I tracked down that ABC News story after seeing it referred to in an excerpt from a new book by Stephen Hayes, “The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America,” published in the June 7 Weekly Standard. Hayes cited similar news stories in Newsweek, the AP and NPR, in the 1998-99 range, which assumed bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were cooperative.
The Weekly Standard titled its excerpt, “The Connection: Not so long ago, the ties between Iraq and al Qaeda were conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom was right.” In the book, Hayes recited numerous pieces of evidence of how Iraq and al-Qaeda had a mutually beneficial relationship. Here’s an excerpt from the Weekly Standard’s book excerpt in which Hayes recounted how the media assumed such a relationship, based on information provided by Clinton administration officials:
There was a time not long ago when the conventional wisdom skewed heavily toward a Saddam-al Qaeda links. In 1998 and early 1999, the Iraq-al Qaeda connection was widely reported in the American and international media. Former intelligence officers and government officials speculated about the relationship and its dangerous implications for the world. The information in the news reports came from foreign and domestic intelligence services. It was featured in mainstream media outlets including international wire services, prominent newsweeklies, and network radio and television broadcasts.
Newsweek magazine ran an article in its January 11, 1999, issue headed "Saddam + Bin Laden?" "Here's what is known so far," it read:
“Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas -- assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer.”
....NPR reporter Mike Shuster interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, and offered this report:
“Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait....Some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee when he said bin Laden was planning additional attacks on American targets.”
By mid-February 1999, journalists did not even feel the need to qualify these claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. An Associated Press dispatch that ran in the Washington Post ended this way: "The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."
Where did journalists get the idea that Saddam and bin Laden might be coordinating efforts? Among other places, from high-ranking Clinton administration officials.
In the spring of 1998 -- well before the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa -- the Clinton administration indicted Osama bin Laden. The indictment, unsealed a few months later, prominently cited al Qaeda's agreement to collaborate with Iraq on weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton Justice Department had been concerned about negative public reaction to its potentially capturing bin Laden without "a vehicle for extradition," official paperwork charging him with a crime. It was "not an afterthought" to include the al Qaeda-Iraq connection in the indictment, says an official familiar with the deliberations. "It couldn't have gotten into the indictment unless someone was willing to testify to it under oath." The Clinton administration's indictment read unequivocally:
“Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”
END of Excerpt
For the full Weekly Standard excerpt of the book: www.weeklystandard.com
For Amazon.com’s page on the book: www.amazon.com
Hayes also cited a January 1999 ABC story and, utilizing the MRC video archive, I tracked it down. The above-quoted MacVicar piece aired Thursday, January 14, 1999 on the short-lived ABC prime time magazine program, Crime and Justice. This one-topic edition, which featured John Miller’s interview in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden, carried the title, “Target America: The Terrorist War.” Anchor Cynthia McFadden’s plug for the hour predicted the danger ahead: “Tonight, an exclusive ABC News interview with the man who declared war on the United States: Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. His loyal foot soldiers are even here in the U.S., hidden among us, awaiting his call to deadly action.”
Sheila MacVicar, who a short time later jumped to CNN, and I believe she has recently departed from CNN, provided an overview of the bin Laden-Hussein relationship: “Saddam Hussein has a long history of harboring terrorists. Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, the most notorious terrorists of their era, all found shelter and support at one time in Baghdad. Intelligence sources say bin Laden's long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan's fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
“Three weeks after the bombing [by the U.S. in Sudan], on August 31, bin Laden reaches out to his friends in Iraq and Sudan. [over video of Iraqi man cheek to cheek with Sudanese men] Iraq's Vice President arrives in Khartoum to show his support for the Sudanese after the U.S. attack. ABC News has learned that during these meetings, senior Sudanese officials, acting on behalf of bin Laden, ask if Saddam Hussein would grant him asylum.
“Iraq was, indeed, interested. ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief, named Farouk Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad.”
A CNN-posted story by MacVicar with a picture of her: www.cnn.com
A fan site, apparently, that I came across via Google: home.wanadoo.nl
All the media hullabaloo over the 9-11 Commission’s claims stemmed from one paragraph on page 5 of “Staff Statement No. 15,” titled “Overview of the Enemy.” The paragraph:
“Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein’s secular regime. Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”
The report is online, as a PDF, at: wid.ap.org
The AP’s posting: www.9-11commission.gov
A more complete rundown of the June 16 ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscast stories, all of which followed a lead story about how the commission reported that al-Qaeda planned to use ten airliners on 9-11.
-- ABC’s World News Tonight. Peter Jennings intoned: “One of the Bush administration’s most controversial assertions in its argument for war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda. Today the 9-11 Commission said, unequivocally, not so.”
On screen:
No connection
between
al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein
From the White House, Terry Moran checked in: “After the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq undermined President Bush’s main argument for going to war, this new finding by the 9-11 Commission challenges his case on another front. The 9-11 Commission staff report was categorical.”
Douglass MacEachin, former CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence, at the hearing: “So far we have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”
Moran: “The commission’s conclusion was based on the work of all U.S. intelligence agencies going back more than a decade. In addition, in recent interrogations, captured al-Qaeda leaders have adamantly denied any ties to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But the Bush administration continues to link the two. Vice President Cheney on Monday said this of Saddam.”
Cheney, in Florida: “He was a patron of terrorism. He had long established ties with al-Qaeda.”
Moran: “Over the past two years the Vice President in particular has aggressively pushed the notion of an al-Qaeda/Saddam alliance, describing it in dire terms.”
Cheney on October 10, 2003: “He also had an established relationship with al-Qaeda, providing training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gasses, making conventional bombs.”
Moran: “Today’s 9-11 Commission report cast doubt on that claim, describing attempts by bin Laden in the mid-1990s to get help from Iraq, but the report concludes 'Iraq apparently never responded.’ President Bush yesterday backed up his Vice President, arguing that the presence of al-Qaeda associate Abu al-Zarqawi in Iraq, both before and after the war, proves the link.”
Bush: “Zarqawi’s the best evidence of a connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda.”
Moran went on to note how the White House says the commission report “does not in any way contradict” the Bush case for war, and he ran a soundbite of White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett maintaining that no tie to the 9–11 plot is “not inconsistent with” a “broader relationship.”
Moran then concluded: “The commission found, however, that the only relationship between Iraq an al-Qaeda was an apparent agreement not to attack each other.”
-- CBS Evening News. Dan Rather announced at the top of his program: “The independent commission also directly contradicted one of President Bush’s justifications for going to war against Iraq.”
After a piece by Jim Stewart, Rather set up a story from John Roberts: “What about bin Laden and Saddam Hussein? Was there or was there not, as the Bush administration still insists, a working connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda?”
From the White House, Roberts answered: “It is one of President Bush’s last surviving justifications for war in Iraq and today it took a devastating hit when the 9-11 Commission declared there was [with words on screen] no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.”
Joseph Cirincione, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “I think this is the clearest case of the administration deliberately misleading the American public in order to rally support for war and that misleading worked.”
Roberts: “But the White House is not backing down. Just Monday Vice President Cheney repeated his assertion that Iraq had well-established ties with al-Qaeda. President Bush stood behind Cheney the very next day and late this afternoon the White House claimed the intelligence is on their side.”
Dan Bartlett: “And what the Director of the CIA has testified before Congress to, is that there were multiple sources indicating a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.”
Roberts proceeded to contend that the White House has “frequently” thrown Iraq, links to terror and 9/11 attacks in “the same pot,” and he illustrated that with a clip of Cheney, on NBC’s Meet the Press on September 14, 2003, contending that Iraq was the “geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Roberts picked up: “Those repeated associations left the majority of Americans believing Saddam was involved in 9/11. But the commission today put the nail in that connection, or for that matter, any other al-Qaeda acts of terror against America, declaring 'there is no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.’ The report is yet another blow to the President’s credibility as he struggles to find the exit door in Iraq and opens him up to new criticism on the wisdom of taking on Saddam with al-Qaeda’s leadership still at large.”
After another clip of Cirincione, Roberts concluded:
“While Bush officials are sticking to their story of an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection, they are trying to change the subject, suggesting today that the real question here is whether or not anyone can argue that Iraq and the world aren’t better off without Saddam Hussein.”
-- NBC Nightly News. Tom Brokaw reported: “And the 9/11 Commission also has come to some conclusions about the link, or the absence of it, between Iraq and al-Qaeda. As NBC’s David Gregory reports from the White House tonight, the Commission is sharply at odds with what leading members of the administration continue to claim.”
Gregory began, as taken down by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: “Vice President Cheney is as adamant as ever about a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. He spoke in Florida Monday.”
Dick Cheney, on Monday: “He had long-established ties with al-Qaeda.”
Gregory: “When asked about the proof of such claims, the President pointed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist now in Iraq who is believed to be behind much of the violence directed against U.S. soldiers.”
George W. Bush, on Tuesday: “Zarqawi is the best evidence of a connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda. He’s the person who’s still killing.”
Gregory: “But the 9/11 Commission contradicts the White House today, particularly on claims that Iraq and al-Qaeda were linked before the war. The report reveals for the first time that in 1994 an Iraqi intelligence official met Osama bin Laden in Sudan. Bin Laden requested space to establish training camps and help getting weapons, but the report said Iraq apparently never responded. The report said that the meeting and other contacts between Iraq and bin Laden 'do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.’ The Commission also debunked the administration’s claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April of 2001 saying, ‘We do not believe that such a meeting occurred.’ Critics say the President has gone out of his way to blur the lines between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.”
Bush: “The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States, and war is what they got.”
Gregory: “Last fall, the President was pressed about the connection.”
Bush: “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September the 11th.”
Gregory: “And, in fact, today the Commission reported, ‘We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States. The White House isn’t backing down tonight, insisting there always was an Iraq-al-Qaeda link. But it’s clear this report is a blow to the President’s rationale for war. David Gregory, NBC News, the White House.”