Posted on 10/06/2004 7:49:44 AM PDT by focusandclarity
TRAIL OF TERROR Secret intelligence memo links Saddam, bin Laden Relationship involved training in WMD, financial support for 9-11 hijacker Atta
Posted: November 15, 2003 8:00 p.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, as well as financial and logistical support, and may have included the bombing of the USS Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks.
That's the assessment of a 16-page top secret government memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee, reports the Weekly Standard.
The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. The memo cites reports from a variety of domestic and foreign spy agencies including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources.
According to the Weekly Standard, the memo reports Saddam's willingness to help bin Laden plot against Americans began in 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War, and continued through last March, the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It says bin Laden sent ''emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials.'' At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, ''Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to al-Qaida.''
The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al-Qaida-affiliated National Islamic Front.
A defector reported that ''al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al-Qaida relationship." The defector said Iraq sought al-Qaida influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al-Qaida with training and instructors.
Another man, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim — who's described as the terror lord's ''best friend'' — was involved in planning the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
The Weekly Standard report says bin Laden visited Baghdad in January 1998 and met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz ''to establish camps in Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan.''
The CIA believes ''fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement'' in the bombing of the USS Cole in Oct. 2000, according to the memo.
Two members of al-Qaida were sent to Iraq following the attack on the USS Cole, to be trained in weapons of mass destruction and to obtain information on ''poisons and gases.''
And according to the CIA, in December of 2000, the Saudi National Guard went on alert after learning Saddam agreed to ''assist al-Qaida in attacking U.S./UK interests in Saudi Arabia.''
The report also contains new information about alleged meetings between the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks Mohamed Atta and former Iraqi intelligence chief Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani.
The memo says the men met several times in the Czech Republic city of Prague and Iraq authorized the transfer of funds to Atta.
The relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued in the aftermath of Sept. 11. An al-Qaida associate helped to set up ''sleeper cells" in Baghdad beginning in October 2002. And Iraq agreed, following a ''secret deal'' last year, to provide money and weapons to al-Qaida and to obtain Iraqi and Syrian passports for its members.
As WorldNetDaily has often reported, compelling evidence of an Iraq-Al-Qaida link have been widely known for years. Yossef Bodansky, who as former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare has been Congress' foremost terrorism expert, documents in his book "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America" how Saddam has supported al-Qaida for over a decade.
One example, widely reported before the Iraq war, concerned the Boeing 707 fuselage Saddam Hussein provided terrorists for practicing airline hijackings. Indeed, commercial satellite photos show the fuselage at the notorious terrorist training camp near a bend in the Tigris.
Specifically, says Iraqi defector Sabah Khalifa Alami, Iraqi intelligence trained groups at Salman Pak on how to hijack planes without weapons. It's not specifically known whether al-Qaida operatives trained at Salman Pak.
When confronted about the camp, Baghdad has repeatedly told U.N. inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces.
And as WorldNetDaily reported last December, 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."
Related stories:
WND stories on al-Qaida-Iraq link
this "Assessment of a 16-page top secret government memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee"!
As tax payers, whose money paid for this intelligence, and whose money is paying every congressman, congresswoman's's and senator's wages and whose votes put these guys and women in their office, I say we want this information to come out now! Now, not after the November 2 election!
I am fed up with the crumbs we've been given, the bi-partisan collusion and hush-hush, and the double talk (references to Al Qaida and Iraq terrorism connection in 9/11 Commission Report). I want to see what they "saw" now!
"That's the assessment of a 16-page top secret government memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee, reports the Weekly Standard."
And who in the news sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee?
bookmark
As long as you promise never to let the information fall into the hands of a bad person and all terrorists promise not to read it. /sarcasm
I think that last comment should read,
" And who in the news [ocassionally, when it suits him] sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee?"
Ah yes, I stand corrected.
Thanks for noting that information about the "member of the Senate Intelligence Committee" in your reply...I was so steamed I forgot to mention it.
Of course, that could explain exactly WHY this Nameless Person is unaware of these details. Maybe he was at the Barber that day (or does he use a hair dresser???)
THANKS
SENT TO EMAIL LIST.
If a reports such as those cited in the Newsmax article truly do exist, and if (given the fact that Saddam has fallen, and can't get up) it is now time to declassify, or sanitize (i.e. remove all references to the sources and means), then the Administration would be better served to release that information NOW, rather than waiting until two days before the election to divulge what they know. Such information, if released at the 11th hour, will lead to a Democrat defense that "we didn't know what the Administration didn't tell us", followed by a counter-charge that Bush Administration had not "leveled" with the American people. Indeed, the Democrats, knowing that there would not be time to confirm the provenance and genuineness of such reports a few days before the election, may simply "brazen it out", and accuse Mr. Bush of producing false documents. And for God's sake, if the Administration has the goods on Saddam and WMD, Saddam and Al Qaeda and/or Saddam and 9/11, let them release that information to a slightly less partisan organization than WorldNet daily or Newsmax.
Is there any way you could post what you wrote here again as a new thread or topic. You said exactly what I was thinking and I feel we need to keep this info and (as you wrote) idea going through out the day. I fear the country for the most part (those not getting their news from a variety of sources on the internet) is drowning in misinformation or lack of information...how else would Kerry and Edwards get away with so many distortions of the real facts.
If you can do this in any way or even start a new thread with some of your ideas I for one would be a very appreciative American.
Thanks for pointing that out. I guess what I really want to see is all the "Top Secret" stuff. Does the article mean that these SIC (Senate Intell Committee) Guys didn't see the actual testimony and proof, just the assessment only?
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