In in 1998, an Arab intelligence officer, who knows Saddam personally, predicted in Newsweek: "Very soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis." The Arab official said these terror operations would be run under "false flags" --spook-speak for front groups--including bin Laden's organization.
Then there were the predictions by an Iraqi with ties to Iraqi intelligence, Naeem Abd Mulhalhal, in Qusay's own newspaper several weeks before the attacks that stated bin Laden would “demolish the Pentagon after he destroys the White House and ”bin Laden would strike America “on the arm that is already hurting.” (referencing a second IRAQI sponsored attack on the World Trade Center). Another reference to New York was “[bin Laden] will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra everytime he hears his songs.” (e.g., “New York, New York”) which identified New York, New York as a target. Mulhalhal also stated, “The wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same in the heart of a believer." which references an airplane attack.
The Arabic language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabic also cited the cooperation between Iraq, bin Laden and Al December 1998 editorial, which predicted that “President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama Bin-Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world.” This info is in the link provided below. How could these people have had foreknowledge without Iraq being involved?
Warning...slow loading .pdf file. This was from a lawsuit filed against Iraq after 9/11...the court ruled against Iraq.
There was also another lawsuit filed by the family of John O’Neill (a former FBI agent who captured Ramzi Yousef after the 1993 WTC bombings) after he died in the WTC on 9/11. His personal files from his years of traveling around the world investigating al-Qaeda are were used as evidence in the lawsuit. The evidence includes documents unearthed in the headquarters of the Mukhabarat (Iraq's intelligence service) and information gleaned from the interrogation of both al-Qaeda and Iraqi prisoners. (Link below). It also quotes Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA counter-terrorism chief, who stated in October 2000 that Iraq had been wanting to carry out terrorist attacks, and that the Iraqi military had been in contact with Osama bin Laden.
We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
Weekly Standard: The Mother of All Connections
List of newspaper article in the 90's which mention the world's concern regarding the growing relationship between OBL and Saddam:
Son of Saddam coordinates OBL activities:
The AQ connection (excellent):
Western Nightmare:
Saddam's link to OBL:
NYT: Iraq and AQ agree to cooperate:
Document linking them:
Iraq and terrorism - no doubt about it:
A federal judge rules there are links:
Wall Street Journal on Iraq and AQ:
Iraq and Iran contact OBL:
More evidence:
Saddam's AQ connection:
Further connections:
What a court of law said about the connections:
Some miscellaneous stuff on connections:
Saddam's Ambassador to Al Qaeda: (February 2004, Weekly Standard)
Yes - it's NewsMax but loaded with interesting bullet points.
Saddam's Fingerprints on NY Bombing (Wall Street Journal, June 1993)
Colin Powell: Iraq and AQ Partners for Years (CNN, February 2003)
The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connections (September 2003, Richard Miniter)
Oil for Food Scandal Ties Iraq and Al Qaeda (June 2003)
Saddam and OBL Make a Pact (The New Yorker, February 2003):
Al Qaeda's Poison Gas (Wall Street Journal, April 2004):
Wolfowitz Says Saddam behind 9/11 Attacks:
Saddam behind first WTC attack - PBS, Laurie Mylroie:
Growing Evidence of Saddam and Al Qaeda Link, The Weekly Standard, July 2003:
Qusay Hussein Coordinated Iraq special operations with Bin Laden Terrorist Activities, Yossef Bodansky, National Press Club
The Western Nightmare: Saddam and Bin Laden vs. the Rest of the World, The Guardian Unlimited:
Saddam Link to Bin Laden, Julian Borger, The Guardian, February 1999
The Al Qaeda Connection, The Weekly Standard, July 2003
Cheney lectures Russert on Iraq/911 Link, September 2003:
No Question About It, National Review, September 2003
Iraq: A Federal Judges Point of View
Mohammed's Account links Iraq to 9/11 and OKC:
Free Republic Thread that mentions some books Freepers might be interested in on this topic:
The Proof that Saddam Worked with AQ, The Telegraph, April 2003:
Saddam's AQ Connection, The Weekly Standard, September 2003
September 11 Victims Sue Iraq:
Osama's Best Friend: The Further Connections Between Al Qaeda and Saddam, The Weekly Standard, November 2003
Terrorist Behind 9/11 Attacks Trained by Saddam, The Telegraph, December 2003
James Woolsey Links Iraq and AQ, CNN Interview, March 2004, Also see Posts #34 and #35
A Geocities Interesting Web Site with maps and connections:
Bin Laden indicted in federal court, read down to find information that Bin Laden agreed to not attack Iraq and to work cooperatively with Iraq:
Case Closed, The Weekly Standard, November 03
CBS - Lawsuit: Iraq involved in 9/11:
Exploring Iraq's Involvement in pre-9/11 Acts, The Indianapolis Star:
The Iraq/AQ Connection: Richard Minister again
Militia Defector says Baghdad trained Al Qaeda fighters in chemical weapons, July 2002
The Clinton View of Iraq/AQ Ties, The Weekly Standard, December 2003
Saddam Controlled the Camps (Iraq/AQ Ties): The London Observer, November 01
Saddam's Terror Ties that Critics Ignore, National Review, October 2003:
Tape Shows General Wesley Clark linking Iraq and AQ:
The Missing Link (What the Senate Ingelligence Report Said about Iraq/AQ Connections) Click Here
Credit to Peach for the above info.
Credit to joesbucks for the following links:
Dozens of links here:
Just a few of those links include:
The Clinton Justice Department's indictment against OBL in federal court which mentions the terrorist's connections to Iraq. November 4, 1998. The federal indictment:
Iraq and AQ agree to cooperate. The federal indictment against OBL working in concert with Iraq and Iran is mentioned. November 1998. The New York Times
Saddam reaching out to OBL January 1, 1999. Newsweek
ABC news reports on the Osama/Saddam connections January 14, 1999. ABC News
Western Nightmare: Saddam and OBL versus the World. Iraq recruited OBL. February 6, 1999. The Guardian
Saddam's Link to OBL February 6, 1999. The Guardian
Saddam offered asylum to bin Laden February 13, 1999. AP
And kabar submitted these two little gems showing Bin Laden supported Iraq and its struggle against the US and the West.
1996 Fatwa: "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places."
I haven't had time to read trough them all, but I couldn't find this (Abu Nidal, September 11 and Saddam The terrorist network may be closer knit than we think) in your list.
It provides a link not between Iraq and Atta, but between Ziad Jarrah (plane 4 hijacker), his great uncle, and Iraq. According to the article and articles published in the German magazine Der Spiegel the elder Jarrah was run by the East German secret police, STASI.
The East Germans had a lot of connections both with Iraq and Arab/Islamic terror organizations. Here are few quotations from "The Stasi Files" by Anthony Glees published by Simon & Schuster, 2003 (A Glees is a professor of Contemporary History, and one of the last researchers to gain access to the Stasi archives in Berlin before the German government reclassified key parts of it as secret in 2002):
p 215: It is important to recall that in a key interview in Die Welt in April 1990, a leading member of the East German regime, Alexander Schalk-Golodowski, admitted that the GDR had channeled arms to the Middle East to the tune of DM 650 million by 1989 (19). The chief recipient of these weapons had been groups in Iraq, Jordan and Egypt [.......] He added that Stasi had used a "technical engineering company" to conceal the GDR's lethal trade in arms.
Then follows an interesting discussion about two former Stasi agents, Erich Schwager and Edgar Uher, where the former was an expert in chemical and radiation protection - in other words WMD "and his knowledge of chemical weaponry, strongly suggest that he was at the time deeply involved in the secret arms trade, selling East German weapons to Arab and Latin American terrorist groups from his London base and possibly to the IRA as well." (p. 216)
Today Schwager and Uher are involved with two companies MZ-B (sales of motorcycle parts) and Moha who undertakes "industrial engineering" and was established 1986 by a MK Hadeed and is based in Amman, Jordan.
Professor Glees is careful to point out that there is nothing to indicate that the company based in the Middle East has anything to do with Schwager's previous activities, however he finds it "breathtaking that, at the time of writing, Schwager had not been called to account for his activities in the 1980s. (p. 217)
Further on p 217: The Stasi involvement with terrorism, in particular Middle Eastern and Islamic terrorism, was not known about before February 1990. (23) [.......] By June 1990 the arrest of Susanne Albrecht, who had murdered the banker Jûrgen Ponto, showed an even more chilling aspect of the Stasi's links with international terrorism: in 1977 the Stasi had arranged for her to find refuge in South Yemen.
(I will come back to first statement in this paragraph since this has bearing on the Able Danger affair, I believe.)
p. 219: Further evidence of the Stasi's interest in promoting Arab terrorism, especially in Iraq and the Lebanon, emerged from a further 1990 interview. (26).
References
19: Gesamtdeutsches Institut/Bundesanstalt für gesamtdeutsches Aufgaben, Dokumentation, vol. 3, p.37.
23: Ibid. vol 4, pp. 24-9.
26: Ibid. vol 4, pp. 65-8.
Some points to make:
I have not been able to find any link between Schwager / Uher and Jarrah or MK Hadeed. However, Assem Omar Jarrah's activities are interesting, and the suspicions are certainly strengthened in the light of Schalk-Golodowski's statement regarding GDR's arms trade and how it was concealed. Not data mining, but there seems to be a pattern.
Then I would like to take issue with the statement that Stasi's involvement with terrorism was not known before 1990. Some people did know it. Claire Sterling wrote a book about in 1981, and Bill Casey and the people he brought with him to the CIA did know about it. However, others also at the CIA had made a career of denying this connection, and of course the State Department was totally opposed to any link between the terror organizations and Soviet Russia and its allies.
I have posted a number of posts on FR both re Bill Casey and Sterling's "Terror Network" and also Senator D'Amato quoting Ms Sterling in the US Senate regarding the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, another issue where Bill Casey and "the old CIA" had very different views.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/1991_cr/s911105-gates2.htm
Of course after the fall of the Berlin wall and all that followed it has been shown conclusively that Casey / Sterling were right and the naysayers were wrong. However, these facts have come to earth slowly, slowly and the whole issue about the Soviet Union's use of terror to destabilize the West is now thought of as an academic, historical question. Thus, many people (politicians, academics, operatives within the intelligence community) have never seen the need to reassess their views on things.
And that is why the Iraq / Al Queda connection is so dangerous. And it may become even worse if it is shown that not only is it a "Muslim thing" but that it can also be traced back to the non-acknowledged activities by the Soviet Union and its proxies.
Definitely, the evidence regarding the Gorelick wall points to a cover up to protect the Clinton's from unwarranted investigations, but I would like to make the point that this is not the only agenda that was (and is) played out. There are many careers riding on the outcome of this affair. (And not only careers, but the balance between State and DOD.)
I pointed out in a one of my first comments on the Able Danger affair that this is dangerous ground and it appears that people have already lost their positions (or more) due to the conflict regarding the Iraq - al Quaeda connection.
(See this link and post #68 and compare with this:
Pentagon challenges Rockefeller on Feith hit
Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links
All I can say is cudos to LtCol Schaffer for joining this battle which is promising to be long and bloody.
you guys are amazing -- pulling all this information together is a skill needed in our gov't agencies -- and apparently, when there, is dismissed