I noticed that BBC line... also noticed the article uses a source by the name of former CIA employee Michael Scheuer of the Jamestown Foundation. I wonder if he was the source of that line about al-Libby.
1998 : (BIN LADEN ASKS IRAQ FOR ADVANCED WEAPONS INCLUDING CBW AND "POISONS" ACCORDING TO INTEL FROM VARIOUS SOURCES - See AL QAEDA'S IBN AL-SHAYKH AL-LIBI) Then we have the smoking vial, the intelligence that a link-up between the maniacs of al Qaeda with the resources of the Baathist terror-state [Iraq] was real, and that it could lead to attacks more devastating than 9/11: 26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training. The analysis of this report follows. CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's [Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi a senior al Qaeda operative's] timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons." Again, all this is amazing stuff: a phenomenally important story, if true. "-------- http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1923465/posts
from the thread:
Startling implications of a Jihadi letter
American Thinker ^ | November 09, 2007 | Ray Robison
New light is being shed on the 2001 anthrax attacks in a fascinating open letter to Ayman al Zawahiri of al Qaeda, written by a jihadi living in London.
Numan Bin Uthman, a former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, provides yet more evidence that the global Islamic jihad movement is losing its resolve. But the letter contains a startling admission. Uthman tells us of a conversation he had with al Qaeda leaders before the 9/11 attacks in which he urged them not to use WMD. From AKI News:
Uthman also said that he had taken part in an important al-Qaeda summit in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2000, in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had defined search for and use of weapons of mass destruction as a "Sharia obligation". "During this occasion, I had a strong dispute with the martyr Abu Hafs al-Kumandan, because he was heavily involved in acquiring weapons of mass destruction," he said in the letter.I was unfamiliar with the name "al Kumandan" but there is a well known al Qaeda leader named Abu Hafs who is a "martyr" and was killed by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. Looking up Kumandan on the internet I found a reference and it seems to mean "commander". Abu Hafs has been identified as Usama bin Laden's WMD chaser. He fits Uthman's description. He was the number three man in al Qaeda.
Controversial informant Ibn Sheik al Libi identified Abu Hafs, otherwise known as Mohammad Atef as a contact between al Qaeda and the Saddam regime for procurement of WMD, before he recanted.
In a previous article I noted that a new al Qaeda document matched very well with a Saddam regime document. The linkage between the documents gave a chain of command and time-line from a Saddam regime order to "hunt Americans" in Somalia followed by a Abu Hafs order just two days later that would lead to that ultimate end.
I have also argued publicly that the 2001 anthrax attack makes a lot more sense as a continuation of the 9/11 attacks than as the plot of some embittered scientist....(/snip)