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Saddam may be target Americans are looking for
London Telegraph ^ | 9/17/01 | R James Woolsey, former director of the CIA

Posted on 09/17/2001 7:26:33 AM PDT by truthandlife

IN the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on the 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.

 
Saddam Hussein

To this end, investigators should revisit the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre. 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 the 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 Centre 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 radicalised 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 hostile different one (a sound file in Yousef's computer, for example, includes his voice saying "Shut up, you bitch").

What incentive would the US 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 was ousted, federal prosecutors and the White House have hewed to the line that most terrorist attacks on the United States are either the product of "loose networks" of folk 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 yet, there is no evidence of explicit state sponsorship of the Sept 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.

The chinks already have appeared in the Taliban armour. In February 2000, there was an uprising in Khost, in the Taliban heartland (the area struck by US missiles in August 1998), which resulted in the sacking of a Taliban governor. Likewise, an uprising was narrowly avoided last year in Jalalabad, and one actually occurred in the south-eastern Nimruz province.

While the wobbly-kneed among British and American policymakers and academics may argue that after two decades of war, the Afghans are immune to bombing, the Taliban are not. Taliban ministries, schools, and the well-guarded estates of high officials like Mullah Omar or the foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil, can be targeted. So long as it does not result in an occupation, ordinary Afghans will welcome US and British assistance in freeing themselves from a terrorist regime.

This article first appeared in New Republic. R James Woolsey is a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington DC. He served as director of central intelligence from February 1993 to January 1995.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
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1 posted on 09/17/2001 7:26:34 AM PDT by truthandlife
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To: truthandlife
Bomb him just because.
2 posted on 09/17/2001 7:31:26 AM PDT by Peach
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To: truthandlife
Clinton overlooked Saddam's involvement in order to avoid making a difficult decision? Preposterous!
3 posted on 09/17/2001 7:39:56 AM PDT by Plutarch
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To: Plutarch
America's 8 year dalliance with WJC is tragically coming home to roost.

Is it just me or does Hillary seem extremely subdued and is staying in the background? When she speaks, I am struck at the shallowness with which she comes across. (Even moreso than the past)

My gut feeling and intuition is there's something BIG that could destroy the Clintons.

4 posted on 09/17/2001 8:15:12 AM PDT by Paraclete
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To: truthandlife
Osama bin Laden is just another multimillionaire playboy wasting his daddy's money. I suspect that he was the kind of kid who couldn't be trusted around the farm animals or household pets, and doesn't know his right hand from his left...the kind of kid who not only had to leave home, but leave the country. Most of these do themselves in in incidents with cars or guns when they're still young. I do have a point here, which is that he could very well be a figurehead or straw man with someone a lot smarter behind him and using his money, and I agree that Saddam Hussein would certainly be a key suspect.
5 posted on 09/17/2001 8:26:14 AM PDT by vvpete
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To: truthandlife, rdavis84, golitely, OKCsubmariner, honway, nita nupress
But late last year, AEI Press published Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a careful book about the bombing by the 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.

wary inkterestink.

6 posted on 09/17/2001 8:42:13 AM PDT by thinden
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To: Paraclete
Something Big

Well consider this, just last year the Clintons granted clemency to the FALN terrorists who killed police officers and set off fire bombs on American streets.

It disgusted me to see Hillary standing next those firemen and officers this morning.

www.DeclarationofWar.org
7 posted on 09/17/2001 8:50:14 AM PDT by Spin
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To: truthandlife
I caught Woolsey twice and another security guy who agreed with him, over the weekend. I hope our new intelligence people are being careful and checking all avenues. To me Bin Laden is guilty but a fall guy. This operation was planned by another agency. That's who we want to bomb, and I believe it is Saddam. Even if we don't have proof positive that would stand up in court, I'd take him out while we have a second chance.

Anyone wonder how we go from knowing nothing to knowing everything in less than a week? The trails left are distractions and part of the plan. I think the agent in charge of the WTC operation was like Yousef, an Iraqui agent. I'd bet he was here right up to the end, and left before things got shut down. If they check international fight manifests, which I hope they have already done, for flights coming in recently and leaving before the attacks to places like London, Amsterdam, Rome, I'll bet they will find a name that isn't real, but is the guy.

8 posted on 09/17/2001 9:20:29 AM PDT by JeanLM
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To: BlueDogDemo,golitely,LSJohn,Judge Parker,honway,t-shirt,thinden,Uncle Bill,Wallaby
BUMP
9 posted on 09/17/2001 10:26:09 AM PDT by OKCSubmariner
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To: Paraclete
**Is it just me or does Hillary seem extremely subdued and is staying in the background? When she speaks, I am struck at the shallowness with which she comes across. (Even moreso than the past) **

#97 has always been shallow... She has ice water running through her veins. What you see and hear is what you get. She's vile.

10 posted on 09/17/2001 10:47:19 AM PDT by homeschool mama
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To: rwz,bub
BUMP
11 posted on 09/17/2001 11:03:20 AM PDT by OKCSubmariner
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To: JeanLM
I agree. I think Woolsey is the most credible expert who has spoken since last Tuesday. I wish he were back at the CIA. He says that while it's obvious Bin Laden is guilty, he is calling too much attention to himself and we should not be fooled by this. I personally have thought that Sadsdam Hussein has a hand in this and it's personal. W's dad defeated him and now he's back for junior. I know this has been in the planning for longer than X43 has been in office, but I think his being there is additional motive for Hussein to carry out his evil intentions.
12 posted on 09/17/2001 11:07:27 AM PDT by twigs
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To: truthandlife
The Mossad is also claiming that Iraq, as well as Osama bin Ladin, is involved in the WTC/Pentagon attack.

It is wise to remember that there were two conferences earlier this year, the first in Beirut and the second in Tehran, that brought together all of the extreme and fundementalist anti-Western Muslim nations and terrorist organizations. It must be assumed that these people are able to cooperate with each other to pull off major attacks.

13 posted on 09/17/2001 11:45:55 AM PDT by Magician
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To: Plutarch, OKCSubmariner, BlueDogDemo, truthandlife, independentmind, Askel5, rwz
Clinton overlooked Saddam's involvement in order to avoid making a difficult decision? Preposterous!

Saddam's involvement was overlooked, IMO, but not by Clinton. The national security/foreign policy apparatus does not want to take Saddam out now for the same reason GHWB didn't want to in 1991 -- there is no potential leader on the horizon in Iraq likely to succeed him who is thought to have the wherewithall to maintain the semblance of strength and stability in Iraq sufficient to continue an effective counterbalance to Iran.

What does it mean that Woolsey is floating Saddam's name? Is he now out of the loop so free to say what he really thinks, or an agent floating this balloon for a reason we can't imagine?

14 posted on 09/17/2001 11:59:42 AM PDT by LSJohn
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To: roughrider, Poobah, Nita Nupress, logos, Travis McGee
fyi -- also please see #14
15 posted on 09/17/2001 12:03:30 PM PDT by LSJohn
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To: Peach
Bomb him just because.

No.

Initial surrender on his and his regimes part or ground invasion, end of his regime and occupation.

This is war. For our safety and victory he must be removed.

Just like the German Nazis and Japanese in WWII.

16 posted on 09/17/2001 12:07:36 PM PDT by tallhappy
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Comment #17 Removed by Moderator

Comment #18 Removed by Moderator

To: Peach
did we ever stop?
19 posted on 09/17/2001 12:34:10 PM PDT by CJ Wolf
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To: truthandlife
Osama Yo Mama + Saddim Whose Sane? + Election of Dubya + Desert Storm + Kuwait's Existence = WTC & Pentagon attacks.

The more I think about it, the more sense this makes....

20 posted on 09/17/2001 12:41:21 PM PDT by kahoutek
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