Posted on 06/02/2004 11:41:36 AM PDT by Eurotwit
Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".
The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.
Abu Nidal, who was responsible for the failed assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London in 1982, was based in Baghdad for more than two decades.
ping
NRO: It's been suggested by Isikoff and others that some of the evidence turns up nowadays is forged, that you can't take it on its face value. To what extent is the evidence you present corroborated by other evidence, other documented meetings, etc?--from National Review Online[Stephen] Hayes: I think they're right on that point — and it's almost never a good idea to take these things at face value. There was a report that surfaced in December 2003 that suggested that Mohammed Atta had been in Baghdad during the summer of 2001. And, a little too conveniently, the very same document claimed that the U.S. was seeking uranium from Niger. There's little question that the three-page report was forged. (An interesting side note: That document came not from Ahmed Chalabi, but from CIA favorite Iyad Allawi, the new Iraqi interim prime minister. Allawi has long argued that there was a significant relationship between Saddam's Mukhabarat and al Qaeda.)
Thanks for the reminder!
What was the buzz on this last year?
Sounds juuuuussst a little too pat. They should have included a "PS - We moved all our WMDs out of the country before the invasion. Check Syria."
the U.S. was seeking uranium from Niger??? ...well if it's on the internet it must be true.
Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily think that makes the memo genuine. But, if the memo's really fake, that was a pretty lousy way to convince people. In fact it was nothing if not a surefire way to make people smell "coverup", even if there was none.
And there's been absolute silence since, hasn't there?
Might be interesting to see if the new interim Iraqi leader is ever asked about this at a press conference, eh? :-)
Hayes obviously misspoke.
Would be nice to know how Hayes comes to that conclusion. Is it based on the findings of the handwriting expert who didn't see the actual memo?
But all we really know is Chalabi told a top Iranian spy the US broke a tippy-top secret Iranian code. We really know this because the top Iranian spy secretly communicated to Tehran in the tippy-top secret code that the same tippy-top secret code had been broken.
Or so I read...
No Kidding ???!!!! Who would have thunk
Unfortunately, if he is ever asked about this connection, it won't be by an English speaking reporter and the media would never bother printing the translation if it undermines their ideology.
Well, if that is correct, the new PM seems to be a liar.
and if there were, we would only hear about it through OUR lovely interpreters - the partisan media.
Wow, prepare for a huge onslaugt of stories on the evening news, WashComPost and NySlimes.
don't expect the 3 stooges to pick up on this.
Well, but ideology cuts both ways. Wouldn't they want to trap the new US-approved Iraqi interim leader into admitting having foisted fraudulent documents on the American public in an effort to curry favor and gain prominence with the US occupiers? That would lead to a "crisis" whereby the new leader's honesty is questioned etc and thus prove that we're still as deep in a "quagmire" as ever.... right? :-)
So hey, reporters, what are you waiting for? Ask Allawi about the memo.
In fact, if time goes by and we see no questions from the Western press about the memo, it's almost safe to conclude that they believe it's geniune, is it not? If it's really such an obvious fake, you'd think all the Woodward/Bernstein wannabes would be waving it in front of Allawi's face the first chance they get. I guess we'll see either way :-)
Hey! I gotta e-mail from a Nigerian guy who says he's stuck on the ISS!.............Must be true!
I predicted all this. The summer of tying up loose ends. Saddam's trial is right off the horizon. It's going to play out just as I suspected. WTC1, OKC, WTC2 and Saddam sez "I had some Feyadeen I could not control.....they did this".
GWB is just too bouncy in his step not to be holding major cards.
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