New Iraq Chief: Evidence Linking Saddam to 9/11 is 'Genuine'

The man tapped to head Iraq's new interim government is vouching for the authenticity of evidence that links Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks.

Though the notion that Iraq played a role in 9/11 is considered heresy in U.S. intelligence circles, newly appointed Iraq Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Tuesday that a document purported to be from Saddam's intelligence service that places lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta in Baghdad two months before the attacks was indeed "genuine."

"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," Allawi told the London Telegraph. "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."

According to the Telegraph, Prime Minister Allawi said the document was "genuine."

As first reported by the Telegraph in Dec. 2003, the document - a handwritten memo, dated July 1, 2001 - provides a short resume of a three-day "work program" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's terrorist training camp in Baghdad.

Nidal was executed by Saddam's secret police in August 2002 in what some suspect was a bid to keep him from telling what he knew about 9/11.

I've never doubted a relationship existed, to what extent was my only open question.

Things are becoming very clear a little more than a year after the start of the war.

- The UN was on the take; the lifting of sanctions was more probable than the enforcing of them.
- WMD's and banned Conventional weapons (and programs to develop them) did exist.
- Iraq and Al-Queda did work together.

Saddam was a terrorist, Saddam did not comply with the original disarmament resolution, Saddam wished to inflict pain on the US and its citizens.

How can anyone be surprised, all the indications were there prior to the invasion.

Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 14/12/2003)

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.

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