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U.S. book claims bin Laden met Iran intelligence
officerTuesday January 15, 9:28 AM
By Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden met an Iranian intelligence officer in the mid-1990s to try to forge an alliance to conduct a terror campaign against the United States, according to a new book by a former CIA officer.
Bin Laden met an Iranian intelligence officer in Afghanistan in July 1996 to "hammer out a strategic relationship," Robert Baer, a former CIA operative in the Middle East and Tajikistan, writes in "See No Evil," due out later this week.
Tajik Islamic chieftain Abdallah Nuri, who operated out of Afghanistan, brokered the alliance and at least one meeting between bin Laden and an Iranian intelligence officer occurred, the book said. The Iranian was not identified.
"Although we never found out what happened at the meeting, we knew bin Laden intended to propose to Iran a coordinated terrorism campaign against the U.S.," the book said.
U.S. officials recently expressed concerned that Tehran might give safe haven to some al Qaeda fighters fleeing across the border from Afghanistan due to the U.S.-led war.
U.S. President George W. Bush warned Iran last week against harboring members of al Qaeda or trying to undermine the interim government in Kabul. Iran said its border with Afghanistan was sealed and it would not allow any al Qaeda members to cross.
BOOK CRITICAL OF CIA
The United States has bombed Afghanistan since October 7 and vowed to destroy bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, who Washington blames for the September 11 attacks on America that killed more than 3,100 people.
Baer, who left the CIA in 1997 after 21 years with the spy agency, criticizes the CIA and the White House National Security Council for not taking a more active role in fighting terrorism in the 1990s.
In December 1995 one of bin Laden's Egyptian associates visited Tehran and met several officers from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, Baer writes in the book, an advance copy of which was released to the media.
"The U.S. wasn't sure bin Laden had reached an agreement with the Iranians on a strategic relationship, but we in the intelligence community suspected he had," Baer said.
Early in 1996 a CIA field office proposed a plan to bug a clandestine facility of the Pasdaran or Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the book said.
Baer said National Security Council staff expressed concern that the proposed eavesdropping operation might result in the Iranians taking revenge on employees if U.S. oil company Amoco in Azerbaijan, but later allowed it.
The CIA also suspected bin Laden had a hand in the November 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Baer said.
While posted in Dushanbe during the Afghan civil wars that erupted in the 1990s after Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, Baer said he repeatedly asked for Dari or Pashtun speakers to debrief Afghans crossing into Tajikistan.
"I was told there were no Dari or Pashtun speakers anywhere. I was also told the CIA no longer collected on Afghanistan, so those languages weren't needed," Baer said.
He criticizes the CIA at that time for not actively pursuing contacts in the Middle East and elsewhere who could have provided information on bin Laden's network, but acknowledges there was "no silver bullet" that by itself could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.
Baer also said when he was in northern Iraq he was approached by an Iraqi military opponent of President Saddam Hussein willing to organize a coup on Baghdad in 1995, but the NSC shied away from supporting it.
The CIA had no comment on Baer's book, which as required went through the CIA's publication review board to ensure it did not reveal classified information. Some words and a few passages were blacked out in the book.