Limbaugh to White House: What About Salman Pak?

Friday Aug. 30, 2002; 11:16 p.m. EDT Limbaugh to White House: What About Salman Pak?

Is the Bush administration using all the ammunition at its disposal to convince the American people that war with Iraq is imperative?

Not according to conservative media giant Rush Limbaugh, who chastised the White House Thursday for not spotlighting the issue of Salman Pak, the hijacking school run by Saddam Hussein just south of Baghdad where the 9-11 hijackers likely trained to attack America.

"It's unbelievable that somehow this story remains sequestered," Limbaugh told his 20 million listeners. "I read this story last night and I was amazed."

"There is something called the Republican National Committee and there is the administration," the number one talk host complained. "And look, if I could find this on the Internet, I'm sure the web surfers in the basement of the White House or the Old Executive Office Building could find it too."

Limbaugh proceeded to read at length from a Nov. 11 report in London's Observer newspaper - one of the most respected broadsheets in Great Britain - detailing the accounts of two Salman Pak defectors along with corroborating testimony from a former UN weapons inspector.

Though the Observer's bombshell report has been largely ignored by both the press and the White House in recent months, the similarity between what transpired over the skies of New York and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11 and the drills at Saddam Hussein's hijacking school offers clear evidence of Iraq's involvement in Osama bin Laden's attacks on America.

The facts uncovered by the Observer have yet to be refuted by any subsequent media investigation. And should they be invoked by the Bush White House, the story could form the basis for a solid argument that attacking Iraq isn't merely a preemptive strike to keep Saddam from getting the bomb, but instead direct retribution against the lone head of state who both financed and helped plan the worst attack on the United States in its history.

NewsMax.com first reviewed the Salman Pak story nearly three weeks ago in a report headlined: "Salman Pak: Iraq's Smoking Gun Link to 9-11."

With all the talk about how little evidence the Bush administration has tying Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 attacks, we're more than a little surprised at how quickly reporters, not to mention the White House, seem to have forgotten about Salman Pak.

That's the name of the Iraqi training camp located south of Baghdad where, according to the accounts of at least two Iraqi defectors quoted in the New York Times last November, terrorists from around the world rehearsed airline hijackings aboard a parked Boeing 707 that bore an eerie resemblance to what transpired on 9-11.

"We could see them train around the fuselage," one of the defectors, a five-year veteran of the camp, told the paper. "We could see them practice taking over the plane."

A few days before the Times report, the London Observer revealed that one of the defectors, a colonel with the Iraqi intelligence service Mukhabarat, had drawn an even more direct link to 9-11.

The former Iraqi agent, codenamed Zeinab, told the paper that one of the highlights of Salman Pak's six-month curriculum was training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands. Like the Sept. 11 hijackers, the students worked in groups of four or five, he explained.

Zeinab's story has since been corroborated by Charles Duelfer, the former vice chairman of Unscom, the U.N. weapons inspection team, who actually visited the Salman Pak camp several times.

"He saw the 707, in exactly the place described by the defectors," the Observer reported. "The Iraqis, he said, told Unscom it was used by police for counterterrorist training."

"Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter'," Duelfer explained. "I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. Like, derrrrrr! I mean, what, actually, do you expect?"

Unlike the other parts of Salman Pak, Zeinab told the Observer that there was a foreigners' camp that was controlled directly by Saddam Hussein.

"It was a nightmare! A very strange experience," the Iraqi agent said. "These guys would stop and insist on praying to Allah five times a day when we had training to do. The instructors wouldn't get home till late at night, just because of all this praying."

A second defector said that conversations with the hijacker-trainees made it clear they came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco.

"We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States," he added chillingly. "The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this."

Though the Bush administration has been largely silent about Salman Pak, former CIA Director James Woolsey is apparently convinced it was used to rehearse Sept. 11-style hijackings.

"We know that at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, five different eyewitnesses - three Iraqi defectors and two American U.N. inspectors - have said - and now there are aerial photographs to show it - a Boeing 707 that was used for training of hijackers, including non-Iraqi hijackers trained very secretly to take over airplanes with knives."

Another intriguing coincidence: Salman Pak's hijacking school reportedly opened for business in 1995, the same year al-Qaeda agents in the Philippines hatched a plot to hijack 12 airliners and slam some of them into U.S. landmarks. (End of NewsMax excerpt)

Despite the compelling case of Salman Pak, the shockingly flat-footed Bush public relations team remains mum on the most potent justification for hitting back at Baghdad.

No wonder support for Bush's Iraq attack has dropped to just 51 percent in the latest Gallup poll.

Link

Question:

What warning, if any, did the CIA receive from the National Reconnaissance Office concerning Arabs training on the fuselage of a passenger airliner at a terrorist training camp prior to September 11th, 2001?

Answer:

After Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, an Iraqi military officer, defected from Iraq in 1999 to Turkey. He now lives in Fort Worth, Texas. When he was debriefed, he described his training mission at Salman Pak, a military base about 21 miles from Baghdad that had been used for the testing of secret weapons, including chemical biological warfare agents, and paramilitary training for covert actions.

Captain Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami said that as late as 1998 he trained an elite commando team, Fedayeen Saddam, in airline hijacking and sabotage. Through a translator, Mr. Alami described, according to the Wall street Journal, a daily regimen of exercises on kidnapping, assassination, and -- using a Boeing 707 parked inside the complex -- how to hijack a plane or bus without weapons. He said that a separate group of non-Iraqis were being similarly trained by Saddam's intelligence service, the mukhabarat. Asked about the plane by an interviewer for Front Line, he said "Yes, there's a real whole 707 plane, a whole real plane, standing in the middle of the training area in this camp."

Subsequently, a second Iraqi defector, a former intelligence officer who defected in early 2001 , described "Islamicists" training on a Boeing 707 parked in Salman Pak from about 1995 to as recently as September 2000. Neither defector said any efforts were made to hide or conceal the Boeing from satellite photography. And, according to Front Line, a former U.N. inspector who worked for the United Nations said that he saw the fuselage of an airliner at Salman Pak which was smaller than a Boeing. Whatever manufacture and size , there is agreement such a plane was in the Salman Pak complex.

During this period, the base at Salman Pak was under surveillance of US KH-11 reconnaissance satellites which were providing intelligence on Iraq's possible weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological warfare equipment, to the CIA. The information about Salman Pak was also used publically by UNSCOM, the UN agency charged with monitoring Iraq's disposal of such weapons. Since Salman Pak was systematically photographed, if the defectors' accounts are accurate, the Boeing 707 would also have been routinely photographed between 1995 and 2000 many times. Given that Salman Pak was not an air base, a Boeing 707 on the ground there would have stood out like a sore thumb. It is also possible that the Arabs training on it were recognizable (unless training was only at night or they wore masks). After September 11th, a private US satellite photo company, Space Imaging, went through its archives and found a photo that included a plane parked in the Salman Pak compound.

The National Reconnaissance Office collates, analyzes and distributes the intelligence gleaned from satellite imagery in Iraq. If it had pictures of an airliner, Boeing or whatever kind, permanently stationed inside the Salmon Pak complex, it is reasonable to assume that they would not have withheld them from the CIA. If so, the CIA had photographic evidence confirming defectors claims that Iraq was practicing, if not preparing, covert actions against a Boeing prior to September 11th.

http://www.wfaa.com/localnews/investigates/stories/WFAA_wz_iraqi_defector_110120.5adc07.html

Link

Iraqi defector tells of terrorist training camp

11/21/2001

By VALERI WILLIAMS / WFAA-TV News

Saddam Hussein's possible link to the Sept. 11 terrorists remains a mystery, but a News 8 investigation has uncovered evidence that Iraq has been training Muslim extremists for years-- unchecked by U.S. authorities.

In May, Sabah Khodada and his family fled Iraq with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. They gained their freedom disguised as Kurdish refugees. With Khodada came one of the darkest secrets of Saddam Hussein's regime.

WFAA-TV Sabah Khodada shows the map he made of the terrorist training camp.

From memory, Khodada sketched for U.S. authorities a map of one of the best, most elite terrorist training camps in the Arab world. He said he was ordered to work there as an army captain, but never engaged in any terroristic activities.

Located southwest of Baghdad, the camp is called Salman Pak. Khodada said trainees were drilled in sabotage, assassination techniques and hijacking maneuvers using a 707 jet, a bus or a train.

They were told their main targets would ultimately be American.

Khodada's most chilling stories tell of the psychological preparation troops undergo for suicide missions, something the Iraqis call "self-confidence training."

In one exercise, he said, trainees pull the pin from a grenade, then toss it around in a circle.

"Then, he throws it in the air and it explodes in the air on top of their heads," Khodada said through a translator. "Another type of training they will have hole in the ground, and the trainer will pull the hand grenade pin and throw it in the hole (in the ground) and ask the trainee to stand with the military salute ... and not move until it explodes."

Captain Khodada said Iraqis and the Arab recruits from other countries were under strict orders not to mingle. They were even kept in different barracks separated by a barbed wire fence, but the training was the same for everyone.

Khodada described the procedure for hijacking a jet. "They were trained to jump... literally to jump immediately, at the same time, at the same second, to start screaming and terrorizing the plane."

The known facts about the Sept. 11 attacks have convinced Khodada that some of the terrorists received training at Salman Pak. Just last month, however, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations denied the existence of the terrorism camp on PBS's "Frontline".

"I am lucky that I know this area, this Salman Pak," said Amb. Mohammed Aldouri. "This is a very beautiful area with gardens, with trees ... very, very nice place. It is not possible to do such a program there, because there's no place for planes, for airplanes there."

WFAA-TV Satellite image shows a large jet near Salman Pak.

However, News 8 has discovered through detailed research of satellite photos over Salman Pak that nestled between the small farms is a large plane located close to the place drawn on Khodada's map.

Khodada pointed out railways and a tent where, he said, Iraq's top assassin -- known only as "The Ghost" -- taught training techniques to other terrorists.

"This is a long road along the edge of the camp where, each day, a Mercedes is wrecked while during evasion drills," Khodada explained.

Today, Khodada works as a waiter at a Fort Worth country club. He said he is speaking out to warn Americans that as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power, terrorism will not end.

Khodada recalled the words of a song he said is taught at Salman Pak:

"Why do you have to care about your life? Death is the beginning and the end."

News 8 received translation assistance from the Iraqi National Congress, a group of dissidents opposed to Saddam Hussein.

After Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, an Iraqi military officer, defected from Iraq in 1999 to Turkey. He now lives in Fort Worth, Texas. When he was debriefed, he described his training mission at Salman Pak, a military base about 21 miles from Baghdad that had been used for the testing of secret weapons, including chemical biological warfare agents, and paramilitary training for covert actions.
Sabah Khodada shows the map he made of the terrorist training camp.
In May, Sabah Khodada and his family fled Iraq with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. They gained their freedom disguised as Kurdish refugees. With Khodada came one of the darkest secrets of Saddam Hussein's regime.
. From memory, Khodada sketched for U.S. authorities a map of one of the best, most elite terrorist training camps in the Arab world. He said he was ordered to work there as an army captain, but never engaged in any terroristic activities.

If I am reading this correctly, the U.S. government knew before 9-11 Khodada's information that Iraq was training foreigners to hijack airplanes usuing an actual 707. If you combine this with the information on Moussaoui, it is worrisome they didn't at least look at his computer. Maybe the reason the Administration is quiet about Salman Pak is that they do not want the public aware of what intelligence they had on Salman Pak prior to 9-11.

Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002 11:33 a.m. EDT

Did Bush Blow It by Ignoring Salman Pak?

Did the White House make a mistake by not presenting the U.N. last week with compelling evidence of Saddam Hussein's involvement in 9/11?

That's the question Bush administration supporters must ponder, now that the usual media suspects have begun to urge the president to declare victory with Iraq's agreement to allow the return of inspection teams and instead concentrate on al-Qaeda - as if the two were wholly different issues.

"Iraq's offer yesterday to allow United Nations weapons inspectors back to Baghdad without conditions could open the way to resolving the crisis peacefully," the New York Times intoned Tuesday morning.

In the same editorial the paper complained, "there is little evidence to suggest that [Saddam] and Al Qaeda are allies."

Hussein's decision to call Bush's bluff by welcoming the inspectors back was entirely predictable. And though the president never expressly hinged a decision to go to war on Iraq's refusal to comply with inspections, U.S. allies - not to mention Democratic party critics - are sure to seize on the development to press Bush to back off.

But imagine if the president had gone before the U.N. last week and argued that the U.S. was compelled to attack Iraq not merely because Saddam was developing nuclear weapons, but because of startling evidence that he was directly involved in training al-Qaeda terrorists in the kind of hijacking tactics first employed on 9/11 - and seen nowhere else before or since.

Bush could have dared the U.N. to hear the accounts of graduates from Saddam's hijacking school at Baghdad's Salman Pak camp, including the account of a former colonel with the Iraqi intelligence service Mukhabarat who has already been debriefed by the FBI and CIA.

Even if the president revealed no more information about the Saddam hijack school beyond what has already been reported by the London Observer and the European Wall Street Journal, the case for retribution would be hard to dismiss.

According to those reports, the Salman Pak terrorist training camp featured:

• A Boeing 707 used since 1995 to rehearse 9/11-style hijack operations. The plane is parked far from any regular airfield, according to U.N. weapons inspectors who have confirmed its existence.

• A hijack training curriculum that specialized in instruction on how to overcome U.S. flight crews in groups of four or five armed only with small knives - a technique never employed before 9/11.

• An elite group of hijacking recruits known as "Saddam's Fedayheen" (Saddam's bodyguards), who trained separately from other terrorists and were dedicated Muslim radicals who interrupted their hijacking lessons only to pray to Allah five times a day.

• A curriculum steeped in hatred for America that included the ultimate goal of attacking "installations important to the United States," according to one defector.

• A student body made up of non-Iraqi recruits from throughout the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco.

• Iraq's own admission that hijacking rehearsals are taking place at Salman Pak, though, Baghdad officials claim, they're part of "counter-terrorism training."

• Satellite photos that confirm the existence of Saddam's hijack classroom, the parked Boeing 707.

Is there smoking gun evidence that the 9/11 hijackers trained at Salman Pak? Not yet.

But as Bush might have argued to the U.N. last week: Where else in the world has a known state sponsor of terrorism set up a veritable hijack university to teach al-Qaeda recruits the exact same techniques employed in the attack on America?

It may not be too late to make the case. Next week British Prime Minster Tony Blair is scheduled to release his own dossier on Saddam, which reportedly ties several known al-Qaeda terrorists to Iraqi terror facilities.

If Blair's evidence includes new details about the role played in 9/11 by Saddam's Salman Pak hijack school, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had best tell his weapons inspectors to stay home.

Here’s what the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, said in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 11: “Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Osama bin Laden. We know Zarqawi’s network was behind the poison plots in Europe that I discussed earlier as well as the assassination of a U.S. State Department employee in Jordan. Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to Al Qaeda. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two Al Qaeda associates; one of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful. Mr. Chairman, this information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources. And it is consistent with the pattern of denial and deception exhibited by Saddam Hussein over the past 12 years.”

Providing “training in document forgery and bomb-making” is a far cry from merely having terrorists who happen to live within a country’s borders.

On top of the Tenet testimony to Iraq’s Al Qaeda links, we have the matter of the April 2001 meeting in Prague between a leader of the September 11 attacks, hijacker Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi government official, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, who was expelled from the Czech Republic later in April. The latest of the Czech officials directly involved to comment was the Czech ambassador to the United Nations, Hynek Kmonicek. Reports Edward Jay Epstein, “The last statement to date was made on October 26th, 2002, by Ambassador Kmonicek, who was deputy Foreign Minister at the time and served the expulsion notice on al-Ani. He flatly told the Prague Post that ‘the meeting took place’ and that ‘the Czech government collected detailed evidence of the al-Ani/Atta meeting.’”

In addition, there are the reports — in the New York Times, in Aviation Week, and in the New Republic — of the Iraqi government training camp at Salman Pak, where Islamic militants were trained in hijacking around a Boeing 707.

The relevant congressional resolution here is the one passed September 14, 2001, by a vote of 98 to 0 in the Senate and a vote of 420 to 1 in the House of Representatives. It said “the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future attacks of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

Note the words aided and harbored.

There would be a logic to this war even if there weren’t links between Iraq and the September 11 terrorists, just as there was for a preemptive strike against Al Qaeda before September 11 — in other words, before there were any September 11 terrorists. Still, there’s a lot more evidence here than commonly thought, and one can only wonder at the motives of those who would belittle, ignore, or deny it.

http://www.nysun.com/sunarticle.asp?artID=608

Wednesday, March 12, 2003
By Ken Adelman

The Iraq-a-thon has gone on way too long already. The president’s determination to set March 17 as Saddam’s "drop dead" date -- one hopes literally, though for now diplomatically -- at least gives some closure to the much-vaulted "diplomatic phase."

It seems like a bust for now. The U.N. foolery messed up the Iraq timetable.

President Bush’s press conference last week would have been nearly unassailable a year ago. He would have moved the country, and at least silenced the Europeans, by telling how Sept. 11 constituted a massive wake-up call to previously shrouded dangers to America -- a growing global terrorist network eager to destroy us, and expanding arsenals for mass destruction.

Saddam has long supported that terrorist network. There’s a far more powerful case than Bush mentioned last Thursday.

For starters, the only convicted fugitive for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center -- which caused a number of deaths and may have tumbled the towers, with many more deaths -- now lives in Baghdad. Saddam’s henchmen tried to assassinate an ex-president of the United States that same year.

http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,80819,00.html

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