[kcvl]

THE IRAQ CONNECTION.
Blood Baath
by R. James Woolsey

Post date 09.13.01 | Issue date 09.24.01

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

To this end, investigators should revisit the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. 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 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 Center 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 radicalized 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?

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[The Great Satan]

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.

How con-veen-ient!

[Wallaby]

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.

SECRET HEARING ON IRAQ LINK DAVID HENCKE WESTMINSTER CORRESPONDENT THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2 The Guardian (London) June 17, 1993 A COMMITTEE of MPs went into secret session last night after a senior civil servant refused to answer in public about his knowledge of exports to Iraq from Porton Down, the chemical defence research establishment. Questioned by Alan Williams, Labour MP for Swansea West, about whether the establishment was involved in providing Iraq with vaccines to protect troops against chemical and biological agents, Mr Hart said: "I am afraid I must ask the committee to go into private session. I cannot answer that question in public." Graham Hart, permanent secretary at the Department of Health, also refused to give the full reason why ministers halted the pounds 46 million privatisation of Porton Down after the Gulf war. The U-turn on the sell-off was revealed in a memorandum by Sir John Bourn, the Comptroller and Auditor General, which also discloses that Porton Down receives large royalties from overseas.

He also disclosed that anthrax and toxic agents were produced at Porton Down, but only to test vaccines. Questioned by Alan Williams, Labour MP for Swansea West, about whether the establishment was involved in providing Iraq with vaccines to protect troops against chemical and biological agents, Mr Hart said: "I am afraid I must ask the committee to go into private session. I cannot answer that question in public." Sir John's memo shows that ministers were poised to sell the centre to Porton International Ltd, a private company set up to market its products, but dropped the plan "in view of the part it played in the Gulf War." Mr Hart told the committee that this followed a meeting between ministers from the Treasury, Ministry of Defence and Department of Health. Dr Jeremy Metters, deputy chief medical officer, told Mr Williams that Porton Down produced vaccines against anthrax and other anti-biological and chemical warfare agents. He also disclosed that anthrax and toxic agents were produced at Porton Down, but only to test vaccines. Britain has signed an international agreement not to produce chemical and biological warfare materials but maintains that Porton Down is a chemical defence rather than a war research establishment.