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I misplaced my copy of The New Jackals before finishing it; could you give me a quick summary of what it said about the links?

I remember feeling that the history of the Kuwaiti who was supposedly Yousef seemed a little thin for a veteran terrorist like Yousef - he allegedly studies electronics in the UK, gets radicalized and suddenly accumulates years of accumulated explosives expertise in a few months in Afghanistan. That doesn't ring true to me. It seems more likely that he was an explosives expert of long standing, and was switched with the original Kuwaiti, as described in Laurie Myronie's book.

I think it's more likely that Yousef was originally a Baluch (note his frequent trips and relationships in that region), was recruited by Iraqi intelligence, and given advanced terrorist training in Iraq. Then he could have gone to Afghanistan (where we start picking up his trail) and participate in training there.

If that is the case, we have solid gold links between Iraqi intelligence and Al Queda, and we certainly have a justification to blow all of them to smithereens. (I think most of our war will be a theatrical enterprise, designed /not/ to blow people to smithereens, and I'm all for that, but I think you get the idea).

D

[[I misplaced my copy of The New Jackals before finishing it; could you give me a quick summary of what it said about the links?]]

Very briefly, Yousef was apparently in Kuwait when the Iraqis invaded and probably joined his fellow working-class Kuwaitis in supporting the invaders. There's also a fairly convoluted court case involving an Iraqi named Ihsan Barbouti in which Yousef is tangentially mentioned as working for an Iraqi national oil company, but this is considered a little dicey. Reeve is noncommittal on the subject of an Iraqi connection overall.

Also, I neglected to mention that Reeve in "New Jackals" says there is strong evidence to connect the WTC 1993 attack to Iraq, but virtually none relevant to the remainder of Yousef's terrorist career.

The WTC evidence includes the date (the anniversary of the liberation of Kuwait), one of the conspirators (Yasin) subsequently fled to Baghdad (although the Iraqis recently imprisoned him, possibly as a diplomatic ploy), and another of the plotters whose uncle was connected to a terrorist operation funded by Iraq.

-j