9/11 Commission Finds Ties Between al-Qaeda and Iran


Senior U.S. officials have told TIME that the 9/11 Commission's report will
cite evidence suggesting that the 9/11 hijackers had previously passed
through Iran

By ADAM ZAGORIN AND JOE KLEIN




Friday, Jul. 16, 2004
Next week's much anticipated final report by a bipartisan commission on the
origins of the 9/11 attacks will contain new evidence of contacts between
al-Qaeda and Iran-just weeks after the Administration has come under fire
for overstating its claims of contacts between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's
Iraq.

A senior U.S. official told TIME that the Commission has uncovered evidence
suggesting that between eight and ten of the 14 "muscle" hijackers-that is,
those involved in gaining control of the four 9/11 aircraft and subduing the
crew and passengers-passed through Iran in the period from October 2000 to
February 2001. Sources also tell TIME that Commission investigators found
that Iran had a history of allowing al-Qaeda members to enter and exit Iran
across the Afghan border. This practice dated back to October 2000, with
Iranian officials issuing specific instructions to their border guards-in
some cases not to put stamps in the passports of al-Qaeda personnel-and
otherwise not harass them and to facilitate their travel across the
frontier. The report does not, however, offer evidence that Iran was aware
of the plans for the 9/11 attacks.

The senior official also told TIME that the report will note that Iranian
officials approached the al-Qaeda leadership after the bombing of the USS
Cole and proposed a collaborative relationship in future attacks on the
U.S., but the offer was turned down by bin Laden because he did not want to
alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia.

The Iran-al Qaeda contacts were discovered and presented to the
Commissioners near the end of the bipartisan panel's more than year-long
investigation into the sources and origins of the 9/11 attacks. Much of the
new information about Iran came from al-Qaeda detainees interrogated by the
U.S. government, including captured Yemeni al-Qaeda operative Waleed
Mohammed bin Attash, who organized the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole,
and from as many as 100 separate electronic intelligence intercepts culled
by analysts at the NSA. The findings were sent to the White House for review
only this week. But Commission members have been hinting for weeks that
their report would have some Iran surprises. As the 9/11 Commission's
chairman, Thomas Kean, said in June, "We believe....that there were a lot
more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were
with Iraq."

These findings follow a Commission staff report, released in June, which
suggested that al-Qaeda may have collaborated with Hezbollah and its Iranian
sponsors in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, a key American military
barracks in Saudi Arabia. Previously, the attack had been attributed only to
Hezbollah, with Iranian support. A U.S. indictment of bin Laden filed in
1998 for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa said al-Qaeda "forged
alliances . . . with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist
group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived
common enemies in the West, particularly the United States." But the
Commission comes to no firm conclusion on al-Qaeda's involvement in the
Khobar disaster.

Since 9/11 the U.S. has held direct talks with Iran-and through
intermediaries including Britain, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia-concerning
the fate of scores of al-Qaeda that Iran has acknowleded are in the country,
including an unspecified number of senior leaders, whom one senior U.S.
official called al-Qaeda's "management council". The U.S. as well as the
Saudis have unsuccessfully sought the repatriation of this group, which is
widely thought to include Saad bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, as
well of other key al-Qaeda figures.

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So al-Qaeda approached Saddam, and Saddam rebuffed them...but Iran
approached al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda rebuffed Iran so as not to offend their
supporters in Saudi Arabia?!?!?


Like I said almost three years ago...
Iraq is first on our list because it provides a geographically strategic
location to next invade Iran and/or Syria. With troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq, Iran is surrounded. That's why Iran has been stirring up so much
trouble in Iraq. A US-friendly government in Iraq that allows us to station
troops there is bad news for the mullahs.