OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational
relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in
explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist
attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial
support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top
secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay
Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as
part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the
administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes
from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and
corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in
custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi
officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that
emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most
determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50
numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered
passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in
some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the
source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War.
According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in
1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in
1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to
establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions.
According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to
expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was
Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated
National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector
reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda
relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its
connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed
weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with
training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of
Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:


4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi
intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive
relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first
meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda
was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and
senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of
several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi
intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would
sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief
in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship
with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a
personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under
scrutiny from foreign probes.
A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when
bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.


5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose
reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic
Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the
internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an
"understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support
anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S.
court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached
an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda
operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.
Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was
Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New
York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best
friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton
administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's
regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al
Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in
early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime
before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified
cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the
mid-1990s comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and
his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most
credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.


This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates
of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of
individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive
talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in
general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the
secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a
"window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved
with Iraq (and Iran).
Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though
multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's
current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets much
more specific in the mid-1990s:


8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin
Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi
Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated
explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin
Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the
company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti.
9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996),
staying at the residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He
discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and
operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan, and
Khobar, using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his return,
bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.

And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source:


10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996.
Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral
cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin
Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS
officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS
technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs
which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric
pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically
requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier
explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in
Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with
bin Laden as long as required.
The analysis of those events follows:


The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks
after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary
of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted
assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials
explicitly threatened retaliation.

IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s,
intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again
in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that
"the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of
contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998
and met with Tariq Aziz."


11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent
Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to
meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan
in 1999. . . .
14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and
reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited
Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal
of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and
establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of
Abdul Aziz.

That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the
U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement
following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's presidential
palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President Bill
Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the nation
for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and
organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear example
of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in
April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch
Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo
detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to
Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that,
when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and al
Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and
hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden
and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The
document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our
relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."
The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might provide
"a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his
now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language
daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has been
occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian
Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its
people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula
into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin
Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and
their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim
who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal
brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The
standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President Clinton
launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on
December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy
director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on
December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in
the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting
and relates two others.


15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi
delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly
assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden
in Afghanistan.
16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met
with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan to
seek closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source
reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation with al
Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to sabotage U.S. and
U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with Taliban
leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made for a series of meetings
between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in Pakistan. The source
noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with
several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed
that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit direction.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and
an explanation of these reports:


Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from
different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of
meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or
the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would
indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.
Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so
widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A
January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin
Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of
contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam
expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much
longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued,
indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive
both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to
chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Sudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel
less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according
to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the
embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if
formally."


INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship
between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One
senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah,
"said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999.
Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from
Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any
further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam
wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this
claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training camp
in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest
that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin Laden
throughout 1999.


23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering
safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The
source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi
intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent
contact and had good relations with bin Laden.
Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:


24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi
national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers
for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting
indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of
terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport--a
job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.
One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala
Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later
identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS
Cole.


25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October
2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the
CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."
26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a
senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he
was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi
intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole
bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related
[Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi
intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to
provide this training.

The analysis of this report follows.


CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with
other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for
advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."
Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that
relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:

27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi
National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after
learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests
in Saudi Arabia.

And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting on
those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's more, the
memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence.





The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept.
11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in
Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During
one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta
funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.
And the commentary:


CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in
June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April
2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot
confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross
continues to stand by his information.
It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five
high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed
meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press
attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the
most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta
met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged
meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the
U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness
that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by
Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service
officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's
determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring
of
2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the
funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the
transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but
was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply
return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate
destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry
the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork,
and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after
arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam
and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:


31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a
secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members
and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a
large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that
al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had
been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda
personnel.
The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the
report fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration:


References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and
offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting
considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that Iraqi
support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining
passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including
weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of
9-11.
Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N.
Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting
in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the
resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.


37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and
close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with
Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the
IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles
from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi
was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S.
occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the
Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include
IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms
and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's
procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against
the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.
38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good
access who does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi
intelligence service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was providing
weapons to al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket
propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information, northern
Iraq-based al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to strike al
Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar al-Islam
positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed
that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it
with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."


CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al
Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White
House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that
links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely
"exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of
intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on
"Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to
look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated
intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case
for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was
any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in
Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection
between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis
for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin
serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not
that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed,
the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the
administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore
claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work
with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass
destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page
memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually
be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For one
thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation
secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal
intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people
in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no
Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group
currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi
intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These
documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in
Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but
also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be
a slow process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best
viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains
the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed
Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers
through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have extensive
reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking.
That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo,
extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda
connections.

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one
but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through
the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on
January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur
Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the
September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on
January 9 and January 10, and never again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi
Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its
intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged
"diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his
employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on
September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information
for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998
embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11
hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone
call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been
plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October
21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a
flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in Jordan
for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators
concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in
counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained, according
to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to
"pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time, Amnesty
International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The
Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is believed
to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between
Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether
Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot
against Americans.


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.




--
Oz1...twin of the 3 twins

I cannot believe you've changed your stripes so easily.

What's up Doc?

S.Simon


"Capetanios Oz Twin" wrote in message . ..

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational
relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in
explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist
attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial
support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top
secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay
Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as
part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the
administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes
from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and
corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in
custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi
officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that
emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most
determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50
numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered
passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in
some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the
source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War.
According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in
1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in
1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to
establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions.
According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to
expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was
Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated
National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector
reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda
relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its
connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed
weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with
training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of
Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:


4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi
intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive
relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first
meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda
was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and
senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of
several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi
intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would
sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief
in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship
with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a
personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under
scrutiny from foreign probes.
A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when
bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.


5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose
reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic
Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the
internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an
"understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support
anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S.
court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached
an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda
operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.
Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was
Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New
York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best
friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton
administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's
regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al
Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in
early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime
before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified
cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the
mid-1990s comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and
his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most
credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.


This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates
of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of
individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive
talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in
general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the
secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a
"window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved
with Iraq (and Iran).
Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though
multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's
current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets much
more specific in the mid-1990s:


8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin
Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi
Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated
explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin
Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the
company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti.
9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996),
staying at the residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He
discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and
operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan, and
Khobar, using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his return,
bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.

And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source:


10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996.
Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral
cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin
Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS
officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS
technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs
which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric
pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically
requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier
explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in
Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with
bin Laden as long as required.
The analysis of those events follows:


The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks
after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary
of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted
assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials
explicitly threatened retaliation.

IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s,
intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again
in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that
"the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of
contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998
and met with Tariq Aziz."


11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent
Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to
meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan
in 1999. . . .
14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and
reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited
Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal
of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and
establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of
Abdul Aziz.

That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the
U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement
following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's presidential
palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President Bill
Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the nation
for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and
organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear example
of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in
April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch
Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo
detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to
Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that,
when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and al
Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and
hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden
and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The
document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our
relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."
The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might provide
"a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his
now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language
daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has been
occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian
Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its
people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula
into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin
Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and
their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim
who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal
brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The
standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President Clinton
launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on
December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy
director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on
December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in
the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting
and relates two others.


15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi
delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly
assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden
in Afghanistan.
16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met
with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan to
seek closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source
reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation with al
Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to sabotage U.S. and
U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with Taliban
leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made for a series of meetings
between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in Pakistan. The source
noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with
several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed
that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit direction.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and
an explanation of these reports:


Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from
different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of
meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or
the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would
indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.
Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so
widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A
January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin
Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of
contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam
expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much
longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued,
indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive
both harder to trace and more effctive. With acts of terror contributing to
chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel
less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according
to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the
embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if
formally."


INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship
between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One
senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah,
"said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999.
Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from
Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any
further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam
wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this
claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training camp
in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest
that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin Laden
throughout 1999.


23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering
safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The
source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi
intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent
contact and had good relations with bin Laden.
Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:


24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi
national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers
for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting
indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of
terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport--a
job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.
One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala
Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later
identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS
Cole.


25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October
2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the
CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."
26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a
senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he
was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi
intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole
bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related
[Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi
intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to
provide this training.

The analysis of this report follows.


CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with
other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for
advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."
Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that
relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:

27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi
National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after
learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests
in Saudi Arabia.

And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting on
those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's more, the
memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence.





The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept.
11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in
Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During
one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta
funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.
And the commentary:


CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in
June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April
2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot
confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross
continues to stand by his information.
It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five
high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed
meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press
attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the
most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta
met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged
meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the
U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness
that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by
Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service
officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's
determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring
of
2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the
funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the
transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but
was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply
return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate
destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry
the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork,
and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after
arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam
and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:


31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a
secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members
and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a
large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that
al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had
been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda
personnel.
The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the
report fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration:


References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and
offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting
considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that Iraqi
support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining
passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including
weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of
9-11.
Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N.
Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting
in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the
resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.


37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and
close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with
Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the
IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles
from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi
was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S.
occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the
Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include
IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms
and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's
procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against
the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.
38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good
access who does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi
intelligence service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was providing
weapons to al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket
propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information, northern
Iraq-based al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to strike al
Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar al-Islam
positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed
that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it
with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."


CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al
Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White
House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that
links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely
"exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of
intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on
"Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to
look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated
intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case
for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was
any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in
Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection
between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis
for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin
serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not
that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed,
the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the
administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore
claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work
with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass
destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page
memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually
be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For one
thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation
secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal
intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people
in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no
Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group
currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi
intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These
documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in
Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but
also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be
a slow process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best
viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains
the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed
Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers
through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have extensive
reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking.
That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo,
extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda
connections.

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one
but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through
the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on
January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur
Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the
September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on
January 9 and January 10, and never again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi
Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its
intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged
"diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his
employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on
September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information
for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998
embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11
hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone
call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been
plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October
21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a
flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in Jordan
for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators
concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in
counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained, according
to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to
"pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time, Amnesty
International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The
Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is believed
to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between
Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether
Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot
against Americans.


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.




--
Oz1...twin of the 3 twins

Never mind. I see now that I'm reading a post from a
twin of a deranged man but the twin seems rational.

Go figure .. . .

S.Simon


"Simple Simon" wrote in message ...
I cannot believe you've changed your stripes so easily.

What's up Doc?

S.Simon


"Capetanios Oz Twin" wrote in message . ..

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational
relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in
explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist
attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial
support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top
secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay
Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as
part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the
administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes
from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and
corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in
custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi
officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that
emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most
determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50
numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered
passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in
some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the
source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War.
According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in
1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in
1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to
establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions.
According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to
expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was
Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated
National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector
reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda
relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its
connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed
weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with
training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of
Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:


4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi
intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive
relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first
meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda
was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and
senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of
several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi
intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would
sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief
in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship
with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a
personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under
scrutiny from foreign probes.
A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when
bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.


5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose
reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic
Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the
internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an
"understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support
anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S.
court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached
an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda
operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.
Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was
Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New
York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best
friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton
administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's
regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al
Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in
early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime
before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified
cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the
mid-1990s comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and
his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most
credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.


This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates
of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of
individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive
talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in
general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the
secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a
"window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved
with Iraq (and Iran).
Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though
multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's
current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets much
more specific in the mid-1990s:


8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin
Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi
Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated
explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin
Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the
company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti.
9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996),
staying at the residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He
discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and
operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan, and
Khobar, using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his return,
bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.

And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source:


10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996.
Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral
cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin
Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS
officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS
technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs
which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric
pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically
requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier
explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in
Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with
bin Laden as long as required.
The analysis of those events follows:


The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks
after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary
of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted
assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials
explicitly threatened retaliation.

IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s,
intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again
in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that
"the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of
contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998
and met with Tariq Aziz."


11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent
Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to
meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan
in 1999. . . .
14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and
reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited
Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal
of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and
establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of
Abdul Aziz.

That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the
U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement
following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's presidential
palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President Bill
Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the nation
for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and
organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear example
of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in
April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch
Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo
detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to
Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that,
when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and al
Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and
hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden
and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The
document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our
relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."
The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might provide
"a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his
now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language
daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has been
occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian
Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its
people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula
into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin
Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and
their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim
who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal
brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The
standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President Clinton
launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on
December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy
director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on
December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in
the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting
and relates two others.


15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi
delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly
assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden
in Afghanistan.
16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met
with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan to
seek closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source
reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation with al
Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to sabotage U.S. and
U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with Taliban
leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made for a series of meetings
between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in Pakistan. The source
noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with
several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed
that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit direction.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and
an explanation of these reports:


Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from
different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of
meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or
the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would
indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.
Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so
widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A
January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin
Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of
contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam
expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much
longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued,
indignation wuld grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive
both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to
chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel
less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according
to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the
embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if
formally."


INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship
between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One
senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah,
"said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999.
Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from
Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any
further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam
wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this
claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training camp
in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest
that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin Laden
throughout 1999.


23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering
safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The
source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi
intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent
contact and had good relations with bin Laden.
Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:


24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi
national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers
for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting
indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of
terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport--a
job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.
One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala
Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later
identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS
Cole.


25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October
2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the
CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."
26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a
senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he
was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi
intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole
bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related
[Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi
intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to
provide this training.

The analysis of this report follows.


CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with
other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for
advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."
Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that
relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:

27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi
National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after
learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests
in Saudi Arabia.

And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting on
those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's more, the
memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence.





The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept.
11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in
Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During
one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta
funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.
And the commentary:


CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in
June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April
2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot
confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross
continues to stand by his information.
It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five
high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed
meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press
attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the
most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta
met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged
meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the
U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness
that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by
Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service
officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's
determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring
of
2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the
funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the
transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but
was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply
return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate
destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry
the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork,
and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after
arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam
and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:


31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a
secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members
and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a
large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that
al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had
been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda
personnel.
The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the
report fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration:


References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and
offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting
considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that Iraqi
support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining
passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including
weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of
9-11.
Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N.
Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting
in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the
resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.


37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and
close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with
Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the
IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles
from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi
was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S.
occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the
Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include
IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms
and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's
procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against
the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.
38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good
access who does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi
intelligence service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was providing
weapons to al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket
propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information, northern
Iraq-based al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to strike al
Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar al-Islam
positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed
that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it
with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."


CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al
Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White
House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that
links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely
"exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of
intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on
"Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to
look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated
intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case
for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was
any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in
Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection
between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis
for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin
serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not
that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed,
the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the
administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore
claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work
with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass
destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page
memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually
be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For one
thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation
secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal
intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people
in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no
Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group
currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi
intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These
documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in
Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but
also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be
a slow process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best
viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains
the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed
Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers
through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have extensive
reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking.
That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo,
extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda
connections.

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one
but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through
the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on
January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur
Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the
September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on
January 9 and January 10, and never again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi
Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its
intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged
"diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his
employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on
September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information
for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998
embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11
hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone
call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been
plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October
21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a
flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in Jordan
for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators
concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in
counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained, according
to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to
"pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time, Amnesty
International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The
Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is believed
to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between
Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether
Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot
against Americans.


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.




--
Oz1...twin of the 3 twins

Bobsprit has ALWAYS been a liar. Gore doesn't lie, he's
just terminally ignorant, Clinton doesn't lie, rather Clinton
spins . . .

S.Simon


"Capetanios Oz Twin" wrote in message . ..

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational
relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in
explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist
attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial
support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top
secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay
Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as
part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the
administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes
from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and
corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in
custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi
officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that
emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most
determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50
numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered
passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in
some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the
source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War.
According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in
1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in
1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to
establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions.
According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to
expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was
Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated
National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector
reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda
relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its
connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed
weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with
training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of
Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:


4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi
intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive
relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first
meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda
was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and
senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of
several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi
intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would
sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief
in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship
with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a
personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under
scrutiny from foreign probes.
A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when
bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.


5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose
reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic
Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the
internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an
"understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support
anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S.
court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached
an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda
operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.
Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was
Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New
York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best
friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton
administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's
regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al
Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in
early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime
before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified
cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the
mid-1990s comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and
his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most
credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.


This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates
of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of
individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive
talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in
general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the
secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a
"window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved
with Iraq (and Iran).
Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though
multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's
current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets much
more specific in the mid-1990s:


8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin
Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi
Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated
explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin
Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the
company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti.
9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996),
staying at the residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He
discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and
operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan, and
Khobar, using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his return,
bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.

And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source:


10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996.
Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral
cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin
Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS
officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS
technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs
which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric
pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically
requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier
explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in
Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with
bin Laden as long as required.
The analysis of those events follows:


The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks
after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary
of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted
assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials
explicitly threatened retaliation.

IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s,
intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again
in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that
"the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of
contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998
and met with Tariq Aziz."


11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent
Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to
meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan
in 1999. . . .
14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and
reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited
Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal
of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and
establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of
Abdul Aziz.

That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the
U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement
following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's presidential
palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President Bill
Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the nation
for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and
organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear example
of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in
April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch
Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo
detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to
Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that,
when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and al
Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and
hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden
and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The
document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our
relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."
The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might provide
"a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his
now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language
daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has been
occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian
Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its
people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula
into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin
Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and
their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim
who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal
brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The
standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President Clinton
launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on
December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy
director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on
December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in
the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting
and relates two others.


15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi
delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly
assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden
in Afghanistan.
16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met
with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan to
seek closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source
reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation with al
Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to sabotage U.S. and
U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with Taliban
leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made for a series of meetings
between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in Pakistan. The source
noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with
several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed
that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit direction.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and
an explanation of these reports:


Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from
different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of
meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or
the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would
indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.
Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so
widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A
January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin
Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of
contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam
expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much
longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued,
indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive
bothharder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to
chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel
less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according
to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the
embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if
formally."


INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship
between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One
senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah,
"said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999.
Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from
Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any
further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam
wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this
claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training camp
in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest
that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin Laden
throughout 1999.


23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering
safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The
source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi
intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent
contact and had good relations with bin Laden.
Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:


24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi
national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers
for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting
indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of
terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport--a
job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.
One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala
Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later
identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS
Cole.


25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October
2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the
CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."
26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a
senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he
was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi
intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole
bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related
[Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi
intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to
provide this training.

The analysis of this report follows.


CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with
other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for
advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."
Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that
relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:

27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi
National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after
learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests
in Saudi Arabia.

And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting on
those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's more, the
memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence.





The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept.
11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in
Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During
one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta
funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.
And the commentary:


CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in
June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April
2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot
confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross
continues to stand by his information.
It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five
high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed
meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press
attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the
most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta
met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged
meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the
U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness
that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by
Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service
officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's
determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring
of
2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the
funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the
transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but
was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply
return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate
destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry
the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork,
and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after
arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam
and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:


31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a
secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members
and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a
large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that
al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had
been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda
personnel.
The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the
report fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration:


References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and
offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting
considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that Iraqi
support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining
passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including
weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of
9-11.
Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N.
Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting
in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the
resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.


37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and
close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with
Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the
IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles
from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi
was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S.
occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the
Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include
IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms
and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's
procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against
the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.
38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good
access who does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi
intelligence service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was providing
weapons to al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket
propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information, northern
Iraq-based al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to strike al
Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar al-Islam
positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed
that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it
with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."


CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al
Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White
House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that
links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely
"exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of
intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on
"Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to
look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated
intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case
for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was
any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in
Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection
between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis
for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin
serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not
that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed,
the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the
administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore
claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work
with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass
destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page
memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually
be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For one
thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation
secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal
intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people
in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no
Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group
currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi
intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These
documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in
Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but
also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be
a slow process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best
viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains
the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed
Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers
through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have extensive
reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking.
That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo,
extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda
connections.

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one
but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through
the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on
January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur
Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the
September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on
January 9 and January 10, and never again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi
Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its
intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged
"diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his
employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on
September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information
for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998
embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11
hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone
call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been
plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October
21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a
flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in Jordan
for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators
concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in
counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained, according
to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to
"pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time, Amnesty
International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The
Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is believed
to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between
Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether
Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot
against Americans.


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.




--
Oz1...twin of the 3 twins

It depends on your definition of the word spin.

"Simple Simon" wrote in message
news
Bobsprit has ALWAYS been a liar. Gore doesn't lie, he's
just terminally ignorant, Clinton doesn't lie, rather Clinton
spins . . .

S.Simon


"Capetanios Oz Twin" wrote in message
. ..

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational
relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in
explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for
terrorist
attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi
financial
support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top
secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from
Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay
Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as
part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the
administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo
comes
from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive,
and
corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained
in
custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi
officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that
emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's
most
determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50
numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued
through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered
passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in
some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the
source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War.
According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan
in
1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point
in
1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to
establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions.
According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to
expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was
Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated
National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One
defector
reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al
Qaeda
relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through
its
connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of
proscribed
weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with
training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one
of
Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:


4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi
intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive
relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The
first
meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al
Qaeda
was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and
senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the
first of
several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between
Iraqi
intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda
would
sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence
chief
in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the
relationship
with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a
personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under
scrutiny from foreign probes.
A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993,
when
bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.


5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of
whose
reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the
"Islamic
Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding
the
internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an
"understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer
support
anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in
U.S.
court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden
reached
an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al
Qaeda
operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.
Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s
was
Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a
New
York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August
1998
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best
friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton
administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with
Saddam's
regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction
for al
Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in
early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence.
Sometime
before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified
cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the
mid-1990s comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden
and
his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most
credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.


This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific
dates
of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names
of
individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the
substantive
talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in
general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the
secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided
a
"window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily
involved
with Iraq (and Iran).
Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy,
though
multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin
Laden's
current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets
much
more specific in the mid-1990s:


8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin
Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi
Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated
explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at
bin
Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in
the
company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti.
9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996),
staying at the residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He
discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and
operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan,
and
Khobar, using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his
return,
bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.

And later more reporting, from the same "well placed"
source:


10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July
1996.
Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss
bilateral
cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin
Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other
IIS
officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for
IIS
technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making
bombs
which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric
pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically
requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier
explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with
him in
Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan
with
bin Laden as long as required.
The analysis of those events follows:


The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few
weeks
after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third
anniversary
of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the
attempted
assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi
officials
explicitly threatened retaliation.

IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s,
intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and
again
in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported
that
"the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point
of
contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan.
1998
and met with Tariq Aziz."


11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally
sent
Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey,
to
meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in
Afghanistan
in 1999. . . .
14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular
and
reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative,
visited
Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The
goal
of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden
and
establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership
of
Abdul Aziz.

That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of
the
U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire
agreement
following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's presidential
palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President
Bill
Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the
nation
for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers,
and
organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear
example
of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed
in
April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch
Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo
detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to
Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper
that,
when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and
al
Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel
and
hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin
Laden
and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The
document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of
our
relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with
him."
The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might
provide
"a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his
now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language
daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has
been
occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian
Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating
its
people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the
Peninsula
into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples."
Bin
Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and
their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every
Muslim
who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal
brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again.
The
standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President
Clinton
launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on
December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy
director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on
December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting
in
the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this
meeting
and relates two others.


15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi
delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly
assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin
Laden
in Afghanistan.
16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met
with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan
to
seek closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source
reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation
with al
Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to sabotage U.S.
and
U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with
Taliban
leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made for a series of meetings
between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in Pakistan. The
source
noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along
with
several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed
that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit
direction.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context
and
an explanation of these reports:


Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from
different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of
meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in
Afghanistan
and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational
details or
the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship
would
indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.
Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was
so
widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press.
A
January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin
Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of
contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam
expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on
much
longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued,
indignation would grow in the uslim world, making his terrorism
offensive
both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror
contributing to
chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel
less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy,
according
to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking
the
embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if
formally."


INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship
between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting.
One
senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim
Abdallah,
"said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July
1999.
Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back
from
Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from
any
further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that
Saddam
wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this
claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training
camp
in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports
suggest
that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin
Laden
throughout 1999.


23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering
offering
safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The
source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi
intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent
contact and had good relations with bin Laden.
Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi
named
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:


24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based
Iraqi
national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11
hijackers
for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive
reporting
indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network
of
terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur
airport--a
job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.
One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the
Kuala
Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later
identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS
Cole.


25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in
October
2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to
the
CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."
26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a
senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate
that he
was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with
Iraqi
intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole
bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for
CBW-related
[Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi
intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to
provide this training.

The analysis of this report follows.


CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent
with
other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998
for
advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."
Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that
relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:

27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi
National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000
after
learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K.
interests
in Saudi Arabia.

And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11
hijacker
Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting
on
those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's more,
the
memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi
intelligence.





The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the
Sept.
11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief
in
Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions.
During
one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue
Atta
funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.
And the commentary:


CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994
and in
June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April
2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot
confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross
continues to stand by his information.
It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five
high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed
meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most
press
attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of
the
most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that
Atta
met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged
meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of
the
U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of
sloppiness
that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda
contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by
Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence
Service
officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead
hijacker's
determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the
spring
of
2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that
the
funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested
the
transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000,
but
was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than
simply
return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate
destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused
entry
the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper
paperwork,
and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day
after
arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between
Saddam
and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:


31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq
reached a
secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda
members
and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly
prompted a
large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said
that
al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda
had
been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda
personnel.
The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the
report fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration:


References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and
offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting
considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that
Iraqi
support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining
passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by
including
weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of
9-11.
Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the
U.N.
Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
Reporting
in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the
resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.


37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner
and
close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with
Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with
the
IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles
from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al
Zarqawi
was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a
U.S.
occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the
Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could
include
IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to
arms
and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's
procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations
against
the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.
38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good
access who does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi
intelligence service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was
providing
weapons to al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket
propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information,
northern
Iraq-based al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to strike al
Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar al-Islam
positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which
"claimed
that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided
it
with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."


CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that
Iraq-al
Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the
White
House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that
links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely
"exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of
intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance
on
"Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse
to
look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated
intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the
case
for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there
was
any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in
Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a
connection
between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a
basis
for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which
Levin
serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence.
Not
that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements.
Indeed,
the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the
administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore
claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to
work
with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass
destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page
memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will
eventually
be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For
one
thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their
cooperation
secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal
intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few
people
in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no
Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group
currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing
Iraqi
intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These
documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in
Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam,
but
also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It
will be
a slow process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best
viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It
contains
the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed
Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11
hijackers
through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have
extensive
reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking.
That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page
memo,
extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al
Qaeda
connections.

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not
one
but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al
Hamzi--through
the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on
January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala
Lumpur
Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of
the
September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to
work on
January 9 and January 10, and never again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi
Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its
intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged
"diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his
employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on
September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact
information
for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998
embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11
hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a
phone
call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had
been
plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On
October
21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a
flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in
Jordan
for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators
concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in
counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained,
according
to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to
"pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time,
Amnesty
International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The
Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is
believed
to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection
between
Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument about
whether
Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot
against Americans.


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.




--
Oz1...twin of the 3 twins

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 00:09:46 +0000, Capetanios Oz Twin wrote:


The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay
Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee.

Oh please, Feith? This is the same man who oversaw the Office of Special
Plans. Ring a bell? WMD? He and Rumsfeld should both be fired for
cooking the intelligence. Have a read:

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030512fa_fact

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8725

http://www.radioleft.com/article.php?op=Print&sid=1192

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 03:25:31 -0500, thunder wrote:


Oh please, Feith? This is the same man who oversaw the Office of Special
Plans. Ring a bell? WMD? He and Rumsfeld should both be fired for
cooking the intelligence. Have a read:

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030512fa_fact

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8725

http://www.radioleft.com/article.php?op=Print&sid=1192

Some of you may find my sources to "leftist". For those, how about the
Department of Defense:

http://www.dod.mil/releases/2003/nr20031115-0642.html