Pentagon Report :Saddam Directly Funded & Trained Al -Qaeda prior to 911 

Ricin plotters tied to al-Qaida, Iraq

Cheney Connects Saddam to 1993 World Trade Center Bombing (NewsMax)[Read]

Baathist Fingerprints
Increasing evidence suggests Saddam ties to 9/11.(NRO) [Read]

The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, a book endorsed by VP Cheney as a comprehensive source on the evidence linking the two., Stephen F. Hayes

Iraqi official at 9-11 plot meeting
U.S. finds documents tying Saddam's man to al-Qaida

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States (WND).[Read]

Ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein  ("Quinn in the Morning" www.warroom.com) Outlines evidence, using reputable sources. [Download Mp3 ](1.98 meg)

Aides Contradict Kerry on Iraq-al Qaida Connection

While Sen. John Kerry has accused the Bush administration of misleading America by falsely claiming there were operational ties between Iraq and al Qaida, two of Kerry's top foreign policy advisers are on the record contending that Saddam Hussein helped Osama bin Laden in his quest for chemical weapons (NewsMax) [Read]

Case Closed: Saddam and Al Qaeda were Connected

.Yet Another piece: Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi native who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center building.  Coalition forces found a document in Tikrit several months ago that indicates the former Iraqi regime has provided Yasin housing and a monthly stipend for nearly a decade.  Dick Cheney has mentioned this on a couple of occasions, but it has otherwise gone unnoticed.  Why?  [Read]

On July 21, 2001 - less than two months before 9/11 - the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper Al-Nasiriya carried a column headlined "America, An Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin."

The same column also insisted that bin Laden "will strike America on the arm that is already hurting," and that the U.S. "will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs" - an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic "New York, New York." [Two 9/11 families were awarded over $100 million in May 2003 by U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer based on this and other evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11 (NewsMax)
[Read]   .

Saddams attempt to assassinate Former President Bush.

Former President George Bush visited Kuwait between April 14 and April 16, 1993, to commemorate the allied victory in the Persian Gulf War. Accompanying Bush were his wife, two of his sons, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, former Chief of Staff John Sununu, and former Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady.

In late-April 1993, the United States learned that terrorists had attempted to assassinate Bush during his visit to Kuwait. The Kuwaiti authorities arrested 17 persons suspected in the plot to kill Bush using explosives hidden in a Toyota Landcruiser. The Kuwaitis recovered the Landcruiser, which contained between 80 and 90 kilograms of plastic explosives connected to a detonator ( the Bush device or Bush explosive device ). The Kuwaitis also recovered ten cube-shaped plastic explosive devices with detonators (the cube-bombs ) from the Landcruiser. Some of the suspects reportedly confessed that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS ) was behind the assassination attempt

On April 29, 1993, CIA bomb technicians compared the Bush explosive device to two known Iraqi explosive devices found in different Middle-Eastern countries in 1990 and 1991 (the Middle-East devices ) . The technicians reported that the remote control firing mechanism in the Bush device was identical to those in the Middle-East devices. Additionally, the technicians reported that blasting caps from the Bush device appeared to be identical to those found in one of the Middle-East devices. The technicians later concluded that the circuit board from the Bush device also closely resembled circuit boards from the Middle-East devices  http://hnn.us/articles/1000.html

The Iraqis Plot to blow up Radio Free Europe
The Czech news media have suggested that the reason for Vulterin's dismissal was that BIS failed to inform the government that a terrorist attack was being organized by the Iraqi consul against the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty. BIS allegedly had been aware that Iraq had requested its consul, Jabir Salim, to organize the terrorist operation against RFE/RL, apparently in retribution for the start-up last year of Radio Free Iraq. The Czech press says Baghdad sent the consul $50,000 to organize the attack but the consul asked for more money. Baghdad allegedly sent an additional $100,000. The consul then fled to London in December, taking the money, his family and the embassy codes. The government reportedly only found out about the plans to attack RFE/RL from British intelligence. Czech officials have categorically refused to comment on this version of events. Czech Minister without Portfolio Jaroslav Basta, who oversees the secret services, blames BIS for leaking this version of events. http://www.rferl.org/features/1999/02/f.ru.990203125419.asp

The Iraqis behind the plot to blow up Radio Free Europe
The story behind the purported Atta-Iraqi meeting is nonetheless an illuminating window into the murky world of intelligence in the war on terrorism - and how easily facts can become distorted for political purposes. The tale begins in 1998, when Radio Free Europe, which is headquartered in Prague, started broadcasting anti-Saddam programs into Iraq, infuriating the dictator. Late that year, Tom Dine, the director of Radio Free Europe, says U.S. officials warned him that "the Iraqis were plotting to blow us up." The information about the plot, sources said, came from a recent Iraqi defector who had fled Prague for Great Britain carrying nine suitcases and $150,000 in cash - the proceeds of which were supposed to have been used to finance the operation.

Radio Free Europe started round-the-clock video surveillance of the building. Soon enough, the cameras picked up a heavyset Middle Eastern man who was hanging around the RFE building taking pictures. He was sometimes accompanied by a thinner, taller man who wore a Shell Oil jacket. RFE passed along the pictures to the Czech intelligence agency, known as the BIS. The Czechs identified the heavier man as Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat widely believed to be a spy. The thinner man was never identified.

In late April 2001, al-Ani was again caught casing the building, and he was expelled from the country. Then, in the chaotic days after September 11, a Czech intelligence source inside Prague's Middle Eastern community saw Atta's picture in the media and reported that he had seen the same person meeting al-Ani at the Iraqi Embassy five months earlier. Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman publicly confirmed the story to CNN during a visit to Washington last November. But the uncorroborated report, some Czechs now concede, should have generated more skepticism. "These [informants] tend to tell you what you want to believe," says Oldrich Cerny, the former director of Czech intelligence. http://www.progressiveaustin.org/isikoff.htm

DoD News Briefing October 10, 1998
Cohen: The short answer to the question about whether the United States would agree to an investigation: the answer is, we don't think it's necessary to do so. I personally reviewed the information pertaining to the Shifaa plant. I was satisfied that the information pointed very clearly that chemicals, so-called precursor chemicals for the manufacture of VX, were discovered. The history behind Osama bin Laden's activities in Sudan, his contribution to the military-industrial corporation, of which this plant was also a part; and the information we had that he was seeking to acquire and has been seeking to acquire chemical weapons, was very persuasive as far as I'm concerned about the need to have struck that as a target.

As I have pointed out, the terrorists who have attacked American embassies have done so with the purpose of killing as many people as possible. They killed 267 people, most of them Africans. They wounded 5,000 people, most of them -- if not all -- Africans. And by contrast, the United States, in seeking to send a very strong message to terrorists that their actions will not go without response, tried very hard to limit the amount of casualties. And if you look at what took place in the Shifaa plant, there was only one. But I think that's important to keep in mind in terms of how the United States approaches this compared to the terrorists who seek to inflict as many massive casualties as possible.

With respect to terrorism in the future, the answer is yes. We believe - and we have sufficient evidence to believe - that a number of terrorist actions have been planned and will - the attempt will be made to carry them out. We intend to remain as vigilant as possible and as intense and intensive as we can about preventing those acts from being carried out and the destruction that would go with them, not only to our buildings and facilities but also to our diplomats and embassy people and innocent individuals associated with the embassies. So we expect that this will be continued for a long time. We've tried to indicate to our public that they must be prepared for this on a long-term basis, and that we need to work very cooperatively with all of our allies and all of our friends to combat this type of terrorism from being carried out.  http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/1998/t10131998_t1010sd.html

Seeing the Evil In Front of Us  Christopher Dickey   
The moment of confrontation had come. President Bush warned Saddam Hussein that if he continued to interfere with United Nations weapons inspectors and to shoot at American warplanes over Iraq, he would have to pay the consequences. So Islamic radicals from all over the Middle East, Africa and Asia converged on Baghdad to show their solidarity with Iraq in the face of American aggression. Chechens in Persian-lamb hats, Moroccans in caftans, delegates who hailed "from Jakarta to Dakar," as one Senegalese put it, poured into Baghdad's Rashid Hotel, where Saddam's minions urged them to embrace jihad as "the one gate to Paradise." And the greatest holy warrior of all? "The mujahed Saddam Hussein, who is leading this nation against the nonbelievers," they were told. "Everyone has a task to do, which is to go against the American state," declared Saddam's deputy Ezzat Ibrahim. The Americans had colonized Lebanon; they had colonized Saudi Arabia. But the line against them would be drawn in Iraq. Believers would triumph, said Ibrahim: "Our stand now can lead us to final victory, to Paradise."

That was in January 1993. I was there, and every time I hear diplomats and politicians, whether in Washington or the capitals of Europe, declare that Saddam Hussein is a "secular Baathist ideologue" who has nothing to do with Islamists or with terrorist calls to jihad, I think of that afternoon and I wonder what they're talking about. If that was not a fledgling Qaeda itself at the Rashid convention, it sure was Saddam's version of it.
You must register and pay for this article but its very much worth it. Link to article

Saddam Hussein offered asylum
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.Despite repeated demands from Washington, the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden after the August 7 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, demanding proof of his involvement in terrorist activities. However, in recent weeks, both the United States and Britain have renewed their pressure on the Taliban to expel bin Laden. Pakistan, a strong ally of the Taliban and one of only three countries to recognize the movement's control over Afghanistan, also has been asked by the United States to use its influence to have bin Laden expelled from Afghanistan. http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/13/afghan.binladen/

06 November 1998 TEXT: US GRAND JURY INDICTMENT AGAINST USAMA BIN LADEN
New York -- A U.S. Federal Grand Jury in New York on Nov. 5 issued an indictment against Usama Bin Laden alleging that he and others engaged in a long-term conspiracy to attack U.S. facilities overseas and to kill American citizens. The indictment noted that Al Qaeda, Bin Laden's international terrorist group, forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in Sudan and with the government of Iran and with its associated group Hezballah to "work together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States." Additionally, the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons development. According to the indictment, Bin Laden's group also tried to recruit Americans to travel through the United States and the West to deliver messages and to conduct financial transactions to aid their terrorist activities. The indictment also states that Al Qaeda used humanitarian work as a conduit for transmitting funds to affiliate terrorist groups.

h. At various times from in or about 1992 until the date of the filing of this Indictment, USAMA BIN LADEN and other ranking members of Al
Qaeda stated privately to other members of Al Qaeda that Al Qaeda should put aside its differences with Shiite Muslim terrorist organizations, including the Government of Iran and its affiliated terrorist group Hezballah, to cooperate against the perceived common enemy, the United States and its allies; http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/1998/11/98110602_nlt.html

Interview Dick Cheney Jan 2004 on Links between Al Queda Saddam and 9/11 Explosive!

Q: It was amazing, yeah. When I was in Iraq, some of the soldiers said they believed they were fighting because of the Sept. 11 attacks and because they thought Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaida. You've repeatedly cited such links. I heard your speech in Denver a while back. But even Secretary of State (Colin) Powell now says there's no smoking guns or concrete evidence proving that connection. I wanted to ask you what you'd say to those soldiers, and were those soldiers misled at all?

CHENEY: Well, there are two issues here. First of all, I don't want to speak to Colin's statements. I'm not familiar with what he said yesterday. Two issues in terms of relationship. One is, was there a relationship between al Qaida and Iraq, between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, or the al Qaida and the Iraqi intelligence service? That's one category of issues. A separate question is, whether or not there was any relationship relative to 9/11. Those are two separate questions and people oftentimes confuse them.

On the separate issue, on the 9/11 question, we've never had confirmation one way or another. We did have reporting that was public, that came out shortly after the 9/11 attack, provided by the Czech government, suggesting there had been a meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, and a man named al-Ani (Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani), who was an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague, at the embassy there, in April of '01, prior to the 9/11 attacks. It has never been -- we've never been able to collect any more information on that. That was the one that possibly tied the two together to 9/11.

With respect to the other question, the general relationship, I would refer you...There are several places you can go. One place you ought to go look is an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago, that goes through and lays out in some detail, based on an assessment that was done by the Department of Defense and forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committee some weeks ago. That's your best source of information. I can give you a few quick for instances, one the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

Q: Yes, sir...

CHENEY: The main perpetrator was a man named Ramzi Yousef. He's now in prison in Colorado. His sidekick in the exercise was a man named Abdul Rahman Yasin... Ahman Rahman... Yasin is his last name anyway. I can't remember his earlier first names. He fled the United States after the attack, the 1993 attack, went to Iraq, and we know now based on documents that we've captured since we took Baghdad, that they put him on the payroll, gave him a monthly stipend and provided him with a house, sanctuary, in effect, in Iraq, in the aftermath of nine-ele...(sic)... the 93' attack on the World Trade Center.

Q: So you stand by the statements...?

CHENEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you can look at Zarkawi, (Abu Mussab) al-Zarkawi, who is still out there operating today, who was an al-Qaida associate, who was wounded in Afghanistan, took refuge in Baghdad, working out of Baghdad, worked with the Ansar al Islam group up in northeastern Iraq, that produced a so-called poison factory, a group that we hit when we went into Iraq. They were involved in trying to smuggle things, manufacture and smuggle things like ricin into Europe to attack various targets in Europe with. He also, Zarkawi, was responsible for the assassination of a man named Foley, who worked for A.I.D. in Amman, Jordan, an American assigned over there. The links go back. We know for example from interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who wants to look at it. A lot of it has been declassified. More, I'm sure, will be declassified in the future, and my expectation would be as we get the time. We haven't really had the time yet to pore through all those records in Baghdad. We'll find ample evidence confirming the link, that is the connection if you will between al Qaida and the Iraqi intelligence services. They have worked together on a number of occasions.  http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/politics/article/0,1299,DRMN_35_2565269,00.html

Well-heeled Saddam has global stash

GENEVA — If Saddam Hussein is indeed orchestrating an anti-American guerrilla campaign from a hideout somewhere in Iraq, he can count on the billions of dollars he stashed away all over the world to finance his hit-and-run operations. The money was packed into suitcases, which were transported by truck from Bled, Slovenia, to Zurich, where a fair exchange was guaranteed by Youssef Nada of El-Taqwa Bank" — an outfit included in President Bush's list of al Qaeda's money suppliers, Mr. Fusi said. El-Taqwa's headquarters were in Campione, a tiny Italian enclave surrounded by Swiss territory, which also serves as an international tax haven.  "The neatly packaged bills then were shipped to Lebanon and Syria after which they disappeared," he said.  Another case entailed a consignment of weapons purchased in Slovenia from Russian, German and American arms merchants by one of Saddam's agents. The contraband was sent to the Croatian port of Koper, where landlocked Slovenia has extraterritorial shipping privileges. It was listed on the outgoing freighter's manifest as "grain" and delivered to Syria.  "Ironically, the boat was named the Nada after the Egyptian financial family whose scion, Youssef, founded El-Taqwa Bank," Mr. Fusi said. http://washingtontimes.com/world/20030816-105042-4611r.htm

Following Saddam Hussein's Secret Money-Laundering Trail
A detailed analysis of Saddam Hussein's secret money-laundering techniques shows here for the first time how he used the same offshore money launderers as Osama bin Laden. That covert money network, based in the tax havens of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Panama and Nassau, helped bankroll the war machines of both Iraq and al-Qaeda. More than 1,000 pages of confidential corporate, bank and legal documents show how the network functioned. The papers come from court cases filed in several European countries, from corporate records, from investigations by Italian police, from a report of the Kroll international investigative agency, and from private sources. The documents are the basis of further investigations coordinated in Europe by the prosecutor of Milan. They show, for example, that a father-and-son team in Liechtenstein, whose business is setting up shell companies and secret bank accounts, worked to move the money of both Saddam and al-Qaeda. Engelbert Schreiber and his son Englebert Schreiber Jr. are listed as founder or board member of Mediterranean Enterprises Development Projects, Tradex, Techno Service Intl., Saidomin and Executive Flight Assistance, all Liechtenstein companies that handled arms sales and payoffs for Saddam. They also are listed on corporate documents for Nasreddin International Group Ltd. Holding (Liechtenstein). Ahmed Idriss Nasreddin, on the U.S. terrorist blacklist, was a founder of Al Taqwa, the bank that moved money for al-Qaeda and which was closed down by the United States after 9/11. The Schreibers declined to respond to numerous requests for comment.
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/05/28/World/Following.Saddam.Husseins.Secret.MoneyLaundering.Trail-684337.shtml

This is something I just came across that I dont recall ever being referenced by anyone before reading it in Bill Sammon's Book on President Bush Misunderestimated though he seemed to pass right over the quote without giving it enough attention, here Saddam threatens the US by saying that even though his armies cannot reach the US individual arabs can. Indeed!.
Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy
On July 25,President Saddam Hussein of Iraq summoned the United States Ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie
If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you.

Saddam's Files New evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda
One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005133

Case Closed Weekly Standard
From the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. by Stephen F. Hayes 11/24/2003, Volume 009, Issue 11 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. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp

Remember Anthrax? Despite the evidence, the FBI won't let go of its "lone American" theory. by David Tell 04/29/2002, Volume 007, Issue 32
1) OVER THE PAST SIX MONTHS, have federal authorities altered their working theory of last fall's anthrax murders?
No, not much. On November 9 last year, even before the anthrax outbreak's fifth and final fatality had been recorded, the FBI called a press conference to unveil its "linguistic and behavioral assessment" of "the person" purportedly responsible. It was "highly probable, bordering on certainty," the Bureau announced, that a single "adult male" had prepared and mailed all the contaminated letters at issue. This man "probably has a scientific background," "may work in a laboratory," and is familiar with the area around Trenton, New Jersey--where the envelopes were postmarked.

3) Well, wait a minute. Wasn't the anthrax powder mailed last fall chemically identical to stuff produced in classified U.S. labs? But the fundamental chemistry involved here cannot sustain such certainty. Silica, or silicon dioxide, is simple quartz or sand, the most abundant solid material on earth. "Bentonite" is the generic term for a class of natural or processed clays derived from volcanic ash, all of which are themselves mineral compounds of silica--and not all of which necessarily contain aluminum. In other words: Trace amounts of silica in an anthrax powder are consistent with the presence of bentonite. And the absence of aluminum from that powder is not enough to exculpate any foreign germ-warfare factory thought to have used bentonite in the past. The FBI and Rosenberg seem also to have ignored what has been standard practice in U.S. biodefense, medical, and veterinary laboratories for most of the past thirty years: Work with virulent strains of anthracis in dried-spore, aerosolized form is virtually unheard of. Pentagon production of weapons-ready--and presumably silicate--anthrax powder was abandoned during the first Nixon administration. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, for example, doesn't even own the requisite technology to manufacture dry aerosols; USAMRIID scientists, like their civilian counterparts, use only "wet" anthrax--which has usually been genetically altered or irradiated to render it non-toxic. So whoever was responsible for last fall's bioterrorism wouldn't have needed to add silica to his anthrax powder at all. But he--or she, or they--might have had use for it while manufacturing that powder to begin with. Before they were kicked out of Iraq for good, U.N. weapons inspectors concluded that Saddam's military biologists were no longer relying on mechanical milling machines to render dried-out paste-colonies of anthracis bacteria into fine dust, but had instead refined a spray drying technique that produced the dust in a single step. And the suspected key ingredient in this Iraqi innovation, interestingly enough: pharmaceutical-grade silica, a common industrial drying agent. So whoever was responsible for last fall's bioterrorism wouldn't have needed to add silica to his anthrax powder at all. But he--or she, or they--might have had use for it while manufacturing that powder to begin with. Before they were kicked out of Iraq for good, U.N. weapons inspectors concluded that Saddam's military biologists were no longer relying on mechanical milling machines to render dried-out paste-colonies of anthracis bacteria into fine dust, but had instead refined a spray drying technique that produced the dust in a single step. And the suspected key ingredient in this Iraqi innovation, interestingly enough: pharmaceutical-grade silica, a common industrial drying agent.

9) Surely the FBI has some substantial reason to discount such fears and focus its attention on a domestic suspect?
That could well be, but if so they're keeping it to themselves. There is purely circumstantial though highly suggestive evidence that might seem to link Iraq with last fall's anthrax terrorism. The U.N.'s former top bioweapons inspector in Iraq, Richard O. Spertzel, has told Congress about reports of a "cryptic September article in a newspaper run by Saddam's son, Uday" which promised that a "virus" would soon attack "the raven," apparently a Baath party curseword for America. Spertzel has also told Congress that Iraq has conducted military exercises simulating the dispersal of anthrax spores from crop-dusting aircraft--a subject in which both Mohamed Atta and Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "twentieth hijacker," are known to have expressed intense interest. Last June, one of Atta's September 11 confederates, Ahmed Ibrahim Al Haznawi, walked into a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, emergency room with a painless but inflamed one-inch black lesion on his lower left leg. In retrospect, Al Haznawi's attending physician, Dr. Christos Tsonas, is convinced that the wound was cutaneous anthrax. The Department of Health and Human Services' top bioterrorism expert agrees, as do two leading researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. And so on. The FBI has hardly said a word about why it is inclined to mistrust or make light of such signals. And what little the Bureau has offered about why it prefers to focus instead on possible American suspects isn't especially persuasive, unfortunately.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/147vnjgh.asp
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/148lbgmg.asp

Marines capture suspected terrorist training camp By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press
SALMAN PAK, Iraq (AP) - The rusted shell of an old passenger jet sat out in a field, its tail broken off. Good for hijacking practice, U.S. Marines speculated Sunday as they examined an Iraqi training base about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The Americans also found a full obstacle course - with wooden walls and other barriers to be climbed over or crawled under - as well as a three-story concrete tower draped with ropes, apparently for rappelling. President Saddam Hussein's regime has said the camp, part of a larger military reservation in a bend of the Tigris River, was used for anti-terrorism training for Iraqi special forces. But U.S. officials and others have long suspected the camp trained terrorists. Two former Iraqi military officers told The New York Times and PBS's "Frontline" in the fall of 2001 that Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs were brought here to practice hijacking planes and trains, planting bombs and staging assassinations. U.N. inspectors looking for biological weapons reported seeing a plane there. The defectors said the plane was a Boeing 707. The one seen on Sunday was not.
http://www.dailybulletin.com/Stories/0,1413,203%257E27069%257E1305668,00.html

9/11 Mysteries In Plain Sight By Jim Hoagland Sunday, Analysis and commentary are my bread and my butter. But detached perspective is in short supply when it comes to Khalid Sheik Mohammed. I hate this murdering terrorist chieftain even for being captured. Why? Because the news of the capture of al Qaeda's No. 3 in Pakistan stirs up the raw memories of the pain, suffering and dread of 9/11 -- and a spasm of self-reproach for not recalling directly what that day was like more often than I do. Worse: more often than I promised myself I would. It is like treading on a live electric wire after stepping over it for much of the past 18 months. There is a song I avoid playing when I don't want to risk tears rolling down my cheeks. For me, Bruce Springsteen captures both the anger and the consolation of time passing since that "Lonesome Day": House is on fire, Viper's in the grass, A little revenge and This too shall pass. I put the Boss's album on the instant I heard of the capture. And listened and hoped that the day of lawful, judicious revenge does not pass too quickly for this man known as Mohammed. The capture of this particular viper may well be even more important than nabbing or killing Osama bin Laden, both in solving the mysteries of 9/11 and in reaching the tipping point in the war on terrorism. Long years of interviewing Middle East terrorist leaders and my reading of human nature suggest this: It is one thing to give up your life to the delusion of advancing a glorious cause toward victory and the final removal of evil. It is quite another, much harder thing to sacrifice yourself to a losing cause in full retreat. There is no scientific way of knowing where that tipping point is. But that it exists is shown by the cyclical pattern of terrorism through the ages. Civilization can never rid itself of murdering fanatics. But it can disrupt, disband and contain their operations, and organize defenses against them. The capture of Mohammed is a big step forward. He knows the answer to these two central questions: How did al Qaeda, within two or three years, go from obscurity to becoming super-terrorists capable of blowing up U.S. embassies, warships and skyscrapers with astonishing precision? And what are the links between 9/11 and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 by Ramzi Yousef, who authorities say is Mohammed's nephew? http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59646-2003Mar7?language=printer

Bush claims new Iraq link with al-Qaida link Bin Laden turned to Bagdad after concluding al-Qaida could not produce weapons, says prisoner 2003-08-10 / Agence France-Presse / A high-ranking al-Qaida operative in custody has disclosed that Iraq supplied the Islamist militant group with material to build chemical and biological weapons, the Bush administration said Friday. "A senior al-Qaida terrorist, now detained, who had been responsible for al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, reports that al-Qaida was intent on obtaining (weapons of mass destruction) assistance from Iraq," the White House said in a report. The 25-page document was released as President George W. Bush vacationed at his Texas ranch.The Bush administration cited links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Baath party regime as justification for attacking Iraq to oust Saddam. The administration also insisted Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons.
http://www.etaiwannews.com/World/2003/08/10/1060483250.htm

'We'll pay all expenses to gain the knowledge from bin Laden and convey a message back' Marked "Top Secret and Urgent" in the margin and signed by "MDA", thought to be the codename for the director of one of the intelligence sections within the Mukhabarat."The envoy is a trusted confidant and known by them. According to the above mediation we request official permission to call Khartoum station to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq. And that our body carry all the travel and hotel expenses 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 Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$JGUS2WPOOC55TQFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2003/04/27/walq127.xml

The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden By Inigo Gilmore (Filed: 27/04/2003)
Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime. Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998. The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad. The papers will be seized on by Washington as the first proof of what the United States has long alleged - that, despite denials by both sides, Saddam's regime had a close relationship with al-Qa'eda. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/27/walq27.xml

Iraq's Tie to Al-Qaeda Terrorists, Airline Hijackings
From: Aviation Week & Space Technology Headline: Satellite Photos Believed To Show Airliner for Training Hijackers Byline: Michael A. Dornheim
Dateline: Los Angeles, January 7, 2002  http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_031403/content/nabbed.guest.html
Satellite images of a facility near Baghdad show an airliner that Iraqi defectors say is used to train terrorists in the art of hijacking.Space Imaging, which operates the Ikonos civilian surveillance satellite, was prompted to look for the aircraft in existing photos after a ''Frontline'' television show interviewed two Iraqi defectors who described the hijacker training and the aircraft used for the mock attacks. One of them drew a map of the Salman Pak training area, and Space Imaging was able to find the facility and the aircraft in photographs taken on Apr. 25, 2000, of an area about 15 mi. southeast of Baghdad on the Tigris River. The zoomed-in photograph is a close match to the hand-drawn map, lending credence to the defector's story. He is Sabah Khodada, and said he worked at the secret Salman Pak complex for about six months as an administrator. The facility is run by the Iraqi secret service, and is used to teach assassination, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, buses and trains and other terrorist operations, Khodada said. ''This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the whole world.''  http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_031203/content/eibexcerpt.guest.html

Saddam’s Ultimate Solution PBS interview with Richard Perle Chairman Defense Policy Board
July 11, 2002: What are the chances that Saddam Hussein is feeding chemical and biological weapons to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda? And, if so, how prepared is the U.S. to respond? Would a regime change in Iraq bring greater stability to the region or muddy the waters further? James P. Rubin discusses the issues with Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory group, and a former assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/saddam/transcript.html 

Nabeel Musawi An Iraqi dissident, Nabeel Musawi is the political liaison for the London-based Iraqi National Congress. Alleging an intelligence connection between Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and Iraq, he tells FRONTLINE that he believes Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Musawi says U.S. support of "corrupt regimes" in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia is a major factor fueling anti-Americanism in the Middle East. This interview was conducted late September 2001

You were saying that Sept. 11 was a coup attempt? What do you mean?
If you go by the history of the Middle East and the way coups were carried out, you aim for the financial center, you aim for the ministry of defense, and you aim for presidential palace. Of course, you usually aim for the TV and radio, but in the case of the United States, you don't need to do that, because it's free press. So what happened on Sept. 11 in the United States was a coup attempt, because they aimed for the White House, they aimed for the Pentagon, and they aimed for the heart of the financial center of the United States.

But a coup implies that they're going to replace the existing government or elite with another one.
If you're attacked in the White House and if you are attacked in Air Force One, and you're attacked in the military establishment which represents the most powerful thing within the United States, that is a coup. You're destroying the leadership. You're killing the whole leadership. It will take weeks, if not months, to bring back some sort of order into the American system. That is a major success for a small terrorist organization like Taliban and Osama bin Laden and their associates in the region.To them, this will throw not only the United States but the whole of the Western world into total anarchy, panic. We know they had limited success from the atrocities committed on Sept. 11. And still, it threw everybody into a panicky state for a few days. It took us few days to get over the shock. Even the political system itself took a few days to recover from the shock. So imagine if you actually get Air Force One and the White House. That is a coup. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/terrorism/interviews/musawi.html

Letting Saddam Be A pre-and post-September 11 danger. By Laurie Mylroie
More American civilians died on September 11 than on any other single day in this nation's history. Such a huge disaster is, almost necessarily, the result of major, multiple errors. The current spasm of finger-pointing and memo-leaking is bringing some mistakes to light, but they are all tactical, i.e. whether 9/11 could have been averted by vigorously pursuing suspicions of the FBI field offices. Even in the best of circumstances, U.S. authorities cannot catch every major terrorist attack in the making. When those attacks are on the scale of 9/11 even one failure is unacceptable. Notably absent in the present debate is consideration of the strategic blunder underlying 9/11. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-mylroie052902.asp

World Trade Center - Who Did It?  An Alternative View From Jane's Foreign Report  (Iraqis involvement)Janes.com 9-19-01 Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world's foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden. The Iraqis, who for several years paid smaller groups to do their dirty work, were quick to discover the advantages of Al-Qaeda. The Israeli sources claim that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri. According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured last October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan. The Iraqis are also reported to have established strong ties with Imad Mughniyeh. http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr010919_1_n.shtml

Iraqs State Sponsorship of Osama bin-Laden and the al-Qaeda Terror Network Essay by Chris Farrell in the Washington Dispatch Jun 30, 2002 [Editor's Note: This article was originally published on November 30, 2001]
Osama bin-Laden represents and articulates a thoroughly developed Islamist theology and philosophy with a broader appeal that goes beyond a simple hatred of Israel. He expounds and defends a religious obligation of Muslims to attack U.S. military and civilian targets; demands the immediate expulsion of U.S. Forces from Saudi Arabia; calls for the creation of a “Muslim” nuclear weapon; criticizes harshly “moderate” Muslim states such as Egypt and Jordan for not instituting “truly” Islamic law; and he also calls for the end of all sanctions against Iraq. Osama bin-Laden sees an opportunity for holy war, literally, across half of the globe.¹ http://www.washingtondispatch.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/1/32 

TERRORISM - THE IRAQI CONNECTION
Host: Hello and welcome to On the Line. The role of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon is well-documented. Indeed, bin Laden virtually claimed credit for the terrorist attacks in a videotape circulated to his al-Qaida followers. But did bin Laden’s terrorists have help from a state -- besides Taleban-ruled Afghanistan? There is evidence that Iraq may have been involved, evidence that U.S. officials are paying increasing attention to. Did the September 11th terrorists have help from Saddam Hussein? I’ll ask my guests, James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Laurie Mylroie, author of "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein’s War against America." Welcome.
James Woolsey, let me ask you first. Is there any direct evidence of a connection between the September Eleventh hijackers and Iraq?
Woolsey: It depends on what you mean by direct. Much of intelligence is hearsay, and would not be admissible for example in a court. There’s some very suggestive evidence. For example, there are at least five individual witnesses -- two American inspectors and three Iraqi defectors -- who tell us about Iraqi government training of non-Iraqi Arabs at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, on an old Boeing 707 [aircraft], in hijacking techniques, including hijacking with knives. Now is that direct evidence? It strikes me that it’s pretty darn suggestive evidence. Would it alone convict Saddam in a court before a jury beyond a reasonable doubt? Probably not. But there’s more.
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages/834.html

Mounting Evidence of Iraqi Link to Terror Attacks By Ziad K. Abdelnour  
Two weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein reportedly put his military on its highest state of alert since the 1991 Gulf War. According to the London-based Sunday Telegraph, the Iraqi leader even took the unusual step of moving his two wives, Sajida and Samira, from Baghdad to an undisclosed location in the family's hometown of Tikrit, 100 miles to the north (see “Army alert by Saddam points to Iraqi role,” The Sunday Telegraph, London, Sept. 23, 2001.)  Saddam's precautions were hardly unwarranted. A growing body of circumstantial evidence indicates that Iraq may have participated in plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The most striking evidence linking Baghdad to the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks is that the presumed ringleader of the suspected hijackers, Mohamed Atta, met twice with Iraqi intelligence operatives in the Czech Republic. According to senior Czech officials quoted in the Czech daily Hospodarske Noviny and The Wall Street Journal, Atta traveled from Hamburg, Germany, to Prague in June 2000 and met with Iraqi intelligence agents at Baghdad's embassy there, which has long been under  constant surveillance by the Czech authorities. http://www.sftt.org/dw11142001.html#3

Saddam and Osama, Alliance for Vengeance (January 29, 2002) The September 11 attacks in the United States was carried out by operatives of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organization, but the initial plans for the terrorist attack were made in Baghdad six years ago. Iraqi intelligence trained at least two of bin Laden's suicide pilots on Boeing jetliners the Iraqis captured during the Gulf war. The Iraqis provided several of bin Laden's men with forged passports and vials of anthrax, which were delivered to one of the suicide pilots, Mohammad Atta, during secret meetings in Prague. Although the religious extremist and the extreme nationalist are polar opposites politically, international terrorist Osama bin Laden and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein long ago set aside their differences to meet a common goal. The tragic events of September 11 mark only the first phase in their joint effort to enact revenge on their many common enemies in both the Western and the Islamic worlds.  http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/4637/terr26a.html

TENET TESTIMONY TO SENATE CURRENT AND PROJECTED NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES HEARING before the SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE of the UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION CURRENT AND PROJECTED NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES FEBRUARY 6, 2002 
Tenet: And the Iraqi piece, as I referenced, you know, the WMD profile I gave you and my interest in being very careful about was there a convergence of interest here between al-Qa'ida and the Iraqis, don't know the answer to the question yet--pursuing it very, very carefully. There was a press story today that said CIA dismisses these linkages. Well, you don't dismiss linkages when you have a group like al-Qa'ida who probably buys and sells all kinds of capabilities for people who have converging interests, whether Sunni or Shi'a, and how they mixed and matched training capabilities, safe harboring, and money is something we're taking a look at. So nobody dismisses anything. Everybody's on the table, and these networks of terrorism should no longer be thought about purely in terms of the state's interests, what they say publicly, what their obvious interests are and how they see the benefit in hurting the United States. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/020602transcript.html 

Saddam link to Bin Laden Terror chief 'offered asylum' in Iraq? US says dealings step up danger of chemical weapons attacks  By Julian Borger in Washington Saturday February 6, 1999
The Guardian Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials. The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,314700,00.html 

Iraq Accused of Encouraging Terrorism by Sheltering Hijackers
7 November 2000Al-Nadwah (Saudi Arabia) charges Iraq with supporting terrorism after Baghdad granted political asylum to two Saudi citizens who hijacked a Saudi airliner and rejected an official Saudi request for their extradition. The hijacking of the London-bound plane shortly after it left Jeddah occurred on October 14. After first indicating that they wanted to go to Damascus, the hijackers directed the pilot to Baghdad. Once the plane landed, the hijacking was resolved within a few hours. The passengers were released and the hijackers gave a press conference, denouncing the Saudi government for its human rights violations. An Iraqi opposition source told MEIB that there is "no doubt" that the entire event was coordinated with Iraqi authorities before hand. http://www.meib.org/articles/0012_irb.htm#lb2 

Iraqi Involvement in Attack on Cole
10 November 2000 The Paris-based weekly Al-Watan al-Arabi, considered friendly to Saudi Arabia, reports that Iraq was involved in the attack on the October 12 attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Iraqi intelligence reportedly received the explosive used in the attack from Russia, and the Iraqis transported the material to Yemen, in collusion with senior officials of the Yemeni regime. The report repeats some of the same charges made two weeks before in the same magazine, which explained that it was such a massive operation and was so carefully planned, that it was virtually impossible for a terrorist group to have carried out the attack without state support. Arab sources tell MEIB that the Saudi leadership is thoroughly convinced that Iraq was behind the attack and that they are exasperated by the U.S. insistence on blaming it solely on Osama bin Ladin.
http://www.meib.org/articles/0012_irb.htm#lb5 

Iraqi Spies Reportedly Arrested in Germany
16 March 2001 Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.

The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies.  http://www.meib.org/articles/0104_irb.htm#irb3

OSAMA BIN LADIN AND IRAQ Iraq News, FEBRUARY 10, 1999 By Laurie Mylroie
The New York Post, Feb 1, reported, "Saddam Hussein-battered, humiliated and increasingly isolated-plans to resort to terrorism in revenge for US airstrikes against his country. . .  US officials say the CIA has received 'credible and reliable' intelligence reports that Saddam is forging alliances with some of the Middle East's most bloodthirsty terrorists-including Osama Bin Ladin and Abu Nidal-as part of an apparently new campaign to strike American targets and possibly destablise Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. . . . US officials are concerned about the possibility that Saddam could not only help with funding and logistics for Bin Ladin's far-flung network, . . .  http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/02/990210-in-terror.htm

Patterns of Global Terrorism (1999): Middle East Overview
U.S. Department of State 1 May 2000 Iran, Syria, and Iraq all persisted in their direct or indirect state sponsorship of terrorism. In most cases, the support included providing assistance, training, or safehaven to terrorist groups opposed to the Middle East peace process. In some cases, particularly Iran, it also included targeting regime dissidents and opponents for assassination or harassment. Libyan support for terrorism has declined significantly in recent years, but Libya continued to have residual contacts and relationships with terrorist organizations http://www.meib.org/articles/0006_medoc1.htm

Laurie Mylroie: Is Iraq involved with U.S. terror attacks?October 29, 2001 Posted: 2:36 PM EST (1936 GMT)
MYLROIE: We are in a very, very difficult situation. If we say clearly that it is Iraq, and we're going to get Saddam, then it is likely that he will do his best to bring his enemies down with him. It is true that we face the danger then of more deadly attacks, including anthrax attacks. If we do not say it is Saddam, we will also face the danger of more deadly attacks. This is a terrible situation. Yet I prefer to deal with the losses that will come by taking on Saddam than to be subject to the losses that will occur if we remain sitting ducks. It would seem that some ambiguity in the beginning is the best thing. If we shift the focus from Afghanistan to Iraq, we are indeed at war, and during war, extreme measures may have to be taken. For example, we might think to get children and all non-essential personnel out of U.S. cities while this war goes on, which we will carry out very quickly, or to have people remaining in U.S. cities where they are a target, wearing masks pretty much all the time, in order to deal with this problem which we should address quickly rather than slowly
http://www.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/10/29/mylroie/

Saddam running training camps for terrorists, say defectors By Philip Delves Broughton in New York
(Filed: 09/11/2001) TWO former Iraqi intelligence agents have told the CIA that Saddam Hussein has fostered training camps to produce scores of highly trained terrorists for attacks in the Middle East and the West. If confirmed, their statements will strengthen the case of those in Washington advising President Bush that the only way to crush Arab terrorism is to topple Saddam. That case received a further boost on Wednesday when Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, regarded as the least hawkish member of Mr Bush's inner circle, said America would turn its focus to Iraq once it had dealt with the al-Qa'eda network and Afghanistan. After defeating al-Qa'eda, said Mr Powell: "We will turn our attention to terrorism throughout the world, and nations such as Iraq, which have tried to pursue weapons of mass destruction." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/09/wirq09.xml

Question:What warning, if any, did the CIA receive from the National Reconnaissance Office concerning Arabs training on the fuselage of a passenger airliner at a terrorist training camp prior to September 11th, 2001?
Answer: After Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, an Iraqi military officer, defected from Iraq in 1999 to Turkey. He now lives in Fort Worth, Texas. When he was debriefed, he described his training mission at Salman Pak, a military base about 21 miles from Baghdad that had been used for the testing of secret weapons, including chemical biological warfare agents, and paramilitary training for covert actions. Captain Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami said that as late as 1998 he trained an elite commando team, Fedayeen Saddam, in airline hijacking and sabotage. Through a translator, Mr. Alami described, according to the Wall street Journal, a daily regimen of exercises on kidnapping, assassination, and -- using a Boeing 707 parked inside the complex -- how to hijack a plane or bus without weapons. He said that a separate group of non-Iraqis were being similarly trained by Saddam's intelligence service, the mukhabarat. Asked about the plane by an interviewer for Front Line, he said "Yes, there's a real whole 707 plane, a whole real plane, standing in the middle of the training area in this camp." http://edwardjayepstein.com/2002question/salmanpak.htm

Clintonized CIA Quashed Best Evidence of Saddam-9/11 Link
Clinton-era holdovers still running the CIA have dismissed the best evidence that Saddam Hussein had a role in planning the 9/11 attacks because they distrust accounts from multiple Iraqi defectors who have described an airplane hijacking training school attended by al-Qaeda members near Baghdad. According to this week's New Republic magazine, "two former Iraqi intelligence officers" brought to the CIA by the Iraqi opposition group the Iraqi National Congress (INC) have provided classified testimony claiming "that Saddam was using a base south of Baghdad, in an agricultural community called Salman Pak, to train non-Iraqi Arabs in hijacking and other black arts of terrorism."  The "Agency," however - still run by Clinton appointee George Tenet - remains unconvinced. "There is no evidence of al-Qaeda training there in Salman Pak," one senior CIA official insisted to TNR. http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/9/27/120144 

Salman Pak / Al Salman
Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations. The Salman Pak biological warfare facility was located on a peninsula caused by a bend in the Tigris river, approximately five kilometers (km) from the arch located in the town of Salman Pak. The facility area comprised more than 20 square km, and might have been known as a farmers (or agricultural) experimentation center. The peninsula was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. Immediately inside and to the east of the fence line were two opulent villas: the larger built for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the other for his half-brother, Barazan al-Tikriti. A main paved road ran through the center of the Salman Pak facility/peninsula. [GulfLINK

Iraq told UN inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. Training activities including simulated hijackings carried out in an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] at the camp. The camp is divided into distinct sections. On one side of the camp young, Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam are trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage. The Islamic militants trained on the other side of the camp, in an area separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire. The militants reportedly spent time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the airplane. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/salman_pak.htm

Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak 
So you were training Iraqis, Saddam's fedayeen, members of the militia in Iraq. And someone else, other groups, were training the non-Iraqis?
They were special trainers or teachers from the Iraqi intelligence and al-Mukhabarat. And those same trainers or teachers will train the fedayeen, the Iraqi fedayeen, and also the same group of those teachers will train the non-Iraqis, foreigners who are in the camp. Personally, my profession is not this kind of training. My profession is to train people on infantry, typical infantry training, such as training on machine guns, pistols, hand grenades, rocket launchers on the shoulder and this kind of training. The special training that I'm talking about, such as the kidnapping and so, is conducted by those trainers who are not from the army; they are from ... al-Mukhabarat.And there was a person who is very famous. They call him Al-Shaba. [ph]. This is Arabic word means "The Ghost," who was responsible for all the training, and those trainers or the teachers.

Why was he called the Ghost?
I don't know exactly why he's being called the Ghost. I came there and his name was the Ghost. But I know that he has conducted several terrorist operations in Lebanon and in other countries all over the world. And I know that he told us that he's been requested to be arrested by the Interpol. This is probably why he called himself the Ghost.

And the foreign nationals, the Arabs who are there, but who are not Iraqis -- what were they like? Were they Egyptians, Saudis? Do you know where they came from?
They look like they're mostly from the Gulf, sometimes from areas close to Yemen, from their dark skin and short bodies. And they also are Muslims. ...

Were they religious?
I don't know exactly because I saw them seldom very [briefly]. But some of them has beards, long beards, which is an indication of being a religious Muslim. 

And they trained people to hijack airplanes?
Yes.

For what purpose?...
It has been said openly in the media and even to us, from the highest command, that the purpose of establishing Saddam's fighters is to attack American targets and American interests. This is known. There's no doubt about it.
All this training is directed towards attacking American targets, and American interests. The training does not only include hijacking of planes and sabotage. ... Some other people were trained to do parachuting. Some other areas were training on how to penetrate enemy lines and get information from behind enemy lines. But it's all for the general concept of hitting and attacking American targets and American interests.

Who controlled this operation?
In terms of training, they will train in this special camp. But after this training, they will go in small groups. These small groups are directly connected with Saddam, or to Saddam's son. For example, the Iraqi fighters, they will be spread all over the country. Occasionally those individual groups, very small groups, will be called for. They might encounter different kind of special training beyond this training on specific things. I'll give you an example. They were calling for some of these groups to train intensively to learn English language, Persian language, Hebrew language, to be sent out to different places of the world to conduct such kind of ... different kind of operations. I suspect that the higher level of training, or the additional training they encounter, has a lot to do with what happened. And there's a lot of similarity with what happened with New York and Washington on September 11.

That was your reaction on September 11 -- that some of these people might be involved?
I assure you, this operation was conducted by people who were trained by Saddam. And I'm going to keep assuring the world this is what happened. Osama bin Laden has no such capabilities. Why? Because this kind of attacks must be, and has to be, organized by a capable state, such as Iraq; a state where they can provide high level of training, and they can provide high level of intelligence to do such training. How could Osama bin Laden -- who's hiding in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan in small caves and valleys -- train people and gather information and send people to do such high-level operation? We all know this is a high-level operation. This cannot be done by a person who does not even own a plane in Afghanistan, who cannot offer such training in Afghanistan. This is definitely done by a mastermind like Saddam. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/khodada.html

Israeli intelligence warned US days before attacks IAN BRUCE
ISRAEL'S military intelligence service, Aman, issued an urgent warning of an impending terrorist "spectacular" against America, several days before the suicide bombers flew passenger airliners into New York's Trade Towers and the Pentagon on September 11. Aman had no details of the targets, but picked up enough indicators of major terrorist activity from a combination of informants and electronic eavesdropping to send out an alert, which also covered US interests in Britain, France and Germany. Much of the Israeli intelligence centred on Imad Mughniyeh, head of the Iranian-backed Hizbollah movement's foreign operations section, and on Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born terrorist mastermind reputed to be Osama bin Laden's chosen successor. The Israelis say they have evidence linking both men to agents representing SSO, Iraq's foreign intelligence service, and believe Baghdad has provided finance and logistical support to them. Links between the terrorist network and Iraq have been established by Pakistan's shadowy ISI agency and by the Czech Republic's counter-intelligence service.  http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/31-10-19101-0-24-15.html

Islamic terrorists continue Islam’s war against what remains of Western civilization
On January 13, 2002, WorldNet Daily reported that "The conviction is gaining ground in some Western intelligence agencies that Osama bin Laden, his family, Ayman al-Zawahiri and thousands of al-Qaida fighters made good their escape from Afghanistan through the illicit sea route created by Lebanese-Iranian super terrorist Imad Mughniyeh for smuggling operations in the service of terrorist organizations. They are believed to have made their getaway from Afghanistan in the first week of December, crossing secretly into Iran and heading out through the Persian Gulf - only to disappear again."

In view of this intelligence, President Bush issued "a blunt warning to Iran last Thursday against harboring ‘al-Qaida murderers.’" Worldnet (based on Debka intelligence journal sources) also reported in November 2002 that "bin Laden had packed his family out of Afghanistan to Pakistan. According to accumulating intelligence, he moved his family so as to draw his American searchers' attention away from his real escape route, which a week later took him and al-Zawahiri from Afghanistan directly into Iran."

WorldNet, citing many additional facts, concludes that "Iran was up to its neck in the al-Qaida escape conspiracy. Imad Mughniyeh, top terrorist operations chief for Iran’s radical spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, organized the logistics; the escapees were led overland through Iran to its main Gulf outlet, under the protection of Iranian intelligence officers."
http://http://www.fatimaperspectives.com/ef/perspective190.asp 

Interview with President Clinton "Trouble in Iraq" JIM LEHRER: All right. Another subject. Iraq
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, the United States does not relish moving alone, because we live in a world that is increasingly interdependent. We would like to be partners with other people. But sometimes we have to be prepared to move alone. You used the anthrax example. Think how many can be killed by just a tiny bit of anthrax, and think about how it's not just that Saddam Hussein might put it on a Scud missile, an anthrax head, and send it on to some city he wants to destroy. Think about all the other terrorists and other bad actors who could just parade through Baghdad and pick up their stores if we don't take action. I far prefer the United Nations, I far prefer the inspectors, I have been far from trigger-happy on this thing, but if they really believe that there are no circumstances under which we would act alone, they are sadly mistaken. That is not a threat. I have shown I do not relish this thing. Every time it's discussed around here, I say one of the great luxuries of being the world's only superpower for a while -- and it won't last forever probably, but for a while -- is that there is always time enough to kill.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june98/clinton_1-21a.html

A first open letter from Saddam Hussein to the peoples of the United States September 15, 2001
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most merciful”

Open letter from Saddam Hussein to the American peoples and the western peoples and their governments.

Once again, we would like to comment on what happened in America on September 11, 2001, and its consequences. The comments we made on the next day of the event represent the essence of our position regarding this event and other events, but the aftermath of what happened in America, in the West in particular and in the world in general, makes it important for every leader to understand the meaning of responsibility toward his people, his nation, and humanity in general to follow up the development of the situation, to understand the meaning of what is going on, and hence to elaborate his country’s and people’s position so as not to restrict oneself to only following the event. 

For this reason also, the Americans, and the world with them, should understand the argument that made those people give their lives in sacrifice, and what they sacrifice themselves for, in that way. When one million and a half Iraqi human beings die, according to Western documents, from a population of twenty five million, because of the American blockade and aggression, it means that Iraq has lost about one twentieth of its population. And just as your beautiful skyscrapers were destroyed and caused your grief, beautiful buildings and precious homes crumbled over their owners in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq by American weapons used by the Zionists. In only one place, which was a civilian shelter, which is the Ameriyah Shelter, more than four hundred human beings, children, young and old men and women, died in Iraq by American bombs. In the same day, the 11^th of September, one of their aggressive military airplanes was shot down over Iraq. And on the same day of the event in America on 11^th September, and American jetfighter was perpetration aggression against Iraq and was shot down.

As for what is going on in Palestine, if Zionist let you see on your TVs the bodies of children, women and men who are daily killed by American weapons, and with American backing to the Zionist entity, the pain you are feeling would be appeased.

Americans should feel the pain they have inflicted on other peoples of the world, so as when they suffer, they will find the right solution and the right path.

All that has been inflicted on the Arabs and
http://www.uruklink.net/iraqnews/ereport16.htm

The Iraqi Regime's Links to Terrorism
Ely Karmon ICT Senior Researcher Reprinted with permission from Policywatch, Analysis of Near East Policy from the Scholars and Associates of the Washington Institute.

On August 28, 2002, a U.S. federal grand jury issued a new indictment against five terrorists from the Fatah Revolutionary Command, also known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), for the 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan. Based on "aggravating circumstances," prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty for the attack, in which twenty-two people -- including two Americans -- were killed.

The leader of the ANO, the infamous Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal (Sabri al-Banna), died violently last week in Baghdad. But his death is not as extraordinary as the subsequent press conference given by Iraqi intelligence chief Taher Jalil Haboush. This press conference was the first time Haboush's name has appeared in the international media since February 2001.

Iraqi Objectives
What could possibly have motivated the Iraqi regime to send one of its senior exponents to announce the suicide of Abu Nidal and to present crude photographs of his bloodied body four days (or eight days, according to some sources) after his death? It should be noted that the earliest information about Nidal's death came from al-Ayyam, a Palestinian daily close to Abu Nidal's bitterest enemy -- the Palestinian Authority.At this sensitive moment in U.S.-Iraqi relations, Abu Nidal could have provided extraordinarily damaging testimony with regard to Saddam's involvement in international terrorism, even beyond Iraqi support of ANO activities in the 1970's and 1980's. In publicizing Nidal's death, the regime may have a number of motives, such as:

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=446

Sources: Senior al Qaeda official may have been in Iraq
From Mike Boettcher and Henry Schuster CNN
CNN) -- A senior al Qaeda leader may provide a link between that terrorist group and Iraq, according to coalition intelligence sources.

Abu Mussab al Zarqawi -- a Jordanian -- was recently accused by Jordanian officials of masterminding the assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman in late October. And Zarqawi has been linked to some of the men arrested recently in London and accused of possessing the deadly poison ricin.

But it is his travels, especially in the past year, that have attracted the attention of intelligence officials. Zarqawi, coalition intelligence sources said, left Afghanistan when the Taliban regime was toppled. From there, said the sources, he traveled through Iran to Baghdad, then to Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq, where Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to al Qaeda, operates. Some in the U.S. intelligence community have questioned whether officials in these countries were aware of Zarqawi's presence, because he might have been using aliases. But former CIA operative Robert Baer, who spent years in the Middle East, disagreed.

"Somebody at some level had to know he was there. Now obviously I can't tell you whether Saddam knew, but somebody in an official line of responsibility for customs and immigration knew he came into the country," Baer said. "Palestinians, other Arabs, even Iraqis go through a very tight screen when they come into that country. Documents are looked at. You just can't do it [sneak in]. It is a police state." Coalition intelligence sources say Zarqawi also traveled to Syria and Lebanon, moving with seeming ease between those countries, setting up terrorist cells. These sources say Zarqawi is believed now to be in Iran

According to U.S. sources, Zarqawi was the person to whom President Bush referred in an October 8 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he sought to point to a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. "Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks," Bush said. Now, U.S. sources have linked Zarqawi to the arrests in London of several men accused of possessing ricin. Sources also said evidence was found in al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan of the organization's interest in ricin. Zarqawi was convicted in Jordan in absentia of planning to bomb tourist sites and hotels during millennium celebrations as part of a series of al Qaeda attack plots worldwide. He evaded arrest and escaped to Afghanistan.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/23/iraq.alqaeda/index.html 

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report mounting fears within US and Israeli counter-terrorism agencies that al Qaeda’s three command centers are preparing mega-terror attacks for US and Israeli targets. They believe that, for the time being, al Qaeda has foregone a nuclear, radiological or chemical option in favor of biological warfare, because of the weapons systems believed to have been made available by Iraqi military intelligence and already in the hands of three al Qaeda commanders: Abu Musaab al Zarqawi, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ,nicknamed “the Mukhtar” . Baghdad believes that a biological attack on Israel will act as an appropriate reprisal for the threatening US offensive and a possible deterrent. To be ready in case Iraq launches its F-1 or L-29 warplanes, or Polish-made drones - all armed with spray canisters loaded with toxic chemicals or germs - over Eilat or Aqaba, the Americans have in the past week been shipping to southern Israel improved, re-engineered PAC-3 anti-missile batteries together with thousands of US Marines. However, in the view of our intelligence and military sources, the more immediate danger to Israel comes not directly from Iraq but from al Qaeda and its biological weapons arsenal. They say the Islamic fundamentalist group has established a headquarters at Bayara in the radical Kurdish Ansar al-Islam enclave of northern Iraq, as one of its three main planning centers. All Zarqawi, whose full name is Ahmad Fadeel Nazal Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, aka al Khalayleh, is the senior bio-project director. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources report that in November and December, al Zarqawi was spotted commuting between Baghdad, Bayara, Damascus and Beirut, giving the Bush administration its first direct proof of the Baghdad-al Qaeda terrorist link. It prompted the US President to remark on Tuesday, December 31, that “an attack from Saddam Hussein or a surrogate of Saddam Hussein would cripple our economy.” Zarqawi’s senior officer, Abdullah is based in Pakistan - either in the port city of Karachi or near the border with Afghanistan, while the whereabouts of Mohammed, “the Mukhtar” are unknown. He may be in Bosnia or Europe. Of the three, Zarqawi is the ticking bomb waiting to go off. A Jordanian-Palestinian in his late 30s, he fled the kingdom in 1999 after he was caught plotting to blow up hotels hosting foreign millennium celebrants. He is the only al Qaeda operative known for certain to have undergone extensive terrorist training – including airline hijacking techniques -- in Iraq’s notorious Salman Pak special weapons facility. Back in October 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks in the United States, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported that Bayara became an al Qaeda base complete with chemical and biological training laboratories run for the group by the Iraqis. http://www.debka.com/article_print.php?aid=233

Ansar Al-Islam: Iraq's Al-Qaeda Connection By Jonathan Schanzer The Washington Institute for Near East Policy | January 17, 2003
Bush administration and PUK officials have also speculated that Ansar may be working with Saddam through a man named Abu Wa'il, reportedly an al-Qaeda operative on Saddam's payroll. Kurdish explosives experts also claim that TNT seized from Ansar was produced by the Iraqi military, and that arms are sent to the group from areas controlled by Saddam. Iraqi officials deny all such ties, yet Saddam clearly profits from Ansar's activities, which keep Kurdish opposition forces tied up on the border and away from Saddam. Indeed, support for Ansar is not unlike the money Saddam gives to families of Palestinian suicide bombers; turning up the heat in Kurdistan and the Palestinian territories takes heat off Saddam as a crisis looms. Currently, Kurdish and international sources are accumulating evidence they say could soon present a clearer picture of Saddam's cooperation with al-Qaeda. 

Implications
More than one year after Ansar announced its formation, the State Department has yet to designate it a Foreign Terrorist Organization, nor has the Treasury Department listed it as a Special Designated Global Terrorist. It would be interesting to know why. Other questions remain: Can Washington pressure Iran to cease cooperation with Ansar? Can it persuade Norway, where Mullah Krekar lived for several years, to examine his financial accounts? Can it verify ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam based on interviews with captured Ansar militants? If such links are established, military force should be considered. Reports from the front indicate that Ansar could not withstand an aerial assault. Yet, Washington may be reticent to attack during this period of UN inspections for fear of international rebuke, particularly from Turkey. Ankara, already ambivalent about an Iraq war, may be sensitive to any measures that would potentially strengthen the Kurds. Still, Ansar al-Islam poses a threat to any future U.S. ground deployment. Moreover, dismantling the group would potentially weaken both Saddam and al-Qaeda -- two primary targets in the war on terror.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=5571

Who is Prince Nayef? The most powerful man in Saudi Arabia. by Bill Tierney
12/23/2002, Volume 008, Issue 15
IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA, the trappings of monarchy obscure the police state that keeps the Saud family in power. But beneath the veneer of gracious luxury, internal security has never been more important than it is today to a regime that constrains the press and commerce, struggles to provide the generous benefits promised its citizens, and has made the country a breeding ground for Islamic extremism. Enmeshed as we are in an alliance of necessity with the Saudis, Americans should be asking: Who runs Saudi internal security? What are his views about the United States and about jihad? And how much power does he wield in the Saudi power structure? The man who has been in charge of the Ministry of Interior for the last 27 years is Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, technically the fourth most powerful man in Saudi Arabia. Active and alert at 69--unlike the two leading members of the "Sudeiri Seven," King Fahd and Prince Sultan, both of whom are elderly and ailing--Nayef has far more sway than the Western press has generally recognized. He heads five major oversight committees and imposes himself on four other ministers, while firmly holding the reins of the most powerful ministry in the kingdom. Indeed, Nayef appears to have made himself irremovable. Certainly he is in a position to remind his brothers, Prince Sultan and Crown Prince Abdullah, that regardless of who makes the public statements or takes the diplomatic trips, it is he who maintains the stability of the kingdom, and his organization that, day by day, keeps the royal family in power. The keys are in his hands, and there is no one who can hold him to account
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/018fdsio.asp 

Protecting Saddam By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON — Soviet propagandists used to touch up photographs to remove the face of a Kremlin official who had fallen from favor, making him a "nonperson." The same disinformation technique is now being used to wipe out the fact of a meeting in Prague in April, 2001 — five months before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. — between Mohamed Atta, the leading Qaeda hijacker, and Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi consul in Prague, who was Saddam Hussein's intelligence case officer there. On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister (like his boss, a former K.G.B. disinformation specialist) said of this widely reported Iraqi-Qaeda connection: "That is wrong information." That denial of an observed connection between bin Laden's suicide bomber and Saddam's spymaster was preceded by a David Ignatius column in The Washington Post last week deriding such reports by me and by James Woolsey, former C.I.A. chief, in The Wall Street Journal. Pooh-poohing the notion of a meeting that "supposedly took place," Ignatius asserted "there is no solid evidence" of such a link. On the contrary, he opined, "hard intelligence to support the Baghdad- bin Laden connection is somewhere between `slim' and `none.' " http://www.nci.org/02/03f/18-07.htm

Iraq & al-Qaeda Is there a link? The go-to-war camp would love to prove that Saddam Hussein is doing business with Osama bin Laden. They talk up suspicions, but no one's got proof As the world's two most nefarious villains, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein ought to have reasons to work together. They share similar interests -- hatred of Israel, hostility toward the rulers of Saudi Arabia and, especially, enmity toward their common nemesis, the U.S. Both are suspected of dabbling in chemical and biological agents, and both are judged capable of using them. While al-Qaeda is still seeking weapons of mass destruction, Western intelligence experts think that Iraq already possesses some--in which case hooking up with bin Laden's network might make sense. If Saddam wants to employ his arsenal against the U.S. and its allies without getting caught, why not contract al-Qaeda to do the job for him?

That, at least, is the connect-the-dots theory that Bush Administration hawks and conservative cheerleaders are advancing in their campaign to persuade the President to take his war on terrorism to Baghdad. Assembling evidence of a direct line between Iraq and al-Qaeda--or better yet, proving that Saddam was complicit in the Sept. 11 plot--would give the war planners something they don't have: a compelling do-it-now reason for war.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/26/time.iraq/

THE UNKNOWN by JEFFREY GOLDBERG in New Yorker
The C.I.A. and the Pentagon take another look at Al Qaeda and Iraq. Issue of 2003-02-10

According to several intelligence officials I spoke to, the relationship between bin Laden and Saddam's regime was brokered in the early nineteen-nineties by the then de-facto leader of Sudan, the pan-Islamist radical Hassan al-Tourabi. Tourabi, sources say, persuaded the ostensibly secular Saddam to add to the Iraqi flag the words "Allahu Akbar," as a concession to Muslim radicals.

In interviews with senior officials, the following picture emerged: American intelligence believes that Al Qaeda and Saddam reached a non-aggression agreement in 1993, and that the relationship deepened further in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when an Al Qaeda operative—a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi—was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training. Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organization called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct Al Qaeda terrorists. (Training in hijacking techniques was also provided to foreign Islamist radicals inside Iraq, according to two Iraqi defectors quoted in a report in the Times in November of 2001.) Another Al Qaeda operative, the Iraqi-born Mamdouh Salim, who goes by the name Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, also served as a liaison in the mid-nineteen-nineties to Iraqi intelligence. Salim, according to a recent book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," by the former N.S.C. officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, was bin Laden's chief procurer of weapons of mass destruction, and was involved in the early nineties in chemical-weapons development in Sudan. Salim was arrested in Germany in 1998 and was extradited to the United States. He is awaiting trial in New York on charges related to the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings; he was convicted last April of stabbing a Manhattan prison guard in the eye with a sharpened comb.

Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad.

Ansar al-Islam was created on September 1, 2001, when two Kurdish radical groups merged forces. According to Barham Salih, the Prime Minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the group seized a chain of villages in the mountainous region outside the city of Halabja, and made a safe haven for Al Qaeda fighters. "Our intelligence information confirmed that the group was declared on September 1st at the behest of bin Laden and Al Qaeda," Prime Minister Salih told me last week, in a telephone conversation from Davos, Switzerland. "It was meant to be an alternative base of operations, since they were apparently anticipating that Afghanistan was going to become a denied area to them."

Recently, I asked two former C.I.A. directors, James Woolsey and Robert Gates, to talk about the problem of analyzing an incomplete set of evidence—the same challenge that stymied intelligence analysts in the days before December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.

Woolsey, who served as President Clinton's first C.I.A. director, said that it is now illogical to doubt the notion that Saddam collaborates with Islamist terrorism, and that he would provide chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda. "At Salman Pak"—a training camp near Baghdad—"we know there were Islamist terrorists training to hijack airplanes in groups of four or five with short knives," Woolsey told me. "I mean, hello? If we had seen after December 7, 1941, a fake American battleship in a lake in northern Italy, and a group of Asian pilots training there, would we have said, 'Well, you can't prove that they were Japanese'?"

Gates, who was C.I.A. director under George H. W. Bush, said that the evidence linking Saddam to Al Qaeda is not irrefutable, but he noted that ambiguous evidence is an occupational hazard in intelligence work. Gates suggested that the current debate over Iraq's ties to terrorism is reminiscent of a debate about the Soviet Union twenty years ago. Then, he said, "you had analysts in the C.I.A. who said, 'Absolutely not, it would be contrary to their interests to support unpredictable, uncontrollable groups.' There were other analysts who said, 'Baloney.' They had a lot of good history, and circumstantial reporting on their side, but they didn't have good evidence. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, and we got hold of the East German Stasi records, we learned, of course, that both the East Germans and the Soviets were supporting Baader-Meinhof and other terrorist groups."

Gates continued, "I have always argued, in light of my fairly detailed knowledge of the shortcomings of our intelligence capabilities, that the fact that we don't have reliable human intelligence that proves something conclusively is happening is no proof at all that nothing is happening. In these situations, the evidence will almost always be ambiguous. On capabilities, it's not ambiguous. Can Saddam produce these weapons of mass destruction? Yes."

The ambiguity, Gates said, has to do with "intentions," and he went on, "If the stakes and the consequences are small, you're going to want ninety-per-cent assurance. It's a risk calculus. On the other hand, if your worry is along the lines of what Rumsfeld is saying—another major attack on the U.S., possibly with biological or chemical weapons—and you look at the consequences of September 11th, then the equation of risk changes. You have to be prepared to go forward with a lot lower level of confidence in the evidence you have. A fifty-per-cent chance of such an attack happening is so terrible that it changes the calculation of risk."
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030210fa_fact

International trail of quiet hijacker includes mysterious visit to Las Vegas Wednesday, October 31, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal COLUMN: John L. Smith
From Florida to New Jersey and out to Las Vegas, those who met Marwan al-Shehhi remembered him as a pleasant young man with good manners and a charming smile. Some would recall that he looked like a computer expert, rarely made small talk, but always was sure to say thank you. At a motel in Las Vegas last summer, he was polite to housekeepers and kept mostly to himself. At a seafood store in Wayne, N.J., al-Shehhi ordered fried fish to go and always thanked owner John Frodella, according to published reports. "He looked like a computer expert to me," Frodella recalled. "He looked pretty intelligent." Ever the devoted follower, al-Shehhi was the youngest of the Arab terrorists to visit Las Vegas in the weeks before 19 members of their cell embarked on a Sept. 11 suicide hijacking mission that killed approximately 6,000 people. If the nation has learned nothing else from this waking nightmare
http://www.lvrj.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-31-Wed-2001/news/17340538.html

Hijackers linked to tabloid Compiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times, published October 15, 2001
Confirming a clear link between the terrorists targeting America and the South Florida company hit by anthrax cases, the FBI said Sunday that the Sun tabloid editor's wife rented a Delray Beach apartment to two of the hijackers. Confirming a clear link between the terrorists targeting America and the South Florida company hit by anthrax cases, the FBI said Sunday that the Sun tabloid editor's wife rented a Delray Beach apartment to two of the hijackers.

The Sun is part of the American Media Inc. tabloid chain, and it employed photo editor Bob Stevens, who died this month from inhalation anthrax. Two other AMI employees were exposed, and five more are being retested to confirm positive blood test results. Sun editor Michael Irish's wife, Gloria, rented unit 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club to Marwan Alshehhi and Saeed Alghamdi this summer, said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela. Alshehhi was aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the second jet to strike the World Trade Center. Alghamdi was on United Flight 93, which crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh when passengers apparently thwarted an attempt to target another building. "There is now a link between the editor's wife and the terrorists," Orihuela said. But just as quickly, she said the FBI wasn't drawing immediate conclusions. "It's just a coincidence right now," Orihuela said. "I'm sure there will be some sort of follow-up." "We are not searching the apartment at this time," Orihuela said from outside the tabloid's Boca Raton headquarters. "We are focusing on this building." http://www.sptimes.com/News/101501/news_pf/Worldandnation/Hijackers_linked_to_t.shtml

There is also one report that ATTA makes a side journey to Rome on this trip. Italian security sources have reported that Iraq made use of its Rome embassy to foster and cultivate Hussein’s partnership with al-Qaeda.
Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, a general in the Iraqi secret service, and from 1982 to 1990 a member of the “Special Operations Branch,” (M-8) charged with developing links with Islamist militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Gulf states, was stationed in Rome as an “instructor” for Iraqi diplomats. Al-Mamouri supposedly met with ATTA in Hamburg and Prague in addition to July’s visit in Rome. Al-Mamouri has not been seen in Rome since July, shortly after he last met ATTA. [Daniel McGrory, “Hijacker ‘Given Flask by Iraqi Agent’,” The Times (London), October 27, 2001.]
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/londontimes102701.html

Philippine terrorists claim link to Iraq
CEBU, Philippines — Islamist terrorists in the southern Philippines who have killed two American hostages in recent years say they are receiving money from Iraqis close to President Saddam Hussein.  Hamsiraji Sali, a local commander of the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf on the remote southern island of Basilan, says he is getting nearly $20,000 a year from supporters in Iraq.  "It's so we would have something to spend on chemicals for bomb-making and for the movement of our people," Sali told a reporter this week, renewing earlier claims of support from Iraq. The payments, while small, provide additional evidence of a link between Iraq and the Abu Sayyaf — a group with long-standing ties to al Qaeda and its global terror network. The boast of an Iraqi connection was taken seriously after the expulsion of an Iraqi diplomat from Manila last week amid charges he had been in contact with the Abu Sayyaf by telephone. http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030304-9060681.htm

Saddams 2nd Open Letter to the Peoples of the United States
In the name of God, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful:
Once again, we make a return to comment on the incidence that took place in America on September 11, not for its significance as such, but for the implications surrounding it and its ramifications in terms of results on the level of the world of which we are part or rather a special case as a nation known as it is with the basis and uniqueness of its faith. On previous occasions, we have already said that the United States needs to try wisdom after it has tried force over the last fifty years or even more. We still see that this is the most important thing the world must advise the US about if there is anybody who wants to say something or adopt an attitude towards this incidence, and who is concerned about world peace and stability. This is the case if the US and the world are convinced with the dictum and the verdict, namely that what has happened came to America from without, not within.It is among the indisputables in the law or general norms, in dealings, in social life, and even political life, that any charge should be based on evidence if the one who makes the accusation is keen to convince others or has respect to that who listens to the accusation or is concerned with it as part of the minimal obligation of his duty. But the US has made the charge before verification, even before possessing the minimum evidence about such a charge. It has even not availed itself the opportunity to verify things, first and foremost. It started a drive of incitement and threat, or said something irresponsible by broadening the base of charges to include states, circles and individuals. American officials set about making charges or giving the guided media, the Zionist media and its symbols within the authority and outside it a free hand in order to prepare the public mind for the charge. What does this mean?In a nutshell, it means that the US gives no heed to the law or rely on it. It has no concern for the counter viewpoint in line with its dangerous policy towards this issue or others. That is why we find that it takes no pain to secure evidence. Therefore, it needs no evidence to pass its verdict. It is content with saying something, passing verdicts, whether people other than the American officials are convinced or not. This means, in keeping with the policy it has pursued since 1990, that it has no regard to the viewpoint of the peoples and governments in the world in it entirety. It gives it no weight or heed despite the fact that it claims to be the democratic state (number one) in the world. The basic meaning of democracy even by the standards of its initial emergence in the Western world, that facts should lay bare before the people so that the people would assume their responsibility with full awareness. Our description of the US attitude vis-à-vis this incidence is a practical description. It means that American officials do not respect even their own people's viewpoint, let alone the world's. In this conduct, the American officials behave as though they are deluding the peoples, beating up the misleading media drums to do the job of mobilizing them against enemy or enemies against whom no evidence about their accountability for the action they are accused of has been furnished. All the officials there seek to achieve is to foment the hostility of the peoples of the US against whoever they assumed to be an enemy before the incidence has occurred. The tax-payer would be in a position where he is prepared to accept the blackmail trap arms manufacturers have laid for him in addition to the wrangled interests on the level of senior military and civil officials in the US. http://home.12move.nl/~sh754597/Ereport/ereport16a.htm

A third open letter from Saddam Hussein to the peoples of the United States, Western peoples and governments.
October 29, 2001

In the name of God the Merciful, The Compassionate
Once again we address a letter to all the peoples and governments of the West, including the United States.
Peace be upon those who expect a greeting of peace from us, or upon those who answer it by saying : and peace be upon you too (wa Alaikum Asalam).The world focused its full attention on the analysis and follow up of the events of last September, but those who made an in-depth analysis may have not been the majority of the people. Nevertheless, it seems to us that they have, now, increased in number. The number of officials in power who are looking into the depth of what happened, its motives or reasons, and its results and effects, has also increased. Their number and way of conduct, at the time of the event, was deplorable for those who are not aware that not everyone is capable of a deep contemplation of major events or complex circumstances, just as not many people are capable of dreaming of what is better. Now that the emotions have relatively calmed down in the heart and spirit of those who applauded the event, or those who condemned it, I say that, the role of leaders should be played, with their people’s support, on the basis of the description and the role of their responsibilities. One of the most important qualities of any leader is saving other from death not by marking the dark ditches on the road, but also by preventing those who do not see the marks from falling into the abyss. Then comes the quality of exaltation, or ascendancy of the people he is in charge of, along with their potential thought and action. The danger that may threaten any people or nation, does not call upon the people in charge to lead the way against this danger only, but also to analyze its reasons in view of abating them, or treating those reasons radically, to eliminate them so that they would never surge again. I am sorry to say that the general approach in this direction is still weak, so far. Western governments are the first in this phenomena of weakness. Some voices have risen on the part of some peoples, journalists, writers, and, in a very restricted way, the voices of those who are preparing themselves, in the shadow, to replace the rulers there. Nevertheless, the latter are still hesitant voices that deal with the situation in the light of the balance of interests of the posts they expect to occupy, and of the influence of the centers of power. As for the United States, the hope in the awareness of its people is greater than it is in its Administrations, if the people could see the facts as they are, unless these Administrations are set free from the conclusive influence of Zionism, and other centers of influence which serve their own interests that are associated with their well-known goals. The events of September 11, and the following reaction of people in rage, or those who took advantage of the situation, including waging the aggression on Afghanistan on the basis of suspicions, and the accompanying insinuations and statements by the media or by American, and non-American leaders, have shown that this vast world can be set on fire by a spark coming from the West, even if that spark comes all the way from across the Atlantic. Naturally, setting something on fire is easier than extinguishing it, and because deeds of virtue exalt the soul and the being, while evil deeds downgrade them, the latter become easier to commit for those who are tempted to do so. On the basis of this realistic image, the entire world needs to be saved from the deep abyss it is being push into by the US, and the likes of the US, whether they are states, individuals, or organizations. In fact, now that we know the limits of how American rulers conduct themselves in crisis, the US itself needs to be saved by the world while it is saving itself. Otherwise, the world will be pulled down by the weight of the US while falling down to the bottom of a deep pit from which it will not be able to come out until that pit is filled with blood and tragedies, not to mention those who will suffocate because they cannot swim. As we said before to those who launched aggressions on us, including the US, in and before Um-Almarik (the mother of the battles), the world, like Iraq and its Arab nation, needs steadfastness to face the aggression, make it miss its targets. It must not allow the US to be victorious. The victory of the US and its allies over Iraq would conceal the opposing attitude and analysis, and would not allow it to emerge again for a long time. In fact, the US is in no need for additional vanity and arrogance, but if it ever defeated Iraq, God forbid, it would acquire an additional vanity that would push it to a higher level of vanity, which would bring it closer to not farther from the abyss.

The Link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda

Case Closed:The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

The Connection:Not so long ago, the ties between Iraq and al Qaeda were conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom was right.

Saddam's Ambassador to al-Qaeda

Document links Saddam, bin Laden

The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden: Iraqi intelligence documents provide evidence of direct link

Osama's Best Friend: The further connections between al Qaeda and Saddam

Pre-Bush timeline/list of Iraq's Ties to Al Queda:Sam Pender-author of Iraq's Smoking Gun and other books on the matter

Clinton Indictment Cited Iraq-bin Laden Link

Enemies Together: Clinton was right: Saddam and al Qaeda had numerous connections.

No Question About It: Saddam and the terrorists

The Al Qaeda Connection: More reason to suspect that bin Laden and Saddam may have been in league

Iraq & Militant Islam: Saddam's al Qaeda links were a worthy rationale for toppling his regime.

Saddam's al Qaeda Connection

Iraq's State Sponsorship of Osama bin-Laden and the al-Qaeda Terror Network

The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections Richard Miniter: author of "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror""

The Story of Salmon Pak

The Iraqi-Bin Laden Connection
 

http://www.angelfire.com/ex/projecthatfill/openletter.html

Saddam's Link to OBL
February 6, 1999. The Guardian
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/866105/posts

Saddam offered asylum to bin Laden
February 13, 1999. AP
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1158274/posts

Son of Saddam coordinates with OBL.
Iraqi Special Ops coordinates with Bin Laden's terrorist activities.
August 6, 1999. Yossef Bodansky, National Press Club
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/951911/posts