Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations

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In 2003, the Bush administration alleged that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda might conspire to launch terrorist attacks on America, and used this allegation, among others, to persuade Congress and the American people to invade Iraq. Prior to 9/11 and the resulting War on Terror, many believed that Saddam Hussein's regime had links to al-Qaeda. Reports of contacts between the two were published in various newspapers and magazines, but no concrete evidence that Iraq conspired with al Qaeda to commit terrorist attacks has ever materialized. The 9/11 Commission concluded that there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. [1] [2] This was also the conclusion of various U.S. government agencies that investigated the issue, including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq also reviewed the intelligence community's conclusions and found that they were justifiable.

This is distinct from the al-Qaeda presence involved in the Iraqi insurgency.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Osama bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia by sending "jihadist" warriors from Afghanistan to repel Saddam's forces. After the Gulf War, bin Laden remained highly critical of Saddam's socialist Ba'ath regime. Additionally, Bin Laden supported anti-Saddam terrorist forces in northern Iraq, although in later years there are indications that Saddam eventually tolerated their presence as a counterweight to the Kurds. (9/11 Commission, p. 61) Those forces, however, mostly operated in areas not under Saddam's control (see below).

Bin Laden's expressed hostility to Saddam's regime, combined with the lack of credibility of the Iraqi National Congress (the source of most of the claims of cooperation between the two) as well as the paucity of evidence for any of the alleged links, particularly for any substantial collaboration, have led most journalists and intelligence analysts not associated with or supporters of the Bush administration to dismiss the claimed links as politically motivated fabrications by the INC.

Some argue that the above argument constitutes an ultra-realist point-of-view which ignores human nature, including the alliance of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin (who were of three vastly different ideological backgrounds and positions) during World War II.

Nevertheless, Robert Pape's exhaustive study of suicide terrorism found that "al-Qaeda's transnational suicide terrorists have come overwhelmingly from America's closest allies in the Muslim world and not at all from the Muslim regimes that the U.S. State Department considers 'state sponsors of terrorism'." (Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism New York: Random House, 2005 [ISBN 1400063175]) p. 114. Pape notes that no al-Qaeda suicide attackers came from Iraq. Daniel Byman's study of state sponsorship of terrorism similarly did not list Iraq as a significant state sponsor, and called the al-Qaeda connection "a rationale that before the war was strained and after it seems an ever-weaker reed." (Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism Cambridge University Press, 2005, [ISBN 0521839734]) p. 285. The conclusion of counterterrorism experts such as Rohan Gunaratna, Bruce Hoffman, Jason Burke, and Daniel Benjamin has been that there is no evidence that suggests any collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That was also the conclusion of specific investigations by the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the 9/11 Commission, among others. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed the CIA's investigation and concluded that the CIA's conclusion that there was no evidence of collaboration was justified.

While it is doubtful that Saddam was involved in September 11, members of his government did have contacts with al-Qaeda over the years; however, many of the links, as will be seen below, are not considered convincing. As former Counterterrorism Czar Richard A. Clarke writes, "[t]he simple fact is that lots of people, particularly in the Middle East, pass along many rumors and they end up being recorded and filed by U.S. intelligence agencies in raw reports. That does not make them 'intelligence'. Intelligence involves analysis of raw reports, not merely their enumeration or weighing them by the pound. Analysis, in turn, involves finding independent means of corroborating the reports. Did al-Qaeda agents ever talk to Iraqi agents? I would be startled if they had not. I would also be startled if American, Israeli, Iranian, British, or Jordanian agents had somehow failed to talk to al-Qaeda or Iraqi agents. Talking to each other is what intelligence agents do, often under assumed identities or 'false flags,' looking for information or possible defectors." (Against All Enemies, p. 269-70.)

Background

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, was known to be highly critical of Saddam Hussein's regime. When Iraqi armies invaded Kuwait in August 1990, bin Laden offered to defend the Saudi kingdom from Saddam by sending warriors from the Afghan jihad to the border. After the Gulf War, bin Laden remained highly critical of Saddam's socialist Ba'ath regime.

After the Gulf War, as Iraq experienced internal unrest, Saddam apparently turned to religion to bolster his government (for example, adding the words "God is Great" in Arabic to the Iraqi flag, and referring to God in his speeches).

Some sources allege that several meetings between top Iraqi operatives and bin Laden took place, but these claims have been disputed by many other sources, including most of the original intelligence agencies that investigated these sources in the first place. Many in the intelligence community are skeptical about whether such meetings, if they took place at all, ever resulted in any meaningful relationship. Many of the claims of actual collaboration seem to have originated with people associated with the Iraqi National Congress whose credibility has been questioned. In addition, many of the raw intelligence reports came to the awareness of the public through the leaking of a memo sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ("the Feith memo", dated October 27 2003), the conclusions of which have been disputed by intelligence agencies including the CIA.

Some have suggested that an understanding was reached between Iraq and al-Qaeda, namely that al-Qaeda would not act against Saddam in exchange for Iraqi support, primarily in the form of training. Some reports claim that six of the 9/11 hijackers, including their leader Mohamed Atta al-Sayed, met with Iraqi intelligence operatives on several separate occasions, but the evidence that any of these meetings actually took place is sketchy. A training camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, was claimed by a number of defectors to have been used to train international terrorists (assumed to be al-Qaeda members) in hijacking techniques using a real airplane as a prop. The defectors were inconsistent about a number of details, and most journalists and investigators have questioned their credibility. The camp has been discovered by U.S. Marines, but intelligence analysts do not believe it was used by al-Qaeda. Some believe it was actually used for counterterrorism training, while others believe it was used to train foreign terrorists but not al-Qaeda members. For discussion of links between Iraq and other terrorist organizations, see 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

Timeline

Much of the evidence of alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaeda is based on speculation about meetings that may have taken place between Iraqi officials and al-Qaeda members. What took place at those meetings is unclear, but often the mere act of meeting has been taken as evidence of substantial collaboration. As terrorism analyst Evan Kohlman points out, "While there have been a number of promising intelligence leads hinting at possible meetings between al-Qaeda members and elements of the former Baghdad regime, nothing has been yet shown demonstrating that these potential contacts were historically any more significant than the same level of communication maintained between Osama bin Laden and ruling elements in a number of Iraq's Persian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait." [3]

The following timeline lists allegations of meetings between al Qaeda members and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to the Saddam/al-Qaeda conspiracy theory. It is important to note that not all of the specific claims about meetings are credible or can be substantiated with other evidence, and that many of the intelligence agencies and experts who have analyzed the evidence have concluded that no substantial links exist.

1988

  • Osama bin Laden lectures in Pakistan, according to sworn testimony of al-Qaeda member Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali. During these lectures, bin Laden warns against Saddam Hussein and the Baath party, telling listeners to beware of the expansionist ambitions of the secular leader.[4]

1990

  • August 2 - Saddam Hussein's army invades Kuwait. In response to the perceived threat to Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden offers to bring an army of jihadist fighters against Saddam to protect the kingdom. The Saudi royal family's decision to seek protection from American troops rather than bin Laden's jihadists is considered a turning point in bin Laden's life; the presence of these troops in the Arabian peninsula after the end of the Gulf War became, for bin Laden, a key piece of evidence that America was at war with Islam. While bin Laden continued to oppose Saddam's Baathist government, he was vocal in criticizing the U.N. sanctions against Iraq and in making common cause with the Iraqi people.

1994

  • Sudan -- Farouk Hijazi, then head of Iraqi Secret Service, meets with Osama bin Laden in Sudan ([5]). Hijazi told his aide that "he had no intention of accepting Saddam's offer because 'if we go there, it would be his agenda, not ours.'"[6] Hijazi, arrested in April 2003, acknowledged the meeting took place but said the two groups established no ties. [7]
  • Baghdad - Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the bombers in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, flees to Iraq where he moves in with a relative and receives a monthly stipend from the regime ([8]). Some FBI agents on the scene, including Assistant Director James Fox, the agent-in-charge, speculated that Iraq might have had a hand in the bombing. Rita Katz, who directs the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute, noted: "While there may be indications that Abdul Rahman Yasin may have worked for the fallen Iraqi regime, evidence significantly linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein still remains unconvincing."[9] Neil Herman, who headed the FBI investigation into the 1993 World Trade Center attack, noted that despite Yasin's presence in Baghdad, there was no evidence of Iraqi support for the attack. "We looked at that rather extensively," he told CNN terrorism analyst Peter L. Bergen. "There were no ties to the Iraqi government." Bergen writes, "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack."[10] During the 9/11 Commission Hearings, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke was asked about whether Yasin going to Iraq established a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 1993 WTC attack. His response was unequivocating: "But the investigation, both the CIA investigation and the FBI investigation, made it very clear in '95 and '96 as they got more information, that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack. And the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was al-Qaida; not Iraq. The Iraqi government because, obviously, of the hostility between us and them, didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists. But the allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation." (9/11 Commission Hearing, 24 March 2004 [11])

1995

  • September -- Sudan -- Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed, top explosives expert of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, allegedly meets with bin Laden in Sudan; a second meeting at which Mani-abd-al-Rashid-al-Tikriti, director of the IIS, is also present, supposedly takes place in July 1996 ([12], 9/11 Commission Report pg. 468 [13]). The 9/11 Commission final report concludes that the evidence did not support the alleged meetings, and notes that the information was received "third hand". The interrogation records show various possible dates for the first meeting. One dates the meeting in 1994 while another dates it in February 1995. The date of the second meeting is also in doubt, and there was no evidence that bin Laden had left Afghanistan at the time: "The information is puzzling, since bin Ladin left Sudan for Afghanistan in May 1996, and there is no evidence he ventured back there (or anywhere else) for a visit. In examining the source material, the reports note that the information was received 'third hand,' passed from the foreign government service that 'does not meet directly with the ultimate source of the information, but obtains the information from him through two unidentified intermediaries, one of whom merely delivers the information to the Service.'" The same source also claims al-Ahmed was seen near bin Laden's farm in December 1995.(Page 468) [14]
  • Salman Pak, Iraq - several defectors independently report that hundreds of foreign terrorists were being trained in airplane hijacking techniques "without weapons" using a real airplane (variously reported as a Boeing 707 and a Tupolev 154) as a prop at the Salman Pak camp just south of Baghdad, between 1995 to 2000; the training is run by Hussein's Mukhabarat ([15], [16]). This story has been reported by the following defectors: Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami (former Iraqi army captain), Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy (former brigadier general in the Mukhabarat), Khidir Hamza (scientist who was director of the Iraqi nuclear program, [17]), Abdul Rahman al-Shamari (a Mukhabarat agent in US custody), and "Abu Mohammed" (a former colonel in the Fedayeen, [18]). Khodada provided details of the layout of the camp, now confirmed as accurate, as early as 1998, and Abu Zeinab corroborated the story in 2000. However, some of the sources for this story including Khodada and Abu Zeinab have been associated with the Iraqi National Congress, which has been accused of deliberately supplying false information to the US government in order to build support for regime change ([19], [20]). "The INC’s agenda was to get us into a war," said Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News. "The really damaging stories all came from those guys, not the CIA. They did a really sophisticated job of getting it out there."[21] Inconsistencies in the stories of the defectors have led U.S. officials, journalists, and investigators to conclude that the Salman Pak story was inaccurate. One senior U.S. official said that they had found "nothing to substantiate" the claim that al-Qaeda trained at Salman Pak. The credibility of several INC defectors has been questioned on this issue, and the CIA was very skeptical of information coming from these sources ([22], [23]). Iraq Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer disagrees: "We always just called them the terrorist camps ... We reported them at the time, but they've obviously taken on new significance." ([24]) and "The Iraqis, he said, told UNSCOM it was used by 'police' for counter-terrorist training. "Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter'," Duelfer explained.([25]). After the invasion of Iraq, the camp was captured by the Marines ([26], [27]) "after it was discussed by Egyptian and Sudanese fighters caught elsewhere in Iraq". Brigadier General Vincent Brooks described the capture: "The nature of the work being done by some of those people that we captured, their inferences to the type of training that they received, all of these things give us the impression that there was terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak." No evidence has been disclosed about any intelligence finds at the camp after its capture, leading some to doubt that anything was found. According to Douglas MacCollam, a journalist for the Columbia Journalism Review, "the consensus view now is that the camp was what Iraq told UN weapons inspectors it was — a counterterrorism training camp for army commandos." ([28]).
  • (circa 1995) Iraq - Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi (an alias), an al-Qaeda operative, allegedly requests help in chemical weapons training from Saddam. The request was supposedly approved and trainers from Unit 999, an Iraqi secret-police organization organized by Uday Hussein dispatched to camps in Afghanistan. ([29]). The source of this information was captured al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who has since recanted. "Intelligence officials declined to say precisely when Mr. Libi changed his account, and they cautioned that they still did not know for sure which account was correct. But the intelligence officials said Mr. Libi had backed away from many of his earlier claims after American interrogators presented him with conflicting information. Both Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, two other high-ranking Qaeda operatives now in American custody, have told interrogators that Al Qaeda had no substantive relationship with the Iraqi government, according to the Senate report."([30]). The Senate report states that Zubaydah admitted he would not necessarily know about contacts with Iraq. The Senate report also concludes that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had an operational and not administrative role which may not make him privy to information about links to Iraq. (Page 324-325)[31] Nevertheless, it concludes that their comments tracked with the comments of other detainees. (Page 324-325) [32] The report also offers no reason to doubt the intelligence they have provided, and the report does not address al-Libi's credibility on the issue at all, nor does it suggest that al-Libi had any reason to have access to information that the other operatives would not have been privy to. The Senate Committee report apparently directly questioned al-Libi's reliability; Douglas Jehl reports in the New York Times (31 July 2004): "American officials now say still-secret parts of the separate report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was released in early July, discuss the information provided by Mr. Libi in much greater detail. The Senate report questions whether some versions of intelligence reports prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi's claims."[33] Jehl further notes that "Neither the Senate committee nor the 11 September commission have found evidence of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda on any matter."

1997

  • Afghanistan - Armad Jan, Taliban minister, tells Karl Inderfurth, Assistant US Secretary of State, that the Taliban "had frustrated Iranian and Iraqi efforts to contact" bin Laden. But Inderfurth told UPI that "he did not believe the Taliban claim was credible at the time, and that he had no recollection of Taliban officials mentioning Iraqi or Iranian attempts to meet bin Laden." He said, "I never saw any evidence in anything I was doing where there were any Iraqi connections." ([34]).

1998

  • Baghdad - Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda second-in-command, allegedly meets Taha Yasin Ramadan, Iraqi vice-president ([35]). The source of this unlikely claim appears to be Yossef Bodansky's controversial 1999 book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (p. 322), which makes many similar unsourced claims. There are no footnotes in the book, and there has been no other independent confirmation of this claim, which was republished uncritically by William Safire in a column in October 2001.
  • Washington - Daniel Benjamin, head of the National Security Council's counterterrorism division, heads an exercise aimed at a critical analysis of the CIA's contention that Iraq and al Qaeda would not team up. "This was a red-team effort," he said. "We looked at this as an opportunity to disprove the conventional wisdom, and basically we came to the conclusion that the CIA had this one right."[36]
  • February, Baghdad - the Mukhabarat arranges for an envoy from bin Laden to travel from Sudan to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi officials; the meeting is extended by a full week ([37]). These talks, according to the Observer, "are thought to have ended disastrously for the Iraqis, as bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad."([38]).
  • February 23, Afghanistan - Osama bin Laden issues a fatwa urging jihad against all Americans. "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it..." One of his reasons for the fatwa is the "Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people." Osama mentions aggression against Iraq four times in the fatwa.[39]
  • November 4, New York - The U.S Department of Justice files an indictment against Osama Bin Laden[40]. This indictment repeats the disputed claim that "al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq." [41] Richard A. Clarke wrote a memo to Sandy Berger that the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory was "probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qaida agreement." (Page 128) [42] By 2001, based on several reviews of the evidence prompted by the Bush Administration, Clarke came to change his view. To date, no evidence of such an "understanding" or "agreement" has ever materialized. Clarke notes in his book Against All Enemies that many of the contacts cited by conservatives as proof of Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperation "actually proved that al Qaeda and Iraq had not succeeded in establishing a modus vivendi," (p. 269).
  • December, after President Clinton ordered a four day bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Fox, the Arabic language daily newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi speculated in an editorial that "President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four-day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama bin Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world." [43]
  • December 18 or December 21, Afghanistan - Farouk Hijazi, Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, allegedly meets with bin Laden in Afghanistan ([44], [45]). Corriere della Sera, a Milan newspaper, translated by the CIA, reads: “Saddam Hussayn and Usama bin Ladin have sealed a pact. Faruk Hidjazi, the former Director of the Iraqi Secret Services and now the country’s Ambassador to Turkey, held a secret meeting with the extremist leader on 21 December.” The newspaper had direct quotes from Hijazi without specifying the source of the quotes. (Page 328)[46] Former CIA counterterrorism official Vince Cannistraro notes that bin Laden rejected Hijazi's overtures, concluding that he did not want to be "exploited" by Iraq's secular regime.[47] Hijazi, arrested in April 2003, denied any such meeting took place. [48]

1999

  • January, Newsweek magazine reported Saddam Hussein is joining forces with al-Qaeda to launch joint terror counter-strikes against the US and Britain. An Arab intelligence officer, reported to know Saddam personally, told Newsweek: "very soon, you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity by the Iraqis." The planned attacks are said to be Saddam's revenge for the "continuing aggression" posed by the no fly zones that show the countries are still at war since Operation Desert Fox.[49] The planned attacks never materialized, and at the time officials questioned the validity of the claim. The Newsweek article went on: "Saddam may think he's too good for such an association [with bin Laden]. Jerold Post, a political psychologist and government consultant who has profiled Saddam, says he thinks of himself as a world leader like Castro or Tito, not a thug. 'I'm skeptical that Saddam would resort to terrorism,' says a well informed administration official." (Newsweek, 11 January 1999, p. 34)
  • January 31, Moscow newspaper Novosti reported that "hundreds of Afghan Arabs are undergoing sabotage training in Southern Iraq and are preparing for armed actions on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. They have declared as their goal a fight against the interests of the United States in the region." [50] Cybercast News Service claims that it received documents from an unnamed government official that appear to substantiate this claim (see below, October 2004). The Weekly Standard claims that the Kuwaiti government detained some al Qaeda members on the border but notes that the Kuwaiti government would not respond to requests for more information about these alleged detainees.
  • July, Iraq - Saddam Hussein allegedly cuts off all contact with al-Qaeda, according to Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, a former Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody.[51]
  • September, Baghdad - Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda second-in-command, allegedly visits Iraq under a pseudonym to attend the ninth Popular Islamic Congress, according to Iyad Allawi.[52] Farouk Hijazi, the Iraqi ambassador who supposedly orchestrated the visit, is in U.S. custody and has denied meeting al-Qaeda members (see above, 18 December 1998).

2000

  • -- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- Ahmad Hikmat Shakir al-Azzawi, an Iraqi national with connections to the Iraqi embassy and possibly a leutenant-colonel in Saddam's Fedayyeen, supposedly helped arrange a top-level al-Qaeda meeting attended by Khalid al-Midhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and his brother Salem al-Hazmi, three of the 9/11 hijackers, and Tawfiz bin Atash, responsible for the USS Cole bombing ([53]) (see 2000 al-Qaeda Summit) The CIA has concluded that while Shakir al-Azzawi was indeed an Iraqi with connections to the embassy in Malaysia who helped organize the Kuala Lumpur meeting, he is a different person from a Fedayeen officer with a similar name ([54]).

2001

  • February 25- February 27 -- Two unidentified Iraqi men are arrested in Germany on suspicion of spying. [55], [56] According to the Weekly Standard, an Arab newspaper in Paris called Al-Watan al-Arabi reported: "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. [57] This report and the interrogation records of the detained Iraqi agents were not discussed in the 9/11 Commission Report. It is not known if the CIA presented this information to the Commission or if the Commission chose to ignore it. It is not known whether the arrests revealed any cooperation between the men and either Iraqi intelligence or al Qaeda.
  • April 8 -- Prague, Czech Republic -- Czech counterintelligence service claimed that Mohamed Atta al-Sayed, 9/11 hijacker, met with Ahmad Samir al-Ani, the consul at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague, in a cafe in Prague. This claim, known as Prague connection, is generally considered to be false, although the Czech Foreign Minister (also in charge of intelligence) continued to give credence to the report in 2003.[58] According to the January 2003 CIA report Iraqi Support for Terrorism, "the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this possibility" that such a meeting occurred. (States News Service, 15 April 2005). The claim was based on a report from "a single informant from Prague's Arab community who saw Atta's picture in the news after the 11 September attacks, and who later told his handlers that he had seen him meeting with Ani. Some officials have called the source unreliable."[59] The claim was officially stated by Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman and Interior Minister Stanislav Gross ([60]), but Czech officials later backed off of the claim, first privately, and then later publicly after the New York Times conducted "extensive interviews with leading Czech figures."[61] When rumors of the Czech officials privately backing off the claims first appeared in the Western media, according to The Prague Post, Hynek Kmonicek, the Czech envoy to the UN stated "The meeting took place." One senior Czech official who requested anonymity speculated that the media reports dismissing the meeting were the result of a "guided leak."[62]. By 2002 the Czechs were already backing away from the claimed meeting. On 15 March 2002 David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post: "Even the Czechs, who initially put out the reports about Atta's meeting with al-Ani, have gradually backed away. The Czech interior minister, Stanislav Gross, said in October that the two had met in April 2001. That version was altered slightly by Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman when he told CNN in November: 'Atta contacted some Iraqi agent, not to prepare the terrorist attack on [the twin towners] but to prepare [a] terrorist attack on just the building of Radio Free Europe' in Prague. Then, in December, Czech President Vaclav Havel retreated further, saying there was only 'a 70 percent' chance Atta met with al-Ani."[63] But Havel later "moved to quash the report once and for all"[64] by making the statement publicly to the White House, as reported in the New York Times. According to the Times report, "Czech officials also say they have no hard evidence that Mr. Ani was involved in terrorist activities, although the government did order his ouster in late April 2001." The New York Times report was described as "a fabrication" by a Ladislav Spacek, a spokesman for Czech president Vaclav Havel. But Spacek also "said Mr. Havel was still certain there was no factual basis behind the report that Mr. Atta met an Iraqi diplomat."(Peter S. Green, "Havel Denies Telephoning U.S. On Iraq Meeting," New York Times (23 October 2002) p. A11.) The Times story was a potential embarrassment to Czech prime minister Milos Zeman after "extensive interviews with Czech and other Western intelligence officials, politicians and people close to the Czech intelligence community revealed that Mr. Zeman had prematurely disclosed an unverified report." (Green, p. A11.) According to an article in the Washington Post more recently, the Czechs backed off of the claim: "After months of further investigation, Czech officials determined last year that they could no longer confirm that a meeting took place, telling the Bush administration that al-Ani might have met with someone other than Atta."[65] This perception seems confirmed by an associate of al-Ani's who suggested to a reporter that the Czech informant had mistaken another man for Atta. The associate said "I have sat with the two of them at least twice. The double is an Iraqi who has met with the consul. If someone saw a photo of Atta he might easily mistake the two."[66] The Chicago Tribune on 29 September 2004 also reported that a man from Pakistan named Mohammed Atta (spelling his name with two "m's" rather than one) flew to Czechoslovakia in 2000, confusing the intelligence agency, who thought it was the same Mohamed Atta.[67] Opposition leaders in Czechoslovakia have publicly called this a failure on the part of Czech intelligence, and it is not clear that any Czech officials still stand by the story.[68] In hopes of resolving the issue, Czech officials hoped to be given access to information from the U.S. investigation but that cooperation was not forthcoming.[69] In May 2004, the Czech newspaper Pravo speculated that the source of the information behind the rumored meeting was actually the discredited INC chief Ahmed Chalabi. (CTK Czech News Agency, 27 May 2004) In addition, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has claimed that "there was no evidence Atta left or returned to the U.S. at the time he was supposed to be in Prague. ... We ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on, from flight reservations to car rentals to bank accounts." ([70]). There are no known travel records showing Atta leaving or entering the US at that time, and everything known about Atta's whereabouts suggests that he was in Florida at that time. Also, the Czech police chief, Jiri Kolar, "said there were no documents showing that Atta visited Prague at any time" in 2001.[71] Even further doubt was cast on rumors of such a meeting in December 2003 when Al-Ani, who is in U.S. custody, denied having ever met Atta ([72], [73]). According to Newsweek, it was "a denial that officials tend to believe given that they have not unearthed a scintilla of evidence that Atta was even in Prague at the time of the alleged rendezvous."[74] It is also notable that Atta's own religious and political convictions made him violently opposed to the Saddam regime; according to the 9/11 Commission Report, "In his interactions with other students, Atta voiced virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American opinions, ranging from condemnations of what he described as a global Jewish movement centered in New York City that supposedly controlled the financial world and the media, to polemics against governments of the Arab world. To him, Saddam Hussein was an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East." (p. 161) The 9/11 Commission also addressed the question of an alleged Prague connection and listed many of the reasons above that such a meeting could not have taken place. The report notes that "the FBI has gathered intelligence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he and Shehhi leased an apartment. On April 6,9,10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida. We cannot confirm that he placed those calls. But there are no U.S. records indicating that Atta departed the country during this period." Combining FBI and Czech intelligence investigations, "[n]o evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001." The Commission still could not "absolutely rule out the possibility" that Atta was in Prague on April 9 travelling under an alias, but the Commission concluded that "There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation. By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training,and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States. The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting." (p. 229)
  • summer -- United Arab Emirates -- According to Vanity Fair reporter David Rose, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, two of the 9/11 hijackers, supposedly meet with unidentified Mukhabarat officer ([75], [76]). No evidence has emerged to support this claim.
  • summer -- A man known as "Abu Wael" ("Abu Wa'il"), who worked with the Ansar al-Islam organization in northern Iraq, allegedly worked with al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan to set up a backup base. According to Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, Abu Wael is an alias for Saadan Mahmoud Abdul Latif al-Aani, allegedly a colonel in Iraq's Mukhabarat ([77], [78]). The 9/11 Commission reported: "There are indications that by then (2001) the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy." (Page 61) [79] And al-Shamari, sitting in a Kurdish prison, has said that Saddam Hussein supported Ansar al Islam because he wanted to "foment unrest in the pro-American Kurdish area of Iraq."[80] Intelligence agencies have disputed such claims of support, however. According to Con Coughlin in the Telegraph, "While the White House has attempted to link the group directly to Hussein's intelligence agents, both the CIA and MI6 insist that all their intelligence suggests the group operates in [an] area over which Saddam has no control."[81] Spenser Ackerman wrote in November 2003, "Far from being "harbored" by Saddam, Ansar al Islam operated out of northeastern Iraq, an area under Kurdish control that was being protected from Saddam's incursions by U.S. warplanes. Indeed, some of its members fought against Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war."[82] Additionally, Mullah Krekar, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, calls himself "Saddam's sworn enemy" and "scoffs" at the notion that his friend Abu Wael works with the Mukhabarat.[83] Elsewhere, Abu Wael is described as a "former Iraqi army officer" and it is suggested that, while he may still have been working for Saddam, it was as a spy, gathering intelligence on Ansar al-Islam rather than cooperating with them.[84] Jason Burke notes, "Saddam may well have infiltrated the Ansar-ul-Islam with a view to monitoring the developments of the group (indeed it would be odd if he had not) but that appears to be about as far as his involvement with the group, and incidentally with al-Qaeda, goes."[85] Ackerman likewise notes that the "far more likely explanation" of Abu Wael's contact with Ansar al-Islam, "is that the dictator had placed an agent in the group not to aid them, as Powell implied to the Security Council, but to keep tabs on a potential threat to his own regime."[86] Additionally, while Mullah Krekar has expressed admiration for bin Laden, he has denied any actual links to al-Qaeda, stating, "I have never met with him, nor do I have any contacts [with him]."[87] The Belgian think tank International Crisis Group called the group "nothing more than a minor irritant in local Kurdish politics" and suggested that the alleged ties to bin Laden were the product of propaganda by the secular Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).[88] Nevertheless, Ansar al-Islam is generally considered an al-Qaeda affiliate organization and is designated officially as such by the United Nations. But it was not an organization identified as a terrorist group by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury until 20 February 2003, just one month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and just weeks after Powell's presentation to the United Nations,[89] and it was not until March 2004 that it was officially added to the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.[90]
  • July -- Rome, Italy -- Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, general in the Iraqi intelligence, allegedly meets with Mohamed Atta, 9/11 hijacker ([91]) Daniel McGrory, the reporter who claims this information came from Italian intelligence, admits "There is no proof the men were in direct contact." (London Times, 27 October 2001). A June or July meeting in Rome is completely at odds with everything known about Atta's whereabouts in mid-2001.
  • July 21 -- Iraq -- The state-run Iraqi newspaper Al-Nasiriya publishes an opinion piece written by Naeem Abd Muhalhal. This piece praises Osama bin Laden and includes the following, which James Woolsey has interpreted (in testimony before Judge Baer) as a "vague" foreshadowing of the 9/11 attacks: bin Laden "continues to smile and still thinks seriously, with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House." The opinion piece also reads that “Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.” On the floor of the Senate, Senator Ernest Hollings interpreted this as foreknowledge: “In other words, the World Trade Towers. Here, over a year ahead of time in the open press in Iraq, they are writing that this man is planning not only to bomb the White House, but where they are already hurting, the World Trade Towers.” Senator Hollings read the opinion piece into the U.S. Congressional Record. [92] Judge Baer also interprets this opinion piece as an allusion to the once-bombed World Trade Center. This editorial, by itself, is not proof of Iraqi complicity in the attacks of 9/11. No evidence of foreknowledge of the attacks on the part of the Iraqi government has ever materialized.
  • September 5 -- Spain -- Abu Zubayr, an al-Qaeda cell leader in Morocco, allegedly meets with Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, 9/11 financier. Some allege that Abu Zubayr was also an officer in the Iraqi Mukhabarat. ([93]) Abu Zubayr was arrested in Morocco in 2002 and while news accounts widely noted that he was "one of the most important members of Al Qaeda to be captured," no mainstream source substantiated (or even saw fit to mention) the allegation that the Saudi citizen abu Zubayr worked for the Iraqi Secret police. (James Risen, "Morocco Detainee Linked to Qaeda," New York Times 19 June 2002; see also Al-Hayat 20 June 2002)
  • November 21 -- The Bush Administration froze the assets of the Al Taqwa network, accusing them of raising, managing and distributing money for al Qaeda under the guise of legitimate business activity. Youssef Nada and Ali Ghalib Himmat, the two principals of Al Taqwa, are members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Nada was known to have good relations with Saddam Hussein. Asat Trust, a Liechtenstein-based company earning revenue from Iraq’s Oil for Food contracts, also had its assets frozen due to its relationship to Al Taqwa. Marc Perelman speculates: “The operation raises the possibility that Iraq quietly funneled money to Al Qaeda by deliberately choosing an oil company working with one of the terrorist group's alleged financial backers.” [94] Perelman presents no evidence to substantiate this speculation.

2002

  • May – July -- Abu Musab al Zarqawi allegedly recuperated in Baghdad after being wounded in the war in Afghanistan. Dozens of his followers came to Baghdad as well. The United States, through a foreign intelligence service, notified Saddam Hussein’s government that Zarqawi was living in Baghdad under an alias. [96] “A foreign government service asserted that the IIS (Iraqi Intelligence Service) knew where al-Zarqawi was located despite Baghdad’s claims that it could not find him.” (Page 337) "Senate Report on PreWar Intelligence on Iraq" Nevertheless, no evidence has emerged of any collaboration between Zarqawi and Saddam's government. According to Jason Burke, "Stories that an injured leg had been amputated in Baghdad as al-Zarqawi was cared for by Saddam Hussein's personal physicians proved false." (Jason Burke, Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam London: I.B. Tauris, 2004) [ISBN 1850436665] p. 326). And Spenser Ackerman wrote in the Washington Monthly that "if Zarqawi's ties to al Qaeda were loose, his ties to Saddam were practically non-existent."[97] In addition, Zarqawi did not identify himself with bin Laden nor swear allegiance to him until October 2004. Before that time terrorist experts considered him an "independent actor" who was setting himself up as a "competitor to bin Laden" rather than an al Qaeda operative.[98] Jason Burke writes, "What Powell did not say was that al-Zarqawi ... had operated independently of bin Laden, running his own training camp in the west of Afghanistan near Herat. It was a small operation and al-Zarqawi was not considered a significant player, by militants or Western and Middle Eastern intelligence services, at the time. It is likely that al-Zarqawi had some contact with bin Laden but never took the bayat and never made any formal allegiance with the Saudi or his close associates. Instead he was one of the thousands of foreign activists living and working in Afghanistan during the late 1990s.... al-Zarqawi was a rival, not an ally, of the Saudi." (p. 270). Interestingly, even though no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Zarqawi has emerged, the White House continued to insist on such a connection, and Colin Powell made this claim a feature of his February 2003 speech to the United Nations (which has been heavily criticized). Nevertheless, the White House on several occasions nixed Pentagon plans to attack Zarqawi. Former National Security Council member Roger Cressey noted, "People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists." It has been suggested by military officials that the White House let Zarqawi's camp continue to operate inside Iraq because destroying the camp "could undercut its case for war against Saddam."[99] While U.S. officials now think reports of al-Zarqawi's leg being amputated are incorrect, they still believe that al-Zarqawi may have received medical treatment in Baghdad.[100] However, a CIA report in late 2004 concluded that there was no evidence Saddam's government was involved or even aware of this medical treatment, and found "no conclusive evidence the Saddam Hussein regime had harbored Zarqawi."[101][102] One U.S. official summarized the report: "The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything."[103]
  • September 17 -– Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before a Congressional Committee: “There is evidence that Iraq provided al-Qaida with various kinds of training – combat, bomb-making, and CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear). Although Saddam did not endorse al-Qaida’s overall agenda and was suspicious of Islamist movements in general, he was apparently not averse, under certain circumstances, to enhancing bin Laden’s operational capabilities. As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training are (redacted as classified info) from sources of varying reliability.” (Page 329) "Senate Report on PreWar Intelligence on Iraq" The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence pointed out that the DCI's comments could be misleading: "The DCI's unclassified testimony did not include source descriptions, which could have led the recipients of that testimony to interpret that the CIA believed the training had definitely occurred." (p. 330).
  • October -- U.K. -- British Intelligence investigation of possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda issues report concluding: "We have no intelligence of current cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda and do not believe that al-Qaeda plans to conduct terrorist attacks under Iraqi direction."[104]
  • October 8 -- Washington, D.C. -- Knight Ridder reports that "a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats" have serious doubts about the Bush Administration's case for war, specifically raising doubts about claimed "links" between Iraq and al-Qaeda. One official told the reporter that "Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books."[107]
  • November 14 -- Baghdad -- Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, officer at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan, is identified as "responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group" in a list of names published in an issue of the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper by Uday Hussein, interpreted by Judge Gilbert S. Merritt as some kind of private memo ([108]). Judge Merrit leaves out the passage published at the top of the list, which undercuts his story: "This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them." The Defense Intelligence Agency's only comment on the list was, "There are innumerable lists. So you have to ask what does it mean to be on this list? It takes time to sort through all this. People give names all over the place."[109]

2003

  • January -- CIA releases special Report to Congress entitled Iraqi Support for Terrorism. The report states “We have reporting from reliable clandestine and press sources that (deleted) direct meetings between senior Iraqi representatives and top al-Qaida operatives took place from the early 1990s to the present.” (Page 326) [110] The report concludes that "In contrast to the patron-client pattern between Iraq and its Palestinian surrogates, the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other -- their mutual suspicion suborned by al-Qaida's interest in Iraqi assistance, and Baghdad's interest in al-Qaida's anti-U.S. attacks…. The Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike." [111]
  • February 11 -- Satellite TV -- Osama bin Laden audiotape broadcast on Al Jazeera urges Iraqi Muslims to fight the American invaders who will soon be attacking Hussein's Baathist regime. He reaffirms his view of Saddam as an infidel: "Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden."[112]
  • April 28 -- The Toronto Star publishes a report by Middle East correspondent Mitch Potter about a memo discovered in the wreckage of Mukhabarat headquarters. The memo discusses a planned trip by a trusted aide of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Baghdad. The story says the trip is "thought to have ended disastrously for the Iraqis, as bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad, or holy war." Martin Bright and Jason Burke contend that "the find is unlikely to be the 'smoking gun' the US and Britain are looking for."[113]
  • May 8 -- New York District Court Judge Robert Baer issues a decision in a lawsuit ordering Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to pay $104 million to the families of two men killed in the September 11 attacks. Baer ruled in part that the plaintiffs had "shown, albeit barely ... that Iraq provided material support to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda." [114] Judge Baer's decision was based on the testimony of former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey as well as on Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations that February. Judge Baer said, however, that these sources had provided "few actual facts" demonstrating that Iraq provided any material support for the attack and instead based his decision on this point of fact entirely upon their expertise. No testimony was introduced into the case by defendants to counter the statements of Woolsey or Powell. [115]
  • October 27 -- Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and head of the controversial Office of Special Plans, sends a memo to Congress that includes "a classified annex containing a list and description of the requested reports, so that the committee could obtain the reports from the relevant members of the intelligence community...The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions." [116] The memo was subsequently leaked to the media and became the foundation for reports in the Weekly Standard by Stephen F. Hayes.[117] W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of Defense Intelligence Agency, called the Feith memo "a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?"[118] Daniel A. Benjamin criticized the memo, noting that "in any serious intelligence review, much of the material presented would quickly be discarded."[119] A Pentagon press release warned: "Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal."[120]
  • December 13 -- Saddam Hussein's arrest in Iraq yields a document from Saddam directing Iraqi Baathist insurgents to beware of working with foreign jihadists. The New York Times reported that the directive "provides a second piece of evidence challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation between Mr. Hussein's government and terrorists from al-Qaeda. C.I.A. interrogators have already elicited from the top Qaeda officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly with Mr. Hussein."[121] Reporter Greg Miller went even further, calling the document "one of the strongest pieces of evidence to contest the repeated insinuations of the Bush Administration that there were links between al-Qaeda and the Baath regime."[122]

2004

  • July 7 -- Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases report assessing the state of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The report concludes that the CIA's assessment that there was no evidence of a formal relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was justified. (See below).
  • July 22 -- 9/11 Commission releases its final report on the September 11 attacks, concluding that there was no evidence of an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. (See below).
  • October 4 – The conservative news organization Cybercast News Service published a story describing 42 documents dated January-April 1993 confiscated by U.S. forces. [123] The documents supposedly include details of Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorists, records on WMDs and information on terrorists trained inside Iraq. The unnamed source of the documents is described as "a senior government official who is not a political appointee." The documents were examined by Bruce Tefft, a retired CIA specialist in counter-terrorism and expert on Islam[124], who speculated that "based on available, unclassified and open source information, the details in these documents are accurate ..." [125] CNSNews, however, does not indicate whether Tefft identified any specific open-source information that confirms details in the documents. Laurie Mylroie wrote an article for the New York Sun expressing confidence in the documents' authenticity. [126] As of August 2005, the documents have not been acknowledged by any Bush Administration official, not even when making the case for Saddam-al-Qaeda cooperation. They have nevertheless led to rampant speculation in the blogosphere about a "smoking gun" proving Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. The documents purport to establish that Saddam had been supporting terrorism for years and implicates Iraq in the defeat of Americans at the Battle of Mogadishu but also that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons. To critics of the Bush Administration, these documents appear "too good to be true." The release of the documents right before the November 2004 election has caused some to wonder if the documents were forged as a sort of October Surprise to help the Republican Party. Sourcewatch notes that "The anonymous individual who supplied the documents is quoted as saying it is 'unlikely' that others in the U.S. government 'even know this exists.' The article does not explain how this is possible if this source is indeed a 'senior government official.' The timing of the news story, which appeared near the end of the U.S. presidential campaign, suggests that it was written with the intention of shoring up support for Bush, whom the article notes has been hurt politically by the failure of investigators to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."[127] If these documents could be authenticated, the implications could be significant, at least for understanding events of early 1993. Some efforts to confirm the accuracy of the documents took place, but no document expert has yet examined them.[128] Even one conservative writer questioned the timing and manner of the documents release and raised serious questions about the documents' veracity.[129] CNSNews has posted translations of some of the documents online and has invited journalists and terror experts to study the documents in person in their corporate offices.

2005

  • April 15 -- Senator Carl Levin releases newly declassified intelligence documents which suggest that Administration claims of a relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda contradicted the conclusions of the intelligence community. Levin said, "These documents are additional compelling evidence that the Intelligence Community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary."[130]
  • May -- Seif al-Adl, the leader of al-Qaeda's security committee, publishes a testament on the internet about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist in Iraq who swore allegiance to bin Laden in October 2004. Among other things, the al-Qaeda leader clarifies the relationship between Zarqawi's group and the new Iraq: “contrary to what the Americans continuously claimed, al-Qaeda did not have any connection with Saddam whatsoever. American attempts to connect Saddam to al-Qaeda were in order to create excuses and legitimate causes to invade Iraq. So after we were trapped in Iran, after being forced out of Afghanistan, it became inevitable that we would plan to enter Iraq through the north, which was free from American control. It was then that we moved south to join our Sunni brothers."[131]
  • July -- Corporal Jonathan "Paco" Reese of the Pennsylvania National Guard, one of the Americans responsible for guarding the captured Saddam Hussein when he was in American custody, tells GQ magazine that the ousted leader insisted that he had no relationship with Osama bin Laden.[132][133]

9/11 Commission Report

The official report issued by the 9/11 Commission addressed the issue of a possible conspiracy between the government of Iraq and al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks. The report addressed specific allegations of contacts between al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, concluding: "to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States." For specific quotations from the report, see 9/11 Commission Report and Saddam-al Qaeda Conspiracy Theory.

Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq

Looking at pre-war intelligence on Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence examined “the quality and quantity of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, ties to terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein’s threat to stability and security in the region, and his repression of his own people;” and “the objectivity, reasonableness, independence, and accuracy of the judgments reached by the Intelligence Community.”

Based on the information the CIA made available to the Senate Committee, the committee published a series of conclusions in the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. These included the following:

Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship. (Page 346)
Conclusion 94. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably and objectively assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that the most problematic area of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida were the reports of training in the use of non-conventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons. (Page 346)
Conclusion 95. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment on safehaven – that al-Qaida or associated operatives were present in Baghdad and in northeastern Iraq in an area under Kurdish control – was reasonable. (Page 347)
Conclusion 96. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise. (Page 347)
Conclusion 97. The Central Intelligence Agency’s judgment that Saddam Hussein, if sufficiently desperate, might employ terrorists with a global reach – al-Qaida – to conduct terrorist attacks in the event of war, was reasonable. No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaida in conducting terrorist attacks. (Page 348)

Statements

  • While speaking at the Pentagon on February 17 1998, President Bill Clinton warned of the "reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." These "predators of the twenty-first century," he said "will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq." [134]
  • "Al-Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al-Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq." -- Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney in an indictment of Osama bin Laden, unsealed November 4 1998 (Page 128)[135]
  • "We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad," -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, September 2002 [136]
  • "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade. ... We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities." -- CIA Director George J. Tenet, October 2002 [137]
  • "We could find no provable connection between Hussein and al-Qaeda." Senior CIA official, summing up conclusions of a 2003 report by the Directorate of Intelligence, 4 March 2004.[138]
  • "There is no doubt in my mind that [Iraq] trained them [al-Qaeda] in how to prepare and deliver anthrax and to use terror weapons." -- Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, after reading classified intelligence as a member of the congressional commission investigating the September 11 attacks [139]
  • "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda, ever" -- Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism official under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, March 21 2004 [140]
  • "The al-Shifa facility had been under surveillance for some time because of a variety of intelligence reports, including HUMINT reports identifying it as a WMD-related facility, indirect links between the facility and bin Laden and the Iraqi chemical weapons program, and extraordinary security – including surface-to-air missiles – used to protect it during its construction. The direct physical evidence from the scene obtained at that time convinced the U.S. intelligence community that their suspicions were correct about the facility’s chemical weapons role and that there was a risk of chemical agents getting into the hands of al-Qaeda, whose interest in obtaining such weapons was clear." William Cohen, former Secretary of defense in a sworn statement to the 9/11 Commission, March 23 2004 (Page 9) [141]
  • Interviewer, 31 January 2003: "Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?" President Bush: "I can't make that claim." [142]
  • "What I have said, however, to the liaison committee, and this is backed up by the evidence we have from intelligence, submitted to me by the joint intelligence committee, is that, yes, on the one hand, we do not know of a link between Iraq and the September 11 attack. But on the other hand there are unquestionably links between al-Qaida and Iraq. Just how far those links go is a matter of speculation. This isn't a static situation. It is changing. We are getting fresh intelligence in the entire time." Tony Blair, February 5 2003 [143]
  • "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. ... There's numerous contacts between the two" -- President George W. Bush, June 18 2004 [144]
  • "In my judgment, Saddam assessed Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda as a threat rather than a potential partner to be exploited to attack the United States. Bin Laden wanted to attack Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990 rather than have the Saudi government depend on foreign military forces." Judith Yaphe CIA counterterrorism analyst who specialized in Iraq during the George H. W, Bush administration, Boston Globe (3 August 2003).[145]
  • Stephen Hayes's book, titled "The Connection", details this alleged link and is entirely based upon a report by the Undersecretary of Defense, Douglas Feith - which has since been characterized by the Pentagon as 'inaccurate'. It "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of Defense Intelligence Agency [146].
  • An article in the Times Online quotes a recently-leaked 'Top Secret' UK government memo: marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "C {(head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove) states that} military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WDM. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Times Online
  • "In 125 separate appearances, they (Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice) made {...} 61 misleading statements about Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda" -- Report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform - Minority Staff pdf
  • "We owe it to the memories of those who lost their lives September 11 to remember, to reflect, and bring justice to those responsible.
"We also have a similar obligation not to use the events of 9/11, and the great loss which so many endured, as a pretext for launching a war against Iraq.
"Iraq was not responsible for 9/11.
"Iraq has not been linked to 9/11.
"Yet here we are on the anniversary of that grim day, and the Administration is attempting to reframe 9/11 by beating the drum for war against a nation not connected to 9/11." -- Dennis Kucinich, Washington, 10 September 2002 [147]
Carol Costello:"But there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected in any way to al-Qaida."
Hayes: "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. There's evidence everywhere. We get access to it. Unfortunately others don't. But the evidence is very clear."
Costello: "What evidence is there?"
Hayes: "The connection between individuals who were connected to Saddam Hussein, folks who worked for him, we've seen it time and time again."
Costello: "Well, are you saying that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11?"
Hayes: "I'm saying that Saddam Hussein -- and I think you're losing track of what we're trying to talk about here -- Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11."
Costello: "[There is] no evidence [that Hussein was involved in 9/11]."
Hayes: "Well, I'm sorry, you haven't looked in the right places."
"I haven't seen compelling evidence of that" -John McCain, asked about Hayes' statements
"I think it undermines the confidence of the American people. I think it shows a contempt for the American people. Unless Robin is going to some tippy-top secret briefing, I'm not sure what Robin’s source of information is." - North Carolina Representative Brad Miller, Democrat
"Extensive research reveals that the facts are clear - Saddam Hussein and Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorists' attacks." - North Carolina Representative G. K. Butterfield, Democrat, who serves with Hayes on the Armed Services Committee [149]
  • "I have not seen one.... I have never seen any evidence to suggest there was one." Colin Powell, when asked whether there had been a "connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attack of 9/11". 20/20 interview, September 9 2005.

Sources

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