Case Closed!
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
Editor's Note, 1/27/04: In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank
reported that "Vice President Cheney . . . in an interview this month
with the Rocky Mountain News, recommended as the 'best source of
information' an article in The Weekly Standard magazine detailing a
relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda based on leaked classified
information."
Here's the Stephen F. Hayes article to which the vice president was
referring.
-JVL
OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from
the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and
weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks,
al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial
support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top
secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of
Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay
Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee
as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by
the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page
memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including
the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence
Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is
detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it
is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al
Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a
decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of
collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous
enemies.
According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered
points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered
passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which
some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source.
This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.
The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War. According to
reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to
meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in
1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to
establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions.
According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted
to expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."
The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese
strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated
National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One
defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the
Iraqi-al Qaeda relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda
influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the
transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return,
Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors."
One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of Saddam
Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:
4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence
officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship
with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting
in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was
brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS
deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al]
Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and
1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al
Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit
Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe
house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al
Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a
personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under
scrutiny from foreign probes.
A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when bin
Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.
5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose
reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the
"Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam.
Overriding the internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden
came to an "understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no
longer support anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive
reporting released in U.S. court documents during the African Embassy
trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an "understanding" with Saddam under
which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda operations to be mounted against
the Iraqi leader.
Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was
Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a
New York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the
August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin
Laden's "best friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the
Clinton administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison
with Saddam's regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass
destruction for al Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu
Hajer "visited Iraq in early 1995" and "had a good relationship
with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime before mid-1995 he went on an al
Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified cooperation with the Iraqi
government."
Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the mid-1990s
comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and his
dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most
credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.
This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates of when
bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of
individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the
substantive talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many
reports in general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq
because of the secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close
access provided a "window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is
seen as heavily involved with Iraq (and Iran).
Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though
multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin
Laden's current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting
gets much more specific in the mid-1990s:
8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin Laden was
receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi Intelligence
Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives,
Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin Laden's
farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the
company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid
al-Tikriti.
9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996), staying at the
residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He discussed the
successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and
operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan,
and Khobar, using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his
return, bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.
And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source:
10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti,
met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti
used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral
cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with
bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two
other IIS officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's
request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel
bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed
on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c)
making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that
[Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives
maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in
Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan
with bin Laden as long as required.
The analysis of those events follows:
The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks after the
Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary of a
U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the
attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which
Iraqi officials explicitly threatened retaliation.
IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s, intelligence
reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again in
December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported
that "the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's
point of contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad
in Jan. 1998 and met with Tariq Aziz."
11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent Faruq
Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to
meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in
Afghanistan in 1999. . . .
14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and reliable
source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited
Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The
goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin
Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the
leadership of Abdul Aziz.
That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the U.N.
inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement
following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's
presidential palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions
mounted, President Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18,
1998, and prepared the nation for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of
terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals"
and said "there is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam
Hussein."
The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in April
2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch Potter
and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo
detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to
Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper
that, when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between
Iraq and al Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for
"all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of
the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message
from us to bin Laden." The document set as the goal for the meeting a
discussion of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and
to achieve a direct meeting with him." The al Qaeda representative, the
document went on to suggest, might provide "a way to maintain contacts
with bin Laden." Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden
issued his now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the
Arabic-language daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the
United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of
places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its
rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning
its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the
neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin Laden urged his followers to act: "The
ruling to kill all Americans and their allies--civilians and
military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any
country in which it is possible to do it."
Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal brokered by
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The
standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President
Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that
began on December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.
According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy director
of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on December
21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in the
memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting
and relates two others.
15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi delegation,
including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly assigned to
the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden in
Afghanistan.
16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met with two
Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.
17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan to seek
closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source
reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation
with al Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to
sabotage U.S. and U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence
officer met with Taliban leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made
for a series of meetings between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin
Laden in Pakistan. The source noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in
late 1998.
18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with several
other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed that
Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit direction.
An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and an
explanation of these reports:
Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from different
sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings
between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details
or the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship
would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.
Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so
widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream
press. A January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline:
"Saddam + Bin Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source"
with knowledge of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to
this source, Saddam expected last month's American and British bombing
campaign to go on much longer than it did. The dictator believed that
as the attacks continued, indignation would grow in the Muslim world,
making his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more effective.
With acts of terror contributing to chaos in the region, Turkey,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel less inclined to support
Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according to several sources,
is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the embargo
against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if
formally."
INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship between Iraq
and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One senior
Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah,
"said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July
1999. Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent
back from Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to
refrain from any further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The
source opined that Saddam wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."
The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this claim. One
report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training camp in
northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest
that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin
Laden throughout 1999.
23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering safe
haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The
source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of
Iraqi intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in
frequent contact and had good relations with bin Laden.
Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named Ahmed
Hikmat Shakir:
24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi national
(Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers for an
operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting
indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network
of terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur
airport--a job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy
employee.
One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala Lumpur
Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified
as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole.
25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 by
al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the
CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."
26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al
Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was
tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi
intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole
bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for
CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in
Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS
Cole bombings to provide this training.
The analysis of this report follows.
CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with other
sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for
advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."
Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that relations
between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:
27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi National
Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after
learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K.
interests in Saudi Arabia.
And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting
on those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's
more, the memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by
Iraqi intelligence.
The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11
hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in
Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions.
During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to
issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.
And the commentary:
CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in June
2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April
2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot
confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross
continues to stand by his information.
It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five high-ranking
members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed meetings
between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press
attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some
of the most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately
skeptical that Atta met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that
reports of the alleged meeting, said to have taken place in public,
outside the headquarters of the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness that doesn't fit the pattern of
previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.
Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by Czech
counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service
officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead
hijacker's determination to reach Prague, despite significant
obstacles, in the spring 2000. (Note that the report stops short of
confirming that the funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS
officer requested the transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from
Germany on May 30, 2000, but was denied entry because he did not have a
valid visa. Rather than simply return to Germany and fly directly to
the United States, his ultimate destination, Atta took pains to get to
Prague. After he was refused entry the first time, he traveled back to
Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and caught a bus back to
Prague. He left for the United States the day after arriving in Prague
for the second time.
Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam and bin
Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:
31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret
agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and
provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted
a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also
said that al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network
for al Qaeda had been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports
for al Qaeda personnel.
The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the report
fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration:
References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and offers of
safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting considered
reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained A that Iraqi
support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining
passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by
including weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the
aftermath of 9-11.
Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N.
Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
Reporting in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain
some of the resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.
37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and close al
Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with Iraqi
officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the IIS
to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles
from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al
Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case
of a U.S. occupation of the city, suggesting his operational
cooperation with the Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such
cooperation could include IIS provision of a secure operating bases
[sic] and steady access to arms and explosives in preparation for a
possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's procurements from the Iraqis also
could support al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies
elsewhere.
38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good access who
does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi intelligence
service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was providing weapons
to al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket
propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information,
northern Iraq-based al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to
strike al Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar
al-Islam positions.
The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed that an
Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it with
$100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."
CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al Qaeda
connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White
House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror;
that links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been
routinely "exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks
"cherry-picked" bits of intelligence and tendentiously presented these
to the American public.
Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made
those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on "Fox News
Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to look at
the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."
Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated
intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the
case for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that
there was any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that
were in Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a
connection between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was
there a basis for that?"
There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin serves.
And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not that
you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed,
the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the
administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore
claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to
work with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass
destruction." Really?
One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page memo is
that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually be
available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For
one thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their
cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on
an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For
another, few people in the U.S. government are expressly looking for
such links. There is no Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's
1,400-person Iraq Survey Group currently searching Iraq for weapons of
mass destruction.
Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi
intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These
documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are
in Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and
Saddam, but also revolting details of the regime's long history of
brutality. It will be a slow process.
So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best viewed as
sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains the
highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.
One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed Hikmat
Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers
through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have
extensive reporting on his activities before and after the September 11
hijacking. That they would include only this brief overview suggests
the 16-page memo, extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the
reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda connections.
Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one but two
September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through
the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on
January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala
Lumpur Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the
masterminds of the September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days.
Shakir returned to work on January 9 and January 10, and never again.
Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi Embassy.
(Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its
intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged
"diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his
employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on
September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact
information for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole,
and the September 11 hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that
Shakir had received a phone call from the safe house where the 1993
World Trade Center attacks had been plotted.
The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October 21,
2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a
flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in
Jordan for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His
interrogators concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in
counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained,
according to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi
regime began to "pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At
the same time, Amnesty International complained that Shakir was being
held without charge. The Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002,
at which point he is believed to have fled back to Iraq.
Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between Saddam
Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out.
But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam
Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against
Americans.
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
-----------
Liberals Hate America!
.
|
