posted                      

quote:

---

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

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

---

quote:

---

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.

---

posted                      

quote:

---

News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.

---

quote:

---

The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the Intelligence Community. The selection of the documents was made by DOD to respond to the Committee�s question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.

---

posted                      

quote:

---

Case Decidedly Not Closed

Nov. 19 � A leaked Defense Department memo claiming new evidence of an �operational relationship� between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein�s former regime is mostly based on unverified claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago�and were largely discounted at the time by the U.S. intelligence community, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.

----

With a few, inconclusive exceptions, the memo doesn�t actually contain much �new� intelligence at all. Instead, it mostly recycles shards of old, raw data that were first assembled last year by a tiny team of floating Pentagon analysts (led by a Pennsylvania State University professor and U.S. Navy analyst Christopher Carney) whom Feith asked to find evidence of an Iraqi-Al Qaeda �connection� in order to better justify a U.S. invasion.
Within the U.S. intelligence establishment, the predominant view�then as now�is that the Feith-Carney case was murky at best. Culling through intelligence files, the Feith team indeed found multiple �reports� of alleged meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives dating back to the early 1990s when Osama first set up shop in Sudan. But many of these reports were old, uncorroborated and came from sources of unknown if not dubious credibility, U.S. intelligence officials say. (Not unlike, as it has turned out, much of the �reporting� on Iraq�s ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction.) Moreover, other reports�some of which came foreign intelligence services and Iraqi defectors�were selectively presented by the Feith team and are, as one U.S. official told NEWSWEEK, �contradicted by other things.�

----

None of this means, of course, that all accounts of Iraqi-Al Qaeda connections should be completely dismissed. The memo, for example, makes brief reference to the intriguing case of Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, a Malaysia-based Iraqi national who, purportedly through the aid of an Iraq embassy employee, landed a job at the Kuala Lumpur airport and then served as greeter and driver for two of the September 11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The two men flew to the city for a crucial Al Qaeda planning session in January 2000. FBI documents obtained by NEWSWEEK more than a year ago show that U.S. law enforcement had a great deal of interest in interrogating Shakir in the months following September 11. After being picked up, first by Qatari intelligence and later by Jordanians, he was twice released�without the FBI ever getting a crack at him. He then flew off to Iraq, where he has never been seen since. U.S. military and intelligence officials are still looking for him to this day, sources say, and for good reason.
But all this is a far cry from solid evidence of ongoing cooperation between Saddam and Osama. The outing of the memo (a still classified document, as it happens) is likely now to become the subject of yet another Justice Department leak investigation. The CIA is expected to begin preparing a �crimes report� identifying the potential damage to national security (most likely pretty minimal). But there can be little doubt about the motive of the leaker: to shore up the Bush administration�s prewar claims and defuse the intelligence committee investigation into allegations of the misuse of intelligence. Unfortunately, for the Pentagon and the Standard, the claims detailed in the memo will do little, if anything, to advance the case.

---