[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11086-11089]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SADDAM HUSSEIN AND OSAMA BIN LADEN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of concern 
over the past year or so about whether or not Saddam Hussein was tied 
in with Osama bin Laden and the terrorist network and al Qaeda.
  There is an article in The Weekly Standard this week called ``The 
Connection,'' and I would urge all of my colleagues to read this 
article. It shows a picture of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and 
some other terrorists on the front page of the magazine. The article is 
written by a gentleman named Stephen Hayes, and it follows an article 
that was written in the Wall Street Journal last week, and I would like 
to read some information from the two articles that I think verifies 
without much doubt that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda 
and other terrorist organizations were working together to try to 
destroy the United States and Western Civilization.
  Let me read from the Wall Street Journal of May 27, 2004:
  ``One striking bit of new evidence is that the name of Ahmed Hikmat 
Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam 
Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and 
entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government 
sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is 
listed with the rank of lieutenant colonel. This matters because if 
Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link 
between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned'' the 9/11 attack 
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
  ``Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda `summit' in Kuala 
Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has 
never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or 
whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his 
own.''
  The fact is he was an officer in the elite military of Saddam. He 
worked with his son Uday, and he was there when they planned the attack 
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
  Further, the article goes on to say: ``The CIA has confirmed that al 
Qaeda's number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met with Iraqi intelligence in 
Baghdad in 1992 and 1998. There is irrefutable evidence that the Iraqi 
regime paid Zawahiri $300,000 in 1998, around the time his Islamic 
jihad was merging with al Qaeda. Four sources have confirmed the 
payment.''
  So here again is another connection.
  ``Since Operating Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence Iraq and 
al Qaeda discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression. We have 
solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members. Through 
interrogations of high-level Iraqi detainees, we have evidence that al 
Qaeda members visited Baghdad, sought weapons and training in areas 
such as poisons, gases, and conventional bomb making.''
  Another item: ``Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, has 
admitted meeting senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994. It 
is believed Hijazi met with Osama bin Laden and offered him safe haven 
in Iraq in 1998.'' That is another example.
  ``Al Qaeda operatives held in Guantanamo have corroborated reports of 
a series of meetings in Khartoum, Sudan, home to al Qaeda during the 
mid-1990s. Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi,'' an al Qaeda weapons of mass 
destruction specialist, ``was sent by Osama bin Laden to seek WMD 
training, and possibly weapons, from the Iraqi regime. His associates 
held meetings in Baghdad with Uday,'' Saddam's son, ``in April 1998.'' 
Another example.
  ``Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. in 
December 2002 detailed intelligence showing that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, 
a Jordanian jihadist and known al Qaeda associate, traveled to Baghdad 
for medical treatment. Among al-Zarqawi's many crimes, he is a key 
suspect'' we just saw recently on television ``in the abduction and 
beheading of American Nicholas Berg.''

                              {time}  1930

  It is believed Saddam Hussein's nephew, Yasser al-Sabawi, and their 
Fedeyyen Saddam paramilitary cronies worked with Al Zarqawi and his 
accomplices in the abduction, transfer, and execution of Mr. Berg. That 
investigation is still in progress, but the linkage between Saddam and 
al Qaeda is reinforced by video and other evidence collected thus far. 
There is a high probability that Zarqawi was the masked man who 
beheaded Berg. Saddam's nephew is described as the ringleader of 
suspects in the case.
  Another item: Statements by Iraqi defectors have been corroborated by 
new evidence seized by Coalition troops that Saddam's regime trained 
non-Iraqi Arab terrorists at a camp in Salman Pak, South of Baghdad. 
The existence of this training camp was verified by U.N. inspectors. A 
Boeing

[[Page 11087]]

707 was used at the camp to simulate terrorist hijackings.
  Another item: In February, 2003, the government of the Philippines 
asked a senior Iraqi diplomat, Hisham al Hussein, to leave the country 
after establishing frequent contact with leaders of Abu Sayyaf, an al 
Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia. This Iraqi official had contact with 
Abu Sayyaf immediately before and after they detonated a bomb in 
Zamboanga city that killed two Filipinos and an American Special Forces 
soldier.
  High ranking Czech officials have confirmed that Mohammed Atta, the 
lead 911 hijacker, met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim al Ani, an Iraqi 
intelligence officer, 5 months before the hijacking.
  Ansar al-Islam, the Al Qaeda cell formed in Northern Iraq in June 
2001, has expanded its attacks against Kurds and has joined with 
remnants of Saddam's regime in their insurgency against Coalition 
forces. It is believed that the bombing of the U.N. headquarters was a 
result of a joint operation between Baathists and the Al Qaeda 
affiliate, Ansar al-Islam.
  When Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa against America in February 1998 
there is evidence Saddam Hussein paid $300,000 to bin Laden's deputy 
Ayman al-Zawahiri.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit herewith for the Record the article by Stephen 
Hayes I referred to earlier:

                [From the Weekly Standard, June 7, 2004]

                             The Connection

                         (By Stephen F. Hayes)

       ``The president convinced the country with a mixture of 
     documents that turned out to be forged and blatant false 
     assertions that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda,'' claimed 
     former Vice President Al Gore last Wednesday.
       ``There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting 
     al Qaeda, ever,'' declared Richard Clarke, former 
     counterterrorism official under George W. Bush and Bill 
     Clinton, in an interview on March 21, 2004.
       The editor of the Los Angeles Times labeled as ``myth'' the 
     claim that links between Iraq and al Qaeda had been proved. A 
     recent dispatch from Reuters simply asserted, ``There is no 
     link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.'' 60 Minutes anchor 
     Lesley Stahl was equally certain: ``There was no 
     connection.''
       And on it goes. This conventional wisdom--that our two most 
     determined enemies were not in league, now or ever--is 
     comforting. It is also wrong.
       In late February 2004, Christopher Carney made an 
     astonishing discovery. Carney, a political science professor 
     from Pennsylvania on leave to work at the Pentagon, was 
     poring over a list of officers in Saddam Hussein's much-
     feared security force, the Fedayeen Saddam. One name stood 
     out: Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. The name was not 
     spelled exactly as Carney has seen it before, but such 
     discrepancies are common. Having studied the relationship 
     between Iraq and al Qaeda for 18 months, he immediately 
     recognized the potential significance of his find. According 
     to a report last week in the Wall Street Journal, Shakir 
     appears on three different lists of Fedayeen officers.
       An Iraqi of that name, Carney knew, had been present at an 
     al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on January 5-8, 
     2000. U.S. intelligence officials believe this was a chief 
     planning meeting for the September 11 attacks. Shakir had 
     been nominally employed as a ``greeter'' by Malaysian 
     Airlines, a job he told associates he had gotten through a 
     contact a the Iraqi embassy. More curious, Shakir's Iraqi 
     embassy contact controlled his schedule, telling him when to 
     show up for work and when to take a day off.
       A greeter typically meets VIPs upon arrival and accompanies 
     them through the sometimes onerous procedures of foreign 
     travel. Shakir was instructed to work on January 5, 2000, and 
     on that day, he escorted one Khalid al Mihdhar from his plane 
     to a waiting car. Rather than bid his guest farewell at that 
     point, as a greeter typically would have, Shakir climbed into 
     the car with al Mihdhar and accompanied him to the Kuala 
     Lumpur condominium of Yazid Sufaat, the American-born al 
     Qaeda terrorist who hosted the planning meeting.
       The meeting lasted for three days. Khalid al Mihdhar 
     departed Kuala Lumpur for Bangkok and eventually Los Angeles. 
     Twenty months later, he was aboard American Airlines Flight 
     77 when it plunged into the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m. on 
     September 11. So were Nawaf al Hazmi and his younger brother, 
     Salem, both of whom were also present at the Kuala Lumpur 
     meeting.
       Six days after September 11, Shakir was captured in Doha, 
     Qatar. He had in his possession contact information for 
     several senior al Qaeda terrorists: Zahid Sheikh Mohammed, 
     brother of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; 
     Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi who 
     helped mix the chemicals for the first World Trade Center 
     attack and was given safe haven upon his return to Baghdad; 
     and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, otherwise known as Abu Hajer al 
     Iraqi, described by one top al Qaeda detainee as Osama bin 
     Laden's ``best friend.''
       Despite all of this, Shakir was released. On October 21, 
     2001, he boarded a plane for Baghdad, via Amman, Jordan. He 
     never made the connection. Shakir was detained by Jordanian 
     intelligence. Immediately following his capture, according to 
     U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence of Shakir, the 
     Iraqi government began exerting pressure on the Jordanians to 
     release him. Some U.S. intelligence officials--primarily at 
     the CIA--believed that Iraq's demand for Shakir's release was 
     pro forma, no different from the requests governments 
     regularly make on behalf of citizens detained by foreign 
     governments. But others, pointing to the flurry of phone 
     calls and personal appeals from the Iraqi government to the 
     Jordanians, disagreed. This panicked reaction, they said, 
     reflected an interest in Shakir at the highest levels of 
     Saddam Hussein's regime.
       CIA officials who interviewed Shakir in Jordan reported 
     that he was generally uncooperative. But even in refusing to 
     talk, he provided some important information: The 
     interrogators concluded that his evasive answers reflected 
     counterinterrogation techniques so sophisticated that he had 
     probably learned them from a government intelligence service. 
     Shakir's Iraqi nationality, his contacts with the Iraqi 
     embassy in Malaysia, the keen interest of Baghdad in his 
     case, and now the appearance of his name on the rolls of 
     Fedayeen officers--all this makes the Iraqi intelligence 
     service the most likely source of his training.
       The Jordanians, convinced that Shakir worked for Iraqi 
     intelligence, went to the CIA with a bold proposal: Let's 
     flip him. That is, the Jordanians would allow Shakir to 
     return to Iraq on condition that he agree to report back on 
     the activities of Iraqi intelligence. And, in one of the most 
     egregious mistakes by U.S. intelligence after September 11, 
     the CIA agreed to Shakir's release. He posted a modest bail 
     and returned to Iraq.
       He hasn't been heard from since.
       The Shakir story is perhaps the government's strongest 
     indication that Saddam and al Qaeda may have worked together 
     on September 11. It is far from conclusive; conceivably there 
     were two Ahmed Hikmat Shakirs. And in itself, the evidence 
     does not show that Saddam Hussein personally had 
     foreknowledge of the attacks. Still--like the long, on-again-
     off-again relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda--it cannot 
     be dismissed.
       There was a time not long ago when the conventional wisdom 
     skewed heavily toward a Saddam-al Qaeda links. In 1998 and 
     early 1999, the Iraq-al Qaeda connection was widely reported 
     in the American and international media. Former intelligence 
     officers and government officials speculated about the 
     relationship and its dangerous implications for the world. 
     The information in the news reports came from foreign and 
     domestic intelligence services. It was featured in mainstream 
     media outlets including international wire services, 
     prominent newsweeklies, and network radio and television 
     broadcasts.
       Newsweek magazine ran an article in its January 11, 1999, 
     issue headed ``Saddam + Bin Laden?'' ``Here's what is known 
     so far,'' it read:
       Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting 
     terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network 
     overseas--assets that would allow him to establish a 
     terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to 
     Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama 
     bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding 
     the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer.
       Four days later, on January 15, 1999, ABC News reported 
     that three intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had 
     offered asylum to bin Laden:
       Intelligence sources say bin Laden's long relationship with 
     the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan's fundamentalist 
     government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass 
     destruction. . . . ABC News has learned that in December, an 
     Iraqi intelligence chief named Faruq Hijazi, now Iraq's 
     ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to 
     meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC 
     News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost 
     certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be 
     welcome in Baghdad.
       NPR reporter Mike Shuster interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, 
     former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, and offered 
     this report:
       Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at 
     least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, 
     Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to 
     Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be 
     nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi 
     Arabia and Kuwait. . . . Some experts believe bin Laden might 
     be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to 
     obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA Director George 
     Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the Senate 
     Armed Services Committee when he said bin Laden was planning 
     additional attacks on American targets.

[[Page 11088]]

       By mid-February 1999, journalists did not even feel the 
     need to qualify these claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda 
     relationship. An Associated Press dispatch that ran in the 
     Washington Post ended this way: ``The Iraqi President Saddam 
     Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports 
     Iraq against Western powers.''
       Where did journalists get the idea that Saddam and bin 
     Laden might be coordinating efforts? Among other places, from 
     high-ranking Clinton administration officials.
       In the spring of 1998--well before the U.S. embassy 
     bombings in East Africa--the Clinton administration indicted 
     Osama bin Laden. The indictment, unsealed a few months later, 
     prominently cited al Qaeda's agreement to collaborate with 
     Iraq on weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton Justice 
     Department had been concerned about negative public reaction 
     to its potentially capturing bin Laden without ``a vehicle 
     for extradition,'' official paperwork charging him with a 
     crime. It was ``not an afterthought'' to include the al 
     Qaeda-Iraq connection in the indictment, says an official 
     familiar with the deliberations. ``It couldn't have gotten 
     into the indictment unless someone was willing to testify to 
     it under oath.'' The Clinton administration's indictment read 
     unequivocally:
       ``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.''
       On August 7, 1998, al Qaeda terrorists struck almost 
     simultaneously at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The 
     blasts killed 257 people--including 12 Americans--and wounded 
     nearly 5,000. The Clinton administration determined within 
     five days that al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks and 
     moved swiftly to retaliate. One of the targets would be in 
     Afghanistan. But the Clinton national security team wanted to 
     strike hard simultaneously, much as the terrorists had. ``The 
     decision to go to [Sudan] was an add-on,'' says a senior 
     intelligence officer involved in the targeting. ``They wanted 
     a dual strike.''
       A small group of Clinton administration officials, led by 
     CIA director George Tenet and national security adviser Sandy 
     Berger, reviewed a number of al Qaeda-linked targets in 
     Sudan. Although bin Laden had left the African nation two 
     years earlier, U.S. officials believed that he was still 
     deeply involved in the Sudanese government-run Military 
     Industrial Corporation (MIC).
       The United States retaliated on August 20, 1998, striking 
     al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the al Shifa 
     pharmaceutical plant outside Khartoum. ``Let me be very clear 
     about this,'' said President Bill Clinton, addressing the 
     nation after the strikes. ``There is no question in my mind 
     that the Sudanese factory was producing chemicals that are 
     used--and can be used--in VX gas. This was a plant that was 
     producing chemical warfare-related weapons, and we have 
     physical evidence of that.''
       The physical evidence was a soil sample containing EMPTA, a 
     precursor for VX nerve gas. Almost immediately, the decision 
     to strike at al Shifa aroused controversy. U.S. officials 
     expressed skepticism that the plant produced pharmaceuticals 
     at all, but reporters on the ground in Sudan found aspirin 
     bottles and a variety of other indications that the plant 
     had, in fact, manufactured drugs. For journalists and many at 
     the CIA, the case was hardly clear-cut. For one thing, the 
     soil sample was collected from outside the plant's front 
     gate, not within the grounds, and an internal CIA memo issued 
     a month before the attacks had recommended gathering 
     additional soil samples from the site before reaching any 
     conclusions. ``It caused a lot of heartburn at the agency,'' 
     recalls a former top intelligence official.
       The Clinton administration sought to dispel doubts about 
     the targeting and, on August 24, 1998, made available a 
     ``senior intelligence official'' to brief reporters on 
     background. The briefer cited ``strong ties between the plant 
     and Iraq'' as one of the justifications for attacking it. The 
     next day, undersecretary of state for political affairs 
     Thomas Pickering briefed reporters at the National Press 
     Club. Pickering explained that the intelligence community had 
     been monitoring the plant for ``at least two years,'' and 
     that the evidence was ``quite clear on contacts between Sudan 
     and Iraq.'' In all, at least six top Clinton administration 
     officials have defended on the record the strikes in Sudan by 
     citing a link to Iraq.
       The Iraqis, of course denied any involvement. ``The Clinton 
     government has fabricated yet another lie to the effect that 
     Iraq had helped Sudan produce this chemical weapon,'' 
     declared the political editor of Radio Iraq. Still, even as 
     Iraq denied helping Sudan and al Qaeda with weapons of mass 
     destruction, the regime lauded Osama bin Laden. On August 27, 
     1998, 20 days after al Qaeda attacked the U.S. embassies in 
     Africa, Babel, the government newspaper run by Saddam's son 
     Uday Hussein, published an editorial proclaiming bin Laden 
     ``an Arab and Islamic hero.''
       Five months later, the same Richard Clarke who would one 
     day claim that there was ``absolutely no evidence that Iraq 
     was supporting al Qaeda, ever,'' told the Washington Post 
     that the U.S. government was ``sure'' that Iraq was behind 
     the production of the chemical weapons precursor at the al 
     Shifa plant. ``Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know 
     how much of the substance was produced at al Shifa or what 
     happened to it,'' wrote Post reporter Vernon Lieb, in an 
     article published January 23, 1999. ``But he said that 
     intelligence exists linking bin Laden to al Shifa's current 
     and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts, and the 
     National Islamic Front in Sudan.''
       Later in 1999, the Congressional Research Service published 
     a report on the psychology of terrorism. The report created a 
     stir in May 2002 when critics of President Bush cited it to 
     suggest that his administration should have given more 
     thought to suicide hijackings. On page 7 of the 178-page 
     document was a passage about a possible al Qaeda attack on 
     Washington, D.C., that ``could take several forms.'' In one 
     scenario, ``suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom 
     Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high 
     explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the 
     headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White 
     House.''
       A network anchor wondered if it was possible that the White 
     House had somehow missed the report. A senator cited it in 
     calling for an investigation into the 9/11 attacks. A 
     journalist read excerpts to the secretary of defense and 
     raised a familiar question: ``What did you know and when did 
     you know?''
       But another passage of the same report has gone largely 
     unnoticed. Two paragraphs before, also on page 7, is this: 
     ``If Iraq's Saddam Hussein decide[s] to use terrorists to 
     attack the continental United States [he] would likely turn 
     to bin Laden's al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is among the Islmaic groups 
     recruiting increasingly skilled professionals,'' including 
     ``Iraqi chemical weapons experts and others capable of 
     helping to develop WMD. Al Qaeda poses the most serious 
     terrorist threat to U.S. security interests, for al Qaeda's 
     well-trained terrorists are engaged in a terrorist jihad 
     against U.S. interests worldwide.''
       CIA director George Tenet echoed these sentiments in a 
     letter to Congress on October 7, 2002:
       --Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al 
     Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying 
     reliability. Some of the information we have received comes 
     from detainees, including some of high rank.
       --We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between 
     Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade.
       --Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda 
     have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
       --Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence 
     of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some 
     that have been in Baghdad.
       --We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought 
     contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. 
     capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has 
     provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons 
     and gases and making conventional bombs.
       --Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians 
     coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al 
     Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will 
     increase, even absent U.S. military action.
       Tenet has never backed away from these assessments. Senator 
     Mark Dayton, a Democrat from Minnesota, challenged him on the 
     Iraq-al Qaeda connection in an exchange before the Senate 
     Armed Services Committee on March 9, 2004. Tenet reiterated 
     his judgment that there had been numerous ``contacts'' 
     between Iraq and al Qaeda, and that in the days before the 
     war the Iraqi regime had provided ``training and safe haven'' 
     to al Qaeda associates, including Abu Musab al Zarqawi. What 
     the U.S. intelligence community could not claim was that the 
     Iraqi regime has ``command and control'' over al Qaeda 
     terrorists. Still, said Tenet, ``it was inconceivable to me 
     that Zarqawi and two dozen [Egyptian Islamic Jihad] 
     operatives could be operating in Baghdad without Iraq 
     knowing.''
       So what should Washington do now? The first thing the Bush 
     administration should do is create a team of intelligence 
     experts--or preferably competing teams, each composed of 
     terrorism experts and forensic investigators--to explore the 
     connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. For more than a year, 
     the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group has investigated the 
     nature and scope of Iraq's program to manufacture weapons of 
     mass destruction. At various times in its brief history, a 
     small subgroup of ISG investigators (never more than 15 
     people) has looked into Iraqi connections with al Qaeda. This 
     is not enough.
       Despite the lack of resources devoted to Iraq-al Qaeda 
     connections, the Iraq Survey Group has obtained some 
     interesting new information. In the spring of 1992, according 
     to Iraqi Intelligence documents obtained by the ISG after the 
     war, Osama bin Laden met with Iraqi Intelligence officials in 
     Syria. A second document, this one captured by the Iraqi 
     National Congress and authenticated

[[Page 11089]]

     by the Defense Intelligence Agency, then listed bin Laden as 
     an Iraqi Intelligence ``asset'' who ``is in good relationship 
     with our section in Syria.'' A third Iraqi Intelligence 
     document, this one an undated internal memo, discusses 
     strategy for an upcoming meeting between Iraqi Intelligence, 
     bin Laden, and a representative of the Taliban. On the 
     agenda: ``attacking American targets.'' This seems 
     significant.
       A second critical step would be to declassify as much of 
     the Iraq-al Qaeda intelligence as possible. Those skeptical 
     of any connection claim that any evidence of a relationship 
     must have been ``cherry picked'' from much larger piles of 
     existing intelligence that makes these Iraq-al Qaeda links 
     less compelling. Let's see it all, or as much of it as can be 
     disclosed without compromising sources and methods.
       Among the most important items to be declassified: the Iraq 
     Survey Group documents discussed above; any and all reporting 
     and documentation--including photographs--pertaining to Ahmed 
     Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi and alleged Saddam Fedayeen officer 
     present at the September 11 planning meeting; interview 
     transcripts with top Iraqi intelligence officers, al Qaeda 
     terrorists, and leaders of al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al Islam; 
     documents recovered in postwar Iraq indicating that Abdul 
     Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi who has admitted mixing the chemicals 
     for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was given safe haven 
     and financial support by the Iraqi regime upon returning to 
     Baghdad two weeks after the attack; any and all reporting and 
     documentation--including photographs--related to Mohammed 
     Atta's visits to Prague; portions of the debriefings of Faruq 
     Hijazi, former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence, who met 
     personally with bin Laden at least twice, and an evaluation 
     of his credibility.
       It is of course important for the Bush administration and 
     CIA director George Tenent to back up their assertions of an 
     Iraq-al Qaeda connection. Similarly, declassifying 
     intelligence from the 1990s might shed light on why top 
     Clinton officials were adamant about an Iraq-al Qaeda 
     connection in Sudan and why the Clinton Justice Department 
     included the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship in its 1998 
     indictment of Osama bin Laden. More specifically, what 
     intelligence did Richard Clarke see that allowed him to tell 
     the Washington Post that the U.S. government was ``sure'' 
     Iraq had provided a chemical weapons precursor to the al 
     Qaeda-linked al Shifa facility in Sudan? What would compel 
     former secretary of defense William Cohen to tell the 
     September 11 Commission, under oath, that an executive from 
     the al Qaeda-linked plant ``traveled to Baghdad to meet with 
     the father of the VX [nerve gas] program? And why did Thomas 
     Pickering, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, 
     tell reporters, ``We see evidence that we think is quite 
     clear on contacts between Sudan and Iraq. In fact, al Shifa 
     officials, early in the company's history, we believe were in 
     touch with Iraqi individuals associated with Iraq's VX 
     program''? Other Clinton administration figures, including a 
     ``senior intelligence official'' who briefed reporters on 
     background, cited telephone intercepts between a plant 
     manager and Emad al Ani, the father of Iraq's chemical 
     weapons program.
       We have seen important elements of the pre-September 11 
     intelligence available to the Bush administration; it's time 
     for the American public to see more of the intelligence on 
     Iraq and al Qaeda from the 1990s, especially the reporting 
     about the August 1998 attacks in Kenya and Tanzania and the 
     U.S. counter-strikes two weeks later.
       Until this material is declassified, there will be gaps in 
     our knowledge. Indeed, even after the full record is made 
     public, some uncertainties will no doubt remain.
       The connection between Saddam and al Qaeda isn't one of 
     them.

     

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