Case Closed
From
the November 24, 2003 issue of the WEEKLY STANDARD (11/24/2003, Volume
009, Issue 11)
The U.S.
government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein
and Osama bin Laden.
by Stephen F.
Hayes
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 in
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 of
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 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.