Updates from AIJAC

An Iraq Connection?

September 21, 2001
Number 09/01 #10

While the state of evidence is currently close to overwhelming that groups associated with Bin-Laden's Al-Qaida carried out last weeks terror atrocity in the USA, there is also some speculation that Iraq may also have had a hand in events. I set out some of the articles on the subject below.

Below, I set out two news and intelligence reports which set out some evidence of an Iraq connection, especially with Mohamed Attah, apparently one of the leaders of the hijackers.

Following this are two articles which look more broadly at the nature of the attack and reasons to think Bin-Laden may have had help from Iraq. One is from Iraq expert Laurie Mylroie, another is from R. James Woolsey, a former Director of the CIA.

U.S. Looks for an Iraqi Role in Attacks

John Donnelly and Bryan Bender

The Boston Globe
Thursday, September 20, 2001

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence has begun to take a hard look at whether Iraq was involved in the deadly terror attacks last week, following a report that one of the suspected hijackers met with the head of Iraqi intelligence in Europe earlier this year, according to two Bush administration officials.

The classified intelligence on a meeting between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence - delivered to U.S. officials by an unspecified foreign agent - prompted officials to broaden the focus of the investigation beyond the only publicly identified suspect, Osama bin Laden, said the two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials cautioned that the information had not conclusively linked Iraq to the attacks.

"It's been a suspicion from the beginning that Iraq may have been at least helping with their intelligence networks," said one of the officials. "But now, after the report, they're looking really seriously at Iraq."

[Iraq played no role whatsoever in the attacks, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said in an interview published in Iraq on Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported from Baghdad.

["The United States, Great Britain, the Western states and the rest of the world know full well that Iraq has no link, near or far, with the attacks against American interests," the minister told the Al Iqtissadi weekly, according to the news agency.]

A U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday that the United States received a report "several days ago" that Mr. Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent somewhere in Europe. To protect sources, the official offered no other details.

Mr. Atta - who carried Saudi and United Arab Emirates passports and had trained as a pilot - was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, the Boston-to-Los Angeles flight that crashed into the first of the two World Trade Centre towers to be hit. Investigators believe he was at the controls of the plane when it crashed.

At the Pentagon and in intelligence circles, many have long believed that Iraq has had a hand in a string of terror activities against the United States, beginning with the failed attempt in 1993 to blow up the World Trade Centre.

Asked Tuesday whether the United States had evidence of "state support" for the attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he would leave the question to the Justice Department. But he added, "I know a lot," and that "what I have said is that states are supporting these people." The State Department lists seven nations as sponsoring terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

Inside several U.S. intelligence agencies, "they are trying to establish a thread of support back to Iraq right now," said a former U.S. defense official with close ties to intelligence sources. "This is one aspect of the investigation now. If they show it, they are going to use that as an excuse to do something against Iraq. My view is, if they make the link, they would first make public that they have an unassailable thread of connection between members of terrorist networks and the Iraqi government." But many other Bush administration officials remained skeptical of the potential Iraq link in the attacks. For one thing, the two U.S. officials said, at this early stage in the investigation there have been no other definitive links with Iraq. Furthermore, nearly all the information so far leads back to Mr. bin Laden.

On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" if there was any evidence linking President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to the attacks, and he said flatly, "No."

But R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in an interview Tuesday night that the intelligence report on Mr. Atta underscored the importance of investigating Iraq.

Israeli intelligence points to Iraqi link to WTC attack

Source: AFP, Thursday September 20

LONDON - Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, suspects Iraq sponsored the terrorist attacks on the New York Trade Center and Pentagon in the US last week, Jane's Security said today.

The website, which specialises in defence and security matters, said Aman officers believed two of the world's foremost terrorist masterminds directed the operation.

They are Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hezbollah, and Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, a senior member of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, according to Jane's.

Bin Laden is the chief suspect in the hunt for the perpetrators of the devastating strikes in the United States.

The Israeli sources claimed for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers had been shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Zawahiri, Jane's Security said.

According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured last October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan.

The Iraqis are also reported to have established strong ties with Mughniyeh, Jane's Security said.

One intelligence source told Jane's: "We believe that the operational brains behind the New York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, who were probably financed and got some logistical support from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (SSO)."

The two men have not been seen for some time. Mughniyeh is probably the world's most wanted outlaw, according to Jane's.

Zawahiri is thought to be now based in Egypt and could be bin Laden's chief representative outside Afghanistan.

Experts on Iraq and Saddam Hussein also believe that Iraq was the state behind the two terror masterminds, Jane's added.

"In recent months, there was a change, and Iraq decided to get into the terror business," it quoted one expert as saying.

Jane's added: "Our sources believe that it will be very difficult to get to the bottom of this unprecedented terror operation. However, they believe the chief of the Iraqi SSO is Qusai Hussein, the dictator's son, and his organisation is the most likely to have been involved."

WHO DID IT?

The Iraqi Connection Did Osama bin Laden act alone? Not likely.

BY LAURIE MYLROIE

Wall Street Journal, Thursday, September 13, 2001

Whether Osama bin Laden was involved in Tuesday's terrorist assault remains to be seen. Yet if that proves to be so, it is extremely unlikely that he acted on his own. It is far more likely that he operated in conjunction with a state--the state with which the U.S. remains at war, namely Iraq.

First, bin Laden's Afghan-based al-Qaeda organization does not really have the organizational capabilities to carry out such well-coordinated attacks. Someone had to understand how to smuggle weapons through U.S. airport security and which airports and airlines to choose. The hijacked planes were flown by terrorists as they crashed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Where did these pilots come from?

During the recently completed trial for the 1998 African embassy bombings, a story emerged of bin Laden's attempt to acquire a pilot and airplane. He turned to an Egyptian, Essam Rida, who had previously been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan, but had since settled in the U.S. Rida purchased a mothballed jet in 1993, refurbished it and flew it to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, then returned home. Some months later, al-Qaeda called him back to Khartoum to take some passengers to Nairobi. Apparently, no one else could fly the plane.

At year's end, he was called back again. The plane had not been maintained and was in terrible condition. Rida nonetheless took it out on a test flight. When he landed the plane, the brakes failed, so he drove it into a sand dune on the edge of the landing strip and left it there. Indeed, following the conclusion of that trial, the New York Times noted the discrepancy between the image of al-Qaeda as a fearsome terrorist organization and the reality of a group that was "at times slipshod, torn by inner strife, betrayal, greed." Moreover, the trial revealed that al-Qaeda was intimately connected to at least one foreign intelligence agency: Sudan's. In 1991, Sudanese intelligence approached bin Laden, then based in Afghanistan, and invited him to move to Khartoum, which he did. The government's star witness--who defected from al-Qaeda in 1996--also worked for Sudanese intelligence. The information that emerged in the trial about the close ties between bin Laden and the Sudanese government helps explain why the U.S. also struck Khartoum, in addition to bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the embassy bombings.

Yet although the trial detailed close ties between Sudanese intelligence and al-Qaeda, they were not portrayed as especially significant. Instead attention focused on the individual wrongdoers, some of them in the dock, others still on the lam. Presumably, that is because a prosecutor cannot indict and convict a state, or at least not so easily. Thus, the trial distorted the public understanding of bin Laden's terrorism to make it appear to be a "stateless" phenomenon.

States have far more capabilities for terrorist actions than do individuals. They control territory; maintain embassies abroad; regularly transfer material in diplomatic pouches, secure from outside probing; and often have very large intelligence agencies.

And al-Qaeda's demonstrated ties to Sudanese intelligence raise another question. Iraq has close ties to Sudan. Sudan supported Iraq during the Gulf War and subsequently established Khartoum as a major centre for Iraqi intelligence. Abd al Samad al-Ta'ish, a highly placed Iraqi intelligence agent, was Iraq's ambassador to Khartoum until the summer of 1998. Al-Ta'ish arrived in Khartoum in July 1991 with 35 other intelligence officers to establish a base for Iraqi operations in the wake of the upheaval wrought by the Gulf War.

Was al-Qaeda also in contact with Iraqi intelligence while it was based in Khartoum? The months preceding the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings are suggestive. The bombings occurred during Saddam's campaign to drive the United Nations weapons inspectors (known as Unscom) out of Iraq. Starting in the fall of 1997, Baghdad orchestrated a series of crises that had the effect, a year later, of ending Unscom's presence there.

Following the "resolution" of the second crisis, in late February 1998, through the mediation of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, bin Laden began to issue a series of bloody-minded threats against Americans. Soon Baghdad was issuing its own threats, asserting that its proscribed weapons of mass destruction had been eliminated and demanding that sanctions be lifted.

The threats issued by bin Laden, the threats issued by Iraq, and the preparations for the bombing all moved in virtual lockstep. On Aug. 3, 1998, Unscom chairman Richard Butler arrived in Baghdad. The Iraqis demanded that he declare Iraq in compliance or leave immediately. Mr. Butler departed the next day. The following day, Aug. 5, Baghdad declared "suspension day"--that is, the suspension of weapons inspections. It restated its previous threats, affirming, "To those against whom war is made, permission is given to fight."

Two days later, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed simultaneously. Initial media speculation focused on Iraq, but as luck would have it, one of those involved in the bombing, Muhammad Sadek Odeh, was already in the custody of Pakistani authorities. He had flown into Karachi on a false passport that was so ill-suited to his likeness that he was detained at the airport and subject to a harsh interrogation. U.S. authorities soon had critical evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks.

Yet that information did not address the question of whether Iraq might also have been involved, as its harsh threats and the crisis over Unscom had seemed to suggest. Indeed, the possibility of Iraqi involvement was probably a line of inquiry that the Clinton White House was not interested in pursuing--although it could have been legitimately asked whether bin Laden alone really had the capability to carry out simultaneous bombings of two major U.S. targets.

One reason so many in the U.S. bureaucracies believe that bin Laden is the greatest terrorist threat to America--and, therefore, quite possibly behind Tuesday's attacks--is the wealth of signals intelligence they pick up about al-Qaeda's plotting. That intelligence leads to repeated alerts about possible attacks on U.S. targets, including an alert last June, which caused U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and Jordan to put to sea.

It is somewhat surprising that the U.S. can regularly pick up so much information about bin Laden's planning, but miss the signs of Tuesday's attack. Is it possible that deception--a common practice in war--is involved? Is the U.S. meant to pick up those communications, thereby reinforcing a disposition to believe that the terrorism is being carried out by al-Qaeda and not by an enemy state? There is plenty of precedent for such actions. In World War II, prior to the Allied landing at Normandy, an elaborate deception campaign was conducted to make the Germans believe that the allies would attack elsewhere. That included the creation of a fake "First Army" in Britain, which appeared poised to attack at Pas de Calais. False signals were a critical element of that deception.

Similarly, the U.S. used fake communications prior to the start of the Gulf War to make the Iraqis believe that it would attack their forces up through Kuwait, while radio silence was maintained in the area where the real attack--far off to the west--would come.

It does not make a great deal of sense to attribute to one man--Osama bin Laden--all the acts of terrorism which are regularly ascribed to him, including Tuesday's assault. It is time to take a new look at the major terrorists acts of terrorism directed against the U.S. in recent years. Are they, perhaps, more complicated than they seem? Indeed, are they acts of war, with all the complexity that wartime activities regularly involve? Ms. Mylroie is author of "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America" (American Enterprise Institute, 2000).

Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

THE IRAQ CONNECTION

Blood Baath

by R. James Woolsey

The New Republic, Post date 09.13.01

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden. And he may well be responsible. But intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.

To this end, investigators should revisit the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. A few years ago, the facts in that case seemed straightforward: The mastermind behind the bombing, who went by the alias Ramzi Yousef, was in fact a 27-year-old Pakistani named Abdul Basit. But late last year, AEI Press published Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a careful book about the bombing by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie. The book's startling thesis is that the original theory of the attack, advanced by James Fox (the FBI's chief investigator into the 1993 bombing until his replacement in 1994) was correct: that Yousef was not Abdul Basit but rather an Iraqi agent who had assumed the latter's identity when police files in Kuwait (where the real Abdul Basit lived in 1990) were doctored by Iraqi intelligence during the occupation of Kuwait. If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right, then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Center last time. Which makes it much more plausible that Iraq has done so again.

According to the theory of the 1993 bombing embraced by federal prosecutors and the Clinton administration, Yousef/Abdul Basit was just another Middle Eastern student who became radicalized in his early twenties. But it is worth noting that the only two publicly reported items suggesting that Yousef and Abdul Basit are the same man could very easily have been products of Iraqi tampering with Kuwaiti police files: a few photocopied pages from earlier Abdul Basit passports that had clearly been tampered with, provided by Yousef in New York in 1992 to get a Pakistani passport in Abdul Basit's name, and fingerprints matching Yousef's found in Abdul Basit's police file in Kuwait. It is also worth noting that Abdul Basit and his family, who lived in Kuwait, disappeared during the Iraqi occupation, and the family has never reappeared. Was this a random tragedy of war or part of an effort to set up a false identity for Yousef?

Moreover, the Fox/Mylroie theory--that Yousef, via Iraqi intelligence, stole Abdul Basit's identity--would explain a number of troubling differences between Abdul Basit in the summer of 1989 (when he left the United Kingdom after three years of study) and Yousef in September 1992 (when he arrived in New York). If the two are indeed the same man, then, over the course of three years, he would have: (a) grown four inches (from five foot eight inches to six feet) in his twenties; (b) put on between 35 and 40 pounds; (c) developed a deformed eye; (d) developed smaller ears and a smaller mouth; (e) gone from being an innovative computer programmer to being computer-challenged; (f) aged substantially more than three years in appearance; and (g) changed from being a quiet, smiling young man respectful to women to a rather different one (a sound file in Yousef's computer, for example, includes his voice saying "Fuck, fuck, fuck" and "Shut up, you bitch").

What incentive would the U.S. government have had to overlook these changes, stipulate that Abdul Basit and Yousef were the same person, and turn away from any suggestion that Saddam was behind the first WTC attack? One can only speculate. But by arguing that the 1993 WTC bombing and a separate, FBI-thwarted plot to bomb New York tunnels and buildings were connected as parts of a common conspiracy, prosecutors made convicting the participants, under the very broad seditious conspiracy law, far simpler. As for the Clinton administration itself, there would be less need to confront Saddam, and perhaps less need to make hard choices, if it didn't finger him as being behind the WTC bombing.

And indeed, ever since Fox's ouster, federal prosecutors and the White House have hewed to the line that most terrorist attacks on the United States are either the products of "loose networks" of folks who just somehow come together or are masterminded by the mysterious and unaccountable bin Laden. Explicit state sponsorship, especially by Iraq, has not been on the agenda. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, treated Saddam--in former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's famous metaphor--like the mole in an international version of the "Whack-a-Mole" carnival game: If you bopped him on the head, he'd stay in his hole for a while. But what has he been doing while he's down there? If Fox and Mylroie are right, quite possibly planning, financing, and backing terrorist operations against the United States.

As of yet, there is no evidence of explicit state sponsorship of the September 11 attacks. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Does it not seem curious that bin Laden issues fatwas, pushes videotapes, quotes poems, and orders his followers to talk loudly and often about his role in attacks on us? Does someone want our focus to be solely on bin Laden's hard-to-reach self, and not on a senior partner?

If we hope to answer that question, the 1993 WTC bombing is a good place to start looking. No one other than the prosecutors, the Clinton Justice Department, and the FBI had access to the materials surrounding that case until they were presented in court, because they were virtually all obtained by a federal grand jury and hence kept not only from the public but from the rest of the government under the extreme secrecy requirements of Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Now a new administration, a new attorney general, and a new FBI director should investigate the materials that Abdul Basit handled while in the United Kingdom in 1988 and 1989, which were taken into custody by Scotland Yard. If those materials have Yousef's fingerprints on them, then the Fox/Mylroie theory is likely wrong. But if they don't, then Yousef was probably a creature of Iraqi intelligence. Which means that Saddam still considered himself at war with the United States in 1993. And, tragically, he may still today.

R. JAMES WOOLSEY is a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C. He served as director of central intelligence from February 1993 to January 1995.