secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

[Ethereal]

WASHINGTON POST PICKS UP ON MEMO

CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 18, 2003; Page A18

The CIA will ask the Justice Department to investigate the leak of a 16-page classified Pentagon memo that listed and briefly described raw agency intelligence on any relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, according to congressional and administration sources.

In addition, the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), are considering making their own request for a Justice investigation. The top-secret memo was attached to an Oct. 27 letter to them from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. Feith was answering a request that he support his assertion during a closed-door hearing in July that there was intelligence to support a longtime relationship between the Iraqi leader and the terrorist group.

Excerpts from the memo were first published Saturday in the issue of the Weekly Standard dated Nov. 24. Under the headline "Case Closed," the article described the memo as documenting "an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003" between bin Laden and Hussein. It describes the memo as containing "50 numbered points" that are "best viewed as sort of a 'Cliff's Notes' version of the relationship. It contains the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive."

In making their case for invading Iraq, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other senior administration officials stressed both Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction and his connection to bin Laden. To date, the administration has been unable to come up with unconventional weapons in Iraq or evidence that there was a close connection between the Iraqis and al Qaeda.

A Washington Post poll in August found that 69 percent of the American public believed Saddam Hussein was connected to the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A CIA request to Justice is automatic when classified information purported to come from the CIA is involved in an unauthorized disclosure, according to a senior intelligence official, who declined to comment specifically on the Feith memo. Under the normal referral system, a request would be made to Feith to determine who had access to the memo and what other distribution it may have had beyond the Senate committee, the official said.

In a news release, the Defense Department late Saturday described the Feith memo as containing "either raw reports or products of the CIA, the NSA [the National Security Agency, which performs electronic intelligence intercepts] or in one case, the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency]." The release said that leaking such a document "is deplorable and may be illegal."

One item reported in the Weekly Standard began, "According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and [top bin Laden deputy Ayman] Zawahiri met with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998." Another item refers to "sensitive CIA reporting" about the Saudi National Guard going on alert in December 2000 "after learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia."

In its Saturday release, the Pentagon took the unusual step of saying, "News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq . . . are inaccurate." The release also said the memo "was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and drew no conclusions."

A senior intelligence official said yesterday that the NSA and the DIA may make their own referrals to Justice, based on their analysis of the information disclosed from the Feith memo.

While Stephen F. Hayes, author of the Weekly Standard article, concluded that "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," some critics of the administration policy came to a different conclusion.

W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the DIA, said yesterday that the Standard article "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?"

Another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather "data points . . . among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true."

 

[Ethereal]

TECHCENTRALSTATION

[This was published 3 months ago]

The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections

By Richard Miniter Published 09/25/2003

Every day it seems another American soldier is killed in Iraq. These grim statistics have become a favorite of network news anchors and political chat show hosts. Nevermind that they mix deaths from accidents with actual battlefield casualties; or that the average is actually closer to one American death for every two days; or that enemy deaths far outnumber ours. What matters is the overall impression of mounting, pointless deaths.

That is why is important to remember why we fight in Iraq -- and who we fight. Indeed, many of those sniping at U.S. troops are al Qaeda terrorists operating inside Iraq. And many of bin Laden's men were in Iraq prior to the liberation. A wealth of evidence on the public record -- from government reports and congressional testimony to news accounts from major newspapers -- attests to longstanding ties between bin Laden and Saddam going back to 1994.

Those who try to whitewash Saddam's record don't dispute this evidence; they just ignore it. So let's review the evidence, all of it on the public record for months or years:

* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.

* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.

* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.

(Why are all of those meetings significant? The London Observer reports that FBI investigators cite a captured al Qaeda field manual in Afghanistan, which "emphasizes the value of conducting discussions about pending terrorist attacks face to face, rather than by electronic means.")

* As recently as 2001, Iraq's embassy in Pakistan was used as a "liaison" between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan -- who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks -- that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre," London's Independent reports.

* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives -- on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: "We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden's group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq.'"

* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.

* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.

* In 2001, an al Qaeda member "bragged that the situation in Iraq was 'good,'" according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.

* That same year, Saudi Arabian border guards arrested two al Qaeda members entering the kingdom from Iraq.

* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.

*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.

* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaeda's military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. "Where did they go, where did they look?" said the secretary. "They went to Iraq."

* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddam's regime "successful," Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.

* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" to be established in Baghdad.

* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, "three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 'to undertake jihad,'" Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein -- and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekar's group was funded by "Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad."

* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islam's strongholds inside northern Iraq.

Some skeptics dismiss the emerging evidence of a longstanding link between Iraq and al Qaeda by contending that Saddam ran a secular dictatorship hated by Islamists like bin Laden.

In fact, there are plenty of "Stalin-Roosevelt" partnerships between international terrorists and Muslim dictators. Saddam and bin Laden had common enemies, common purposes and interlocking needs. They shared a powerful hate for America and the Saudi royal family. They both saw the Gulf War as a turning point. Saddam suffered a crushing defeat which he had repeatedly vowed to avenge. Bin Laden regards the U.S. as guilty of war crimes against Iraqis and believes that non-Muslims shouldn't have military bases on the holy sands of Arabia. Al Qaeda's avowed goal for the past ten years has been the removal of American forces from Saudi Arabia, where they stood in harm's way solely to contain Saddam.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html

 

[Mcleanhatch]

LOL why the caps?

NO REASON IT JUST SO HAPPENED THEY HAPPEN TO BE ON

Mcclean...Faux News is the most reactionary news network in this country's history and they've yet to pick up on it. Moron.

AND FOX NEWS HAS WHAT TO DO WITH THIS DISCUSSION AGAIN??? THE SOURCES I QUOTED WERE THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AND THE WEEKLY STANDARD

 

[Mcleanhatch]

AGAIN ITS JUST A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL THE LIBERAL MEDIA IS FORCED TO PICK UP THIS STORY, NOW WHAT THEY WILL DO WITH IT AFTER THEY PICK IT UP IS ANOTHER STORY, ANYWAY HERE IS ANOTHER PIECE ON THE STORY

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...ap_on_go_co/congress_intelligence_1&printer=1
Senate Panel Eyes Justice Dept. Leak Probe
Mon Nov 17, 7:21 PM ET Add Politics - U. S. Congress to My Yahoo!

By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Senate Intelligence Committee leaders plan to ask the Justice Department (news - web sites) to investigate who leaked a top-secret Pentagon (news - web sites) memo sent to the committee.

The Oct. 27 memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith provided details of intelligence linking Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida network and the toppled Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Details of the memo were published in the Nov. 24 issue of The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he expected to ask the Justice Department and the Pentagon to determine if the leak constituted a crime. If it did, a criminal investigation should be conducted, he said.

"That's highly classified material and an egregious leak of classified material," he told reporters.

He said committee staff drafted a letter to the Justice Department and but was waiting to consult with the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, before sending it.

A spokeswoman for Rockefeller, Wendy Morigi, said he would support sending the letter.

Roberts said he did not believe that the leak came from the committee.

The memo provided what the magazine described as a collection of old and new reports that Saddam had provided training, logistical and financial support for al-Qaida. It said the memo depicted "a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies."

A Pentagon statement Saturday said the memo did not include new information about al-Qaida's contacts with Iran. It said the memo provided details of intelligence reports Feith referred when testifying before the committee on July 10. It said the leak of classified material "is deplorable and may be illegal."

Committee Democrats have focused on Feith's office as they question whether the Bush administration distorted intelligence to make the case for war. The committee is examining prewar intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites)'s weapons programs and ties to terrorism. The panel's Republicans and Democrats have accused the other side of trying to manipulate the inquiry for political purposes.

The Justice Department has been investigating the leak of an undercover CIA (news - web sites) officer's name to columnist Robert Novak in July. Novak said he got the information from two senior administration officials. The officer, Valerie Plame, is married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who has said he believes his wife's identity was revealed to discredit his claims that the administration exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capabilities to make the case for war.

 

[Mcleanhatch]

HERE IS A TRANSCRIPT FROM CNN'S LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER INTERVIEWING CLINTON CIA DIRECTOR JAMES WOOLSEY ABOUT THE MEMO WE WERE SPEAKING OF HERE

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0311/16/le.00.html
BLITZER: Let me go -- Director Woolsey, wrap up this segment for us. There's an article in the Weekly Standard that came out, referring to a memo that Doug Feith wrote, a top Pentagon official, to the chairman and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggesting that the linkage, the evidence, the intelligence evidence involving al Qaeda's relationship with Saddam Hussein, goes back more than a decade.

Are you convinced that there has been a close relationship between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime throughout the '90s?

WOOLSEY: Oh, definitely. It had been all along. George Tenet wrote a year ago October to the Congress and told them that, said there'd been a relationship going back a decade. Training in -- by Iraqi intelligence of al Qaeda in, quote, "poisons, gases and explosives."

This memo expands on that. It's a different question whether Iraqi intelligence had something to do with 9/11. That is certainly arguable. It is a different issue.

But a relationship between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda, this memo -- and I've seen this on the Web -- puts flesh on the bones of what George Tenet wrote a year ago.

And I would say, after reading this piece in the Weekly Standard, anybody who says there is no working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence going back to the early '90s, they can only say that if they're illiterate. This is a slam dunk.

BLITZER: All right. We're going to have to leave it right there.

Director Woolsey, as usual, thank you very much for joining us.

Secretary Eagleburger, always a pleasure to have you on this program as well.

EAGLEBURGER: Thank you, Wolf.

 

[MrFedEx503]

Fuck the Anti. americans. i cant stand this shit no more. They are all like we should do this we shoudl do that. Fuck all that shit, They always talk but never walk. its so easy to say i would have done it differnetly i would have TALKED it out with saddam. I mean all these liberals seem to have all the answers for everything. FUCK THAT