Here is Woolsey in his own words:
The Iraqi Connection: Interview with James Woolsey and Others
11/24/2001
ON THE LINE NUMBER=1-01024
TERRORISM - THE IRAQI CONNECTION
Host: Hello and welcome to On the Line.
The role of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon is well-documented. Indeed, bin Laden virtually claimed credit for the terrorist attacks in a videotape circulated to his al-Qaida followers. But did bin Laden’s terrorists have help from a state -- besides Taleban-ruled Afghanistan? There is evidence that Iraq may have been involved, evidence that U.S. officials are paying increasing attention to. Did the September 11th terrorists have help from Saddam Hussein? I’ll ask my guests, James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Laurie Mylroie, author of "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein’s War against America." Welcome.
James Woolsey, let me ask you first. Is there any direct evidence of a connection between the September Eleventh hijackers and Iraq?
Woolsey: It depends on what you mean by direct. Much of intelligence is hearsay, and would not be admissible for example in a court. There’s some very suggestive evidence. For example, there are at least five individual witnesses -- two American inspectors and three Iraqi defectors -- who tell us about Iraqi government training of non-Iraqi Arabs at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, on an old Boeing 707 [aircraft], in hijacking techniques, including hijacking with knives. Now is that direct evidence? It strikes me that it’s pretty darn suggestive evidence. Would it alone convict Saddam in a court before a jury beyond a reasonable doubt? Probably not. But there’s more.
Host: Laurie Mylroie, how credible are the sources that are defectors from Iraq as to the training camp at Salman Pak?
Mylroie: Well, several of them provided a coherent, detailed account, which very interestingly was backed up by the U-N weapons inspectors. And the U-N weapons inspectors have satellite imagery of Salman Pak, including that plane sitting in the middle of the terrorist training camp.
Host: Now is there also evidence, James Woolsey, of actual contact between Iraqi agents and any of the hijackers that we know were involved in the September Eleventh attacks?
Woolsey: Certainly. We know through the Czech Republic government, a formal statement, that in one of his trips to Prague, Mohamed Atta, the lead bomber on September Eleventh. . .
Host: How many trips to Prague did Atta take?
Woolsey: Well, there are indications of at least three: two in which he got inside Prague, and one in which he got inside the airport and had to go back. The Czech government has stated there were two in which he got into Prague, and on one of those he met with a Mr. [Colonel Muhammed Khalil Ibrahim] al-Ani, who is a senior Iraqi intelligence officer.
Host: What evidence is there for him having been an intelligence officer?
Woolsey: He was declared persona non grata, a few weeks after his meetings with Mr. Mohamed Atta, by the Czech government, for conduct unbecoming a diplomat, which is intelligence-ese for being caught as a spy. And I don’t know any disagreement about al-Ani being an Iraqi intelligence officer. Now perhaps they were meeting to discuss the beautiful medieval architecture of Prague, but it seems unlikely. It seems far more likely that something very important was taking place between Iraqi intelligence and the lead bomber. And we have the Czech government’s statement that they did in fact meet.
Host: Laurie Mylroie, do we know what they talked about? Do we have any idea what they talked about?
Mylroie: Well, the two trips that Atta made to Prague, the two successful trips, were in June 2000 and April 2001. In June 2000, he first tried to get into the Czech Republic by air, but he didn’t have a proper visa, so he was turned back at the airport and returned to Germany where he was based, got his visa for the Czech Republic, and came by land. He stayed less than twenty-four hours in Prague, then afterwards flew to the United States. It was his first trip to the United States. He stayed for six months. He got his flight training. In that period of time he received a hundred-thousand dollar wire transfer.
Host: Do we know where that hundred-thousand dollar wire transfer came from?
Mylroie: It came from the United Arab Emirates, but I personally don’t know more than that. But that’s an awful lot of money. See, the point is that at that point, the operation enters a new, more intense phase of activity. And Atta doesn’t come to the States until he’s made that trip to Prague. And I don’t think the Czechs observed a meeting between Atta and al-Ani on that trip, but they did on the second trip. And still, it’s less than twenty-four hours. You know, it’s not a tourist coming to see the medieval castles; it’s a business trip. And the surmise is that he in fact met with Iraqi intelligence on that first trip, which then is followed by this new, more intense phase of activity. On the second trip, where the Czechs observed a meeting between Atta and al-Ani, it was again very brief, in April 2001, and it’s possible that on that trip the final go-ahead for the operation was given.
Host: Now is the meeting, James Woolsey, in Prague, is that in and of itself evidence enough for you, as a former intelligence official, to draw any particular conclusions?
Woolsey: Intelligence isn’t like that -- at least it’s not very often, unless you wiretap a conversation in which a direct order is given, or something like that. Usually it builds up by associations, and things that you know part of but not all of. But I would say the combination of the training at Salman Pak and the al-Ani/Atta meeting or meetings is very strongly suggestive. The way I would put it [is], in the United States there’s a different standard for civil proof than criminal conviction. In a civil litigation, preponderance of the evidence, more likely than not, is what will win the case. In criminal cases you have to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt. I’d say, based on what we know so far, we have a preponderance of evidence that there was Iraqi involvement of some sort in what happened September Eleventh.
Host: James Woolsey, let me ask you a little bit more about Salman Pak. Who are the former Iraqi officers who have testified about what was going on there?
Woolsey: One I’ve met, and was an instructor.
Host: An instructor at the camp?
Woolsey: At the camp, yes. His name is [Sabah Khalifa] Khodada [Alami]. He lives in the United States. He’s a refugee who lives here, and has spoken to the press -- he’s been reported in the Washington Post and the like. The second, I don’t know his name. But he escaped from northern Iraq some weeks ago -- from Iraq into northern Iraq, and then from northern Iraq into Turkey, [and] made his way to Ankara -- and made contact with the Iraqi National Congress, and they put him in touch with the United States government. And he was also mentioned, I think, publicly for the first time by Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post. The third, I’ve only seen press accounts of. But there apparently are at least three Iraqi defectors who identify and give details of one kind or another about this terrorist hijacking-with-knives training at Salman Pak, including training of non-Iraqis. And you also have the former U-N weapons inspectors -- at least two of them I know, and there may be others -- who have seen the camp and seen at least some aspect of what was taking place there.
Host: Laurie Mylroie, what have they testified to about who was being trained at Salman Pak?
Mylroie: What the defectors said was that there were Islamic types who were not Iraqis who were being trained there, and these Islamic types were kept separate from the Iraqis, although there were. . .
Host: How did they know they were Islamic types if they were kept separate from the. . .
Mylroie: Well, there were from time to time interactions. Like one fellow told about his car breaking down and his needing it to be fixed or towed or whatever, and one of the vans carrying people from the training stopped by to help them out, so he saw them. Another, I think, the instructor explained what it was like to be not very religious, as the Iraqi instructors were not, training people who were very extreme in their religion, and how they’d always want to break to pray -- not always, I mean, just to do it regularly, but you know, religiously so to speak, to pray regularly -- but the Iraqi instructors resented that, because it meant that the training would take longer [and] they’d come home later.
Host: I’d to take a moment to remind our audience that this is On the Line, and I’m Eric Felten. This week we’re talking about "Terrorism - What is the Iraqi Connection?" with former C-I-A Director James Woolsey and publisher of Iraq News, Laurie Mylroie.
Let’s turn to the first World Trade Center attack, which you’ve written about extensively, Laurie Mylroie. And perhaps you can tell us, what role did Ramzi Youssef have in the first World Trade Center attack?
Mylroie: Ramzi Youssef was the mastermind of that bomb. He entered the United States in September of 1992; befriended local Muslim extremists in the New York area; built the bomb; fled the night of the bombing, February 26th, 1993; and essentially left those people behind to be arrested.
Host: Now you’ve argued that he is an Iraqi agent. What evidence do you have for that?
Mylroie: Well, the first thing is, people should understand the general context. New York F-B-I, particularly its director, Jim Fox, believed that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an Iraqi intelligence operation. There are Iraqis all around the fringe of the plot, including one who is an indicted fugitive who came from Baghdad before the bombing [and] returned to Baghdad afterwards. But I think the key piece of evidence is the identity of Ramzi Youssef. He came on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Youssef, which is how he’s known, and fled the night of the bombing on a Pakistani passport in the name of Abdul Basit Karim. There really was an individual, Abdul Basit Karim, born and raised in Kuwait. He graduated from high school in Kuwait at the age of eighteen; studied for three years in Britain; got his degree in the summer of 1989; returned to Kuwait, where he got a job in the planning ministry; and was in Kuwait when Iraq invaded.
Host: And you’ve argued that Iraqi intelligence assumed that man’s identity and gave it to their agent, Ramzi Youssef.
Mylroie: Iraqi intelligence doctored the file of Abdul Basit Karim to create a false identity for Ramzi Youssef.
Host: Now, do you have hard evidence of that, or is this your best surmise from the evidence you’ve looked at?
Mylroie: The file in Kuwait was doctored with. There should have been copies of the passport of Abdul Basit Karim, with the information on the first page -- the picture, the signature -- those were taken out. Information was put in that should not be there: above all, the information that Abdul Basit and his family left Kuwait on August 26th, 1990, traveling from Kuwait to Iraq, crossing from Iraq to Iran at Salamchah which was the border-crossing point, on the way to Pakistani Baluchistan where they live now.
Host: Well, I was going to ask, James Woolsey, actually, where was Ramzi Youssef captured?
Woolsey: He was captured in Pakistan after having had his operation to blow up twelve American airliners, and perhaps one of the twelve be flown into the C-I-A headquarters -- there’s some dispute about that. That whole operation was thwarted because some chemicals blew up in his apartment in the Philippines, and Philippine police came and got his computer. And by getting into the computer, enough information was obtained on him that the Pakistanis helped us catch him, in -- when was it Laurie? -- early 1995, around January of 1995.
Host: Well, let me just play devil’s advocate and ask both James Woolsey and Laurie Mylroie: David Plotz in Slate magazine has said that evidence shows that, quote, "Ramzi Youssef worked not for Iraq, but for Osama bin Laden. Youssef’s co-conspirator in the Philippines airliner plot was Wali Khan Amin Shah, a big buddy of Osama’s, according to C-N-N’s Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc. Bin Laden said in an interview that he was friends with Wali Khan, and did not deny that he was Wali Khan’s boss." Is there more clear evidence for an Osama bin Laden connection with Ramzi Youssef than there is with an Iraqi connection?
Woolsey: Before Laurie answers, let me make one point. She knows the facts on this one better than I. But the key thing is that a very fundamental misunderstanding takes place in exactly this statement, which is to assume that if someone is a terrorist he’s a sole-source contractor, that he works either with al-Qaida or with Iraq. That is, if I may say so, a particularly stupid and false assumption. There is absolutely nothing to keep these terrorists from working with al-Qaida and to have Iraqi government support for one or more aspects of the operation. So any argument, such as this statement, that begins with the proposition [that] he was not close to Iraq because he was close to al-Qaida is, I think from its initial underlying assumption, a really particularly stupid statement.
Host: Would you agree with that?
Mylroie: That’s true, but one can go much further. That statement is Osama bin Laden’s statement. Now why would anyone believe Osama bin Laden? There is no credible information to link Wali Khan Amin Shah to Osama bin Laden. Wali Khan Amin Shah was not a Muslim extremist. In the Philippines -- because these people are caught by surprise -- he had a girlfriend. She’s described in his trial. [She wore] very nice-fitting clothes; they rode around on a motorcycle; when the police came into the apartment and did the search, they found condoms there. These people, Wali Khan and Ramzi Youssef, they went to bars in the Philippines. These people are not Islamic extremists at all.
Host: Although we did find in the activities of Osama bin Laden’s hijackers in the U.S., leading up to the second World Trade Center attack on September Eleventh, that there was an effort to fit in by behaving like Westerners.
Mylroie: Well, there are reports of their going to [a nightclub] in Florida on the night before the hijacking. It’s very strange because this is not what these people believe in, and for the most part they tend to do what they believe in. But I really want to emphasize how irresponsible David Plotz’s statement is, and Peter Bergen’s before. This is not credible evidence, the statement of Osama bin Laden. You have asked us, what is the evidence of Iraqi involvement with September Eleven. We have not provided statements by Iraqis or statements by bin Laden which may be wrong or made up. We have provided evidence that can be checked out, can be documented.
Woolsey: There may be a particular way in which statements by Osama bin Laden are an excellent indicator of the truth. Sort of like a weathervane put on backwards: they always point the opposite direction from what’s accurate. That’s one way it may be an indicator.
Host: Let’s move to talk a little bit about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Just recently, John Bolton, [U.S.] Under Secretary [of State] for Arms Control said, quote, "The United States strongly suspects that Iraq has taken advantage of three years of no U-N inspections to improve all phases of its offensive biological weapons program. The existence of Iraq’s program is beyond dispute."
Woolsey: I think that’s clear.
Host: Do you think there’s any reason to think that Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program is in any way related to the anthrax attacks in the United States?
Woolsey: Well, there were three countries that weaponized anthrax in a sophisticated manner: grinding the spores to a very small, one to three micron size, so they would be inhaled properly; developing various coatings, silicon and others, so that they would not stick together. And that was the United States, before 1969, but we destroyed our stocks when we actually abided by the 1969 agreement, which the Soviet Union did not; they carried their program on. And the Soviets had a very sophisticated anthrax program as part of their biological weapons program. And it’s not absolutely impossible that some dissident Soviet scientists somewhere, with some understanding and expertise, and perhaps even some anthrax, have somehow gotten linked up with terrorists. But the third country that had, that has still, a very sophisticated anthrax and biological weapons program -- and anthrax is part of it -- is Iraq. So although it is not absolutely impossible that some crazed American Nazi biochemist P-H-D is sitting in a tunnel underneath Trenton, New Jersey, sending off these letters of anthrax, it seems to me that one would at least look very, very closely at the country that has a sophisticated program, as Iraq does. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the anthrax itself was provided by Iraq. It could well have been technology; it could well have been understanding; it could well have been training; it could well have been any number of different types of association.
Host: What would count as proof in this case?
Woolsey: Well, it would be, I think, very useful -- and now that we have another letter like the letter to Senator [Tom] Daschle, we have another highly weaponized anthrax letter that’s just been discovered within the last couple of days -- it may be possible through analyzing the coatings or something else, to come up with some more clear-cut forensic evidence than they were able to with the first letter, which left them only a very little bit of material to analyze. And I think we need to look at that. But this, because of Iraq’s program, this is to my mind yet another indicator -- circumstantial, yes -- but yet another important indicator, that when you add it with everything else, begins to make the Baath regime in Iraq look to me as if it has had some kind of involvement in September Eleventh and after, as well. Clearly it had involvement before September Eleventh, we know that.
Host: Let me ask you very quickly, after the September Eleventh attacks, U.S. officials, including Vice President [Dick] Cheney, downplayed the notion that Iraq might be involved. But recently we’ve been hearing statements from [National Security Advisor] Condoleeza Rice, from Secretary of State Colin Powell, suggesting that there’s more concern about Iraq. Do you believe that the evidence is mounting and that it’s being taken more seriously by government officials?
Woolsey: Absolutely. I think all that Vice President Cheney said in the first day or two was that at that point they had no evidence of Iraqi government involvement. But as the evidence has built up, I think your assumption is exactly right. All public officials in the United States have started to leave, at the very least, leave open this possibility -- and in some cases imply that Iraq may well have been involved.
Host: I’m afraid that‘s all the time we have for today. I’d like to thank my guests, former C-I-A Director James Woolsey and publisher of Iraq News, Laurie Mylroie. This is Eric Felten for On the Line.
intelmessages.org
Why in the world you would bring up Woolsey is beyond me since Woolsey's position is the opposite of what you claim. Also note that the interview above correctly notes that Cheney downplayed the possibility Iraq might h/b involved in 911 - the opposite of your idiotic meme. |
