The Connection
From the June 7, 2004 issue: The collaboration of Iraq and al Qaeda.
by Stephen F. Hayes
06/07/2004, Volume 009, Issue 37
by Stephen F. Hayes.
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"THE PRESIDENT CONVINCED the country with a mixture of documents that turned out to be forged and blatantly 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,<font color=black> 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 <font color=blue>"myth"<font color=black> the claim that links between Iraq and al Qaeda had been proved. A recent dispatch from Reuters simply asserted, <font color=blue>"There is no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."<font color=black> 60 Minutes anchor Lesley Stahl was equally certain: <font color=blue>"There was no connection."<font color=black>
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 had 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 at 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
on 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 nationals. But others,
pointing to the flurry of phone calls and personal appeals
from the Iraqi government to the Jordanians, disagreed.
This panicked reaction, they say, 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 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 the condition that he agree to report back on the activities of Iraqi intelligence. And, in one of the most egregious mistakes by the U.S. intelligence community 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. But 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 collaboration. 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, 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:<font color=blue>
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.<font color=black>
Four days later, on January 15, 1999, ABC News reported that three intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had offered asylum to bin Laden.<font color=blue>
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.<font color=black>
NPR reporter Mike Shuster interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, and offered this report. <font color=blue>
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.<font color=black>
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: <font color=blue>"The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."<font color=black>
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. <font color=blue>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.<font color=black>
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).
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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."<font color=black>
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 had 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.
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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. <font color=black>
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, twenty days after al Qaeda attacked the U.S. embassies in Africa, Babel, the government newspaper run by Saddam's son Uday Hussein, published a startling editorial proclaiming bin Laden "an Arab and Islamic hero."
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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 Loeb, 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."<font color=black>
Later in 1999, the Congressional Research Service published a report on the psychology of terrorism. That 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 report was a passage about a possible al Qaeda attack on Washington, D.C., that "could take several forms." In one scenario, the report suggested "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 it?"
But another passage of the same report has gone strangely
unnoticed. Two paragraphs before, also on page 7, is
this: <font color=blue>"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 Islamic 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."<font color=black>
CIA director George Tenet echoed these sentiments in a letter to Congress on October 7, 2002. <font color=blue>
-- 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.<font color=black>
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.
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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
had "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."<font color=black>
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 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 Tenet 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 the 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? <font color=blue>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.<font color=black>
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. counterstrikes 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.
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. Parts of this article are drawn from his new book, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America (HarperCollins).
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