While there have been a number of promising intelligence leads hinting at possible meetings between al-Qaeda members and elements of the former Baghdad regime, nothing has been yet shown demonstrating that these potential contacts were historically any more significant than the same level of communication maintained between Osama bin Laden and ruling elements in a number of Iraq's Persian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait.In 2006, a report of postwar findings by the
Gulf War
1988
* According to the sworn testimony of1990
March
*During an interview with2 August
*Saddam Hussein's army invades Kuwait. In response to the perceived threat to Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden offers to bring an army ofInter-war period
1992
* According to information that was first made public in the Feith memo, a meeting was arranged by Hassan al-Turabi between members of the1993
*TheIn sum, by the mid-'90s, the*During theJoint Terrorism Task Force In the United States, the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) are locally-based multi-agency partnerships between various federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating terrorism and terrorism-related crimes, led by the ...in New York, the F.B.I., theU.S. Attorney United States attorneys are officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who serve as the chief federal law enforcement officers in each of the 94 U.S. federal judicial districts. Each U.S. attorney serves as the United States' chief federal c ...'s office in theSouthern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New Y ..., theC.I.A. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ..., the N.S.C., and theState Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack.
But the investigation, both the CIA investigation and the FBI investigation, made it very clear in '95 and '96 as they got more information, that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack. And the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was al-Qaida; not Iraq. The Iraqi government because, obviously, of the hostility between us and them, didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists. But the allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation.
1994
*Most analysts believe, however, that the ideological differences between the Iraqis and the terrorists were insurmountable. It is thought that bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of globaljihad Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ..., or holy war.
1995
19 February, Sudan
*A handwritten note that is a part of the Operation Iraqi Freedom documents collection (released by the U.S. government in 2006) suggests that a representative of Saddam's government met with bin Laden in Sudan on 19 February 1995. According to the note, bin Laden suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. *AnSeptember, Sudan
*At least one of these reports dates the meeting to 1994, but other evidence indicates the meeting may have occurred in February 1995.* A second meeting between the IIS and bin Laden is alleged to have taken place in Sudan, in July 1996. At this meeting, Mani' Abd Rashid al-Tikriti, a director of the IIS, was allegedly present. According to the ''9/11 Commission Report'', however, the veracity of the second meeting is in doubt due to the
The information is puzzling, since bin Ladin left Sudan for Afghanistan in May 1996, and there is no evidence he ventured back there (or anywhere else) for a visit. In examining the source material, the reports note that the information was received 'third hand,' passed from the foreign government service that 'does not meet directly with the ultimate source of the information, but obtains the information from him through two unidentified intermediaries, one of whom merely delivers the information to the Service.'" The same source also claims al-Ahmed was seen near bin Laden's farm in December 1995.
Starting in 1995, Salman Pak, Iraq
* Several Iraqi defectors report that hundreds of foreign terrorists were being trained in airplane hijacking techniques "without weapons" using a real airplane (variously reported as aThe INC's agenda was to get us into a war. The really damaging stories all came from those guys, not the CIA. They did a really sophisticated job of getting it out there.One of the defectors, al-Ghurairy, has been described as "a complete fake – a low-ranking former soldier whom
I am lucky that I know the area, this Salman Pak. This is a very beautiful area with gardens, with trees. It is not possible to do such a program there, because there's no place for planes.* The chief of the
The nature of the work being done by some of those people that we captured, their inferences to the type of training that they received, all of these things give us the impression that there was terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak.* The investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, however, expresses an opposite stance in noting that
Salman Pak was overrun by American troops on 6 AprilA similar view is also held by Douglas MacCollam, a journalist for the ''003 003, O03, 0O3, OO3 may refer to: *003, fictional British 00 Agent *003, former emergency telephone number for the Norwegian ambulance service (until 1986) *1990 OO3, the asteroid 6131 Towen * OO3 gauge model railway *''O03 (O2)'' and other related ...Apparently, neither the camp nor the former biological facility has yielded evidence to substantiate the claims made before the war hat the camp was used for terrorist training
There still remain claims and counterclaims about what was going on at Salman Pak. But the consensus view now is that the camp was what Iraq told UN weapons inspectors it was – a counterterrorism training camp for army commandos.* In the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2006 report, the DIA stated that it found "no credible reports that non-Iraqis were trained to conduct or support transnational terrorist operations at Salman Pak after 1991." Explaining the origins for the false allegations, the DIA concluded that
Fabricators and unestablished sources who reported hearsay or third-hand information created a large volume of human intelligence reporting. This type of reporting surged after September 2001.
Circa 1995, Iraq
* An al-Qaeda operative using the alias Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi allegedly requests help in chemical weapons training from Saddam. The request was supposedly approved and trainers from Unit 999, an Iraqi secret-police organization organized byThis is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh in which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qaida's CBRN hemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclearefforts. However, he lacks specific details on the Iraqis involved, the CBRN materials associated with the assistance, and the location where training occurred. It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.* A CIA report in January 2003 voiced similar concerns, also noting that al-Libi was "not in a position to know" the things he had told interrogators. The CIA recalled all of its intelligence reports that were based on al-Libi's testimony in February 2004. * It was revealed in December 2005 that al-Libi lied about this, and other, information regarding Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in order to avoid harsh treatment by his
1997
* On 7 December 1997, in a meeting between U.S. andMr. Inderfurth said he did not believe the Taliban claim was credible at the time, and that he had no recollection of Taliban officials mentioning Iraqi or Iranian attempts to meet bin Laden in the following 19 meetings he would attend with the de facto Afghan regime for the next four years.
1998
Circa 1998, Baghdad
Circa 1998, Washington D.C.
No one disputes that there have been contacts over the years. In that part of the America-hating universe, contacts happen. But that's still a long way from suggesting that they were really working together.
23 February, Afghanistan
Osama bin Laden issues aThe ruling to kill the 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, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosqueHe also states that one of his reasons for the fatwa is the "Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people." Bin Laden mentions aggression against Iraq four times in the fatwa. A more important reason is the perceived American aggression against Muslims, which is mentioned seven times.ecca Ecca may refer to: * Ecca Group, a group of sedimentary geological formations in southern Africa * Ecca Pass, Eastern Cape province, South Africa * European Coil Coating Association, non-profit group dedicated to the diffusion of the use of coil a ...from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.
March, Baghdad
*According to Inigo Gilmore of London's ''Telegraph'', the Iraqi Intelligence Service, i.e., the Mukhabarat, arranged for an envoy from bin Laden to travel from Sudan to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi officials. Gilmore's claim is based on three stapled pages that he claims to have found in the Mukhabarat headquarters in early 2003, which he smuggled out of the building while it was guarded by American troops. Gilmore stated that the CIA had already been through the building for intelligence "but they seem to have missed this particular document." *According to the handwritten documents, the Al-Qaeda envoy stayed at the al-Mansour Melia, a first class hotel. A letter with this document states that the envoy was a trusted confidant of bin Laden. It also readsAccording to the above, we suggest permission to call the Khartoum station raq's intelligence office in Sudanto facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq. And that our body carry 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 letter refers to al-Qaeda's leader as an opponent of the Saudi Arabian regime and says that the message to be conveyed to bin Laden through the envoy "would relate to the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The meeting was allegedly extended by a week and the document "recommends contacts with bin Laden." *Based on these documents the ''Telegraph'' stated that these "Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime." *According to the ''Observer'', however, these Baghdad talks "are thought to have ended disastrously for the Iraqis, as bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad."
August, Khartoum
* U.S. PresidentThe direct physical evidence from the scene obtained at that time convinced the U.S. intelligence community that their suspicions were correct about the facility's chemical weapons role and that there was a risk of chemical agents getting into the hands of al-Qaeda.Officials later acknowledged, however, that:
the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980s.*The
Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate. Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence. Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak.*The Chairman of Al Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries told reporters in 2004, "I had inventories of every chemical and records of every employee's history. There were no such erve gaschemicals being made here." Sudan has since invited the U.S. to conduct chemical tests at the site for evidence to support its claim that the plant might have been a chemical weapons factory. So far, the U.S. has refused the invitation to investigate and also to officially apologize for the attacks, suggesting that some still privately suspect that chemical weapons activity existed there.
August, Pakistan
Stephen Hayes of the ''There is no indication the Iraqi's purported terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, other than the brief mention of him he detaineetraveling to Pakistan with a member of the Iraqi intelligence. ... The assertion that the etaineewas involved in a plot against embassies in Pakistan is not substantiated in the document.
4 November, New York
*Theal 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.*After reading the indictment,
December
After President Clinton ordered a four-day bombing campaign of Iraq, known asPresident Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four-day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama bin Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world.
18 or 21 December, Afghanistan
*The Iraqi ambassador to Turkey,Saddam Hussayn and Usama bin Ladin have sealed a pact. Faruk Hidjazi, the former Director of the Iraqi Secret Services and now the country's Ambassador to Turkey, held a secret meeting with the extremist leader on 21 December.The newspaper had quotes from Hijazi, without specifying the source of the quotes. *Former CIA counterterrorism official
1999
January
''Saddam may think he's too good for such an association ith bin Laden Jerold Post, a political psychologist and government consultant who has profiled Saddam, says he thinks of himself as a world leader like Castro or Tito, not a thug. 'I'm skeptical that Saddam would resort to terrorism,' says a well informed administration official.
14 January
*ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief, named Farouk 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.This story is repeated by
Indeed, intelligence agencies tracked contacts between Iraqi agents and Al Qaeda agents in the '90s in Sudan and Afghanistan, where bin Laden is believed to have met with Farouk Hijazi, head of Iraqi intelligence. But current and former intelligence specialists caution that such meetings occur just as often between enemies as friends. Spies frequently make contact with rogue groups to size up their intentions, gauge their strength, or try to infiltrate their ranks, they said.
31 January
A 2005 article in ''The Weekly Standard'' claimed that thehundreds of Afghan Arabs are undergoing sabotage training in Southern Iraq and are preparing for armed actions on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. They have declared as their goal a fight against the interests of the United States in the region.In the same article, ''The Weekly Standard'' claimed that the Kuwaiti government detained some al Qaeda members at the border but notes that the Kuwaiti government did not respond to requests for more information about these alleged detainees.
May, Iraq
*According to documents summarized by theJuly, Iraq
Saddam Hussein allegedly cuts off all contact with al-Qaeda, according to Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, a former Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody.September, Baghdad
*9/11 and lead-up to the Iraq War
2000
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*An Iraqi national with connections to the Iraqi embassy, and possibly a2001
25–27 February
Two unidentified Iraqi men are arrested in Germany on suspicion of spying. According to ''The Weekly Standard'', an Arabic newspaper in Paris called ''Al-Watan al-Arabi'' reportedThe arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.The same article also reported that
The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies.This report and the interrogation records of the detained Iraqi agents were not discussed in the ''9/11 Commission Report'', and do not seem to be mentioned in other media sources. It is not known whether the arrests revealed any cooperation between the men and either Iraqi intelligence or al Qaeda.
8 April, Prague, Czech Republic
*The Czech counterintelligence service claimed that Mohamed Atta al-Sayed, 9/11 hijacker, met with Ahmad Samir al-Ani, theWell, on something like the Atta meeting in Prague, we went over that every which way from Sunday. We looked at it from every conceivable angle. We peeled open the source, examined the chain of acquisition. We looked at photographs. We looked at timetables. We looked at who was where and when. It is wrong to say that we didn't look at it. In fact, we looked at it with extraordinary care and intensity and fidelity.*The source for the claim that the meeting did occur was based on a contact that the Czech intelligence had within the Iraqi embassy, who was described in ''
Even the Czechs, who initially put out the reports about Atta's meeting with al-Ani, have gradually backed away. The Czech interior minister, Stanislav Gross, said in October that the two had met in April 2001. That version was altered slightly by Czech Prime Minister Miloš Zeman when he told CNN in November, 'Atta contacted some Iraqi agent, not to prepare the terrorist attack on he twin towersbut to prepare terrorist attack on just the building of Radio Free Europe' in Prague. Then, in December, Czech President*Havel, however, later "moved to quash the report once and for all" by making the statement publicly to the White House, as reported in ''The New York Times''. According to the report, "Czech officials also say they have no hard evidence that Mr. Ani was involved in terrorist activities, although the government did order his ouster in late April 2001." *The ''New York Times'' report was described as "a fabrication" by Ladislav Spacek, a spokesman for Czech president Václav Havel. But Spacek also "said Mr. Havel was still certain there was no factual basis behind the report that Mr. Atta met an Iraqi diplomat." The ''Times'' story was a potential embarrassment to Czech prime minister Milos Zeman after "extensive interviews with Czech and other Western intelligence officials, politicians and people close to the Czech intelligence community revealed that Mr. Zeman had prematurely disclosed an unverified report." According to an article in ''Václav Havel Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as ...retreated further, saying there was only 'a 70 percent' chance Atta met with al-Ani.
In his interactions with other students, Atta voiced virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American opinions, ranging from condemnations of what he described as a global Jewish movement centered in New York City that supposedly controlled the financial world and the media, to polemics against governments of the Arab world. To him, Saddam Hussein was an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East.The 9/11 Commission also addressed the question of an alleged Prague connection and listed many of the reasons above that such a meeting could not have taken place. The report notes that
the FBI has gathered intelligence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on 4 April (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on 11 April, where he and Shehhi leased an apartment. On 6, 9, 10, and 11 April, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida. We cannot confirm that he placed those calls. But there are no U.S. records indicating that Atta departed the country during this period." Combining FBI and Czech intelligence investigations, " evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001.The Commission still could not "absolutely rule out the possibility" that Atta was in Prague on 9 April traveling under an alias, but it concluded that
There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation. By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training, and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States. The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting.*Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a proponent of the theory that Atta had met al-Ani in Prague, acknowledged in an interview on 29 March 2006
We had one report early on from another intelligence service that suggested that the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague, Czechoslovakia. And that reporting waxed and waned where the degree of confidence in it, and so forth, has been pretty well knocked down now at this stage, that that meeting ever took place.
Summer, United Arab Emirates
According to David Rose, a reporter for '' Vanity Fair'',Summer
*A man known as Abu Wael, who worked with theThere are indications that by then (2001) the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al-Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.Furthermore, al-Shamari, sitting in a Kurdish prison, has said that Saddam Hussein supported Ansar al Islam because he wanted to "foment unrest in the pro-American Kurdish area of Iraq." *Intelligence agencies have, however, disputed such claims of support. According to
While the White House has attempted to link the group directly to Hussein's intelligence agents, both the CIA and MI6 insist that all their intelligence suggests the group operates in narea over which Saddam has no control.*Spenser Ackerman wrote in November 2003 that:
Far from being "harbored" by Saddam, Ansar al Islam operated out of northeastern Iraq, an area under Kurdish control that was being protected from Saddam's incursions by U.S. warplanes. Indeed, some of its members fought against Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war.*Additionally, Mullah Krekar, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, calls himself "Saddam's sworn enemy" and "scoffs" at the notion that his friend Abu Wael works with the Mukhabarat. Elsewhere, Abu Wael is described as a "former Iraqi army officer" and it is suggested that, while he may still have been working for Saddam, it was as a spy, gathering intelligence on Ansar al-Islam rather than cooperating with them. *Jason Burke notes
Saddam may well have infiltrated the Ansar-ul-Islam with a view to monitoring the developments of the group (indeed it would be odd if he had not) but that appears to be about as far as his involvement with the group, and incidentally with al-Qaeda, goes.Ackerman likewise notes that the "far more likely explanation" of Abu Wael's contact with Ansar al-Islam, "is that the dictator had placed an agent in the group not to aid them, as Powell implied to the Security Council, but to keep tabs on a potential threat to his own regime." Additionally, while Mullah Krekar has expressed admiration for bin Laden, he has denied any actual links to al-Qaeda, stating, "I have never met with him, nor do I have any contacts
As one of the first journalists to enter the research facilities at the Darunta camp in eastern Afghanistan in 2001, I was struck by how crude they were. The Ansar al-Islam terrorist group's alleged chemical weapons factory in northern Iraq, which I inspected the day after its capture in 2003, was even more rudimentary.
July, Rome
A general in the Iraqi intelligence, Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, allegedly meets with21 July, Iraq
*The state-run Iraqi newspaper ''Al-Nasiriya'' allegedly publishes an opinion piece written by Naeem Abd Muhalhal. The piece is said to praise Osama bin Laden and includes the following, whichbin Laden 'continues to smile and still thinks seriously, with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.'The opinion piece also claims that
Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurtingand that the U.S.
will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs.*On the floor of the
In other words, the World Trade Towers. Here, over a year ahead of time in the open press in Iraq, they are writing that this man is planning not only to bomb the White House, but where they are already hurting, the World Trade Towers.Senator Hollings read the opinion piece into the U.S. Congressional Record. Judge Baer also interprets this opinion piece as an allusion to the once-bombed
5 September, Spain
Abu Zubayr, an al-Qaeda cell leader in19 September
21 September, Washington, D.C.
*Ten days after theSaddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.This PDB was one of the documents the Bush Administration refused to turn over to the
23 September
*''Saddam has remained out of the public eye in his network of bunkers since the military alert at the end of August and moved his two wives, Sajida and Samira, away from the presidential palaces in Baghdad to Tikrit, his home town to the north.While the article reports that the "US is understood to have found no hard evidence linking Baghdad directly to the kamikaze attacks," it also cites Western intelligence officials as saying that
the Iraqi leader had been providing al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, with funding, logistical back-up and advanced weapons training. His operations reached a 'frantic pace' in the past few months.*In another article published on the same day, 23 September 2001, ''The Telegraph'' reported that *The Duelfer Report noted Saddam's reaction to the 9/11 attacks, concluding that it was a result of his paranoia
Isolated internally by his paranoia over personal security, and externally by his misreading of international events, Saddam missed a major opportunity to reduce tensions with the United States following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. By failing to condemn the attacks and express sympathy to the American people, Saddam reinforced US suspicions about his connections to Al Qa'ida and certified Iraq's credentials as a rogue state. He told his ministers that after all the hardships the Iraqi people had suffered under sanctions he could not extend official condolences to the United States, the government most responsible for blocking sanctions relief. From a practical standpoint, Saddam probably also believed—mistakenly—that his behavior toward the United States was of little consequence, as sanctions were on the verge of collapse.The internal debate among Iraqi officials, according to the Duelfer Report, suggested that these officials were wary of Iraq being wrongly associated with al-Qaeda
Some ministers recognized that the United States intended to take direct unilateral action, if it perceived that its national security was endangered, and argued that the best course of action was to 'step forward and have a talk with the Americans.' Also concerned with the assertion of a connection between Iraq and its 'terrorist allies,' they felt they must 'clarify' to the Americans that 'we are not with the terrorists'
November
In November 2001, a month after the21 November
*The Bush Administration froze the assets of the Al Taqwa network, accusing them of raising, managing and distributing money for al Qaeda under the guise of legitimate business activity.The operation raises the possibility that Iraq quietly funneled money to Al Qaeda by deliberately choosing an oil company working with one of the terrorist group's alleged financial backers.
2002
January - April
* January: Captured al-Qaeda leaderMay - July
September - November 2002
* 10 September, Berlin: AFP reports that German intelligence chief2003
* January: The CIA releases a special Report to Congress entitled ''Iraqi Support for Terrorism''. The report states "We have reporting from reliable clandestine and press sources that (deleted) direct meetings between senior Iraqi representatives and top al-Qaida operatives took place from the early 1990s to the present." (Page 326) The report concludes that "In contrast to the patron-client pattern between Iraq and its Palestinian surrogates, the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other – their mutual suspicion suborned by al-Qaida's interest in Iraqi assistance, and Baghdad's interest in al-Qaida's anti-U.S. attacks…. The Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike." (Page 332) The report also questioned the information coming from captured al-Qaeda leaderIraq War
2003
* 19 March, Iraq: United States and coalition troops invade Iraq, beginning with large-scale air strikes against specific targets. * April,2004
* 8 January:And the question of relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda is an interesting one. I don't have information post-2001 when I got involved in a trial, and I don't have information post-11 September. I can tell you what led to that inclusion in that sealed indictment in May and then when we superseded, which meant we broadened the charges in the Fall, we dropped that language. We understood there was a very, very intimate relationship between al Qaeda and the Sudan. They worked hand in hand. We understood there was a working relationship with Iran and Hezbollah, and they shared training. We also understood that there had been antipathy between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein because Saddam Hussein was not viewed as being religious. We did understand from people, including al-Fadl—and my recollection is that he would have described this most likely in public at the trial that we had, but I can't tell you that for sure; that was a few years ago—that at a certain point they decided that they wouldn't work against each other and that we believed a fellow in al Qaeda named Mondu Saleem, Abu Harzai the Iraqi, tried to reach a, sort of, understanding where they wouldn't work against each other. Sort of, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And that there were indications that within Sudan when al Qaeda was there—which al Qaeda left in the summer of '96 or spring '96—there were efforts to work on joint—you know, acquiring weapons. Clearly, al Qaeda worked with the Sudan in getting those weapons in the national defense force there and the intelligence service. There were indications that al-Fadl had heard from others that Iran was involved. And they also had heard that Iraq was involved. The clearest account from al-Fadl as a Sudanese was that he had dealt directly with the Sudanese intelligence service, so we had firsthand knowledge of that. We corroborated the relationship with Iran to a lesser extent but to a solid extent. And then we had information from al-Fadl, who we believe was truthful, learning from others that there were also was efforts to try to work with Iraq. That was the basis for what we put in that indictment. Clearly, we put Sudan in the first order at that time as being the partner of al Qaeda. We understood the relationship with Iran but Iraq, we understood, went from a position where they were working against each other to a standing down against each other. And we understood they were going to explore the possibility of working on weapons together. That's my piece of what I know. I don't represent to know everything else, so I can't tell you, well, what we've learned since then. But there was that relationship that went from opposing each other to not opposing each other to possibly working with each other.* 17 June: At a press conference, the chairman and vice chairman of the
Commissioner* 29 June: In an interview withJohn Lehman John Francis Lehman Jr. (born September 14, 1942) is an American private equity investor and writer who served as Secretary of the Navy (1981–1987) in the Ronald Reagan administration where he promoted the creation of a 600-ship Navy. From 2003 ..., a Republican, came to the defense of Vice President Dick Cheney, who is the most aggressive in contending that there were strong Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda. Lehman said new intelligence that 'we are now in the process of getting" indicates one of Hussein's Fedayeen fighters, a lieutenant colonel, was a prominent Al Qaeda member.' Cheney has said he probably has intelligence the commission does not have, and 'the vice president was right when he said that,' Lehman said on NBC's 'Meet the Press ''Meet the Press'' is a weekly American television news/interview program broadcast on NBC. It is the longest-running program on American television, though the current format bears little resemblance to the debut episode on November 6, 1947. ' ....' Lehman said the news media were 'outrageously irresponsible' to portray the staff report as contradicting what the administration said. The commission's vice chairman, former representative Lee Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, said the White House and the commission agree on the central point: There is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq in the attacks of 11 September 2001, on the United States.
I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September – atrocities or not, I can't – vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists.* 7 July: The
Formed in December 2001 out of a conglomeration of Kurdish Islamist groups, nsar al-Islamis closely allied with and receives both ideological and strategic inspiration from al Qaeda. A number of Ansar members trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and the group provided safe haven to al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups until its operations were disrupted during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) ... In August 2002, Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, who has described Ansar as a 'very important' group within the larger framework of bin Laden's World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders stated, ' nsarhas received limited support from Iraq, and I stress limited.' According to Dr. Gunaratna, Ansar received support from Iraqi agents with the specific intention of infiltrating the anti-PUK group and not to strengthen the Islamist group; Ansar remains an anti-Saddam and an anti-Western group. Some commentators would draw a different conclusion with respect to the nature of Ansar's relationship with Saddam, especially in the period immediately prior to OIF. According various reports, as well as claims made by US and PUK officials prior to OIF, the Iraqi regime helped to smuggle weapons to Ansar from Afghanistan. According to another report, PUK explosives experts believe that the Iraqi military intelligence supplied Ansar with TNT, which was in addition to other weaponry that was supplied to Ansar from areas under Baathist control. Another indication of links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime, which the Bush administration cited, are the activities of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is believed to have run one of Ansar's terrorist training camps in northern Iraq prior to OIF.In this document, Dr. Gunaratna noted that Saddam's relationship with Ansar was one of spying and infiltration rather than cooperation: Qassem Hussein, another Iraqi intelligence officer now in Kurdish custody, has stated that Abu Wael is the true leader within Ansar. However, Rohan Gunaratna believes that Qassem Hussein is likely to be a penetration agent with hidden loyalties to Saddam. As Ansar was anti-PUK and the PUK was supported by the U.S. Saddam was very interested to use Ansar against the PUK. Therefore, Qassem may have been providing Abu Wael with a cover story. Dr. Gunaratna concluded in his own study of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that "there is no conclusive evidence of Iraqi assistance to Al Qaeda ... The documentation and interviews indicated that Al Qaeda regarded Saddam, a secular leader, as an infidel" and warned in February 2003 that "an invasion of Iraq would give a new lease on life to existing and emerging terrorist groups." * 29 August: In an interview with
"Iraq is attracting Islamic militants from across the world determined to join the 'holy war' against the US-led occupation," the son of Osama bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam told AFP in an interview. "Hundreds of Muslims from all over Arab and non-Arab countries go to Iraq to help the resistance end the occupation, spurred by the conviction that jihad is a duty against the occupier," said Hudayfa Azzam ... "The Iraqi resistance was the fruit of the American occupation" and buyoed by the "fatwa (religious decree) which considers jihad a duty when a Muslim country is occupied," he said.* 4 October, Washington, D.C.: Media report on a new CIA assessment, requested by Vice President Dick Cheney, concludes that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime harbored Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Knight Ridder reporters called the CIA study "the latest assessment that calls into question one of President Bush's key justifications for last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq." * 4 October Washington, D.C.: U.S. Secretary of Defense
2005
* 15 April, Washington, D.C.: Senator2006
* 3 January: CNN terrorism expertI told the Americans a long time before 2 August [1990, the day Iraq invaded Kuwait and the U.S./Iraqi relationship changed dramatically] and told the British as well, I think Hamed was there keeping the meeting minutes with one of them, that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction. What prevents this technology from developing and people from smuggling it? All of this, before the stories of smuggling, before that, in 1989. I told them, 'In the future, what would prevent that we see a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?':Saddam later adds, "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq." Reporter Sherrie Gossett wrote that the excerpts of the tapes presented at the Intelligence Summit were "vague, cryptic, nonsensical, insignificant" and notes that "the most-hyped excerpts are also subject to wide-ranging interpretations." A spokeswoman for John Negroponte, the Directorate of National Intelligence, noted that "Intelligence community analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq's weapons programs, nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey Group report." ABC News reporter Brian Ross commented that people on both sides of this controversy will use these tapes to support their side. * 23 February: Abdel Bari Atwan publishes a book titled ''The Secret History of Al-Qa'ida''. In it, he writes:
Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al-Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al-Qaeda's ideology, Saddam established contact with the 'Afghan Arabs' as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed. In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Ba'ath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance. According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis. On arrival in Iraq, Al-Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddam's caches. Most commentators agree that Al-Qaeda was present in Iraq before the US invasion. The question is for how long and to what extent. What is known is that Zarqawi took a direct role in Al-Qaeda's infiltration. In March 2003 – it is not clear whether this was before or after the invasion began – he met Al-Qaeda's military strategist, an Egyptian called Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi, and agreed to assist Al-Qaeda operatives entering Iraq.* 16 March: The Pentagon, at the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, begins releasing the Arabic-language documents obtained during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. These documents have been hailed by some supporters of the invasion as a possible "smoking gun" connecting Saddam's Iraq to al-Qaeda terrorists and Representative Hoekstra has been calling for their release to the public; those released so far, however, fail to provide evidence of any such connection. According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, the release of the documents "looks like an effort to discover a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq." The Pentagon cautions that the government "has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." One of the documents, which seems to have been trumpeted by Stephen Hayes earlier in the year as proof that "thousands" of al-Qaeda terrorists were trained in Iraq between 1999 and 2002 to fight in Afghanistan, is according to the Pentagon simply an investigation of a rumor. The Pentagon synopsis of the document reads: "Fedayeen Saddam received news of a rumor that 3,000 volunteers from Iraq and Saudi Arabia had traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Mujahideen against the US. This letter is a request to investigate the rumor to determine whether it is true." Also present in the collection is Iraqi Intelligence correspondence from 2002 concerning suspected al-Qaeda members in Iraq. The document includes names and photographs of suspected al-Qaeda members, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Pentagon summary of the document indicates that Iraqi intelligence suspected these people to be members of al-Qaeda but provides no indication that they trained or supported them. Indeed, an
That OBL and the Taliban are in contact with Iraq and that a group of Taliban and bin Laden group members visited Iraq. That the U.S. has proof the Iraqi government and 'bin Laden's group' agreed to cooperate to attack targets inside America. That in case the Taliban and bin Laden's group turn out to be involved in 'these destructive operations,' the U.S. may strike Iraq and Afghanistan. That the Afghan consul heard about the issue of Iraq's relationship with 'bin Laden's group' while he was in Iran.While stating that "the controversial claim that Osama bin Laden was cooperating with Saddam Hussein is an ongoing matter of intense debate ... [and that] the assertions contained in this document clearly support the claim," ABC questioned the sourcing of the document and concluded that "without further corroboration, this document is of limited evidentiary value." The ''Los Angeles Times'' notes that "the documents do not appear to offer any new evidence of illicit activity by Hussein, or hint at preparations for the insurgency that followed the invasion." * 28 March: CNN terrorism expert Peter L. Bergen writes an op-ed in ''The New York Times'' addressing the release of the Operation Iraqi Freedom documents, noting a significant problem for proponents of the theory of Saddam/al-Qaeda collaboration: "Another striking feature about the supposed Qaeda-Iraq connection is that since the fall of the Taliban, not one of the thousands of documents found in Afghanistan substantiate such an alliance, even though Al Qaeda was a highly bureaucratic organization that required potential recruits to fill out application forms." * 18 May: Former NSA Chief General Michael Hayden (general), Michael Hayden testifies before the Senate Hearing on his nomination as Director of Central Intelligence. During the hearing, Hayden is questioned by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) on the pressure exerted by Douglas Feith's Office on the intelligence community over the question of Saddam's links to al-Qaeda. Hayden explained that he was not comfortable with Feith's analysis: "I got three great kids, but if you tell me go out and find all the bad things they've done, Hayden, I can build you a pretty good dossier, and you'd think they were pretty bad people, because that was I was looking for and that's what I'd build up. That would be very wrong. That would be inaccurate. That would be misleading." He also acknowledged that after "repeated inquiries from the Feith office" he put a disclaimer on NSA intelligence assessments of Iraq/al-Qaeda contacts. * 16 June: Fox News posts on its website the translation of a 76-page notebook belonging to an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent named Khaled Abd El Majid. The notebook is part of the Operation Iraqi Freedom documents. The translation process was supervised by Ray Robison, who claims that the translation details a meeting between an unnamed Iraqi official and Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a
2007
* In February 2007, a Pentagon Inspector General report found that Douglas J. Feith, who was under secretary of Defense for Policy for United States president George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers."References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saddam-al-Qaeda conspiracy allegations timeline Saddam–al-Qaeda conspiracy theory, * Timelines of the Iraq War, Saddam-al-Qaeda conspiracy allegations Contemporary history timelines