Post by HODFormer director James Woolsey, the Clinton-era CIA chief said recently that
there's no question Iraq and al Qaeda worked together to plan attacks
against U.S. interests during the decade leading up to 9/11, describing the
evidence of an operational relationship as "a slam dunk."
Commenting on a memo issued by the Defense Department to the Senate
Intelligence Committee and revealed by the Weekly Standard recently, Woolsey
told CNN's "Late Edition," "Anybody who says there is no working
relationship between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence going back to the early
'90s, they can only say that if they're illiterate."
Maybe this will clear things up for you
from http://www.spinsanity.org/posts/2003_11_23_archive.html
The memo in question was written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
Douglas Feith for Senators Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV),
the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It lays
out fifty pieces of evidence suggesting contacts between Iraq and Iraqis and
members of Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden (Hayes prints a substantial
fraction of the numbered points, but not the entire memo).
The memo does provide evidence of several meetings between Iraqi agents and
members of Al Qaeda, including several meetings between Iraqi intelligence
officials and members of Al Qaeda, mostly between 1992 and 1998. The memo
also includes evidence of an agreement between Iraq and Al Qaeda not to take
action against one another.
Yet many of the memo's pieces of evidence come with caveats. For example, in
regard to several meetings, the memo states that "None of the reports have
information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings" (which
are obviously crucial to establishing an "operational relationship" between
Iraq and Al Qaeda). Other evidence is indirect, such as a note that
"According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi National Guard went
on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after learning Saddam
agreed to assist Al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia."
(ellipsis in Hayes article).
The memo also details the actions of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi living in
Malaysia. Yet the only documented contact between Shakir and the Iraqi
government is Shakir's own claim that he obtained a job at an airport
"through an Iraqi embassy employee." And regarding the controversial meeting
between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer in
Prague, the memo substantiates two meetings (one in December 1994 and one in
June 2000) but notes that evidence surrounding two others, including one in
April 2001 that has been cited by Bush administration officials, "is
complicated and sometimes contradictory".
The connections reported between Iraq and Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, 2001 are
also vague and far from conclusive. They include an alleged offer of safe
haven in Iraq to Al Qaeda members, the provision of weapons to "Al Qaeda
members in northern Iraq" beginning in "mid-March," roughly the time of the
beginning of US military action; and assistance provided by an Iraqi
intelligence agent to Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group which
operated prior to the war in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq.
Moreover, there are questions about the reliability of the information
contained in the memo. The Defense Department released a statement which
describes "[t]he items listed in the [memo]" as "either raw reports or
products of the CIA, the National Security Agency or, in one case, the
Defense Intelligence Agency," and says that the memo "was not an analysis of
the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it
drew no conclusions." (According to reports, the classified version of the
National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 also indicated that those
contacts had not precipitated any lasting relationship between Saddam and Al
Qaeda.)
As Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball have pointed out, the memo also omits
evidence that casts doubt on some of its claims. For example, while the memo
details a meeting between Iraqi intelligence officer Farouk Hijazi, Isikoff
and Hosenball note that "as Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism
official, says, the Feith-Carney memo omits the rest of the story: that bin
Laden actually rejected the Hijazi overture, concluding he did not want to
be 'exploited' by a regime that he has consistently viewed as 'secular' and
fundamentally antithetical to his vision of a strict Islamic state."
Regarding the alleged April 2001 meeting between Atta and an Iraqi
intelligence agent, "the Iraqi agent in question, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir
al-Ani, has been in U.S. custody for months and, according to U.S.
intelligence sources, denies ever meeting Atta."
In short, the evidence remains contested, and the memo itself does not
demonstrate the sort of high-level coordination between Iraq and Al Qaeda
implied by phrases such as "operational relationship."
Yet several pundits have implied that the memo documents such a connection,
often including the suggestion that the memo justifies military action in
Iraq. Former CIA director James Woolsey was one of the first, suggesting on
CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" on the 14th that "Anybody who says
there is no working relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence
going back to the early '90s--they can only say that if they're illiterate.
This is a slam dunk."
Others suggested some sort of personal link between Saddam and Bin Laden
(which nothing in the memo supports). On the 17th, Rush Limbaugh trumpeted
the article on his radio show (Windows Media Audio), claiming that "It says
what I have suspected all along... And that is that there's been a tie, a
link between Iraq and Al Qaeda dating back all the way to the early 90s,
particularly Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein." The New York Post
editorial board also weighed in on the 17th with the suggestion that the
Hayes article "documents an even more profound linkage: between none other
than Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden." It continues, "The memo provides
enormous evidence that the Bush team was right all along about Saddam's
terrorist ties - despite charges to the contrary by the president's foes,
particularly Democrats."
Syndicated columnist Frank Gaffney overstated the implications of the memo
in a slightly different way last Monday, suggesting that "Saddam Hussein's
regime had been guilty as charged - tied for over a decade to Osama bin
Laden and his Al Qaeda network (among other terrorist groups) for the
purpose of waging attacks on their mutual foe, the United States." The memo
simply decribes evidence linking Iraq and Al Qaeda - it does not suggest
that the purpose of the relationship was to wage attacks specifically on the
United States.
On October 21st, Oliver North took the spin a step further, quoting Hayes
and then suggesting that "[I]n their attempt to continue to undermine the
president, the media is largely ignoring this memo -- and the few that are
reporting on it have cast doubts about its contents."
These sorts of claims both ignore questions about the reliability of the
evidence contained in the memo, and unfairly generalize what the evidence
suggests. In such a heated debate, commentators must note caveats about such
information and fairly represent it to the public rather than making
sweeping claims that distort the facts.