Testing The Standard, Part III: The Sudan Years

By now, I expect that just about everyone in blogosphere has heard from one source or another about the memo that was leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard that provided a considerable listing of evidence regarding a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

What I'm now going to do is to examine the memo excerpts that were provided by The Weekly Standard and endeavor to see whether or not the raw data is consistent with what we already know or can reasonably deduce from reported stories in the press. This is a far from ideal method of verifying the excerpts in the Standard's piece, but short of full declassification of all US intelligence in relation to al-Qaeda (something that might happen around 2025 or so), it's probably the best that we're going to get here in the blogosphere.

Because of the length and detail required, this is a 6-part series. Part 3 looks at the Clinton years.

The Clinton Connection

More to the point, the claim of al-Qaeda and Iraqi cooperation in the area of "weapons development" is extremely significant because, as you can read in either The Age of Sacred Terror, available via this link at the Federation of American Scientists, or this article from the 1998 edition of Non-Proliferation Review, they formed the basis behind the Clinton administration's decision to launch cruise missiles against the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan as a result of CIA intelligence that the facility was involved in the manufacture of a precursor to the deadly nerve agent VX for both Iraq and al-Qaeda.

The Non-Proliferation Review piece is extremely critical of the Clinton administration's decision to attack al-Shifa, and may well add to American conservative polemics in regards to the missile strike (for a reasoned defense of Clinton's decision, here again I recommend a careful reading of The Age of Sacred Terror ). As even the Non-Proliferation Review explains, however, one of the rationales that the Clinton administration made for the strike was that the al-Shifa plant had ties to Dr. Emad al-Ani, an individual identified by the US as the father of the Iraqi VX program. Interestingly enough, the Non-Proliferation Review article also included this tantalizing statement:

"It [the Iraqi connection to al-Shifa] conforms in general terms to allegations made in a February 1998 congressional task force report authored by Youssef Bodansky, which claimed that Iraq had relocated its WMD assets and development to the Sudan, Yemen, Libya, and Algeria ... the credibility of the report is dubious at best."

After looking at the footnotes at the end of the article, I dunno, maybe it might be time to revisit Bodansky's core thesis despite the improbable nature of most of his claims.

Travels Beyond Sudan

Another source of corroboration for the Clinton administration's position in regard to Iraq and al-Qaeda working together can be found in the saved Free Republic version of the November 5, 1998 and November 12, 1998 editions of the New York Times and Facts on File.

"This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a "window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved with Iraq (and Iran)."

The Iranian connection with al-Qaeda is both long-standing and currently active given that over 24 of the organization's top leaders including its equivalents to secretary of war and secretary of finance are currently being sheltered by an elite organization within the IRGC answerable only to Ayatollah Khamenei.

As far as bin Laden's travels go at this point, they remain largely a mystery from his arrival in Sudan in December 1991 to his departure in May 1996. Up until that point, there is little if any sign that the US had identified him as the man responsible for either 1993 WTC bombing or the killing of US troops in Somalia, to say nothing of his extra-curricular activities in sponsoring the formation of al-Qaeda affiliates worldwide and radicalizing existing Islamist insurgencies. Among those known travels away from Sudan during this period that are documented a trip to Bosnia in 1993 to survey the progress of al-Qaeda's Kateebat al-Mujahideen Battalion, which fought as part of the Bosnian Third Army against Serbian military and paramilitary forces. There is also an exceedingly mysterious trip in December 1995 to the Triple Border area of Latin America along with future 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The point is that there is no real way to verify any of this particular account with open source material because at the time in question, nobody outside of government agencies was really following the movements of either bin Laden or his top lieutenants. They literally could have been anywhere or met with anyone.

Tuesday: Part IV: Into Afghanistan