Winds of Change.NET: Testing The Standard, Part VI: Conclusion

Testing The Standard, Part VI: Conclusion

by Dan Darling at November 27, 2003 3:12 AM

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. This final installment takes a critical look at some of the Iraq-related intelligence, then follows with some thoughts regarding the results of this research effort as a whole.

Guess who's Coming to Dinner�

"The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required."

This is one of the hardest pieces of information in the memo to swallow.

For one thing, bin Laden left Sudan in May 1996 for Peshawar, Pakistan before forming an alliance with the Pashtun Taliban. So there is a definite chronological discrepancy here unless he returned to Sudan at some point over the summer. Al-Qaeda possessed (and still does) ample infrastructure within the country even after bin Laden's departure through its ties with the National Islamic Front. However, any travels that he did make would have to be short ones, as most if not all available sources list him as operating out of first Pakistan and later Afghanistan during this time period.

The other part that I find rather bizarre is this whole notion that al-Qaeda wanted expertise in bombmaking in 1996, which is certainly odd given that the court testimony of American al-Qaeda leader Ali Mohammed in the embassy bombings trial (the records of which can be accessed here at the bottom of the ICT profile on the organization) states that al-Qaeda did indeed start looking for explosives expertise following the failure of the 1993 WTC bombing and hence turned to assistance from the leading Shi'ite Khomeinist organization Hezbollah and forged a partnership with both the Iranian government and Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mugniyeh to work together to target American interests that same year. Al-Qaeda leaders and mid-level operatives received explosives training in the Bekaa Valley, which would seem to suggest that the organization had already gotten was looking for in this regard.

On the other hand, this comes from the same source as the anecdote about bin Laden staying at the home of a member of House Thani . That enhances the source's credibility because I doubt that the US (for diplomatic reasons) or the Qataris (for obvious reasons) is going to be very liberal with who they leak that particular piece of information to. Maybe there's a way to harmonize this account with existing data, but right now I just don't see it.

"The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials explicitly threatened retaliation."

This is also stretching it somewhat, unless there's some kind of evidence that either Iraq or bin Laden requested to the Saudi al-Qaeda cell that carried out the Khobar Towers bombing for it to take place on that date. Then again, dates are important in terrorism, as can be seen from the fact that 9/11 was very likely chosen to commemorate the defeat of Turkish forces in Eastern Europe in the 1600s that marked the end of the expansion phase of the Ottoman Empire.

Can We Take This Czech to the Bank?

"The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office. CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April 2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross continues to stand by his information."

This is likely one of the most contested pieces of evidence that I have ever seen argued back and forth across blogosphere and has formed the crux of many mainstream media efforts at "debunking" a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. That Atta ever met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani is still in dispute and I have seen what I consider to be credible arguments in favor of both scenarios, so I'm more or less agnostic on this one.

However, as this story from the March 16, 2003 edition of The Guardian notes that the Czech government evidently believes that al-Ani did have contact with Atta during his time in Prague. The Slate version of a similar story is more ambiguous in this regard, but it does give this fascinating tidbit:

"The Czechs reviewing these visits in retrospect further assumed that Atta's business in Prague was somehow related to his activities in the United States, given that large sums of laundered funds began to flow to the 9/11 conspiracy in June 2000, after Atta left Prague."

Those funds could possibly have been those given to Atta by the Iraqi intelligence that are mentioned in the memo excerpt, but there is nothing definitive here from open source documents.

S.A.M. I Am

"Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S. occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies elsewhere."

The reference to Zarqawi having obtained portable anti-aircraft S.A.Ms from Iraq is a new development, but would seem to square with reports in the UK in February 2003 that an Algerian al-Qaeda affiliate (probably the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) was targeting Heathrow Airport.

As Powell and others, myself included, have noted, Zarqawi relied extensively on the existing GIA and GSPC infrastructure among the Algerian expatriate community in Europe to plan crude chemical weapons attacks on European targets that, had they succeeded, would have probably killed hundreds of people. If he was coordinating these attacks with the blessings of the Iraqi government (in the hopes that a renewed terrorist offensive would refocus global attention away from Iraq?), it would make sense for the Mukhabarat to assist him in this regard.

Iraq, al-Qaeda & WMD

"During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training. CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."

Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (which looks to me like a nom de guerre, it means "son of the Libyan sheikh" if my rusty Arabic is accurate) is one of the top al-Qaeda leaders identified by US intelligence pre-9/11 (CNN listed him among the top 12, suggesting that his claims should carry just as much weight to interrogators as Abu Zubaydah or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). He was captured by the Pakistani military on January 3, 2002, and is said to have run the organization's training camps in Afghanistan from his base of operations at Khalden camp.

This is extremely significant because it means that both Darunta camp run by Abu Khabab (the origin of the dog gassing video that was shown on CNN) as well as the unnamed training facility near Herat where al-Qaeda's crude nuclear laboratory was locate, may have had Iraqi connections.

The memo is unclear here (at least to me) as to whether al-Libi or the unnamed "al-Qaeda associate" (a term, incidentally, that is frequently used by the CIA to describe Abu Musab Zarqawi) was tasked to travel to Iraq in 1998 to establish a relationship with the Mukhabarat to obtain chemical weapons for the network. The reference to two al-Qaeda operatives traveling to Iraq beginning in December 2000 was evidently thought credible enough by CIA Director George Tenet to include in his February 11, 2003 Worldwide Threat Briefing in which he stated, "... This information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources." In my own opinion, we can probably assume that al-Libi is the al-Qaeda associate in question who characterized the relationship between the organization and Iraq as "successful."

In addition, it is now apparent at least to me that al-Libi is probably the interrogated source of this related story from August 9, 2003.

Final Thoughts

So where does this leave us? Discreprancies and disagreements in a minority of the cases aside, the raw information contained within the memo appears to be very much in agreement with what can be learned from a careful study of open source material concerning the same topics. This does not resolve all of the issues involved with the memo, nor is the open source documents the preferred means through which to verify intelligence to begin with, it's simply the just best that we have available right now. At the absolute least, however, it leaves those of us who supported the existence of such connection like myself content in the knowledge that our scenario fits the facts at least as well as any other hypothesis, theory, or conundrum that I have seen presented to date.

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