Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda—save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against “Crusaders”during the Gulf War of 1991.Moreover,Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan,and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.53 To protect his own ties with Iraq,Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge,at least for a time,although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad’s control.In the late 1990s,these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces.In 2001,with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam.There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54 With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary,Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps,as well as assistance in procuring weapons,but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.55As described below,the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.
There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime,offering some cooperation.None are reported to have received a significant response.According to one report,Saddam Hussein’s efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin.74 In mid-1998,the situation reversed;it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative.In March 1998,after Bin Ladin’s public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence.In July,an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin.Sources reported that one,or perhaps both,of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin’s Egyptian deputy,Zawahiri,who had ties of his own to the Iraqis.In 1998,Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.75 Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting,Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined,apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides’hatred of the United States.But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship.Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.76
With UN sanctions set to come into effect in November, Clarke wrote Berger that “the Taliban appear to be up to something.”89Mullah Omar had shuffled his “cabinet”and hinted at Bin Ladin’s possible departure.Clarke’s staff thought his most likely destination would be Somalia;Chechnya seemed less appealing with Russia on the offensive.Clarke commented that Iraq and Libya had previously discussed hosting Bin Ladin,though he and his staff had their doubts that Bin Ladin would trust secular Arab dictators such as Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qadhafi.
On November 4,1998,the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of Bin Ladin,charging him with conspiracy to attack U.S.defense installations.The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran,and Hezbollah.The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaeda had “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.”109This passage led Clarke,who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was “probably a direct result of the Iraq–Al Qida agreement.”Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the “exact formula used by Iraq.”110This language about al Qaeda’s “understanding”with Iraq had been dropped,however,when a superseding indictment was filed in November 1998.111
In February 1999,Allen proposed flying a U-2 mission over Afghanistan to build a baseline of intelligence outside the areas where the tribals had coverage.Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible.He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin’s having met with Iraqi officials, who “may have offered him asylum.”Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders,though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq.If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq,wrote Clarke,his network would be at Saddam Hussein’s service,and it would be “virtually impossible”to find him.Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan,Clarke declared.134Berger suggested sending one U-2 flight,but Clarke opposed even this. It would require Pakistani approval, he wrote; and “Pak[istan’s] intel[ligence service] is in bed with”Bin Ladin and would warn him that the United States was getting ready for a bombing campaign:“Armed with that knowledge,old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad.”135Though told also by Bruce Riedel of the NSC staff that Saddam Hussein wanted Bin Ladin in Baghdad,Berger conditionally authorized a single U-2 flight.Allen meanwhile had found other ways of getting the information he wanted.So the U-2 flight never occurred.136
These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9,2001.He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias,but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling (as he did in January and would in July when he took his next overseas trip).The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports.
Responding to a presidential tasking,Clarke’s office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled “Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks.”Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad,concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda.The memo found no “compelling case”that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports,including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7) and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event.Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak,the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime.Finally,the memo said,there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons.62
Two CIA memoranda of information from a foreign government report that the chief of Iraq’s intelligence service and a military expert in bomb making met with Bin Ladin at his farm outside Khartoum on July 30,1996. The source claimed that Bin Ladin asked for and received assistance from the bomb-making expert,who remained there giving training until September 1996,which is when the information was passed to the United States.See Intelligence reports made available to the Commission.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 claims that the bomb-making expert had been seen in the area of Bin Ladin’s Sudan farm in December 1995.
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