Timeline of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations explained

This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In 2003, American terrorism analyst Evan Kohlman said in an interview:

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.[1]

In 2006, a report of postwar findings by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that:

The same report also concluded that:

The result of the publication of the Senate report was the belief that the entire connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was an official deception based on cherry picking specific intelligence data that bolstered the case for war with Iraq regardless of its reliability. One instance of this reaction was reported in a BBC news article, which stated:

Gulf War

1988

1990

March

2 August

Inter-war period

1992

1993

In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack.[13]

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.[14]

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 global jihad, or holy war.[16]

1995

19 February, Sudan

September, Sudan

At least one of these reports dates the meeting to 1994, but other evidence indicates the meeting may have occurred in February 1995.[21]

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

The 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.[26]

One of the defectors, al-Ghurairy, has been described as "a complete fake – a low-ranking former soldier whom Ahmed Chalabi's aides had coached to deceive the media."[27] Another defector who interviewed al-Ghurairy noted, "He is an opportunist, cheap and manipulative. He has poetic interests and has a vivid imagination in making up stories."[28] Inconsistencies in the stories of the defectors led U.S. officials, journalists, and investigators to conclude that the Salman Pak story was inaccurate. One senior U.S. official said that they had found "nothing to substantiate" the claim that al-Qaeda trained at Salman Pak other than the testimony of several INC defectors.

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.[29]

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.

Salman Pak was overrun by American troops on 6 April [2003]. Apparently, neither the camp nor the former biological facility has yielded evidence to substantiate the claims made before the war [that the camp was used for terrorist training].[33]

A similar view is also held by Douglas MacCollam, a journalist for the Columbia Journalism Review,

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.

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.[34]

Circa 1995, Iraq

This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh in which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qaida's CBRN [Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear] efforts. 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.[37]

1997

Mr. 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

Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda second-in-command, allegedly meets Taha Yasin Ramadan, Iraqi vice-president.[40]

Circa 1998, Washington D.C.

Daniel Benjamin, head of the U.S. National Security Council's counterterrorism division, heads an exercise aimed at a critical analysis of the CIA's contention that Iraq and al Qaeda would not team up. "This was a red-team effort," he said. "We looked at this as an opportunity to disprove the conventional wisdom, and basically we came to the conclusion that the CIA had this one right." He further stated that

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.[41]

23 February, Afghanistan

Osama bin Laden issues a fatwa urging jihad against all Americans. In his fatwa, bin Laden states

The 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 mosque [Mecca] 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.

He 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.[42]

March, Baghdad

According to the above, we suggest permission to call the Khartoum station [Iraq's intelligence office in Sudan] to 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."[44]

August, Khartoum

The 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.[46]

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.[47]

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.[48]

August, Pakistan

Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard reported that this month, according to a "Summary of Evidence" released by the Pentagon in March 2005 concerning a detainee held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, that this former infantryman of the Iraqi Army who became an al-Qaeda agent traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence "for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British Embassies with chemical mortars."[50]

An Associated Press report of the same document, however, includes the caveat

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 [the detainee] traveling to Pakistan with a member of the Iraqi intelligence. ... The assertion that the [detainee] was involved in a plot against embassies in Pakistan is not substantiated in the document.[51]

4 November, New York

al 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.

December

After President Clinton ordered a four-day bombing campaign of Iraq, known as Operation Desert Fox, the Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi speculated in an editorial that

President 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.[55]

18 or 21 December, Afghanistan

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.

1999

January

Newsweek magazine reported that Saddam Hussein is joining forces with al-Qaeda to launch joint terror strikes against the US and the UK.[59] An Arab intelligence officer, reported to know Saddam personally, told Newsweek: "very soon, you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity by the Iraqis." The planned attacks were said to be Saddam's revenge for the "continuing aggression" posed by the no-fly zones that showed the countries were still at war since Operation Desert Fox.[60] The planned attacks never materialized, and at the time officials questioned the validity of the claim.

The same Newsweek article also said

Saddam may think he's too good for such an association [with 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.[61]

This story is repeated by CNN on 13 February. The article reports that "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers."[62]

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.[65]

31 January

A 2005 article in The Weekly Standard claimed that the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported in 1999 that

hundreds 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

July, 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

2001

25–27 February

Two unidentified Iraqi men are arrested in Germany on suspicion of spying.[73] [74] According to The Weekly Standard, an Arabic newspaper in Paris called Al-Watan al-Arabi reported

The 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.[75]

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

According to the January 2003 CIA report Iraqi Support for Terrorism, "the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this possibility" that such a meeting occurred.[77]

Well, 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.[79]

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 [the twin towers] but to prepare [a] terrorist attack on just the building of Radio Free Europe' in Prague. Then, in December, Czech President Václav Havel retreated further, saying there was only 'a 70 percent' chance Atta met with al-Ani.[85]

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.[95]

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, "[n]o 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.[96]

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.[97]

Summer, United Arab Emirates

According to David Rose, a reporter for Vanity Fair, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, two of the 9/11 hijackers, supposedly met with an unidentified Mukhabarat officer.[98] Rose claims he was told this story by members of the Iraqi National Congress. Their credibility, however, has since been impugned on this matter.

Summer

There are indications that by then (2001) the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al-Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.[101]

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."[102]

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 [an] area over which Saddam has no control.[103]

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.[104]

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.[107]

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 [with him]."[108]

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.[112]

July, Rome

A general in the Iraqi intelligence, Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, allegedly meets with Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 hijacker[113] [114] Daniel McGrory, the reporter who claims this information came from Italian intelligence, admits, "There is no proof the men were in direct contact."[115] A June or July meeting in Rome is completely at odds with everything known about Atta's whereabouts in mid-2001.

21 July, Iraq

bin 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.'[116]

The opinion piece also claims that

Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting

and that the U.S.

will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs.

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.[117] Judge Baer also interprets this opinion piece as an allusion to the once-bombed World Trade Center.

5 September, Spain

Abu Zubayr, an al-Qaeda cell leader in Morocco, allegedly meets with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was a facilitator for the 9/11 attacks. It is alleged that Abu Zubayr was also an officer in the Iraqi Mukhabarat.[118] Abu Zubayr was arrested in Morocco in 2002, and while news accounts widely noted that he was "one of the most important members of Al Qaeda to be captured," no mainstream source substantiated (or even mentioned) the allegation that the Saudi citizen, abu Zubayr, worked for the Iraqi Mukhabarat.[119]

19 September

Jane's reports that Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, claims that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri. According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured in October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan.[120]

21 September, Washington, D.C.

Saddam 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.[121]

This PDB was one of the documents the Bush Administration refused to turn over to the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq, even on a classified basis, and refuses to discuss other than to acknowledge its existence.

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 100miles 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.

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'[123]

November

In November 2001, a month after the 11 September attacks, Mubarak al-Duri was contacted by the Sudanese intelligence who informed him that the FBI had sent Jack Cloonan and several other agents, to speak with a number of people known to have ties to Bin Laden. Al Duri and another Iraqi colleague agreed to meet with Cloonan in a safe house overseen by the intelligence service. They were asked whether there was any possible connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and laughed stating that Bin Laden hated the dictator, who he believed was a "Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate."[124]

21 November

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.[125]

2002

January - April

May - July

Abu Musab al Zarqawi allegedly recuperated in Baghdad after being wounded while fighting with Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters resisting the United States invasion of Afghanistan.[133] He was allegedly wounded in a U.S. bombardment. Dozens of his followers came to Baghdad as well. The United States, through a foreign intelligence service, notified Saddam Hussein's government that Zarqawi was living in Baghdad under an alias.[134] According to a U.S. Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq,[135] "A foreign government service asserted that the IIS (Iraqi Intelligence Service) knew where al-Zarqawi was located despite Baghdad's claims that it could not find him."(Page 337) Nevertheless, no evidence has emerged of any collaboration between Zarqawi and Saddam's government. Jason Burke, author of Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, wrote that "Stories that an injured leg had been amputated in Baghdad as al-Zarqawi was cared for by Saddam Hussein's personal physicians proved false."[136] He also wrote that "What Powell did not say was that al-Zarqawi ... had operated independently of bin Laden, running his own training camp in the west of Afghanistan near Herat. It was a small operation and al-Zarqawi was not considered a significant player, by militants or Western and Middle Eastern intelligence services, at the time. It is likely that al-Zarqawi had some contact with bin Laden but never took the bay'at and never made any formal allegiance with the Saudi or his close associates. Instead he was one of the thousands of foreign activists living and working in Afghanistan during the late 1990s. ... al-Zarqawi was a rival, not an ally, of the Saudi." (p. 270). An Israeli intelligence official noted that when bin Laden first met Zarqawi, "it was loathing at first sight."

Mary Ann Weaver wrote, "According to several different accounts of the meeting, bin Laden distrusted and disliked al-Zarqawi immediately. He suspected that the group of Jordanian prisoners with whom al-Zarqawi had been granted amnesty earlier in the year had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence ... Bin Laden also disliked al-Zarqawi's swagger and the green tattoos on his left hand, which he reportedly considered un-Islamic. Had Saif al-Adel-now bin Laden's military chief-not intervened, history might be written very differently ... As an Egyptian who had attempted to overthrow his own country's army-backed regime, al-Adel saw merit in al-Zarqawi's views. Thus, after a good deal of debate within al-Qaeda, it was agreed that al-Zarqawi would be given $5,000 or so in 'seed money' to set up his own training camp outside the western Afghan city of Herat, near the Iranian border. It was about as far away as he could be from bin Laden. Saif al-Adel was designated the middleman."[137]

Counterterrorism experts told The Washington Post that while "Zarqawi accepted al-Qaeda money to set up his own training camp in Afghanistan, ... he ran it independently. While bin Laden was preparing the 11 Sept. hijacking plot, Zarqawi was focused elsewhere, scheming to topple the Jordanian monarchy and attack Israel."[138]

Weaver writes in the Atlantic Monthly that bin Laden found Zarqawi "aggressively ambitious, abrasive, and overbearing" and that he found his hatred of Shiites divisive (bin Laden's mother is a Shiite). Weaver reports that "At least five times, in 2000 and 2001, bin Laden called al-Zarqawi to come to Kandahar and pay bayat – take an oath of allegiance—to him. Each time, al-Zarqawi refused. Under no circumstances did he want to become involved in the battle between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. He also did not believe that either bin Laden or the Taliban was serious enough about jihad. When the United States launched its air war inside Afghanistan, on 7 October 2001, al-Zarqawi joined forces with al-Qaeda and the Taliban for the first time. He and his Jund al-Sham fought in and around Herat and Kandahar."(p. 96)

When Zarqawi finally did take the oath in October 2004, it was "only after eight months of often stormy negotiations." (p. 98). Gary Gambill writes, "While Zarqawi's network – by this time known as al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War) – was not completely independent of al-Qaeda, it was clearly autonomous. Zarqawi's men 'refused to march under the banner of another individual or group,' recalls Nu'man bin-Uthman, a Libyan Islamist leader now living in London who was in contact with Zarqawi at the time. During or shortly before the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Zarqawi returned to Iran, where he met with bin Laden's military chief, Muhammad Ibrahim Makawi (Saif al-Adel), who asked him to coordinate the entry of al-Qaeda operatives into Iraq through Syria. Zarqawi readily agreed and by the fall of 2003 a steady flow of Arab Islamists were infiltrating Iraq via Syria. Consequently, Zarqawi came to be recognized as the regional "emir" of Islamist terrorists in Iraq – without (until last month) having sworn fealty to bin Laden."[139] The conservative newsmagazine the Weekly Standard, which has generally trumpeted alleged ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda, published an article concluding that Zarqawi was not tied to either.

On the alleged bin Laden connection, Nixon Center terrorism experts Robert S. Leiken and Stephen Brooke wrote:Though he met with bin Laden in Afghanistan several times, the Jordanian never joined al Qaeda. Militants have explained that Tawhid was "especially for Jordanians who did not want to join al Qaeda." A confessed Tawhid member even told his interrogators that Zarqawi was "against al Qaeda." Shortly after 9/11, a fleeing Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the main plotters of the attacks, appealed to Tawhid operatives for a forged visa. He could not come up with ready cash. Told that he did not belong to Tawhid, he was sent packing and eventually into the arms of the Americans.[140] And Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Washington Monthly that "U.S. intelligence had already concluded [in 2002] that Zarqawi's ties to al Qaeda were informal at best." He also noted that "if Zarqawi's ties to al Qaeda were loose, his ties to Saddam were practically non-existent." He argues that Saddam did not "harbor" Ansar al Islam, since they "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. Powell asserted that Saddam dispatched an agent to Ansar to forge an alliance with the Kurdish terrorists. If true, the far more likely explanation, however, 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."[141] While U.S. officials now know that reports of al-Zarqawi's leg being amputated are incorrect, one official still believes that al-Zarqawi may have received medical treatment in Baghdad.[142]

A CIA report in late 2004 concluded that there was no evidence Saddam's government was involved or even aware of this medical treatment, and found "no conclusive evidence the Saddam Hussein regime had harbored Zarqawi. A US official told Reuters that the report was a mix of new information and a look at some older information and did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions. 'To suggest the case is closed on this would not be correct,' the official said."[143] [144]

A US official familiar with the report told Knight-Ridder that "what is indisputable is that Zarqawi was operating out of Baghdad and was involved in a lot of bad activities." Another U.S. official summarized the report as such: "The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything." U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded to the report by saying, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

Zarqawi did not identify himself with bin Laden nor swear allegiance to him until October 2004, although he did twice seek financial support from al-Qaeda. Terrorist experts considered Zarqawi an "independent actor" who was setting himself up as a "competitor to bin Laden" rather than an al Qaeda operative.[145] Michael Isikoff reported in Newsweek that German law enforcement learned that Zarqawi's group operated in "opposition to" al-Qaeda and that Zarqawi even vetoed splitting charity funds with bin Laden's group.[146]

In an interview on Al-Majd TV, former al-Qaeda member Walid Khan, who was in Afghanistan fighting alongside Zarqawi's group, said, "The problem was that most of the Arabs there were Jordanians, supporters of Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi. We mixed with them. The problem was they didn't care about anyone but their sheikh, al-Maqdisi. They belonged to the Jordanian Bay'at Al-Imam, organized from 1995. They pledged allegiance to al-Maqdisi and were in jail for five years. They were sentenced to 15 years. They served five years and then were pardoned. So they went to Afghanistan. Their ideology further developed there. Of course, they accused the government, the army, and the police of heresy. This is the most dangerous group. I understood that they had differences of opinion with bin Laden on a number of issues and positions. Of course, we understood that only later. From the day al-Zarqawi's group arrived, there were [disagreements]"[147]

Scholars have added that cooperation between Saddam and al-Zarqawi goes against everything known about both people. Counterterrorism scholar Loretta Napoleoni quotes former Jordanian parliamentarian Layth Shubaylat, who was personally acquainted with both Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein: "'First of all, I don't think the two ideologies go together, I'm sure the former Iraqi leadership saw no interest in contacting al-Zarqawi or al-Qaeda operatives. The mentality of al-Qaeda simply doesn't go with the Ba'athist one.' When he was in prison [in Jordan with Shubaylat], 'Abu Mos'ab wouldn't accept me,' said Shubaylat, 'because I'm opposition, even if I'm a Muslim.' How could he accept Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator?"[148]

A letter from an Iraqi intelligence official dated August 2002 that was recovered in Iraq by U.S. forces and released by the Pentagon in March 2006 suggests that Saddam's government was "on the lookout" for Zarqawi in Baghdad and noted that finding Zarqawi was a "top priority"; three responses to the letter claimed that there was "no evidence" Zarqawi was in Iraq.[149]

One high-level Jordanian intelligence official told the Atlantic Monthly that al-Zarqawi, after leaving Afghanistan in December 2001, frequently traveled to the Sunni Triangle of Iraq where he expanded his network, recruited and trained new fighters, and set up bases, safe houses, and military training camps. He said, however, "We know Zarqawi better than he knows himself. And I can assure you that he never had any links to Saddam."[150] (for additional information, see May 2005)

September - November 2002

2003

Iraq War

2003

Senator Feingold: Mr. Chairman, I'll just conclude by saying this is the same road that the White House went down in the beginning by trying to patch together a few different anecdotes that may or may not have related to somebody, that may or may not have some connection to a group, that may or may not be connected to al-Qaeda. And the President had to actually admit the other day that there was no such connection.

Ambassador Bremer: But Senator, let me just correct the record on something you said about the President. If I understood what the President said was, he said that there was not a connection between Saddam Hussein and 11 September.

Senator Feingold: Right.

Ambassador Bremer: He did not say that there was no connection between terrorism and Saddam.

Senator Feingold: No, I agree with that.

Ambassador Bremer: I just want to correct the record.

Senator Feingold: What I am indicating is that the American people in polling believed, at the time of the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. So what I am suggesting is, the sloppiness in this regard is unfair to the American people. And I think there was a deliberate attempt to make the American people believe that somehow there was this connection.

2004

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.[192]

Commissioner John Lehman, 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.' 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.[197]

Formed in December 2001 out of a conglomeration of Kurdish Islamist groups, [Ansar al-Islam] is 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, '[Ansar] has 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.[199]

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."[200]

"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.[202]

2005

2006

I 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."[236] 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."[237] ABC News reporter Brian Ross commented that people on both sides of this controversy will use these tapes to support their side.

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.[238]

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."[244] 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."

The notebook also contains a transcript of a meeting between Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice president of Iraq. At this meeting, Rahman tells the vice president, "I met Mullah Omar the leader of Afghanistan and he welcomed the establishment of Islamic relations with Iraq and we foresee to tell them about our needs and they would like to have contacts with Russia but they feel that the Russians (unclear) with Afghanistan, they go to America (RR: probably means that the Russians side with the US against the Taliban). And they (RR: probably the Taliban) say that now we do not feel that Russia is our enemy and we do not know why they support the Northern Alliance (RR: non-Pashtun Afghani militant groups seeking to topple the Taliban). They (RR: probably the Taliban) want Iraq to intervene with Russia. According to the translation conducted by Ray Robinson's team, Rahman and Ramadan are quoted as saying:

At the end of the meeting, the vice president is quoted as saying "I gave Mr. President an overview about Afghanistan and its issues."

2007

Notes and References

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