Saturday, April 14, 2007

On the Iraq/Qaeda Connection, It's Senator Levin, Not the (AWOL) Bush Administration, Who's Spinning the Intelligence   [Andy McCarthy]

The invaluable terrorism researcher Tom Joscelyn had a devastating piece in yesterday's Daily Standard (on the Weekly Standard's website), demonstrating the lengths to which Senator Carl Levin and the Washington Post continue to go to bury and discredit solid evidence of a meaningful relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.  Levin's revisionist narrative that the connection was cooked up by neconservatives like former Defense under secretary Doug Feith, over the complete objection of the CIA, as a false justification for toppling the Iraqi regime is flat-out fantasy — although fantasy with legs given the uncritical recitals it gets in the mainstream media and the inexplicable failure of the Bush administration to counter it with facts. 

(Aside:  This is one of the worst abdications in the Bush record — the administration's insistence that it is "looking forward, not back," clearly motivated by fear that revisiting pre-war intelligence is a political loser given the unpopularity of the war.  The administration has facts on its side on this critical issue, and the legacy of the war — the crucial connection of Iraq to the overall war on terror — depends on it.  It is just reprehensible to shy from this debate.)

As Tom notes, Sen. Levin

now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. The Post summarized the inspector general's report as saying: " the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups."

This is simply revisionist history at its worst.

Although there were certainly disagreements between the CIA and Feith's shop, both argued in 2002 that there was a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, stated the CIA's position quite clearly in an October 7, 2002 letter to then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL). Tenet explained, "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Iraq and al Qaeda "have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression." Tenet warned, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." And, "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qaeda, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action."

Tenet was far from alone in these assessments. Michael Scheuer, the one-time head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, also used to be certain that Iraq and al Qaeda were working together. Scheuer's first book on al Qaeda, Through Our Enemies' Eyes, which was published in 2002, went into elaborate detail about the support the Iraqi regime was providing to al Qaeda. Among the areas of concern was Iraq's ongoing support for al Qaeda's chemical weapons development projects in the Sudan.

In 2004, after fashioning a career as a critic of the Bush administration, Scheuer did an about face. He suddenly claimed that there was no evidence of a relationship. He even decided to re-write history—literally. He revised Through Our Enemies' Eyes to be consistent with his newly formed opinion by claiming he was simply mistaken.

The bottom line is that members of the CIA, including the Agency's director, certainly believed in 2002 that there was a relationship between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. And no matter what he says now, Senator Levin knows that. In a June 16, 2003 appearance on NewsHour, Senator Levin explained:

"We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al-Qaida and Iraq, and there were real questions raised. And there are real questions raised about whether or not that link was such that the description by the intelligence community was accurate or whether or not they [note: "they" here refers to the intelligence community, not the Bush administration] stretched it."

The idea that Feith's analysts cooked up the connection, while the CIA shunned the very notion, is pure fantasy—a fantasy dreamed up by Senator Levin and some former CIA members who have repeatedly made clear their disdain for the Bush administration.

Tom also sorts through just some of what is known from the haul of Iraqi intelligence documents recovered after the U.S. invasion.  (And here, it is worth noting that the Bush administration has, for some reason, allowed the shut down by the Intelligence Community of a project to make these documents publicly available for analysts — the government itself plainly did not make reconstructing the workings of Saddam's regime a priority, and the IC is clearly content that we remain ignorant.)  Here's some of what Tom notes the known intel (which is but a fraction of the total) tells us:

• Saddam's Terror Training Camps & Long-Standing Relationship With Ayman al-Zawahiri.
• A 1992 IIS Document lists Osama bin Laden as an "asset."
• A 1997 IIS document lists a number of meetings between Iraq, bin Laden and other al Qaeda associates.
• A 1998 IIS document reveals that a representative of bin Laden visited Baghdad in March 1998 to meet with Saddam's regime.
• Numerous IIS documents demonstrate that Saddam had made plans for a terrorist-style insurgency and coordinated the influx of foreign terrorists into Iraq.

Forgetting all of these circumstances, among others, Tom also recalls, as Steve Hayes, myself, and others have for some time, that in 1998, "Ayman al-Zawahiri was in Baghdad ... and collected a check for $300,000 from the Iraqi regime."  I would add, for context, that this was in the same time frame as bin Laden and Zawahiri's infamous fatwa calling for the murder of Americans — which, if you read it, argues that American actions against Iraq are a big part of the justification.  It also came just a few months before al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in east Africa, the Clinton administration bombed a Sudanese phramaceutical factory because intel indicated it was a joint Iraqi/Qaeda chemical weapons venture, and Clinton counter-terror honcho Richard Clarke fretted that "wily old Osama would boogie to Baghdad" — of all places — if the U.S. made things too hot for Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Sure, maybe all this is just a big coincidence.  But, given that al Qaeda is a 24/7 terror operation whose main target is the U.S., I've always wondered for what earthly purpose Senator Levin and other connection naysayers figure Saddam Hussein gave Ayman Zawahiri 300K?

04/14 09:03 AMShare