Thomas Joscelyn

An Innocent Abroad?

2008-06-25T16:11:00.002-05:00

(This article is posted at WeeklyStandard.com)

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision earlier this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has now decided that the Bush administration was wrong to label Gitmo detainee Huzaifa Parhat an "enemy combatant." The Court of Appeals decided that Parhat should be released, transferred to another country, or granted another tribunal session.

Predictably, the decision has been celebrated by critics of the Bush administration and the Guantánamo detention facility. They have cited the decision as further evidence of the unjustness of America's detention policies. And some, including the editors of the New York Times, have highlighted Parhat's own "insistence that he was an innocent swept up in the chaos in Afghanistan."

However, Parhat is far from an obvious innocent. A closer look at documents released by the Department of Defense, as well as information from other sources, reveals that his story is not clear-cut. Because the opinion contains classified information, the Court of Appeals has not yet released it. And we may never see the classified evidence the court relied upon in making its determination. Nevertheless, given what is known about Parhat and his affiliations, there are ample reasons to think he was a threat, albeit perhaps a low-level one.

According to the DOD, 22 citizens of China have been detained at Gitmo. Five of them have been released, but 17 of them remain at Gitmo. Like Parhat, all of these men are Uighurs, that is, natives of China's Xinjiang region, or East Turkestan, as Uighurs call it. The Uighurs, who have been oppressed by various Chinese policies, have been fighting for their independence for decades. And given the deplorable human rights record of the Chinese regime, they have won at least some international support for their efforts.

Not all Uighur separatists are created equal though. A minority of them in the early 1980s formed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a separatist group rooted in radical Islamic ideology and dedicated to jihad. And by the early 1990s, the ETIM had become a significant fighting force with a presence throughout Central and South Asia. It was only a matter of time before the ETIM's members would cross paths with their Arab and Afghan ilk.

By the late 1990s, Hasan Mahsum, the ETIM's leader, began mingling with Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda's CEO reportedly gave Mahsum $300,000--although, this claim may come from the Chinese government, which is not always the most honest broker of information. However, we know for certain that bin Laden gave Mahsum's forces training space inside Afghanistan. In particular, the ETIM opened a training camp at Tora Bora.

And that is where Parhat was in October 2001 when, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, American forces bombarded the ETIM's Tora Bora training camp. The bombings sent the Uighurs, including Parhat, scrambling to Pakistan where they were arrested. During his tribunal session at Gitmo, Parhat admitted that he attended the ETIM's Tora Bora camp from June 2001 until the bombing began. During those months, he admitted to being trained in the use of small arms, including the Kalashnikov rifle and a pistol.

At his tribunal session, Parhat denied having any "Arab" (that is, al Qaeda) trainers at the Tora Bora camp or having had anything to do with al Qaeda. But he did admit that Mahsum was the leader of his group:

Q: There is an important gentleman in the Uighur community by the name of Hasan Mahsum; do you know who this man is?

Parhat: Yes. I saw that person.

Q: Who is he, please?

Parhat: He is a Turkistani person. [Note: As the DOD transcript notes, the Uighurs frequently refer to themselves as "Turkistani."]

Q. Is he the leader of your Uighur group?

Parhat. Yes.

Q. Would he give the Uighurs in the camp guidance and instruction on what to do?

Parhat. Maybe he would do that and there was another person and he was the leader of the camp guiding all the people. I saw this person twice at the camp. I forgot the leader name.

Q. Would that be Mr. Abdul Haq?

Parhat. Yes. . . .

Q. There is a concern that Mr. Hassan Maksum may have relationships with al Qaeda people. Do you know any thing about this?

Parhat. I don't think so. The people in Turkistan will not associate with al Qaeda.

On this last point, Parhat is either lying or ignorant of the relationship between the ETIM and al Qaeda. As the Combatant Status Review Board noted in its summary of evidence (a document used to determine whether or not a Gitmo detainee is an enemy combatant) for Parhat, the ETIM's training facilities at Tora Bora "were funded by Bin Laden and the Taliban."

Parhat denied this specific point too, but there is abundant evidence indicating that the Tora Bora training camp was an al Qaeda-Taliban-ETIM joint venture. For example, as terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna rightly noted in an interview earlier this year:

We have seen that al Qaeda and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement have released a number of statements and videos where ETIM is training in al Qaeda camps with their instructors. Hasan Mahsum, the leader of ETIM, was killed in South Waziristan--the area that al Qaeda was operating in 2003--by the Pakistani forces. There have been a number of ETIM members arrested in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are working very [closely] with Al-Qaeda. Abu [Zubaydah], the operations chief for Al-Qaeda, met with Uighur radical groups entering Pakistan. The relationship between the two is very strong.

Former Indian intelligence officer B. Raman has similarly explained the relationship between the ETIM and al Qaeda. Raman has written that the ETIM "is a major component of the terrorist network headed by bin Laden" throughout South and Central Asia. Raman further claims:

Hasan Mahsum, the ETIM ringleader, used to hide in Kabul and had an Afghan passport issued by the Taliban. Bin Laden asked the ETIM to stir up trouble in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then stage an organized infiltration into Xinjiang. The "Turkistan Army" under the ETIM fought along with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This "Army" has a special "China Battalion" with about 320 terrorists from Xinjiang. The battalion is under the direct command of Hasan Mahsum's deputy Kabar.

The Times's editorial noted that supporters of Parhat and his fellow Uighur detainees "maintain that they were captured by mistake and had no hostile intentions toward the United States." This is a common defense of the ETIM-associated detainees at Gitmo. They are supposedly only interested in targeting the Chinese regime, so the U.S. should look the other way.

But as disgusting as the Chinese regime's human rights record is, there is no moral equivalency between legitimate opposition and terrorists who seek to hijack their cause. Osama bin Laden's grand vision was to unite terrorist groups around the world by bringing nationalist, ethnic and other sectarian groups under the banner of his jihad. Bin Laden and al Qaeda were at least partially successful in this endeavor in Algeria, Somalia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Southeast Asia, South and Central Asia, as well as Iraq. There is every indication that he was successful in incorporating the ETIM into his global designs as well. Moreover, it is not true that the ETIM targets only Chinese interests. As Raman points out, the group has also "fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Uzbekistan" among other locations. ETIM trainees may profess a lack of hostility towards the United States, but once allied with al Qaeda, there is no telling where they may be asked to wage jihad.

We do not know what basis the Court of Appeals had for determining Parhat was improperly labeled an "enemy combatant." We may never see the classified evidence they relied upon. Perhaps there are mitigating factors that trump Parhat's disturbing ties. We can only hope that the Parhat decision was not grounded in an ignorance of the ETIM.

Harboring Al Qaeda

2008-06-11T12:52:00.004-05:00

(This article first appeared on the Weekly Standard's web site.)

THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE has once again released a report claiming that the Bush administration hyped prewar intelligence. The so-called Phase Two report is supposed to investigate the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence. In reality, the report is little more than yet another attempt by partisan Democrats to make political hay out of flawed prewar intelligence. (The only Republicans to endorse the report were two of the Senate's most liberal GOP members.) The committee focused exclusively on prewar statements by Bush administration officials, ignoring similar statements by leading Democrats. Therefore, the report is intended to portray the Bush administration in the worst possible light. But even with this bias, the committee came to a noteworthy conclusion: The Bush administration was right to claim that Saddam's regime was harboring al Qaeda members.

The Senate Intelligence Committee's report includes this conclusion at the end of a terse section on the Bush administration's claims about Saddam's prewar terror ties:

Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al Qaeda-related terrorist members were substantiated by the intelligence assessments.

Intelligence assessments noted Zarqawi's presence in Iraq and his ability to travel and operate within the country. The intelligence community generally believed that Iraqi intelligence must have known about, and therefore at least tolerated, Zarqawi's presence in the country.

Regarding postwar information collected by the U.S. intelligence community, the report reads:

Postwar information supports prewar assessments and statements that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad and that al Qaeda was present in northern Iraq.

These conclusions should not be surprising. In his book At the Center of the Storm, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet provided a number of details concerning the safe haven al Qaeda members received in Saddam's Iraq. For example, Tenet wrote that two of Ayman al-Zawahiri's top operatives, Thirwat Shihata and Yussef Dardiri, received safe haven in Baghdad. Tenet says that there was "concern that these two might be planning operations outside Iraq."

The first report on the uses of prewar intelligence published by the Senate Intelligence Committee in July 2004 also found that Zarqawi freely roamed around Iraq and Saddam's goons must have been aware of his presence. The authors of the Butler Report, the British government's investigation into prewar intelligence, found roughly the same. Even other al Qaeda members have, on occasion, been open about the relationship between Zarqawi, other al Qaeda operatives, and Saddam's regime in prewar Iraq.

Despite all of these findings, however, the myth that Zarqawi and other al Qaeda operatives lived in Saddam's neo-Stalinist state without receiving at least the dictator's tacit support has lived on. But now, even in a partisan report designed to attack the Bush administration's credibility, the Senate Intelligence Committee has admitted that Bush and his officials were right to argue that Saddam was harboring al Qaeda fugitives. Both prewar and postwar intelligence assessments confirm their view.

But no one should take the Senate Intelligence Committee's word one way or another on these issues. In fact, the only reason that we know the committee got the story of Saddam's safe haven for al Qaeda members right is because so many other sources have already confirmed it. And while the Senate Intelligence Committee got this issue right, it got many others wrong. The report is not even internally consistent and the committee simply ignored numerous pieces of information that got in the way of some of its conclusions.

One glaring illustration is the following baseless finding:

Iraq and al Qaeda did not have a cooperative relationship. Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al Qaeda to provide material or operational support.

Here, the committee simply regurgitated an old storyline invented by some analysts within the CIA and other intelligence bureaucracies. The truth is that this was a prewar assumption that went untested and is contradicted by a variety of pieces of evidence discovered both in the prewar as well as postwar period. Some of this evidence is cited in the committee's own report!

For example, if Saddam was willing to harbor al Qaeda terrorists, as the committee itself admits was substantiated by "postwar information," then how can the committee claim that Saddam spurned all offers of cooperation and was entirely "distrustful" of al Qaeda members? Isn't giving safe haven to wanted terrorists--who, according to George Tenet, may have been plotting attacks around the world--evidence of a "cooperative relationship"? And if Saddam was willing to give al Qaeda members safe haven, how can the committee be sure that he wasn't willing to do more for them?

Indeed, the committee ignored the best evidence of Saddam's true attitude towards al Qaeda and other "Islamic extremists"--Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in postwar Iraq. For instance, the Institute for Defense Analyses published a study of captured Iraqi regime documents in November 2007. The IDA report's authors found that when it came to "attacking Western interests":

Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda - as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision.

Moreover:

Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.

Documents cited in the IDA report show that Saddam had an agreement with Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman's Islamic group to cooperate in attacks against Hosni Mubarak's Egyptian regime in the early 1990s. Both of those terrorist groups have been core members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist joint venture. Other documents show that Saddam financed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who counterterrorism analyst Peter Bergen has called Osama bin Laden's "alter ego," and was willing to work with Hekmatyar's terrorists in attacking American forces in Somalia. Clearly, then, Saddam was willing at times to offer al Qaeda's terrorists more than just safe haven.

Another document from the mid-1990s, which was not cited in the IDA's analysis, relays Osama bin Laden's request for Iraqi assistance in performing "joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz." That is, bin Laden wanted Iraq's assistance in attacking U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. We do not know what, exactly, came of bin Laden's request. But the document indicates that Saddam's operatives "were left to develop the relationship and the cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up." According to the regime's own documents, therefore, Saddam did not "[refuse] all requests from al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." Saddam was willing to leave the relationship open to see what avenues for cooperation between his intelligence operatives and al Qaeda's terrorists may open up.

There's more, of course, but the Senate Intelligence Committee managed to avoid any direct mention of such documents, which contradict some of its findings. The report is, therefore, hardly comprehensive. However, we can be certain of at least one thing: Saddam harbored al Qaeda terrorists.

Even the Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee now admit that.

A Master Terrorist Is Killed

2008-02-13T14:50:00.001-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

According to multiple press accounts, Iran’s and Hezbollah’s master terrorist, Imad Mugniyah, is dead. He was reportedly killed by a car bomb in Damascus last night. Hezbollah is claiming that he was killed by the Israelis. But the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, disputed Hezbollah’s version: “Israel rejects any attempt by terrorist organisations to attribute to it any implication in this affair.”

Thus far, the press accounts I’ve read have done a decent job of summarizing Mugniyah’s early terrorist career in the 1980’s. Mugniyah’s involvement in the bombings of the U.S. Embassy (April 18, 1983) and the Marine barracks (October 23,1983) in Lebanon, which led to the U.S. retreat from that nation, is well known. Mugniyah’s role in a string of additional attacks including the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 (June 14, 1985) and the kidnapping and murder of various Americans is also widely known.

But here is something that none of the press accounts I’ve read today have reported: Imad Mugniyah played an instrumental role in al Qaeda’s rise. I detailed Mugniyah’s role in al Qaeda’s terror in Iran’s Proxy War Against America, a short book published by the Claremont Institute last year. I won’t go into all of the details again in this post, but here is a quick summary of the relationship:

• Mugniyah met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the early 1990’s. The two agreed to work together against their common enemies, including America. Al Qaeda operatives were then trained by Mugniyah and other Hezbollah trainers, as well as Iranian personnel, in Sudan, Lebanon, and Iran. Both the Clinton administration, in its first two indictments of al Qaeda and bin Laden, and the 9/11 Commission found significant evidence of this early collaboration.

• According to Bob Baer, a long-time CIA operative who tracked Mugniyah for years, one of Mugniyah’s goons facilitated the travel of an al Qaeda operative en route to the November 19, 1995, bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The bombing was among al Qaeda’s earliest operations.

• There is no real doubt that Iran and Mugniyah’s Hezbollah were primarily responsible for the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. But the 9/11 Commission also found evidence that al Qaeda may have played some role. Intelligence indicates that al Qaeda was planning a similar operation in the months prior. And afterwards, in telephone conversations that were evidently intercepted, Osama bin Laden received congratulations from his fellow terrorists, including Ayman al Zawahiri.

• Al Qaeda’s August 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were modeled after Mugniyah’s bombings in Lebanon in 1983. According to the 9/11 Commission, bin Laden asked Mugniyah for help in executing such attacks and Mugniyah agreed to provide his assistance. Thereafter, al Qaeda adopted Hezbollah’s modus operandi: simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers. Al Qaeda’s August 7, 1998, bombings directly mirrored Hezbollah’s simultaneous strike against the U.S. Marine barracks and a headquarters for French paratroopers on October 23, 1983. In fact, the 9/11 Commission found that some of the terrorists responsible for the embassy bombings were trained by Hezbollah. This is a crucial point: al Qaeda’s most successful attack prior to 9/11--the August 7, 1998, embassy bombings--was modeled after Hezbollah’s operations.

• After the 9/11 attacks, Bob Baer immediately suspected that Mugniyah and his masters had played some role. (I also discussed this in a previous article, "Sy Hersh’s Overactive Imagination".) Amazingly, the 9/11 Commission found that senior Hezbollah operatives were aware of and facilitated the travel of many of the 9/11 hijackers. This evidence was so “disturbing” that the Commission called for a further investigation into the matter. Although he was not named by the Commission directly, Mugniyah was reportedly one of the senior Hezbollah terrorists involved.

• There are reports, although unconfirmed, that Mugniyah may have helped senior al Qaeda operatives flee Afghanistan in late 2001.

There is much more to this story, which can be found in my short book on the topic: Iran’s Proxy War Against America.

Gates Gets It Right

2008-02-12T15:09:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates laid out the case for a continued NATO role in Afghanistan during a speech in Germany this past Sunday. Highlighting the gravity of the terrorist threat against Europe, Gates listed a number of terrorist plots that have been foiled in recent years and asked the audience to:

Imagine, for a moment, if some or all of these attacks had come to pass. Imagine if Islamic terrorists had managed to strike your capitals on the same scale as they struck in New York. Imagine if they had laid their hands on weapons and materials with even greater destructive capability--weapons of the sort all too easily accessible in the world today. We forget at our peril that the ambition of Islamic extremists is limited only by opportunity. (emphasis in original)

Then Gates said something that deserves more attention. He explained:

We should also remember that terrorist cells in Europe are not purely homegrown or unconnected to events far away--or simply a matter of domestic law and order. Some are funded from abroad. Some hate all western democracies, not just the United States. Many who have been arrested have had direct connections to Al Qaeda. Some have met with top leaders or attended training camps abroad. Some are connected to Al Qaeda in Iraq. In the most recent case, the Barcelona cell appears to have ties to a terrorist training network run by Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistan-based extremist commander affiliated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda--who we believe was responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Here, Gates is directly refuting what I will call the “homegrown-only myth.” That is, it is widely believed that attacks such as the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid and the July 7, 2005, bombings in London were executed by terrorists with no real affiliation to al Qaeda’s global network. Instead of being the work of an organized and professional terrorist network, it is widely believed that such attacks were cooked up by local extremists, with no support from more seasoned terrorist operatives. Some Western counterterrorism officials and analysts believe this to be true despite abundant evidence to the contrary. For example, as I argued in "The Real Madrid Bombers?", there are numerous threads connecting the terrorists responsible for the 3/11 attack to al Qaeda. The same can be said for the 7/7 attackers--they had clear ties to senior al Qaeda operatives operating out of Pakistan.

Hopefully, some in Secretary Gates’ audience paid close attention to what he had to say about the global terror network. If NATO fails in Afghanistan, we can expect even more attacks from the al Qaeda terrorists operating there and in northern Pakistan. Europe and the United States should be on guard against “homegrown-only” plots. There is certainly the potential for such attacks in the future, and some incidents both here and abroad appear to conform to this paradigm (e.g. the Fort Dix Six). But this does not mean we should bury our heads in the sand when it comes to the terror emanating from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as Iraq. Nor should we ignore the fact that al Qaeda still maintains an active network all across Europe.

NIE: An Abrupt About-Face

2007-12-05T14:05:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

As many recognize, the latest NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program directly contradicts what the U.S. Intelligence Community was saying just two years previously. And it appears that this about-face was very recent. How recent?

Consider that on July 11, 2007, roughly four or so months prior to the most recent NIE’s publication, Deputy Director of Analysis Thomas Fingar gave the following testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (emphasis added):

Iran and North Korea are the states of most concern to us. The United States’ concerns about Iran are shared by many nations, including many of Iran’s neighbors. Iran is continuing to pursue uranium enrichment and has shown more interest in protracting negotiations and working to delay and diminish the impact of UNSC sanctions than in reaching an acceptable diplomatic solution. We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons--despite its international obligations and international pressure. This is a grave concern to the other countries in the region whose security would be threatened should Iran acquire nuclear weapons.

This paragraph appeared under the subheading: "Iran Assessed As Determined to Develop Nuclear Weapons." And the entirety of Fingar’s 22-page testimony was labeled "Information as of July 11, 2007." No part of it is consistent with the latest NIE, in which our spooks tell us Iran suspended its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003 "primarily in response to international pressure" and they "do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."

The inconsistencies are more troubling when we realize that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Fingar is one of the three officials who were responsible for crafting the latest NIE. The Journal cites "an intelligence source" as describing Fingar and his two colleagues as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials." (The New York Sun drew attention to one of Fingar’s colleagues yesterday.)

So, if it is true that Dr. Fingar played a leading role in crafting this latest NIE, then we are left with serious questions:

Why did your opinion change so drastically in just four months time?

Is the new intelligence or analysis really that good? Is it good enough to overturn your previous assessments? Or, has it never really been good enough to make a definitive assessment at all?

Did your political or ideological leanings, or your policy preferences, or those of your colleagues, influence your opinion in any way?

Many in the mainstream press have been willing to cite this latest NIE unquestioningly. Perhaps they should start asking some pointed questions. (Don’t hold your breath.)

NIE: What Changed Since 2005?

2007-12-04T11:44:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

In a NIE just two years ago, the U.S. Intelligence Community (“IC”) concluded: “[We] assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immovable.” However, the latest NIE on Iran’s nuclear program says, “…we do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.” This is just one of many differences between the 2005 estimate, which concluded that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and this latest estimate, which claims that the “military” nuclear weapons program was shut down sometime in 2003. (Keep in mind that the “civilian” program, which everyone concedes is still up and running, could quite easily be repurposed for military use. And the NIE is drawing a line between the two without explaining how it made that judgment. See Question #3 here.)

What changed?

Judging from press accounts, anonymous intelligence officials are offering a number of answers. For example, McClatchy newspapers ran this description (emphasis added):

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said the judgment that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in mid-2003 emerged four to six months ago as a result of fresh intelligence, some of it from open sources and some from a "very rigorous scrub" of 20 years of information, some of which informed the 2005 NIE.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the analysts who drafted the report also had applied lessons learned from an erroneous 2002 NIE on Iraq.

Taken at face value, we have here a number of explanations. What is the “fresh intelligence” gathered by the IC? I am a strong advocate of open source analysis, but what “fresh intelligence” was gathered through open sources (e.g. press articles, television appearances, etc.)? Can you determine through open sources that Iran shut down its nuclear program in 2003? If so, how?

What did the “very rigorous scrub” of two decades of information entail? Keep in mind that the U.S. and the international community were in the dark for much of this period concerning Iran’s nuclear program. And why did this scrub produce different results now since it also “informed the 2005 NIE”? Is this a concession that the tradecraft used in the 2005 estimate was sloppy? Or, have the analysts let the current climate, with partisan debates over how to handle Iran dominating the headlines, dictate the way they viewed this intelligence?

This last question is particular apt, since the McClatchy account tells us that the “analysts who drafted the report also had applied lessons learned from an erroneous 2002 NIE on Iraq?” Did the lessons have to do with tradecraft? Or, do they mean they just wanted to make sure that the intelligence coming out of the IC was not used to justify any military action, as it did in the case of Iraq?

The Washington Post, based on anonymous sources, gives us a sense of what intelligence was used in the revised estimate (emphasis added):

Senior officials said the latest conclusions grew out of a stream of information, beginning with a set of Iranian drawings obtained in 2004 and ending with the intercepted calls between Iranian military commanders, that steadily chipped away at the earlier assessment.

In one intercept, a senior Iranian military official was specifically overheard complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered years earlier, according to a source familiar with the intelligence. The intercept was one of more than 1,000 pieces of information cited in footnotes to the 150-page classified version of the document, an official said.

Several of those involved in preparing the new assessment said that when intelligence officials began briefing senior members of the Bush administration on the intercepts, beginning in July, the policymakers expressed skepticism. Several of the president's top advisers suggested the intercepts were part of a clever Iranian deception campaign, the officials said.

What drawings were obtained? Were there any intercepts that cut against the thesis that the program was shuttered in 2003? Were any of the “more than 1,000 pieces of information” cited in the report contradictory? If so, how were these contradictions explained away?

As the Post notes, senior administration officials expressed their skepticism concerning these intercepts, noting that it could be part of an elaborate deception campaign. The IC then did a review to determine if this was plausible and evidently concluded that the intercepts were valid. I have no reason to think their judgment is wrong, but then again, who knows?

Key questions regarding the intercepts: Are the conversations intercepted between parties that would know the full scope of the program? Are intercepts alone enough to validate the cessation of the “military” program in 2003, or is human intelligence also needed? Did any human intelligence go into this assessment? Are there any intercepts pertaining to the current state of the “military” nuclear program? Do any of the intercepts relate to the “civilian” nuclear program and its dual uses?

It will be interesting to follow the details of what made up this NIE in the press over the next few days.

Additional note: Over at NRO’s The Corner, Seth Leibsohn offers his own rundown of the different explanations for the flip-flop appearing in the press.

Five Questions Concerning the Latest NIE

2007-12-04T11:40:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

The story dominating the news cycle right now is the public release of "Key Judgments" from an NIE on Iran’s nuclear program. In particular, the first sentence of the NIE is drawing the press’s intention: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…" But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Given the poor performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community ("IC") in drafting previous NIE’s, we should review the IC’s work with a skeptical eye--no matter what conclusions are drawn. Interestingly, the IC now concedes that it is certain Iran had a nuclear weapons program. But that isn't getting the headlines. And after having read the little that has been made public from this NIE, we are left with substantive questions.

First, what intelligence is this assessment based upon?

Any student, or even casual observer, of the U.S. intelligence community knows that it has done a remarkably poor job of recruiting spies inside unfriendly regimes. For example, we had no meaningful spies inside Saddam’s regime. That was at least part of the reason the U.S. intelligence community misjudged Saddam’s WMD programs so badly. (Whatever came of Saddam’s WMD, U.S. intelligence clearly did not know what was going on since the few sources it had were on the periphery of Saddam’s regime.)

Reading the latest NIE does not provide, of course, any clues as to how the IC came to these conclusions. If the IC does have good sources inside the Iranian regime and its putative nuclear program, then quite naturally it would want to protect them. And we wouldn’t expect to see any information about sources in a declassified "Key Judgments" such as this.

However, there are good reasons to suspect that the IC does not have good intelligence inside Iran. For example, both of the leading members (one Republican, one Democrat) of the House Intelligence Committee explained back in 2006 that we did not really know then what was going on inside Iran. And the Robb-Silberman Commission, which investigated what the IC knew about WMD programs around the world, found in 2005: "Across the board, the Intelligence Community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors. In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or ten years ago." Understandably, the Commission refrained from discussing the specifics of the intelligence community’s infiltration, or lack thereof, of both the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. But it is a safe bet that the statement cited above applied in both cases.

Thus, we should not be confident, at all, that the IC has the type of intelligence that would allow it to make a definitive assessment one way or another. This is true no matter what conclusions the IC publishes. Who or what are the sources cited by IC? How do we know they are telling the truth? If they are members of the Iranian regime, have their so-called bona fides been established? Are they in a position to know what they claim to know? Do they have any motives to lie, or distort the truth? We should be mindful of all of these questions and more.

Second, what has changed since 2005?

As this latest NIE notes, its conclusions are at odds with what the IC believed in 2005. The last page of the declassified Key Judgments notes significant differences between what the IC believed in 2005 and what it is saying now. In 2005, the IC noted: "[We] assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immovable." Now the IC says, "…we do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." So, in 2005 the IC was sure that Iran was determined to build a nuclear weapon and now it is not sure at all. This is a profound change in opinion and, at a minimum, does not inspire confidence that the IC can get this story right. After all, if the IC’s judgments can change so drastically in two years time, why should we believe any of its pronouncements one way or the other?

What is the basis for this flip-flop? What has been learned in the meantime to warrant such an about-face?

Third, how did the IC draw its line between a "civilian" nuclear program and a military one?

In the very first footnote the authors of the NIE explain: "For the purposes of this Estimate, by ‘nuclear weapons program’ we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

So, is the IC then assuming that Iran’s "declared civil work" is necessarily benign? One of the key issues with respect to Iran’s "civilian" nuclear program is its capacity, with some tweaking here and there, to be used for military purposes. For example, according to the New York Times in early 2006, the IAEA concluded that there was evidence suggesting "links between Iran’s ostensibly peaceful nuclear program and its military work on high explosives and missiles." Indeed, the authors of the NIE explicitly recognize the possibility of the civilian program being diverted for military uses:

Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so. For example, Iran’s civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing. We also assess with high confidence that since fall 2003, Iran has been conducting research and development projects with commercial and conventional military applications--some of which would also be of limited use for nuclear weapons.

So, then, the NIE’s conclusions apply strictly to Iran’s alleged halt of its military and clandestine programs. As we know, however, uranium enrichment is the most important component of developing the bomb and Iran indisputably has the capacity. (Again, with some tweaking, Iran can use its declared enrichment facilities at some point to make weapons-grade material.) But, this leads us to ask another simple question.

Fourth, how does the IC know that Iran has stopped its clandestine activities with respect to developing nuclear weapons?

Returning to the first footnote of the NIE’s Key Judgments, the IC argues that, in 2003, Iran ceased its "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work." How does the IC know that Iran did not continue working on "weapon design and weaponization" covertly? Does it think that its sources are so good that they can rule out that possibility? Remember that Iran carried out much of its work on its nuclear program clandestinely for the better part of two decades. And some of these clandestine activities involved dealings with the AQ Khan network, the scope of which was not fully appreciated until it had already been doing business for years. How can the IC be sure that Iran’s clandestine activities ceased in 2003?

Note that the IC argues that Iran supposedly gave up its covert uranium conversion and enrichment work. How does the IC know that? Are we to believe that the IC’s penetration of Iran’s intelligence services, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other parties controlled by the mullahs is so iron-clad that it can know this with certainty? Furthermore, is it possible that Iran did not need to do said work covertly because it has been openly enriching uranium?

Fifth, how does the IC know what motivated Iran’s alleged change in behavior?

The NIE claims that "Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure." How does the IC know what motivated Iran’s alleged change in behavior? Did the Iranians tell someone? Is this coming from clandestine sources? Assuming for the moment that Iran really did halt its program, are we to believe that a substantial U.S.-led military presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq (or potential presence in Iraq, depending on when in 2003 this change supposedly occurred), had nothing to do with Iran’s supposed decision? That is, are we to believe that U.S. led forces on Iran’s eastern and western borders had nothing to do with Tehran’s decision-making process?

We are left with a number of important questions. And without knowing the answers to these questions, the IC’s opinions are best viewed with a skeptical eye.

Bin Laden's Latest Propaganda

2007-11-29T19:07:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

As predicted, the latest purported bin Laden tape blames American foreign policy (that is, his conspiratorial notion of America’s foreign policy) for al Qaeda’s terror. The Associated Press has reported translations of excerpts of the tape, which were broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Bin Laden says he was the "only one responsible" for the 9/11 attacks. Moreover:

The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance's aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that.

Bin Laden wants free reign inside Afghanistan again, so he calls upon European nations to abandon the U.S.-led effort there:

Europe went along with it (the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan) because they had no other alternative, only to be a follower.

It is better for you [European citizens] to stand against your leaders who are dropping in on the White House, and to work seriously to lift the injustice against the believers.

Of course, this is fairly typical of al Qaeda’s propaganda. In the group’s messages to the West, they claim that their terror is merely a "Defensive Jihad," waged as retribution against the West for its alleged conspiratorial assault on Muslims. In its messages to fellow Muslims and in laying out the Islamic justifications for their attacks, however, al Qaeda argues strenuously for an "Offensive Jihad" waged against the West because we are infidels who refuse to follow their strict sharia laws and offend Allah’s supposed will.

More later when a full transcript of the tape becomes available.

Al Qaeda's Propaganda

2007-11-28T13:25:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

Press reports indicate that a new tape from Osama bin Laden is about to be released. This account from Adnkronos International (AKI) provides an interesting detail about how the video will be distributed:

A new al-Qaeda video containing Osama Bin Laden's latest message "must be posted to Western websites," the terror network's media arm as-Sahab has ordered cyber jihadists.

"You must spread the new message from Sheikh Osama bin Laden in every way, especially via Western websites," said As-Sahab, which produces al-Qaeda's videos and audiotapes.

In a web message announcing the imminent posting of bin Laden's new message, entitled "To the European people", As-Sahab also gives instructions on how best to distribute the new video.

"Any means of distributing the video should be used in order to get the truth across to them about their war which they are losing and reveal to them the reality which they ignore," said As-Sahab. …

That is, al Qaeda is giving explicit orders for how its propaganda should be spread. But we shouldn’t accept any part of it at face value.

This seems obvious enough, but still many commentators and analysts are citing al Qaeda’s propaganda as if it says something meaningful about our nation. This is especially true when it comes to our foreign policy. How many times in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the conflicts that followed were we told by pundits that America’s foreign policy was to blame? This school of “thought” is propounded by people like former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who reads bin Laden’s statements and takes at face value polling done in the Middle East (while ignoring that Arab regimes pump out propaganda of their own on a daily basis to demonize America and America’s “policies,” thereby shaping public opinion) and concludes: “We need to acknowledge that we are at war, not because of who we are, but because of what we do. We are confronting a jihad that is inspired by the tangible and visible impact of our policies.”

Al Qaeda is happy to play along. For more than a decade now, bin Laden has repeatedly pointed out our supposed flaws and that his terror is really all our fault. I am sure the latest tape will have a healthy dose of this rhetoric as well as the usual conspiratorial nonsense. (Remember, for example, that bin Laden told us back in September how President Kennedy was assassinated because he wanted to end the Vietnam war and this “angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation.”)

But while bin Laden and al Qaeda say one thing to us, they say something entirely different in their missives to Muslims. This is the essential lesson of Raymond Ibrahim’s excellent book, The Al Qaeda Reader. Three key paragraphs from Ibrahim’s Foreword explain this difference:

By now, people in the West are vaguely familiar with some of al-Qaeda’s messages. Every so often, the images of bin Laden and Zawahiri surface, usually on the Arabic satellite station al-Jazeera, condemning the West. These speeches are then translated and posted on the Internet (which is fast becoming al-Qaeda’s primary conduit for spreading its messages). Though both men have delivered many such messages to the West, their theme is always the same: al-Qaeda is merely retaliating for all the injustices the West, and the United States in particular, has brought upon Muslims.

Largely absent from the Western hemisphere, however, are al-Qaeda’s theological treatises, which justify and glorify violence and hatred toward the West within an Islamic framework. Written for Muslim audiences, they are rarely translated into English or disseminated to a non-Muslim public. This is unfortunate, since they reveal much more about al-Qaeda’s ideology than the more famous political speeches.

In these theological tracts, al-Qaeda gives Muslims reasons why they should hate and fight the West that differ from those they give in their political speeches. In the latter, bin Laden and Zawahiri insist they are waging a “Defensive Jihad” against an oppressive West. When discussing the tenets of Islam, however, they argue to Muslims that Muslims should battle the West because it is the infidel, or the “Great Satan.”

Ibrahim rightly calls speeches like the one that is about to be released “wholly propagandistic in nature,” noting that they are “issued with the express purpose of demoralizing the West while inciting the [Muslim community].” In their theological treatises, however, al Qaeda lays out a myriad of justifications for waging an “Offensive Jihad” against the West. Democracy, women’s rights, secularism, homosexuality, sexuality, and atheism: these are just some of the aspects of Western society al Qaeda’s leaders cite as evidence of our supposed moral decay. We are, in their words, the “infidels” and deserve to die. Indeed, they argue “practically everything valued by the immoral West is condemned under sharia law.” That is, our Western society is wholly at odds with the fascist laws they seek to impose.

There is much more, of course, but you get the point. They really do hate us for who we are.

Ignore what they say in their propaganda.

Do We Have Spies Inside Iran?

2007-10-29T12:21:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

Over at his new blog "connecting the dots," Gabriel Schoenfeld--who is always a "must read" when it comes to intelligence matters--is discussing Kenneth Timmerman’s new book, Shadow Warriors. I have not yet read Timmerman’s book, but Schoenfeld is discussing one of Timmerman’s claims that I have looked into--that is, I’ve tried to look into it as much as I can. According to Schoenfeld, Timmerman writes that "to this day, the CIA has no spies in Iran" and he attributes this claim to "numerous agency insiders and other sources."

Schoenfeld points out that if the CIA did have spies inside Iran, Langley would have an incentive to tell journalists like Timmerman that they didn’t. It is a fair point. The Agency certainly does have a strong incentive to protect its most important sources. Despite his "distrust" of Timmerman’s account, Schoenfeld says his "best guess, knowing a bit about CIA difficulties in recruiting human sources, is that his claim about the agency’s non-coverage of Iran is accurate."

I am also inclined to believe Timmerman is right. Here’s why.

In 2006, Chris Wallace of Fox News interviewed Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who was then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra was asked what we know about Iran’s nuclear program:

WALLACE: Congressman, how close is Iran to actually developing a nuclear weapon, or don't we really know?

HOEKSTRA: I'd say we really don't know. We're getting lots of mixed messages. Obviously, we're getting lots of different messages from their leadership, the stuff that they are saying in public. It all points out the fact we need to do much better in rebuilding our intelligence community, reshaping it, transforming it, making sure that we give public policy--that we give policymakers the information that they need so that we can make better decisions.
We've got a long way to go in rebuilding our intelligence community. We're focused on this in a bipartisan basis, and we're going to keep trying to build the intelligence community that we outlined in the reform bill that we passed a couple of years ago.

WALLACE: But, Chairman Hoekstra, I mean, almost everyone agrees this is the major foreign policy issue or challenge facing this country today, and you're saying we really don't know what's going on in Tehran?

HOEKSTRA: Hey, sometimes it's better to be honest and to say there's a whole lot we don't know about Iran that I wish we did know, and we as public policymakers need to know that as we're moving forward and as decisions are being made on Iran, we don't have all of the information that we would like to have. And that's nothing more than being honest, being honest with the American people of saying in some of this stuff, we wish we had the information, but right now we don't.

During the same session, Wallace also interviewed Jane Harman, Hoekstra’s Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee. Harman concurred with Hoekstra: "We don't know. Our intelligence is thin. I don't think we have enough sources. I don't think our analysis is sharp enough."

Is it possible that the CIA hid its sources inside Iran from the senior ranking Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, so much so that they went on television warning that we didn’t have any real significant intel inside Iran? Maybe, but that certainly isn’t likely. You could argue that Hoekstra and Harman did not say that the CIA had no spies at all inside Iran, which is Timmerman’s claim. That’s true, but their statements leave us in the same place--the U.S. intelligence community is blind when it comes to Iran.

The Robb-Silverman Commission investigated U.S. intelligence failures with respect to Iraq’s WMD programs and also looked into the state of the intelligence community’s penetration of other nations’ programs, including Iran. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Sure, there were some successes, such as the CIA’s infiltration of A.Q Khan’s nuclear proliferation network. (I should note, however, that the CIA’s penetration of Khan’s network came rather late in the game. Khan had been doing deals around the world for the better part of a decade, if not longer, by the time American intelligence finally got good sources on the inside.) But overall, the CIA and its fellow intelligence agencies knew little about places like Iran and North Korea.

For example, the Commission found: "Across the board, the Intelligence Community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors. In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or ten years ago." Understandably, the Commission refrained from discussing the specifics of the intelligence community’s infiltration, or lack thereof, of both the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. But it is a safe bet, in my opinion, that the statement cited above applied in both cases.

There’s much more, including reports that the CIA’s network of spies inside Iran was compromised by its own ineptitude. But, I’ll leave it there for now.

Thus, I think Timmerman and Schoenfeld are right to think that the United States has few, if any, spies inside Iran. The preceding discussion dealt mainly with Iran’s nuclear program. Perhaps the CIA has spies with knowledge of other aspects of the Iranian regime, but again that’s doubtful.

In the case of Iraq, as Bob Woodward reported in Plan of Attack, the United States had recruited only a handful of its own assets inside Saddam’s regime, and these were on the periphery. My bet is that we face the same situation with Iran: The CIA most likely has few high-value spies working on its behalf inside Iran.

Fatah al-Islam: Syrian Intelligence + al Qaeda?

2007-10-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

According to the New York Sun and the Washington Post, the UN Secretary General has published a report linking an al Qaeda affiliate in Lebanon, Fatah al-Islam, to Syrian intelligence. Fatah al-Islam has engaged in heavy fighting with Lebanese forces at times, but under constant pressure seems to have been significantly degraded in recent months.

The UN’s analysis reportedly draws heavily from a letter Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora wrote Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. According to the Sun, the "letter draws upon information gathered during the interrogation of captured leaders." Indeed, the Sun says that Siniora wrote: "Direct contact between some of Fatah al-Islam's leaders and some senior Syrian intelligence officers, which were revealed in the interrogations, are consistent with the suspicion that Syrian intelligence has used Fatah al-Islam to serve its political and security objectives in Lebanon."

MEMRI has posted excerpts from Siniora’s letter as well as Syria’s response here. See also MEMRI’s previous report.

Now, there are some who have claimed that Fatah al-Islam could not possibly cooperate with both al Qaeda and the Syrian regime. After all, don’t we know that the Baathist, Alawite regime in Syria is simply incapable of colluding with Sunni Islamists? Such thinking, however, is flawed for a variety of reasons. And this is precisely why I and others have argued that it does not make sense to carve up our terrorist enemies into impenetrable ideological boxes. Al Qaeda’s members, including its most senior leaders, have proven willing to work with the enemy of their enemies, despite any theological or ideological differences, time and again. Indeed, there is a lengthy history of collaboration between Syria’s senior partner in terror, Iran, and al Qaeda.

Getting back to the case of Fatah al-Islam, included below are just some of the threads tying the group to both al Qaeda and Syrian intelligence. In addition, links to some of the reporting on the controversy over Fatah al-Islam are included:

- As the BBC noted in September, Fatah al-Islam is an offshoot of "Fatah al-Intifada (Fatah Uprising), a Syrian-backed Palestinian group based in Lebanon." The BBC also notes that Fatah al-Islam is led by Shaker al-Abssi, who has spend much of his time living in Damascus. Interestingly enough, during his time in Syria, al-Abssi "is believed to have become a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, with whom he allegedly helped plan the assassination of a US diplomat, Laurence Foley, in Amman in 2002."

- The Syrian authorities arrested al-Abssi in 2002 and sentenced him to prison for three years, but then let him out. According to the Sun, Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora cited al-Abssi’s release and subsequent links to Syrian intelligence as evidence that the two are working together. This makes sense if you think about it: The Syrians let him go free, just as long as he does what they want him to. That is, assuming he was really imprisoned.

- Despite the aforementioned ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Abssi denies any ties to al Qaeda but endorses the group’s ideology. His denial rings hallow. As the BBC reported, Fatah al-Islam’s statements have appeared on al Qaeda-associated web sites.

- James Gordon Meek of the New York Daily News explained Fatah al-Islam’s ties to al Qaeda in June: "Fatah Al-Islam sprang up quickly in one northern refugee camp, which they were expelled from. Once inside Nahr Al-Bared, they fought with Lebanese army troops. Their biggest backer is Asbat Al-Ansar, which the State Department in 2002 called an ‘Al Qaeda affiliate’ that ‘receives money through international Sunni extremist networks and Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.’ Asbat Al-Ansar fighters have fought recently in the notorious southern refugee camp Ayn Al-Hilweh, where Al Qaeda has its own strong presence." Meek also cited two U.S. counterterrorism officials as dismissing the Lebanese claim that Fatah al-Islam was working with Syria. Again, the UN is not dismissing that claim.

- On October 18, the Daily Star in Lebanon reported that, after "weeks of negotiations," eleven families of Fatah al-Islam members left Lebanon for Syria. Obviously, they believe they will be much safer under the Syrian regime’s watchful eye.

- In May, Evan Kohlmann over at the Counterterrorism Blog believed that the "connections between Fatah al-Islam and the Syrian government remain hazy at best," but "there is significant and troubling evidence linking the group to Al-Qaida fighters in Iraq and elsewhere." According to the UN and the Lebanese government, however, the connections between the Syrians and Fatah al-Islam are not hazy. In any event, Kohlmann wrote an interesting analysis of the al Qaeda angle.

- Walid Phares, also of the Counterterrorism Blog, provided a detailed analysis of the ties between Fatah al-Islam, Syrian intelligence, and al Qaeda here.

- Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora gave an interview to Time magazine this past May in which he discussed Fatah al-Islam’s ties to Syrian intelligence. He left open the possibility then that the Syrian operatives were acting as rogue agents, but that was always unlikely for dozens of reasons and is not what he is saying now.

- The State Department added Fatah al-Islam to its list of Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations in August.

- Michael Young and Michael J. Totten have both taken Seymour Hersh to task for his ridiculous reporting on this issue. Hersh believes that somehow the U.S. and the Lebanese Government are supporting Sunni extremists like Fatah al-Islam. Of course, the situation is precisely reverse. Hersh’s reporting is prime example of how skewed the press’s coverage of the "war on terror" can become. Indeed, Hersh’s reporting mirrors the propaganda of Syria’s government.

Showdown With Iran: A Grand Bargain?

2007-10-26T10:58:00.000-05:00

(This entry was cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

PBS aired a new FRONTLINE documentary this past Tuesday titled "Showdown With Iran." The documentary was produced with the intent of highlighting the source of tensions between the U.S. and Iran since 9/11, but it fell well short of providing an accurate portrait for a variety of reasons.

At one point, for example, the documentary implies that relations between the two nations were improving until President Bush included Iran in the "Axis of Evil" during his January 2002 State of the Union speech. This verbal assault supposedly emboldened Iran’s hardliners and further marginalized the reformists, thereby damaging a real opportunity for meaningful change in the relationship between the two nations. This tripe is frequently repeated, but it is a hollow critique.

In reality, Iran’s reformists have no control over Iran’s terrorist proxies or national security apparatus and, therefore, are and have been incapable of curtailing the hardliners for decades. The ayatollah and his attending mullahs are the real power in Iran, and until this changes the reformists are feckless. So, whether Iran was in or out of the "Axis of Evil" made no difference at the end of the day because the reformists had no real power to speak of in any event. Moreover, the PBS documentary skirts the issue of the hardliners’ unsavory activities at the time and throughout history, which the reformists have never been able to remedy. (More on this later.)

The documentary also implies that the United States spurned a legitimate Iranian offer to settle all debts, so to speak, by striking a "grand bargain." This offer supposedly came in May 2003 via a Swiss Diplomat named Tim Guldimann. The offer is oft-cited by the left as evidence that the Bush administration recklessly flopped a legitimate opportunity to engage in meaningful dialog with Iran. But again, this is nonsense. As Michael Rubin explained in THE WEEKLY STANDARD previously, the Guldimann memo was the work of a wishful thinking, freelancing, Western diplomat, and not a serious attempt by the Iranians to strike a deal.

To its credit, PBS did include some doubts about the Guldimann offer. But the overall impression I got watching the documentary was that PBS thinks there was a legitimate opportunity for setting aside our differences in May 2003. Offering a dissenting view was Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state during President Bush’s first term. A transcript of PBS’s interview with Armitage, snippets of which were included in the documentary, is available online. Armitage was asked about the Guldimann offer and he confirmed Rubin’s take:

PBS: After the invasion [of Iraq], there's been a lot of discussion about the so-called "grand bargain" fax that came through from the Swiss ambassador. Tell us your recollection of that.

Armitage: Our discussions with Iranians were handled by the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, for which we were very grateful, but it had been our view that the Swiss ambassador in Tehran was so intent -- and I mean this positively -- but he was so intent on bettering relations between "the Great Satan," the United States, and Iran that we came to have some questions about where the Iranian message ended and the Swiss message may begin.

I remember talking with people from our Near East division about a fax that came in from the Swiss ambassador, and I think our general feeling was that he had perhaps added a little bit to it because it wasn't in consonance with the state of our relations. And we had had some discussions, ... particularly through intelligence channels with high-ranking Iranian intelligence people, and nothing that we were seeing in this fax was in consonance with what we were hearing face to face. So we didn't give it much weight.

PBS: What were you hearing face to face?

We were getting no cooperation on questions of terrorism, particularly ... turning people over. We had in Europe some very high-level discussions in intelligence channels and were getting a lack of cooperation. ...

Others disagree with Armitage, but he has the better of them on the facts. He rightly points out that the U.S. was already in face-to-face talks with the Iranians, they did not make an offer anything like the Guldimann memo in these talks, and the Guldimann memo was out of step with the rest of Iran’s behavior.

Interestingly, the hardliners themselves say that the offer was not genuine. Hossein Shariatmadari, a mouthpiece for the Ayatollah and editor-in-chief of Kayhan, the regime’s state-run newspaper, was also asked about the Guldimann memo:

Shariatmadari: Whoever wrote that letter was in no position to do so. Such issues are of paramount political importance, and no such thing was discussed at the highest levels.

PBS: Just to be clear: ... Are you clear in your mind that it was definitely not approved by the National Security Council and the Supreme Leader, or is there a chance maybe that it was, but somehow kept quiet?

Shariatmadari: No, I'm very confident that that was not the case. I'm quite aware of the Supreme Leader's views; those viewpoints are well known by the public. Not at all. I'm quite certain that this did not happen. We are even a bit suspicious that the Swiss ambassador wrote that fax himself; we don't know it for sure. ... It was not an important issue, and I'm sure the Supreme Leader and the National Security Council had nothing to do with it.

Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn’t trust anything a regime mouthpiece has to say. But in this instance it is in his and his regime’s interest to pretend that they were legitimately interested in settling our differences and it was the United States that made such accomadation impossible. This is a tailor-made propaganda opportunity, but Shariatmadari shot it down anyway. That is interesting.

PBS included Shariatmadari’s comments in the documentary, but the narrator introduced them by saying something like, "the Iranians now say…"; the implication being that they changed their stance since the "offer" was made. That is not the case. The offer was bogus. The hardliners never wanted any part of this and they are the real power in Iran. Too bad PBS didn’t take the time to explain that.

Saudi Cash for al Qaeda

2007-10-10T15:22:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at the WorldwideStandard.com)

The Treasury Department announced today that it had designated three Saudi nationals as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (“SDGTs”). All three are accused of providing funds to al Qaeda’s affiliate in the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group (“ASG”).

The first, Abdul Rahim Al-Talhi, is described as an “al Qaida-affiliated financier, a loyal colleague of Usama bin Laden, and a member of a Saudi Arabia-based donor network funding terrorists and supporting extremist activity.” The second, Muhammad ‘Abdallah Salih Sughayr, is the “principal conduit” for “unidentified Saudi extremist donors wishing to provide financial and ideological support to the ASG network in the Philippines.” And the third, Fahd Muhammad ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz Al-Khashiban, “gave then-ASG leader Khadaffy Janjalani approximately US $18,000 to finance a planned ASG bombing operation targeting either the U.S. or the Australian embassy in Manila [in the early 2000s].” The plot was disrupted by Philippine authorities “before its completion,” but “Khashiban continued to routinely provide money to the ASG.”

I thought of two things, primarily, when reading this today. First, every account I’ve read has said that the Saudis have been fairly unhelpful in cracking down on the jihadi finance network operating on their own soil. As Investor’s Business Daily wrote in late September:

Asked by ABC News how many Saudis have been charged with funding terror since 9/11, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said, "There have not been any." Not one? "No," he asserted.

That is, despite all of their promises to help stop the flow of jihadi cash, the Saudis have done little to nothing. They are simply not interested in shutting off the pipeline of petrodollars for terror, even though al Qaeda has repeatedly targeted Saudi assets and interests. Talk about duplicity!

An anonymous Jordanian Intelligence official perhaps explained it best in 2005 when he told the German magazine Cicero: “As an Islamist, I go to the Saudis to get money. When I need weapons, logistical support, or military terrorist training and equipment, I go to the Iranians.” We know he was right on the latter count too.

The second thing I thought of was the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) report investigating the Agency’s own pre-9/11 intelligence failures. The OIG’s report built upon the Congressional “Joint Inquiry” report, which was the first to investigate the intelligence community’s failures. The OIG authored its report in 2005, but it was not released until this last August. Most of the attention the media gave the report focused on George Tenet’s failings as the Director of Central Intelligence, but the report also included this interesting passage:

The Joint Inquiry [JI] also argued that both the FBI and CIA had failed to identify the extent of support from Saudi nationals or groups for terrorist activities globally or within the United States and the extent to which such support, to the extent it existed, was knowing or inadvertent. While most of the JI discussion on the Saudi issue dealt with issues involving the FBI and its domestic operations, the report also [redacted] The Team found that a significant gap existed in the CIA's understanding of Saudi extremists' involvement in plotting terrorist attacks. The primary reasons for this gap were the difficulty of the task, the hostile operational environment, and [redacted].

As the OIG found, a “significant gap existed” in the CIA’s understanding of the role Saudi nationals played in sponsoring terrorism. Add that to the list of pre-9/11 blind spots.

One final note: What is the Bush administration doing to pressure the Saudis to do more on this front? Anything at all?

Hat tip for the Treasury Department’s announcement: Zachary Abuza at the Counterterrorism Blog.

Beat to the Punch

2007-10-09T13:12:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted over at the WorldwideStandard.com)

The web is buzzing with news this morning that the latest video of Osama bin Laden was possibly leaked by someone inside the U.S. intelligence community to the media. That leak reportedly led al Qaeda to shut down a hole in its Internet infrastructure, called "Obelisk," thereby closing a fruitful window into the terror organization’s web activities. The New York Sun’s Eli Lake and the Washington Post are both reporting on this unfortunate development this morning.

Much of the attention thus far has focused on the damage done to our national security--and rightfully so. But there is potentially another twist to this. According to Lake’s account, the SITE Institute first provided the video and a transcript of it to the National Counterterrorism Center. Here is how Lake’s report explains it:

The head of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors Jihadi Web sites and provides information to subscribers, Rita Katz, said she personally provided the video on September 7 to the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter.

Ms. Katz yesterday said, "We shared a copy of the transcript and the video with the U.S. government, to Michael Leiter, with the request specifically that it was important to keep the subject secret. Then the video was leaked out. An investigation into who downloaded the video from our server indicated that several computers with IP addresses were registered to government agencies."

This means that a small, private firm got its hands on the latest missive from Osama bin Laden before the federal government did. Think about that. The U.S. Government spends billions of dollars each year tracking the al Qaeda threat. And yet, a comparatively small, independent, and private firm got their hands bin Laden’s latest message first. What does that say about the need for reform with the U.S. intelligence community?

In the Washington Post’s account, intelligence officials recognized that this aspect of the story may make them look bad:

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable, and one official said SITE had been "tremendously helpful" in ferreting out al-Qaeda secrets over time.

So, although he emphasized that the U.S. intelligence community is diligently doing the same type of work as SITE, the DNI’s spokesman did not refute that SITE had first brought this tape to their attention. And other anonymous spooks confirmed that SITE is "tremendously helpful" in exposing al Qaeda’s secrets. Therefore, it does appear that the tape was first uncovered by SITE. In Lake’s account, U.S. intelligence officials claim that no one in the intelligence community leaked the tape. So, thus far, the only material issue at dispute appears to be who leaked the tape and the SITE folks are convinced it was someone in the government.

The bottom line so far then is: SITE beat the federal government to the punch in uncovering this latest bin Laden tape and while SITE managed to protect the source of the tape, the intelligence community allegedly did not.

And as Rita Katz, SITE’s founder, told the Washington Post: "Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless."

Sy Hersh's Overactive Imagination

2007-10-09T09:47:00.001-05:00

Fo those interested: My latest piece, which discusses Seymour Hersh's reporting on Iran, is up at the Daily Standard.

Kurds: Iran Working With Al Qaeda Affiliate in Iraq

2007-10-05T16:36:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at the WorldwideStandard.com)

From Jim Landers of the Dallas Morning News we learn that the Kurds are worried about Iran’s ongoing relationship wiith Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq. Note, in particular, what the mayor of one Iraqi city had to say about Iran’s support for Ansar al-Islam:

"From time to time Iran uses them [Ansar al-Islam fighters] as a pressure card to make trouble for us," said Salam Omer Ibrahim, mayor of the Iraqi border city of Said Sadiq. "They're saying, 'If you help our opposition, we have ways to respond.' "

Landers also provides this interesting account of how Iran may release Ansar al-Islam terrorists on its Kurdish enemies in response to a raid by the U.S. in late September:

On Sept. 23, U.S. soldiers made a pre-dawn raid at a luxury hotel in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah to arrest an Iranian government official named Mahmoudi Farhadi. A U.S. military spokesman said Mr. Farhadi was suspected of supplying armor-piercing bombs and other arms to Iraqi insurgents. The spokesman also accused Iran of smuggling rockets, surface-to-air missiles and other weapons into Iraq.

Iran responded to Mr. Farhadi's arrest by closing its border with Kurdish Iraq, cutting off food, fuel and other consumer goods for much of the eastern half of the region. They also used bulldozers to block smuggling lanes. Kurdish officials say they expect Ansar al-Islam will soon cross the border again to stage another attack.

Go read the whole thing.

Ansar al-Islam ("AAI") is one of those terrorist groups that defies the narrow thinking that clouds our vision of our terrorist enemies. A number of different entities from al Qaeda, to Iran, to Saddam’s Iraq have had substantial connections with the group in one way or another. A naysayer may argue these ties don’t add up to much, but that would be short-sighted. In the piece cited above, Landers says that AAI’s ties to Saddam’s regime prior to the war were "unsubstantiated," but that is not really true.

George Tenet explained in At the Center of the Storm how the CIA collected evidence that showed al Qaeda agents were working with Ansar al-Islam not just in northern Iraq, but also from Saddam’s neo-Stalinist capital, Baghdad. Jonathan Schanzer provided this excellent write-up on the role that Abu Wael, an Iraqi Intelligence officer, played in supporting AAI. Wael is a relative of Saddam’s former right-hand man, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who also has been connected to AAI and al Qaeda in Iraq in a variety of ways. Al-Douri reportedly broke off ties with al Qaeda in Iraq just recently, but prior to his change of heart he had a long history of collaborating with al Qaeda and its affiliates. For more on al-Douri’s relationship with al Qaeda see here, here, and here. This is just some of the available evidence on the relationship between members of Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda’s affiliates in Iraq both before and after the March 2003 invasion.

To understand how this all works, I would recommend Dan Darling’s outstanding dossier on AAI from 2004. I still think that is among the best analyses, if not the best, of AAI to date.

And lest anyone think that the Sunnis of AAI can’t work with the Shiites of Iran, think again.

There is ample evidence that Iran has been supporting our Sunni terrorist enemies all along.

Hat tip for the Dallas Morning News piece: Counterterrorism Blog

Shush, Scheuer

2007-09-26T16:25:00.000-05:00

Here are some thoughts over at National Review's Corner on the CIA's Michael Scheuer. (My post follows up on several earlier posts.)

As best as I can tell, the head of the bin Laden unit was not such a prominent position at Langley when it was first created. George Tenet writes in At the Center of the Storm that the "Alec Station," named for Scheuer's son, was meant to be a "virtual station." The idea behind these "virtual stations," Tenet says, "was to create stateside units that would act as if they were an overseas operation." The idea was to create one of these virtual stations as an experiment given "the limited funds" in the CIA's tight intelligence budget and the desire to get analysts to start thinking more about potentially looming threats. The Alec Station, according to Tenet, was the only such virtual station ever established and was originally called the "Terrorist Financial Links" ("TFL") Station, over something similar. This office came to be focused on bin Laden as more and more mentions of him showed up on the CIA's radar and thus the TFL station came to be renamed. Tenet says that the virtual station was originally supposed to "run for two years, after which time the experiment would be evaluated and its functions folded into the larger Counterterrorist Center under which it fell." "As it turned out," Tenet explains, "the unit operated for almost a decade."

So, the unit Scheuer headed was originally an experimental outfit and not some great bureaucratic post. This is consistent with what we know about the CIA's early take on bin Laden. We know from the government investigations that have come out over the last couple of years that the CIA never did really put together a robust picture of al Qaeda - even up until 2001. Even after Tenet told everyone al Qaeda was at war with us, there doesn't appear to have been any real comprehensive analysis of al Qaeda. The CIA Inspector General's report, which was recently released to the public, says quite clearly that "no comprehensive report focusing on" Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda had been produced during the entire period from the early 1990's to September 11, 2001.

Gabriel Schoenfeld has more on the IG's report and Scheuer here . Schoenfeld deduces that the "Alec Station" was somewhat of a bureaucratic backwater, and I think this is right based on what Tenet has said as well as other evidence. But there is a larger point in all of this.

Look, the record is fairly clear: the CIA did not know what was going on prior to 9/11. It never had a good understanding of al Qaeda (the CIA's Counterterrorism Center didn't even know that 9/11 mastermind KSM was a bin Laden confidant, despite the fact that they were hunting him for past transgressions). That's why it is so ridiculous that many mainstream media outlets to treat former spooks as if they are fantastic expert witnesses. They're frequently not. And they often have their own agendas - political, ideological, bureaucratic, etc. Former CIA types, in particular, have a vested interest in rehabilitating their image. Some have also become highly political and inserted themselves into the political discourse in ways that is not often intellectually honest.

Scheuer is a good example of this. He once was able to find all sorts of evidence connecting al Qaeda and Saddam's Iraq. During a presidential election year, however, he changed his mind. I won't bore you with all the details, but his explanation for this about-face rings hallow. So far, only one journalist (Tim Russert) that I know of has asked him why he changed his mind. It would be nice if more journalists would explore Scheuer's history at the CIA and the evolution of his views. It's the least they can do since they love to cite him so frequently.

Al Qaeda vs. Musharraf

2007-09-20T16:11:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at the WorldwideStandard.com)

As part of its ongoing propaganda war, al Qaeda’s leaders are once again flooding the airwaves. Both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri reportedly cover a lot of ground in their two new recently released tapes. Importantly, they have once again declared war on President Musharraf and his government.

Al Qaeda’s threats towards Musharraf are not, of course, entirely new. But these most recent threats appear to be explicitly timed to coincide with the announcement of the date for upcoming elections, which will determine Musharraf’s political fate.

One tape, entitled “Come to Jihad,” reportedly features the voice of Osama bin Laden. Laura Mansfield, whose translations of al Qaeda’s missives are indispensable, provided the Associated Press with some of the highlights from the tape. Bin Laden says the conflict at the Red Mosque in July “demonstrated Musharraf's insistence on continuing his loyalty, submissiveness and aid to America against the Muslims . . . and makes armed rebellion against him and removing him obligatory.” Bin Laden called on Pakistanis to rebel against Musharraf: “So when the capability is there, it is obligatory to rebel against the apostate ruler, as is the case now.”

Another tape features Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to the Associated Press, Zawahiri also referenced the siege of the Red Mosque, saying it “revealed the extent of the despicableness, lowliness and treason of Musharraf and his forces, who don't deserve the honor of defending Pakistan, because Pakistan is a Muslim land, whereas the forces of Musharraf are hunting dogs under [President] Bush's crucifix.”

These open threats raise the specter of a fresh round of attacks in Pakistan. But Musharraf’s life has been threatened before--al Qaeda has already made several attempts on Musharraf's life. The real question, then, is: will these most recent threats convince Pakistan, and her American ally, to do more about al Qaeda’s safe haven in the northern tribal regions?

It is no secret that al Qaeda’s two most senior leaders are, most likely, hiding in the tribal areas of Pakistan, including Northern and Southern Waziristan. In fact, in his most recent tape, bin Laden reportedly refers to fallen al Qaeda leaders who were slain in these areas as additional justification for attacking Musharraf’s government. But Musharraf’s response to the terror emanating from these uncontrolled areas of Pakistan has been uneven. At some points in the past he has been willing to make a show of force in confronting the thousands of terrorists holed up there, but at other times he has effectively ceded large swaths of Pakistani territory to al Qaeda’s tribal allies. The latter happened last year when Musharraf agreed to the disastrous tribal accords, which limited Pakistan’s engagement in the region and allowed al Qaeda and its allies time to further entrench themselves in their new safe haven.

Musharraf isn’t the only one who is threatened by al Qaeda’s leaders operating from their safe haven in northern Pakistan. Recently foiled plots in Denmark and Germany have been tied to al Qaeda’s Pakistani training camps. Both nations have foiled significant terrorist plots in recent weeks with help from American intelligence. According to the New York Times, American authorities revealed that “electronic intercepts from Pakistan” were used to identify the Danish al Qaeda cell and similar intercepts were used to break up the al Qaeda plot in Germany. The Times also quoted the head of Danish intelligence, Jakob Scharf, on the importance of al Qaeda’s presence in northern Pakistan and the group’s ability to launch attacks from that region. “What’s coming from this is that they are now able to give military and terrorist training and able to plan and steer specific operations in Europe,” Mr. Scharf explained. He added that he was not saying there was “a direct phone line to Osama bin Laden” but that senior al Qaeda members were able to “direct operations outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

The recent failed plots in Germany and Denmark are not the first to be tied to al Qaeda in Pakistan. At least two of the terrorists responsible for the July 7, 2005 bombings in London also met up with senior al Qaeda leaders operating there. In November 2004, Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer made their way from the UK to Karachi, Pakistan. Once in Pakistan they met up with Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a senior member of al Qaeda who was once a major in Saddam Hussein’s army and who has since been captured. According to multiple press accounts, Abd al-Hadi directed the 7/7 plotters to attack the UK and provided them with assistance in devising the plot. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other terrorists are reportedly being trained at as many as twenty-nine training camps in the Pakistani tribal areas as well.

Thus, we are left with a situation in which al Qaeda has regrouped in Northern Pakistan from where they repeatedly threaten and attempt to assassinate President Musharraf and organize plots against the West. Whether or not Musharraf remains in power past the upcoming elections, al Qaeda will undoubtedly continue to threaten Pakistan’s leaders. Yet, no one seems to have a good solution for countering this threat. Admittedly, this is a complicated situation with no easy answers. But it is in all of our interests--Pakistan’s, America’s, Europe’s and the new Afghanistan’s--to come up with a solution sooner, rather than later.

Ahmadinejad's "Chutzpah" (and Iran's ties to al Qaeda)

2007-09-20T11:53:00.000-05:00

Steve Emerson in the New York Post on Iran's ongoing relationship with al Qaeda:

Iran also has a warm relationship with al Qaeda - aiding it in the run-up to 9/11, and ever since:

* The al Qaeda-Iran relationship began in late 1991 or early 1992 when Iranian agents met with al Qaeda leaders in Sudan and informally agreed to provide mutual support for attacks against Israel and the United States.

* Not long after this initial meeting, al Qaeda operatives and trainers went to Iran, where they received training in explosives.

* After al Qaeda was forced to relocate from Sudan to Afghanistan, Iranian agents continued to meet with al Qaeda leadership figures. Iranian officials often accommodated al Qaeda operatives by not stamping their passports -facilitating covert travel through Iran.

* The 9/11 Commission Report notes that eight to 10 of the 9/11 hijackers traveled through Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.

* After the liberation of Afghanistan, several top al Qaeda figures took refuge in Iran.

Emerson is right, of course. And there is a lot more to this story.

Iran's Proxy War Against America

2007-09-11T15:25:00.000-05:00

The Claremont Institute released my lengthy piece, "Iran's Proxy War Against America," today.

In this essay, I survey the evidence of Iran's ongoing support for al Qaeda. For readers of my blog and my articles, this argument will be nothing new. But, I have included a lot of new details and evidence in ways that I haven't seen compiled before. But enough of the self-promotion. Let me answer, in advance, a few questions I expect to get:

Q: Are you arguing that we should go to war with Iran?

A: No. I have expressed my skepticism in this regard on a number of occasions. In the essay, I wrote that I think an "invasion of Iran would most likely be disastrous." There may be some limited opportunities for military retaliation against Iran's provocations. However, I am not advocating any military response at this time.

Q: Why did you write this then?

A: Based on my last six years of research, I think the public discourse is greatly confused. I think we need to have a clearer understanding of how al Qaeda works so that the public debate over how to confront this enemy is better informed.

Q: Aren't Sunnis and Shiites incapable of cooperation?

A: No. This is a myth and one of the areas where there is a lot of confusion. In the essay I provide a number of examples to demonstrate that Iran has been quite capable of working with Sunni groups. The Sunni groups that spawned al Qaeda have been equally willing to work with Iran. The 9/11 Commission itself found that ideological differences did not prevent al Qaeda and Iran from cooperating.

Q: What is the strongest evidence of Iran's involvement with al Qaeda?

A: I think the two strongest pieces of evidence are: (1) The August 7, 1998, embassy bombings and (2) The assistance Iran provided al Qaeda in escaping from Afghanistan in late 2001.

The embassy bombings were modeled after Hezbollah's attacks in the early 1980's. Osama bin Laden reached out to Hezbollah and Iran for assistance in teaching his operatives how to execute the same type of attacks. According to the 9/11 Commission, Iran and Hezbollah obliged. Some of the al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the embassy bombings were trained in Hezbollah training camps. There is evidence that Iran provided al Qaeda with explosives used in the attack. And Iran continues to harbor one of the senior al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the bombing, Saif al Adel, to this day.

There is also abundant evidence that Iran helped al Qaeda escape Afghanistan in late 2001 and continues to harbor senior al Qaeda leaders.

Q: Do you think that Iran was behind 9/11?

A: No. But, just as the 9/11 Commission found, I leave open the possibility that they provided al Qaeda with assistance. The 9/11 Commission found that Hezbollah and Iran were possibly complicit in the attack. A large number of the 9/11 hijackers crossed paths with Hezbollah and Iran on their way to 9/11. Senior Hezbollah officials also were apparently aware of their movements. Imad Mugniyah, Hezbollah's most senior terrorist, and some of his minions appear to have been helping the hijackers in their travels. Quite frankly, this matter is not clear. See my essay for a more detailed explanation.

The 9/11 Commission called for further investigation into Hezbollah's and Iran's possible complicity. More than three years after the Commission published its report, the U.S. Government has not launched any such investigation. I think this matter needs to be reopened and the evidence declassified for the public to see.

More later...

AP: Bin Laden told his followers "to help Saddam Hussein fight Americans"

2007-09-08T17:39:00.001-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at the WorldwideStandard.com)

News that Osama bin Laden is planning on releasing a new video tape this coming September 11, has set off much speculation. I will wait to see what comes of it before commenting further, since there is a lot of uncertainty over what exactly the tape will consist of and whether or not it is legitimate. (I simply don’t know one way or the other.) But, in anticipation of the tape’s release, the Associated Press has compiled a timeline ("Audio and Video Messages From Bin Laden") of bin Laden’s previous communications since September 11, 2001, including those strongly suspected of being authentic as well as those known to be the real deal. Note, in particular, this entry from the AP:

Feb. 11, 2003: Bin Laden tells his followers to help Saddam Hussein fight Americans in an audiotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera. U.S. officials say they believe the tape to be authentic.

One would think that bin Laden himself calling for cooperation with Saddam would serve to end the idea that the two were incapable of cooperation. But, of course, such was not the case. In any event, I discussed bin Laden’s call for supporting Saddam in February 2003 in my piece, "Iraq Is the Central Front":

…bin Laden considered Saddam Hussein an "apostate" and an "infidel." He said so many times. It is widely believed in the West that this ideological difference precluded any form of cooperation between al Qaeda and Saddam. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD has documented repeatedly, however, that judgment is flawed. In fact, as the war approached in February 2003, bin Laden explained the necessity of joining forces with Saddam. However distasteful, Saddam was still preferable to the "Crusaders":

It is well known that fighting under pagan banners is not allowed, and that the Muslim's belief and banner must be clear when fighting for God. As the Prophet said: "Only he whose aim in fighting is to keep God's word supreme fights in God's cause." There is no harm in such circumstances if the Muslims' interests coincide with those of the socialists in fighting the Crusaders, despite our firm conviction that they are infidels. The time of these socialist rulers is long past. The socialists are infidels, wherever they may be, whether in Baghdad or Aden. The current fighting and the fighting that will take place in the coming days can be very much compared to the Muslims' previous battles. There is nothing wrong with a convergence of interests here.

There was a clear convergence of interests in the Iraqi insurgency against the Coalition. Neither Saddam nor bin Laden planned the Iraqi insurgency in every detail. However, extensive evidence found in Iraqi intelligence documents recovered by the coalition and the testimony of al Qaeda operatives confirms that Saddam welcomed al Qaeda terrorists and other jihadists to Iraqi soil in the weeks and months prior to the war. …

Curious, isn’t it, that more people--ahem, the AP included--haven’t been willing to explore this "convergence of interests" further?

Saddam's Family Still Sponsoring Terror

2007-08-27T20:43:00.000-05:00

Not the first time this has been reported, but here is the latest on Saddam's daughter funding terrorists in Iraq.

In other Iraq news, the Multi-National Force in Iraq reports that eight terrorists, who are believed to have been running weapons, EFPs, as well as fellow terrorists from Iran into Iraq have been captured:

Coalition Forces detained eight suspected Special Groups terrorists during pre-dawn operations Monday in Sadr City.

The individuals detained during the raid are believed to be members of the Special Groups terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq into Iran for terrorist training.

No shots were fired as Coalition Forces conducted a precision raid during pre-dawn hours, detaining eight individuals for their association with the Special Groups terrorist network and the targeted individual. Coalition forces confiscated a number of documents, photographs and possible improvised explosive device components.

Intelligence reports indicate that the targeted individual is a Special Groups senior level facilitator with possible Iranian connections.

“The Special Groups network constitutes a significant threat to security and stability in Sadr City and other areas around Baghdad. We will continue to dismantle and degrade the Special Groups terrorist network, eliminating their ability to attack innocent Iraqis as well as Iraqi Security Forces and Coalition Forces,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, MNF-I spokesperson.

Designating the IRGC

2007-08-23T16:12:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I took part in a Threats Watch symposium with Steve Schippert and Andy McCarthy of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The topic was the State Department's decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Here was my contribution:

My initial reaction to the news that the State Department was going to designate the IRGC a terrorist group was: What took so long? Every year from the late 1990’s through 2003, the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism report (which has been replaced by another report), noted something similar to what was written about Iran’s behavior in 2001: “Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2001. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) continued to be involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts and supported a variety of groups that use terrorism to pursue their goals.”

That is, Iran was “the most active state sponsor of terrorism” and the IRGC is one of the two main organizations it uses to spread its terror. So, of course the IRGC is a terrorist organization. Recounting all of the ways the IRGC has been involved in terrorism would require more space than is available here, but it is worth remembering that the IRGC built Hezbollah, one of the two most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet, and has worked in tandem with that group for decades.

Will the designation degrade their ability to interfere in Iraq? The designation, by itself, is unlikely to do have any effect on the ground in Iraq. I think, under General Petraeus, U.S. forces have now started to seriously target IRGC assets inside Iraq. Time will tell if they are doing enough and if what they are doing will work – the Bush administration did so little about their influence in Iraq for so long it may be impossible to substantially reduce their footprint now. But, the point is that the IRGC’s dirty-work in Iraq is being dealt with by our counter-insurgency strategy, not State Department designations.

Will the designation further de-legitimize and degrade the effectiveness of the Iranian regime? It is too early to tell and there are good reasons to think its impact will be minimal. The IRGC and Iran do little business with the U.S. currently because of existing laws and regulations, so the designation will not have any real direct impact in that sense. It may dissuade companies located in other Western countries from doing business with IRGC-run entities, but while that is possible it is also dubious. And, perhaps most importantly, the designation is unlikely to dissuade Russian and Chinese companies from doing business with Iran, including IRGC- run companies. The Bear and the Dragon are what keep the Iran regime going with vital assistance on numerous levels.

Are there any negatives to this move? I don’t think so. I see it as the U.S. Government finally calling it like it is. I am uncertain of its upside also, however. If the designation is a first step to finally dealing with the realities of Iran’s behavior, then it may have some impact down the road. But, the U.S. has simply ignored or minimized Iranian provocations for too long for me to believe that is true.

What's Missing from the New NIE

2007-08-23T15:54:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted over at the WorldwideStandard.com)

The "Key Judgments" section of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), titled "Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive," was released today. I am generally skeptical about the merits of NIE’s since it is often not clear what their judgments are based on, what type of intelligence went into formulating these judgments, and what intelligence was left on the cutting room floor. And, as with the NIE on Iraq’s WMD programs in 2002, the Intelligence Community frequently errs in its assessments. Since the NIE is a consensus document, the analysis is also confined to the lowest common denominator that all agencies can agree upon, which doesn’t tell you much more than you can learn from reading open sources or making simple guesstimates. This is not to say that the NIEs are totally without merits, and occasionally they contain an interesting nugget of information.

In at least two instances, the latest NIE is a good example of all the problems I described above. The following paragraph appears on the last page of the NIE:

Syria has cracked down on some Sunni extremist groups attempting to infiltrate fighters into Iraq through Syria because of threats they pose to Syrian stability, but the IC now assesses that Damascus is providing support to non-AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq] groups inside Iraq in a bid to increase Syrian influence.

Notice that the NIE limits Syria’s support to non-al Qaeda in Iraq groups inside Iraq. But, what of Syria’s support for al Qaeda in Iraq? Is this one of the groups the authors of the NIE contend that Syria has "cracked down on"? It seems unlikely, to say the least, that Syria is really inhibiting al Qaeda’s operations in any meaningful way. In fact, according to intelligence cited by Senator Joe Lieberman, Syria is doing just the opposite. From Senator Lieberman’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal:

Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others. . . .

That is why we now must focus on disrupting this flow of suicide bombers--and that means focusing on Syria, through which up to 80% of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered. Syria refuses to tighten its visa regime for individuals transiting its territory.

Before al Qaeda's foreign fighters can make their way across the Syrian border into Iraq, however, they must first reach Syria--and the overwhelming majority does so, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, by flying into Damascus International Airport, making the airport the central hub of al Qaeda travel in the Middle East, and the most vulnerable chokepoint in al Qaeda's war against Iraq and the U.S. in Iraq.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad cannot seriously claim that he is incapable of exercising effective control over the main airport in his capital city. Syria is a police state, with sprawling domestic intelligence and security services. The notion that al Qaeda recruits are slipping into and through the Damascus airport unbeknownst to the local Mukhabarat is totally unbelievable.

So, on the one hand we have an NIE stating that Syria still supports non-al Qaeda groups in Iraq, with no mention of the Assad regime’s complicity in al Qaeda’s terror. And on the other hand we have Senator Lieberman’s reference to "recently declassified American intelligence" indicating the precise opposite.

It would be interesting to learn what intelligence Senator Lieberman is referring to and why it wasn’t included in the NIE’s Key Judgments. In the meantime, based on all of the open source reporting I’ve seen on the topic, I am inclined to believe that Senator Lieberman is right. It is hard to believe that al Qaeda terrorists are transiting through Damascus International Airport without, at the very least, the Assad regime’s approval.

Baathists "Disown" Al Qaeda

2007-08-22T12:42:00.001-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at the WorldwideStandard.com.)

From adnkronosinternational (AKI) we learn that the Iraqi Baathists, led by Saddam's former righthand man Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, have decided to “disown al-Qaeda.” It is in an interesting development in the insurgency since Saddam's Baathists have fought alongside al Qaeda since the beginning of this war. I don't know if this latest development is a result of the "surge" or not. It may be that al-Douri has realized that being on al Qaeda's team is a losing proposition given the success American-led forces have had in routing al Qaeda in places like Anbar. We'll wait to see if the new schism is temporary or more permanent. But in the meantime I'll just note that the Iraqi Baathists had to be working with al Qaeda in the first place in order to now “disown” them. (See Mark Eichenlaub’s Regime of Terror web site for a handy list of Baathists who have been working with al Qaeda.) Here is AKI's report:

The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party's former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

"AlDouri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to the programme of the national resistance, which includes routing Islamist terrorists and opening up dialogue with the Baghdad government and foreign forces," al-Jashaami said.

Al-Douri has decided to deal directly with US forces in Iraq, according to al-Jashaami. He figures in the 55-card deck of "most wanted" officials from the former Iraqi regime issued by the US government.

In return, for cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda, al-Douri has asked for guarantees over his men's safety and for an end to Iraqi army attacks on his militias.

Recent weeks have seen a first step in this direction, when Baathist fighters cooperated with Iraqi government forces in hunting down al-Qaeda operatives in the volatile Diyala province and in several districts of the capital, Baghadad.

Although the Baath party was officially banned after US-led forces in 2003 toppled the regime of Iraq's late president Saddam Hussein, its members have fought in the insurgency.

Until just a few months ago, former Baath party members were helping Islamists carry out terrorist attacks against US forces in Iraq.

Hat tip: Counterterrorism Blog.

Remembering Ramzi Hashem Abed's Testimony

2007-08-11T20:55:00.000-05:00

A friend sends along a link to Amy Proctor's site, which reminds us of a story that first appeared in 2005. In an interview on Iraqi TV, translated by the indispensable MEMRI, a captured al Qaeda terrorist named Ramzi Hashem Abed (video also available here) admitted that bin Laden had training camps inside Saddam's Iraq, prior to the U.S. war.

Here are three noteworthy sections of the interview:

(1) Abed Worked for Ansar al-Islam

Investigator: What is your full name?
Abed: Ramzi Hashem Abed.
Investigator: What is your alias?
Abed: 'Ubeidi.
Investigator: Where do you live?
Abed: Nabi Yunis in Mosul.
Investigator: What organization do you belong to?
Abed: Ansar Al-Islam.
Investigator: What organization is this?
Abed: It is Bin-Laden's group.
[...]

(2) On Attacking the Shiite Cleric Muhammad Baqer Al-Hakim

Investigator: A religious leader gave you 400 dollars? OK. Did the operation target Muhammad Baqer Al-Hakim specifically or the Al-Imam Ali mosque?
Abed: No... The people in charge, Mullah Al-Raikan and Al-Zarqawi, targeted Al-Hakim specifically.
Investigator: Why in this specific place? Why would they try to target Muhammad Baqer Al-Hakim near the Al-Imam Ali mosque? It is the mosque of the Emir of believers. Didn't you think of all the innocent people around?
Abed: There were also people from Iraqi military intelligence, from the Fidayin, and the internal security, who were also involved in this operation.
Investigator: So Mullah Raikan had ties with the old internal security and military intelligence?
Abed: And they are still in Mosul.
[...]

(3) On Al Qaeda's Training Camps Inside Saddam's Iraq

Abed: Our Ansar Al-Islam military camps were in Halabja.
Investigator: This was in the days of the previous regime?
Abed: Yes.
Investigator: And now?
Abed: Now, there is nothing. They were all scattered. The training area was in Falluja.
Investigator: And then?
Abed: After Falluja was hit, they would come through Syria to Mosul... I mean, through Falluja to Mosul.
[...]

A few notes on this story. First, we should always be careful not to put too much emphasis on any one piece of testimony. However, Ramzi Hashem Abed's testimony about al Qaeda's training camps inside Saddam's Iraq has been corroborated by a number of different sources.

Second, the 9/11 Commission noted that there were "indications" that Saddam's regime "tolerated and may even have helped" Ansar al Islam - the group Abed admitted belonging to -set up shop in Saddam's Iraq. The Commission decided not to get into the details of what these "indications" were, but clearly the CIA was piecing together these threads of evidence prior to the U.S.-led invasion. The 9/11 Commission also noted that bin Laden "is said to have asked for space to establish training camps" as early as 1994 or 1995. The Commission said "there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request." But, that isn't true - at least it isn't now true anyway. Abed's testimony, plus all of the other links provided above point to the existence of al Qaeda training camps inside Saddam's Iraq long prior to 9/11. (This is not meant to imply, I must note, that any of the 9/11 hijackers were trained in these camps. There is no known evidence that they did.)

Third, Abed's account (in 2005) of the attack on Shiite cleric Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim (which took place in 2003) jives with earlier press accounts. For example, this account from 2003 of the attack on al-Hakim noted: "Four men, two Iraqis and two Saudis, thought to have links with Saddam Hussein's deposed regime and the Al Qaeda terror network, have been arrested over the Najaf massacre. " That is, Saddam's former goons found cooperation with al Qaeda to be fruitful.

In any event, Amy Proctor's post is a good reminder of just how much evidence exists on the prewar relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime.

New York Times Distorts Qaeda Link

2007-07-15T08:43:00.000-05:00

Here is my latest, cross-posted at the Worldwide Standard, on the New York Times misleading portrait of al Qaeda in Iraq:

In today's New York Times, under the headline "Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert," the paper itself greatly distorts the evidence concerning al Qaeda’s presence in Iraq. The paper paints a picture of al Qaeda in Iraq is, in important ways, highly misleading. Here are several reasons why as well as some additional observations:

(1) First, an observation: The Times states that when Zarqawi relocated to Iraq he did so "with support from senior Qaeda leaders, American intelligence agencies believe." This directly contradicts what has been reported at various times over the past several years by the New York Times and other media outlets. A common argument that has been made is that Zarqawi wasn't really an al Qaeda operative until 2004, when he swore bayat (loyalty) to bin Laden and was made emir of al Qaeda in Iraq. (Of course, many top al Qaeda operatives worked alongside bin Laden for years without swearing bayat. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, is a good example.)

In an editorial prior to the war (“Elusive Qaeda Connections,” February 14, 2003), for example, the New York Times argued, “…Washington has yet to establish publicly that [Zarqawi] is an important figure in Al Qaeda or maintains active links with Mr. bin Laden.” Daniel Benjamin, one of President Clinton’s former NSC counterterrorism officials, took this argument a step further in a September 2005 piece reviewing Jean-Charles Brisard’s book on Zarqawi. Benjamin argued, “many Western intelligence services saw him less as a lieutenant of bin Laden than a rival - a view now widely accepted.”

There was always evidence tying Zarqawi to al Qaeda (for example, he helped plan attacks with top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah at the turn of the millennium). But it is interesting to see that the intelligence officials quoted in this piece recognize the role that al Qaeda played in supporting Zarqawi’s activities in Iraq all along.

(2) Unfortunately, the Times muddles the evidence tying Zarqawi to another of his sponsors inside Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s regime:

"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who became the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, came to Iraq in 2002 when Saddam Hussein was still in power, but there is no evidence that Mr. Hussein’s government provided support for Mr. Zarqawi and his followers." (emphasis added)

This is simply not true. The authors may disagree with the notion that the evidence is conclusive, but to say there is "no evidence" is demonstrably false. In this piece I summarized what three high-level al Qaeda associates (including one who actually recruits jihadis to send to Iraq for suicide bombing missions) had to say about Zarqawi and his associates’ ties to Saddam's regime prior to the war.

In fact, George Tenet confirmed for us in his new book that the intelligence community connected the dots on Zarqawi and Saddam prior to the war as well. Tenet says that the evidence the CIA had gathered on Zarqawi was one of the reasons there was “more than enough evidence” to be worried about Saddam’s relationship with al Qaeda.

(3) The Times ignores another important prewar link between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. The authors state that "Abu Ayyub al-Masri is an Egyptian militant who emerged as the successor of Mr. Zarqawi, who was killed near Baquba in an American airstrike last year." This is correct, but the paper does not bother to report any of al-Masri’s history inside Saddam’s Iraq. Again according to George Tenet, al-Masri was in Baghdad throughout much of 2002, cooperating with Zarqawi and setting up al Qaeda cells. It is worth remembering that al-Masri was a top aide to al Qaeda's number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, since 1982! It seems highly unlikely that a top terrorist like al-Masri could operate in Baghdad without Saddam’s tacit approval, at the very least.

(4) The authors are inconsistent in how they report on al Qaeda’s operations inside Iraq. In one instance they say it is a "mostly foreign-led group" and in another they say American intelligence agencies have concluded that "the militant group is in many respects an Iraqi phenomenon" whose membership is "overwhelmingly Iraqi."

So, which is it? The answer is that it is both. The foreign AQI leaders have done their best to recruit locals to their side. Look at Baqubah where, according to Michael Yon, perhaps as many 1,000 local Iraqis were recruited over to al Qaeda.

What the paper does not say is that American forces, as well as Sunni tribes and factions who are now unfriendly to al Qaeda, are competing for the “hearts and minds” of Iraqis in places like Baqubah. Al Qaeda was winning this competition at one point, but in recent months the momentum has shifted. Time will tell who wins in the long run.

But this is an important “Qaeda link” that should not be distorted as the debate over Iraq heats up.

A "Hub" for Al Qaeda in Iran

2007-07-06T19:48:00.000-05:00

Colin, a reader, passes along this piece in the Financial Times. Despite a few attempts to dismiss the obvious cooperation between al Qaeda and Iran - including al Qaeda using Iranian soil to stage attacks in Iraq - here is the key portion:

Evidence that Iranian territory is being used as a base by al-Qaeda to help in terrorist operations in Iraq and elsewhere is growing, say western officials.

It is not clear how much the al-Qaeda operation, described by one official as a money and communications hub, is being tolerated or encouraged by the Iranian government, they said.
The group’s operatives, who link the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan with their disciples in Iraq, the Levant and North Africa, move with relative freedom in the country, they said.

The officials said the creation of some kind of al-Qaeda hub in Iran appears to be separate from the group of seven senior al-Qaeda figures, including Saad bin Laden, son of the group’s figurehead, that Iran is said to have detained since 2002.

A senior US official said the information had produced different assessments. “The most conservative, cautious intelligence assessment is that [the Iranian authorities] are turning a blind eye. But there are a lot of doubts about that,” he said.

“They are benefiting from the mayhem that AQ is carrying out. They don’t have to deal with al-Qaeda to benefit.” ...

Indeed, Iran is benefiting greatly from al Qaeda's terror. Note that the anonymous intelligence official quoted by the FT says that the "most conservative" of the assessments of this relationship that he is aware of say that Iran is simply turning a blind eye to al Qaeda's activities. Other assessments, undoubtedly, recognize the lengthy pattern of cooperation between the Shiite Iran and the Sunni al Qaeda when it serves their common interests, including attacking Americans.

Iran's Playbook for Iraq

2007-07-02T15:48:00.000-05:00

(This blog entry is cross-posted at the WorldwideStandard.com.)

In a piece for the Wall Street Journal last year, AEI scholar and WEEKLY STANDARD contributor Michael Rubin argued that Iran was trying to turn Iraq into a new Lebanon. Rubin explained:

While journalists concentrate on the daily blood, Iraqis describe a larger pattern which U.S. officials have failed to acknowledge let alone address: Step-by-step, Iranian authorities are replicating in Iraq the strategy which allowed Hezbollah to take over southern Lebanon in the 1980s. The playbook -- military, economic and information operation -- is almost identical.

On Sunday, CNN reported new evidence that supports Rubin’s thesis. U.S. officials have captured Ali Mussa Daqduq, a 24-year veteran of Hezbollah who reportedly specializes in IED’s, in Iraq. Anonymous U.S. Intelligence officials told CNN that Daqduq “was captured in March in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where he was helping train and lead Shiite militias fighting coalition troops.” When Daqduq was captured he apparently pretended to be deaf and mute, but eventually he started coughing up the details of his activities in Iraq. According to CNN, he admitted to working on behalf of the Iranian government, and intelligence officials believe he “played a crucial role” in the murder of five Americans in Karbala in January.

As Bill Roggio previously noted, the U.S. Government has been investigating the involvement of Iranian proxies in the Karbala attack. But the CNN report appears to be the first to directly connect a senior Hezbollah terrorist to the Karbala murders. (In fact, I believe this is the first time the U.S. has specifically accused Hezbollah, as opposed to Iran’s other terrorist proxies, of any direct involvement in Iraq.) CNN reports that Daqduq’s involvement in the Karbala raid was discovered after coalition forces detained Qais Khazali, a former spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr. “In searching for Khazali,” CNN reports, “U.S. and allied troops found computer documents detailing the planning, training and conduct of the failed kidnapping” in addition to stumbling upon Daqduq.

The Associated Press reported additional details this morning. In addition to planning the Karbala operation, Brig. General Kevin J. Bergner says that Iran has been using Hezbollah to arm Shiite militias in Iraq. Bergner explained that Iran was using Hezbollah to organize terrorists “in ways that mirrored how Hezbollah was organized in Lebanon." According to Bergner, Daqduq told interrogators that the Karbala raid--in which the terrorists posed as an American security team--“could not have conducted this complex operation without the support and direction of the Quds force.” (The Quds force is a long-time Iranian-controlled terrorist organization responsible for exporting the regime’s terror around the globe.)

According to the AP, Bergner also said that Iran was taking teams of 20 to 60 Iraqis to training camps “not too far from Tehran” and when they return to Iraq these teams carry out bombings and kidnappings. Contrary to what some of the pundits and bureaucrats in Washington claim, Bergner said our "intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity." That is, these aren’t “rogue” operations carried out without the permission of the Iranian regime.

These latest reports provide further evidence that Michael Rubin was right: Iran is using its winning playbook from Lebanon in Iraq. The real question is: What will Washington’s response be?

Paul Pillar, the CIA, the DIA and "The Connection"

2007-06-30T11:55:00.000-05:00

In an op-ed for the Washington Post today (reg. required), former DIA analyst Christina Shelton corrects George Tenet's mischaracterization of her analysis on Iraq's ties to al Qaeda.

Ms. Shelton points to something in Tenet's book that caught my eye as well. Tenet explains that the CIA's terrorism analysts "believed to be credible the reporting that suggested a deeper relationship," while the agency's regional analysts "significantly limited the cooperation that was suggested by the reporting."

When Tenet mentions the agency's "regional" analysts he is most certainly referring to Paul Pillar, the former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, and his supporting crew. Pillar has been a very vocal opponent of the idea that Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda could cooperate. He apparently believes that ideology trumps all other concerns such that the "secular" Saddam and the Islamists of al Qaeda couldn't possibly find common ground.

This is nonsense, of course. Our enemies are not cheap cartoon caricatures. They are more than capable of overlooking even substantial ideological disagreements in order to cooperate against their common enemies (just as humans have for all of recorded history: The Soviets and Nazi Germany pre-World War II, the Soviets and the U.S. in World War II, etc.). And Saddam cloaked his regime in the language of the jihadis during the 1990's as well.

But Pillar has made a name for himself by advancing this argument. His Foreign Affairs piece published last year, for example, has been widely cited. In that piece, Pillar accused the Bush administration - including Vice President Cheney - of "cherry-picking" data. He wrote:

But the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD (there was indeed a broad consensus that such programs existed), but the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed. The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the "war on terror" and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood.

The issue of possible ties between Saddam and al Qaeda was especially prone to the selective use of raw intelligence to make a public case for war. In the shadowy world of international terrorism, almost anyone can be "linked" to almost anyone else if enough effort is made to find evidence of casual contacts, the mentioning of names in the same breath, or indications of common travels or experiences. Even the most minimal and circumstantial data can be adduced as evidence of a "relationship," ignoring the important question of whether a given regime actually supports a given terrorist group and the fact that relationships can be competitive or distrustful rather than cooperative.

The intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and al Qaeda...

Pillar goes on. But he never mentions that some of his colleagues within the CIA disagreed with his take - as pointed out by Tenet and Shelton. Pillar leaves no room for the possibility that there was more than one way to look at the issue of Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, or that perhaps he and his analysts in the NESA were simply wrong. Instead, Pillar pretends that only those interested in justifying a war by "capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood" could possibly think that Saddam's ties to al Qaeda were worrisome.

Pillar also does not mention that his own boss, George Tenet, thinks that there was "more than enough evidence" to worry about. Nor does he mention that his own CIA produced at least three analytic products (memos) from the summer of 2002 to the eve of the Iraq war in January 2003, all of which discussed the evidence of a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. The evidence I cite in my piece on Tenet's book goes through the intelligence that was in those three memos - as recounted by Tenet himself.

None of this has been critically examined by the mainstream press. Instead, Pillar is uncritically cited as an unbiased source. (For example, as explained by Robert Novak, Pillar became a "hero" for journalists like Michael Isikoff and David Corn.) But perhaps those journalists that rely on Paul Pillar for their (mis)understanding of these events should rethink their sourcing.

Pillar's "analysis" is based on an assumption about our enemies. There is much evidence that contradicts that assumption, but Pillar couldn't be bothered to honestly investigate it. Others in the CIA and the DIA did.

That story is still not widely known.

Blair: Al Qaeda "in Iraq before Saddam's fall"

2007-06-13T19:15:00.000-05:00

In his piece for the Economist last month, Tony Blair had this to say (emphasis added):

We can debate and re-debate the rights or wrongs of removing Saddam. But the reality is that if you took al-Qaeda (in Iraq before Saddam's fall) out of the conflict in or around Baghdad, without the car bombs aimed at civilians and the destruction of monuments like the Samarra Shrine, it would be possible to calm the situation. Events in Anbar Province, where slowly but surely Sunni opinion is turning on al-Qaeda, show it. And down in Basra, what is poisoning the city is the violence and criminality of Jaish-al Mahdi and other groups—supported, financed and armed by elements of the Iranian regime. Remove al-Qaeda, remove the malign Iranian activity, and the situation would be changed, even transformed.

Me: And no, al Qaeda's presence wasn't limited to northern Iraq either. Just ask George Tenet.

Osama's Bodyguard: Iran-al Qaeda Cooperation Based on "Joint Interests"

2007-06-08T13:45:00.000-05:00

See my post here.

Only Connected...In 2002.

2007-06-08T12:22:00.000-05:00

(Via the Worldwide Standard)

Writing for TNR Online, here is what Paul Berman tells us Bernard Kouchner, a French leftist who is now Sarkozy's Foreign Minister, found in Saddam's Iraq in 2002 (emphasis added):

In December 2002, when the debate over the impending invasion was reaching its highest pitch, Kouchner ventured into Iraq to see with his own eyes what the Iraqi attitudes might be--his third trip to the country. He visited the Kurdish north and questioned everyone he met, and he described their responses to Cohn-Bendit in When You Become President (as well as in a second book, Les guerriers de la paix, or The Warriors of Peace). The Kurds had been fighting against the Baath dictatorship for more than thirty years by then, and during all that time, they had begged repeatedly for a foreign intervention. Kouchner made his way to the exact spot where the Baathists had tried to assassinate him, back in 1992. He visited the zones where the Baathists had carted off Kurdish women and sold them into prostitution in the Gulf countries. He traveled to Halabja for a return visit--to the town that Saddam had gassed (using, as Kouchner recalled with more than a little bitterness, weapons made from French and German materials, and helicopters built by the French and the Americans). He learned something that might have surprised a great many people. The Iraqis in 2002 were afraid of Al Qaeda.

Kouchner was perfectly aware that, all over the world, people had listened to the Bush administration fulminate about the dangers of a secret alliance between and Saddam and Al Qaeda. He knew that, all over the world, entire publics had come away convinced that Bush was an atrocious fabulist, and no such alliance existed. But the Iraqis told Kouchner about precisely such an alliance, or what they concluded to be an alliance, between Saddam and a group called Ansar al-Islam, which was Al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq (and the ancestor of what became, after the invasion, a number of splinter groups affiliated with Al Qaeda). In 2002 Ansar al-Islam was already battling against Saddam's worst enemies, the anti-Baathist Kurds. Ansar al-Islam was growing stronger, too. Hundreds of bin Laden's militants had fled Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban, and some of those militants had turned up in Iraq and had taken their place in Ansar al-Islam.

The newly energized organization was seizing villages and converting them, Taliban-style, to the glory days of the ancient caliphate. Fantasists of the seventh century were wandering around the village streets, brandishing their scimitars. Here was the "realm of pure myth," in Nafisi's phrase. Ansar al-Islam tried to assassinate one of the Kurdish leaders in Iraq, Barham Salih, a few months before Kouchner's visit. (Salih became famous for making a dramatic speech to the council of the Socialist International, in Italy in January 2003, pleading for left-wing solidarity, and, indeed, for an invasion--the single most forceful statement of the left-wing interventionist position.) And yet, the Iraqi Kurds, for all their fear of Al Qaeda, were chiefly afraid of Saddam. Quaking in fear, actually.

...Biermann was old enough to recall World War II and the American bombings. And Biermann recalled his mother's reaction: "I learned from my mother that there are bombs that rescue." Kouchner pointed out to Cohn-Bendit that, in Kosovo in 1999, a great many people had tended to reason along those same lines. Kosovars didn't want to be bombed; and yet wanted the United States to start bombing. Visiting Iraq and Iran in December 2002, Kouchner came to think that a vast number of Iraqis had arrived at pretty much the same degree of schizophrenic confusion. They were frightened of war. Yet they wanted to be rescued--not from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, but from Saddam himself. They wanted to be rescued from Al Qaeda's militants and affiliates. And they had a right to be rescued. In Glucksmann's phrase, these people had the "right to D-Day."

Read the whole thing.

Al Qaeda’s Pursuit of Nukes, While Under “House Arrest” In Iran

2007-05-04T10:54:00.000-05:00

(This entry is cross-posted at the WorldwideStandard.com)

One of the more interesting parts of George Tenet’s new book is his discussion of al Qaeda’s attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon and other weapons of mass destruction. It has long been known that al Qaeda seeks the capability to inflict mass casualties with a WMD attack. But Tenet offers new details that are disconcerting, to say the least. For example, consider this passage:

From the end of 2002 to the spring of 2003, we received a stream of reliable reporting that the senior al-Qa'ida leadership in Saudi Arabia was negotiating for the purchase of three Russian nuclear devices. Saudi al-Qa'ida chief Abu Bakr related the offer directly to the al-Qa'ida leadership in Iran, where Sayf al-Adl and Abdel al-Aziz al-Masri (described as al-Qa'ida's 'nuclear chief' by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) were reportedly being held under a loose form of house arrest by the Iranian regime. The al-Qa'ida leadership had obviously learned much from their ventures into the nuclear market in the early 1990s. Sayf al-Adl told Abu Bakr that no price was too high to pay if they could get their hands on such weapons. However, he cautioned Abu Bakr that al-Qa'ida had been stung by scams in the past and that Pakistani specialists should be brought to Saudi Arabia to inspect the merchandise prior to purchase.

Tenet repeats a common explanation offered for al Qaeda’s presence in Iran: the terrorists are supposedly under a “loose form of house arrest.” But how meaningful is this “detention” if they are openly discussing the acquisition of nuclear weapons? Obviously, it is not very meaningful at all. This should raise a host of questions about the relationship between the Iranian regime and al Qaeda, but Tenet is uninterested.

Tenet does not mention that Sayf al-Adl--one of the terrorists pursuing a nuke while under “house arrest”--has been working with the Iranians and Hezbollah since the early 1990's. Al-Adl was even trained in a Hezbollah camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where, along with other al Qaeda terrorists, he was taught how to blow up big buildings like American embassies. Al-Adl and his comrades found a use for the skills Hezbollah gave them by blowing up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. Tenet also neglects to mention that al-Adl and his comrades have reportedly ordered attacks in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and elsewhere from Iranian soil. There’s much more Tenet does not mention, including evidence that al Qaeda has been openly operating out of Tehran for years.

Shouldn't Tenet, the CIA, and the rest of us be a little more worried that al Qaeda's “nuclear chief” and al-Adl are freely working to acquire nuclear weapons from their safe haven in Iran?

"More Than Enough Evidence"

2007-05-01T13:38:00.000-05:00

My latest piece, on what George Tenet's new book says about Iraq and al Qaeda, is up over at the WeeklyStandard.com site. And here is an update, cross-posted over at the Worldwide Standard:

Al Qaeda In Saddam’s Baghdad

In his new book, George Tenet refers to two members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who were operating out of Baghdad for much of 2002. Tenet explains:

More al-Qa'ida operatives would follow, including Thirwat Shihata and Yussef Dardiri, two Egyptians assessed by a senior al-Qa'ida detainee to be among the Egyptian Islamic Jihad's best operational planners, who arrived by mid-May of 2002. At times we lost track of them, though their associates continued to operate in Baghdad as of October 2002. Their activity in sending recruits to train in Zarqawi's camps was compelling enough.

There was also concern that these two might be planning operations outside Iraq. Credible information told us that Shihata was willing to strike U.S., Israeli, and Egyptian targets sometime in the future. Shihata had been linked to terrorist operations in North Africa, and while in Afghanistan he had trained North Africans in the use of truck bombs. Smoke indeed. But how much fire, if any? [Emphasis Added]

Who are Thirwat Shihata [which is frequently spelled with an “r,” as in Shirhata] and Yussef Dardiri? And why might they have been allowed to freely operate in Saddam’s capital?

According to this account from the BBC, Shirhata is Ayman al-Zawahiri’s “deputy in [the] Egyptian Islamic Jihad group.” The BBC adds, “He has received two death sentences in absentia in Egypt for alleged terrorist activities.” This account from MSNBC implies that his ties to Zawahiri go back some years, since he is “believed to have been part of the plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat,” which occurred on October 6, 1981. MSNBC adds that Shirhata is “believed to be in Iranian control.” That is, he is thought to be one of the terrorists under a loose form of “house arrest” in Iran.

Yussef Dardiri is none other than Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a terrorist who is currently receiving much attention because the Iraqis have reported (and this is unconfirmed) that they have killed him. This claim has been made before, so we will wait for official confirmation. Globalsecurity.org provides a good biography of al-Masri that lists his many aliases and other important details. Globalsecurity says “he is the last remaining original member of the Mujahideen Shura Council.” That is, he is an al Qaeda bigwig. “He has manufactured explosives in Iraq, particularly car and truck bombs” and “has also helped foreign fighters move from Syria to Baghdad, and oversaw al-Qaeda's activities in southern Iraq.” Globalsecurity.org adds, “He has been a terrorist since 1982, when he joined Ayman al-Zawahri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad.”

The bottom line on al-Masri and Shirhata is this: they were and are high-level al Qaeda operatives who have been loyal to al-Zawahiri for decades and they were, according to Tenet’s new book and other available evidence, operating freely out of Baghdad long before American troops got there.

This brings us to our next question: Why were they operating out of Saddam’s capital?

The answer may lie in Ayman al-Zawahiri’s longstanding relationship with Saddam’s regime. As the 9-11 Commission reported, al-Zawahiri had “ties of his own to the Iraqis” and attended at least a few meetings with senior Iraqi officials in 1998. At one of these encounters, the Iraqis gave him $300,000. (“For what reason?,” you might ask.) Joe Klein, who is an ardent critic of the Bush administration, has confirmed that documents discovered in post-invasion Iraq demonstrate that al-Zawahiri had a long-term relationship with Saddam’s regime. There is, undoubtedly, more to this story. But it is not unreasonable to speculate that al-Zawahiri himself may have played some role in arranging safe haven for two of his comrades in Saddam’s Baghdad.

Questions For Another Baathist Turned Al Qaeda Bigwig

2007-04-27T10:33:00.000-05:00

NBC News is reporting that an important al Qaeda terrorist, known by his nom de guerre Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi (his real name is Nashwan Abdulrazaq Abdulbaqi), has been captured and transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi's known biography, and other reported details of his life as a terrorist, raise a number of interesting questions. Here are just some of the questions his interrogators should be focusing on:

(1) What ties, if any, did you have to Saddam's regime after leaving the Iraqi army?

As both the NBC News account and his Rewards for Justice page confirm, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was once a major in Saddam's army "before moving to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union. " NBC News explains, "The Pentagon said al-Hadi was born in Mosul in 1961 and was once a major in Saddam Hussein's military before moving to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union." After joining al Qaeda in the late 1990's, he composed an extensive dossier as a top terrorist for bin Laden. It is worth reproducing the Rewards for Justice description of his life as a terrorist here:

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi is one of Usama bin Laden’s top global deputies, personally chosen by bin Laden to monitor al Qaeda operations in Iraq. Al-Hadi was the former Internal Operations Chief for al Qaeda. He has been associated with numerous attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been known to facilitate communication between al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda. Al-Hadi rose to the rank of Major in Saddam Hussein’s army before moving to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union. He has a reputation for being a skilled, intelligent, and experienced commander and is an extremely well-respected al Qaeda leader. He has commanded numerous terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Al-Hadi is reportedly still in contact with Usama bin Laden.

Several corollary questions include:

(a) Did you maintain ties with any personnel in Saddam's army after leaving for Afghanistan? If so, who? And why?

(b) Did you maintain any ties to members of Saddam's government or intelligence service after leaving for Afghanistan? Again, if so, who? And why? Do you know of other former members of Saddam's regime who joined al Qaeda and maintained ties to Saddam's Iraq afterwards?

(c) The NBC News report and other information indicates that Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was responsible for maintaining ties between al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Where were al Qaeda's leaders stationed in Pakistan and Afghanistan? What measures do they take to hide their location? Who in Iraq did you maintain contact with? What types of messages were you responsible for carrying back and forth? Were any of the al Qaeda members in Iraq you maintained contact with also one-time members of Saddam's military, government and/or intelligence service? If so, who? What are their backgrounds?

(d) Abu Zubaydah told his CIA interrogators that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had good relations with Iraqi intelligence. Can you corroborate Zubaydah's testimony? What do you know about Zarqawi's terrorist career and ties to Saddam's regime prior to the war?

(2) Who in Iran did you meet with? And where in Iran? What is the nature of the relationship between the Iranian regime, including its terrorist appendages (IRGC and Hezbollah), and al Qaeda?

NBC News reports:

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the captive is Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, adding that he was caught as he tried to return to Iraq. “Abd al-Hadi was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage al-Qaida’s affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets,” Whitman said, adding that the terror suspect also met with al-Qaida members in Iran. He said he did not know what time period al-Hadi was in Iran.

It is widely believed, incorrectly, that the al Qaeda leadership in Iran is under some form of meaningful house arrest. In reality, al Qaeda's leadership has continued to openly operate out of Iran over the last several years, and this latest account from NBC News buttresses the point. This should not be surprising since al Qaeda has a long history of cooperating with the Iranians. (See here and here, for example, and I'll have more to come in the weeks that follow.)

Several corollary questions include:

(a) How frequently did you meet with al Qaeda's leaders in Iran?

(b) Were any members of the IRGC, Hezbollah, or any other Iranian proxy/party involved in these meetings?

(c) Were attacks against the West, outside of Iraq, discussed (in addition to the attacks inside Iraq)?

(d) What role does Iran play in aiding al Qaeda's terror inside Iraq, if any?

If warranted, I'll post more on this later. These are just a few of the types of questions American interrogators should be asking.

From Baath to Al Qaeda Jihadi

2007-04-09T06:35:00.000-05:00

The Atlantic has a new piece titled "The Ploy," which is billed as: "The inside story of how the interrogators of Task Force 145 cracked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s inner circle—without resorting to torture—and hunted down al-Qaeda’s man in Iraq." The piece (sub. required) is far better than The Atlantic's last major piece on Zarqawi, which was riddled with errors - both errors in fact and of omission.

"The Ploy" takes tells the story of how a team of American intelligence agents cracked Zarqawi's cell through clever questioning and bargaining. In particular, the Americans focused on two key Zarqawi lieutenants. Their biographies are especially noteworthy since, like so many other al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists, they were once part of Saddam's Iraqi society. Bowden describes the terrorists [Emphasis Added]:

Abu Raja was a sophisticated man in his mid-30s, a professional who spoke fluent English. Round, soft, and balding, he wore the regulation Saddam-era Sunni moustache. He came from a family that had been well- connected during the tyrant’s reign; before the American invasion, he’d had a thriving business. A relative of his had been killed in the long war Iraq fought with Iran in the 1980s, and Abu Raja hated all Iranians. He saw the American invasion as a conspiracy between the Iranian mullahs and the United States to wipe out Iraq’s minority Sunnis. Though Abu Raja was initially defiant, Matt and Nathan sized him up as a timid man, neither ideologically committed nor loyal. They battered him with rapid-fire questions, never giving him time to think, and they broke him—or so they thought—in two days. He agreed to talk about anyone in al-Qaeda who outranked him, but not about those who held less important positions. Since the Task Force’s method was to work its way up the chain, this suited the gators perfectly.

Abu Haydr was more difficult. He was a big, genial man who nearly buckled the white plastic chairs in the interrogation rooms. He was 43 years old, with a wide, big-featured face, big ears, a well-trimmed beard, and fair skin. He was married and had four children. He also spoke fluent English. Before the American invasion, he’d had an important government job and had made a good living. He had hated Saddam, he said, but when the tyrant fell, he had lost everything. He looked tough and boasted that he had a black belt in karate, but his manner was gentle and his hands were smooth and delicate. He spoke in a deliberate, professorial way. He had studied the Koran and, while not overtly pious, knew a great deal about his faith. He admitted his sympathy for the insurgency. He had been arrested once before and had served time in Abu Ghraib, he said, and did not wish to return. He said Abu Raja had asked him to attend the meeting where they had both been captured, and that he was there only because the people at the house needed him to operate a video camera. This was the same story told by Abu Raja.

So, according to Bowden, Abu Raja "wore the regulation Saddam-era Sunni moustache," and "came from a family that had been well- connected during the tyrant’s reign." That is, his family was "well-connected" to the Baathist regime. Abu Haydr claimed to hate Saddam, but nonetheless "had an important government job and had made a good living" during the Iraqi regime's heyday. Both of the former Baathists seamlessly transitioned from a life as a Saddam-era Baathist to an al Qaeda jihadi.

This is the same story over and over again. Numerous members of Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq were once members of Saddam's regime, including his dreaded Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). And as American mainstream media outlets and domestic political partisans continue to spin the Iraq-al Qaeda story for their own political reasons, American forces fight the Baath-al Qaeda alliance in Iraq every day.

(Hat tip: NRO)

Al Qaeda Central & The Terror Attacks In Britain

2007-02-17T16:18:00.000-05:00

As has been documented elsewhere on numerous occasions, al Qaeda central is back. That is, some of al Qaeda's core leadership has secured safehaven on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Others, like Saif al Adel and Saad bin Laden, are presently harbored in Iran. Some are fighting in Iraq. And still others have dispersed throughout the Middle East and into Africa.) Importantly, contrary to some "expert" opinion, it is clear that al Qaeda's leadership on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is still ordering up attacks around the world. For some reason, some al Qaeda watchers and terrorism analysts have come to believe that the al Qaeda-style attacks in England and Spain have been executed without any direction from al Qaeda central. That is obviously false.

Indeed, Brian Ross of ABC News made an important point in his recent interview with Charlie Rose. Ross tells viewers that intelligence compiled by the British now indicates that the last three attempted/executed attacks in the UK were coordinated from Pakistan. I presume he is including in his count the plot against roughly one dozen airliners last year and the July 7, 2005 bombings.

Bottom line: As Ross says, Al Qaeda central is in business and directing attacks around the world.

An American in al Qaeda

2007-02-14T14:05:00.000-05:00

The Houston Chronicle tells the story of ex-Houstonian Daniel Joseph Maldonado (emphasis added):

...He decided to go to Somalia to wage jihad, which he described during an interview as the act of "raising the word of Allah, uppermost, by speaking and fighting against all those who are against the Islamic State." He chose to help Somalia because he said it was the only legitimate Islamic state.

"If Americans came, I would fight them too," Maldonado allegedly said. He would have "no problem" with fighting or killing Americans, nor with the Sept. 11 attacks. He also allegedly said he would be willing to become a suicide bomber if he were wounded.

Maldonado said he never completed his physical training because he contracted malaria. He is also credited with saying that he participated in nightly gatherings where a Yemeni who personally knew Osama bin Laden would tell stories about the al-Qaida leader.

In a news release, Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's national security division, noted the arrest as the first linked to Somalia.

"The prosecution of Mr. Maldonado demonstrates the scope of our laws and serves as a warning to others who would travel overseas to wage violent jihad," Wainstein said.

According to the State Department, al-Qaida poses a threat to the United States and to the stability of Somalia.

While in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, Maldonado was outfitted with an AK-47 assault rifle, ammunition, military combat uniforms, boots and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the complaint says.

At training camps in Kismaayo and Jilib, southern Somali towns, where al-Qaida members were allegedly present, Maldonado received firearms and explosives training to prepare to go to the front to fight for the Islamic Courts Union, a rebel group.

Pentagon officials have acknowledged that in early January, U.S. airships targeted al-Qaida leaders in southern Somalia, the region where Maldonado is accused of living and training with al-Qaida forces.

Maldonado stood still as he listened to U.S. Magistrate Judge Calvin Botley at an initial hearing Tuesday afternoon. Maldonado asked about being detained closer to his parents and children, who reside in or near New Hampshire, he said.

Botley said Maldonado will be held at the Houston federal detention center without bail pending a hearing Feb. 20.

Hat tip: The Worldwide Standard

Zawahiri's Call For Unity

2007-02-13T17:27:00.000-05:00

But, I thought - according to so many "experts" - al Qaeda could never cooperate with those who weren't members of their exclusive Sunni Wahhabist club...from the SITE Insitute (emphasis added):

The voice of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two, is featured in a 40:42 minute video produced by the multimedia arm of al-Qaeda, as-Sahab. Titled: “Tremendous Lessons and Events in the Year 1427 AH”, the video contains English subtitles to Zawahiri’s speech, a static image on him shown in the top left corner of the screen. Primary among the events of the past year in the Islamic calendar, according to Zawahiri, is U.S. President George W. Bush allegedly admitting to failure in Iraq and an escalating threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan. As the Democrats failed to reverse U.S. foreign policy, and the American and British citizens reelected their heads of state, Bush and Tony Blair, to lead them into the “abyss”, Zawahiri observes that Western aggression will continue upon Islam until the Mujahideen are victorious. This circumstance is the focal point of the speech, Zawahiri seeking a solution in a profound call to all Muslims for unity, “even if be they Afghans, Persians, Turks or Kurds”, to heed Islamic doctrine and fight together to make “Allah’s word” supreme.

On the subject of America, Zawahiri claims Bush to be an “alcoholic”, addicted to drinking, lying, and gambling, using these terms as metaphors for his pursuits in the Middle East. He finds no difference between Democrat and Republican, and to their combined actions against Muslims, he announces that their era and that of their allies is over and the “era of Jihad and the Mujahideen has dawned. Counties that have helped in the “Crusade” and Islam in the Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, are threatened by Zawahiri to prepare for the reaping of their “bitter harvest”. Also denying encroachment upon Muslim lands, Zawahiri urges Muslims to deny UN Resolution 1701 and refuse an “international Crusader presence” in southern Lebanon.

Returning to the ideal of Muslim unity, Zawahiri affirms that he and al-Qaeda have pledged loyalty to the Emir of the Believers, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and encourages all Mujahideen to align themselves beneath one banner. He adds: “I ask my Muslim brothers in general and the callers and Mujahideen and their media organizations in particular to highlight the concept of Islamic brotherhood and disown all partisanship, loyalties and animosities based on nationalism, and I ask them not to allow the wrongdoing of a faction or entity motivate them to speak evil of that party's entire people or race.” Within this call, Zawahiri charges that the leaders of Fatah are apostates, and encourages its members to “return to Islam” and fight, but not necessarily join Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, or al-Qaeda.

Concluding the speech, Zawahiri instructs Muslims to serve in jihad in Mauritania, as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, and Somalia, either by bearing arms, monies, or words. He sends greetings to the “fledging” Islamic State of Iraq and members of its leadership, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, and the Mujahideen in both Algeria and Somalia.

What they used to say...

2007-02-11T17:08:00.000-05:00

Powerline takes a trip down memory lane. Here is my take:

The original ABC News report you [Powerline] linked to was from January 1999, I believe, and not 2000. The report was similar to numerous accounts in the worldwide press following Operation Desert Fox. That Clinton-ordered air campaign lasted from December 16 to December 19, 1998. Its purpose was to degrade Saddam's WMD and intelligence capabilities. Reports from more recent years indicate that the campaign nearly plunged Saddam's regime into chaos.

In any event, Saddam's response was telling. Just two days after Operation Desert Fox ended he dispatched one of his top intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. As I and others have written, Hijazi was no low-level flunky. He was one of Saddam's most trusted goons and was responsible for overseeing a good deal of the regime's terrorist and other covert activities. It was this meeting that led to widespread reporting on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. I collected a bunch of these reports, including the ABC News report, in "The Four-Day War." Another, earlier piece also discusses Saddam's conspicuous response to Operation Desert Fox.

The consensus in the media then was that there was a relationship between the two and that Saddam's regime was very willing to work with al Qaeda against their common foe: America. And vice versa. Indeed, the reporting indicated that they had been working together even long before Operation Desert Fox.

The reports from late 1998 and early 1999 are tough for naysayers to explain away for a variety of reasons, but that hasn't stopped them from trying. For example, last year's Senate Intelligence Report on Iraq's ties to al Qaeda (the report was written, primarily, by a former John Kerry for President campaigner) unhesitatingly cited Hijazi's testimony, in which he claimed that he did not meet with bin Laden again after a lone incident in the mid 1990's. The Senate Intelligence report did not cite any of the voluminous reporting, by ABC News and other outlets, following the meeting in December 1998. Obviously, that reporting demonstrates Hijazi is a liar. I asked the Senate Intelligence Committee's staff about this after the report came out. They said they didn't have any evidence that contradicted Hijazi's testimony and that is why they cited it unquestioningly. I think that is a good demonstration of the ignorance or bias or both that clouds this issue.

Of course, at the same time that the worldwide media was reporting all of this, various CIA and National Security Council officials were watching as well. Thus, Richard Clarke worried in February 1999 about bin Laden's possible "boogie to Baghdad." A month earlier he defended intelligence tying Saddam's VX nerve gas program to a suspected al Qaeda front company in Sudan. Michael Scheuer also at one time found it to convenient to cite some of this evidence. In his original 2002 edition of Through Our Enemies' Eyes he approvingly cited several of the media's late 1998/early 1999 accounts. Of course, they both now pretend none of this really means anything.

Such is the state of affairs in today's Washington establishment.

The New Know-Nothings

2006-12-01T15:21:00.000-05:00

Here's my take on the prospect of negotiating with Iran over at the Claremont Institute's web site.

Basically: Iran kills Americans, America doesn't do anything, then some foreign policy gurus call for negotiations based on their ignorance.

Repeat that process from 1979 on and you have the history of America's "relations" with Iran.

Unfounded Assumptions

2006-11-14T10:32:00.000-05:00

My new piece on the DOCEX project coming to an end is up over at The Weekly Standard's site. See below as well:

Unfounded Assumptions

DOCEX challenged the assumptions of the intelligence community and the press. by Thomas Joscelyn 11/14/2006 12:00:00 AM

IN THE WAKE OF the New York Times's November surprise, the government's release of documents captured in Iraq has come to a grinding halt. For more than one week now, the site that had published files from Saddam's archives has been offline. Unfortunately, there is a good chance that the document release project, which had published thousands of documents and other pieces of captured media since March, will never be restarted.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra has long been a champion of releasing the materials captured in Iraq, as long as they did not jeopardize national security. He had to fight a thoroughly disinterested intelligence bureaucracy to jump-start the project. But Tuesday's election results mean that Hoekstra will no longer be positioned to carry on the fight. Within just a few months he will lose his chairmanship to a Democratic replacement, who will most likely have little interest in exposing Saddam's crimes. Instead, the Committee will likely focus more attention on the Bush administration's supposed prewar intelligence abuses.

That's a shame. The documents and other captured media provide a unique window into one of the most secretive regimes in history. As a general rule, Saddam's minions did not advertise their misdeeds in public. The documents and other files released on the Internet, therefore, provided one of the best sources for exploring what the Butcher of Baghdad was really up to during his decades-long rein of terror.

But the captured materials are valuable for a variety of other reasons, not the least of which is intelligence reform. For too long, the U.S. Intelligence Community has been content in its failure to recruit human intelligence assets among our enemies. As a result, IC operatives and analysts frequently filled gaps in their knowledge with simple-minded assumptions. The Iraqi intelligence documents provide numerous examples of just how wrong-headed these assumptions can be and the necessity of good human intelligence (HUMINT) collection.

Take the issue of Iraq's contacts with al Qaeda. No informed observer disputes that the Iraqi regime was in contact with al Qaeda operatives. But the conventional wisdom inside the CIA is that these contacts did not amount to much. This judgment is not based on a deep knowledge of either al Qaeda or the Iraqi regime. The CIA failed to recruit significant assets inside either. Instead, it is based on an assumption.

Bob Baer was one the few CIA operatives to aggressively pursue intelligence collection throughout the Middle East and other terrorist hotspots in the 1990's. Both of Baer's accounts of his decades on the job (Sleeping With The Devil and See No Evil) provide valuable insights into the workings of America's shadowy spook organization. Much of Baer's writings also reflect a keen understanding of how our terrorist enemies work. There is one notable exception.

In the mid-1990s Baer was stationed in Khartoum, Sudan. At the time, Khartoum was also home to the man who would become the most wanted terrorist in the world: Osama bin Laden. In Sleeping With The Devil, Baer notes that bin Laden was frequented by many guests, including Saddam's operatives. He writes:

A lot of Arabs were making the pilgrimage to Khartoum to see bin Laden. Iraqi intelligence had met with bin Laden on several occasions. Although we couldn't be positive, we assumed the emissaries were only taking bin Laden's measure, making sure he wasn't about to turn on them.

Thus, the CIA knew that bin Laden was meeting with Iraqi Intelligence. But without good human intelligence assets inside those meetings, or reliable electronic eavesdropping on the proceedings, the CIA couldn't be sure what exactly was going on. The Agency simply assumed there was no cause for concern.

Thanks to the document release project, however, we learn that this assumption was unwarranted.

One document released on the web earlier this year is an authenticated Iraqi intelligence memorandum summarizing several Iraqi contacts with al Qaeda in the mid-1990s. The memo discusses some of the very meetings Baer dismisses in his book. Some of the contents of the document had been previously reported in the New York Times and THE WEEKLY STANDARD, but the version released by the government allowed the public to read an English translation first-hand.

The story told by the internal Iraqi memorandum does not support the CIA's assumption.

The document was apparently authored in early 1997 and Iraqi intelligence recounts two requests from bin Laden for assistance. The first was a request for the Iraqi regime to rebroadcast al Qaeda propaganda from a leading Sheikh. Saddam agreed.

Bin Laden also requested help in conducting "joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia." As for bin Laden's second request, the Iraqi document notes that Saddam was willing to explore collaboration:

Through dialogue and agreements we will leave the door open to further develop the relationship and cooperation between both sides. The Intelligence Director's representative, our ambassador in Khartoum, informed the Sudanese side of the revered Presidency's [Saddam's] agreement.

The Iraqi memorandum does not mention any fear of bin Laden turning on Saddam, as Baer assumed. Instead, the two sides were explicitly discussing "joint operations" against American forces. It is worth noting that, at the time, al Qaeda was focused on a string of bombings against American assets in Saudi Arabia. Whether or not bin Laden's terrorists received any actual assistance from Saddam in these attacks is not known. But that Osama was willing to explore collaboration with Saddam on these attacks is troubling to say the least.

It is worth noting, too, that Baer's CIA was actively working with Iraqi opposition groups during this time with the aim of overthrowing Saddam. Saddam, therefore, had good reason to explore collaboration with terrorists.

This Iraqi document underscores not only how misguided the CIA's assumptions can be, but also how incomplete the media's reporting on Iraq's contacts with al Qaeda has been.

When the Times first reported the existence of the memo in the summer of 2004 ("Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says"), the "Newspaper of Record" left out a number of details.

For example, the document relates that not only was Iraqi intelligence meeting with bin Laden, but it was also in contact with a prominent al Qaeda ideologue named Dr. Muhammad al-Massari. Al-Massari openly operates a web site devoted to glorifying martyrdom attacks in Iraq from his base of operations in London.

According to the Iraqi intelligence document, a Sudanese intermediary initially acted as a liaison between al-Massari and the Iraqi regime. On behalf of al-Massari, the intermediary "raised the subject of cooperation and joint coordination with Iraq, and the possibility of implementing a mechanism and a working program with his movement."

The Iraqi regime agreed to send the Sudanese intermediary to London to meet with al-Massari to discuss his proposal further. When that intermediary could no longer do the job, the Iraqis arranged for a Saudi intermediary to manage the relationship. During two telephone calls with the Saudi, al-Massari "stated that he wishes to visit the country [Iraq] in the near future." But, do to his current legal troubles, this was impossible.

The Iraqis concluded:

We are following the issue until we reach the goal of establishing a core Saudi Opposition in the country, and we will use our relationship with them to serve us in our intelligence goals.

As with the contacts with bin Laden, we cannot be sure what came of the Iraqi regime's ties to al-Massari. In a recent interview with the editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, however, al-Massari confirmed that Saddam sponsored al Qaeda's relocation to Iraqi soil in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Al-Massari was, therefore, apparently keeping tabs on the Iraqi relationship with al Qaeda years after his first attempts to work with Saddam. And, as with bin Laden's contacts with Iraq, the fact that al-Massari was willing to work with the Iraqis and vice versa is deeply troubling--and contrary to the widely-held belief that Saddam's secular regime was anathema to Sunni extremists.

Yet, nowhere in the Times's account of the Iraqi intelligence memo is there any mention of al-Massari. The public would never have known that the Iraqi regime was in contact with this al Qaeda propagandist if it were not the ability to read a translation of the document.
That's the whole point of the document release project. For too long, the public discussion of the Iraqi regime has been colored by the U.S. Intelligence Community's assumptions and the press's own mishandling of the topic. This is why it is so important for the American people to see the evidence firsthand.

Thomas Joscelyn is a terrorism researcher and economist living in New York.

© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

The New Chair?

2006-11-09T17:11:00.000-05:00

Will Alcee Lamar Hastings be the new Chair of the House Intelligence Committee?

All I can say is: Yikes!

Pakistan's Proxy War

2006-11-03T15:47:00.000-05:00

My new piece on Pakistan's duplicity regarding al Qaeda and its allies is up over at The Weekly Standard. Full text below.

TWO SENIOR AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS met with India's foreign secretary last week. While the meeting received scant attention in the States, it was big news in India. According to Indian press accounts, the role Pakistan's intelligence service (the ISI) played in the July 11, 2006 Mumbai train bombings, which killed roughly 200 people, was one of the subjects discussed.

That India implicated Pakistan in the bombings is no surprise. Senior Indian officials have repeatedly tied the 7/11 bombings to the ISI. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently told reporters that there was "credible evidence" implicating the ISI. India's National Security Advisor offered a more nuanced account. M K Narayanan explained: "I would be hesitant to say we have clinching evidence. There are pieces in the puzzle missing, but I would say we do have petty good evidence [of ISI involvement]."

The ISI has used Islamist terrorists as part of its proxy war against India for decades. But it was hoped that peace talks with India would provide Pakistan with an incentive to limit, if not altogether close down, the operations of terrorists targeting India and Indian assets in Kashmir. If the 7/11 plot is conclusively traced back to the ISI, it would signal that there is little hope of Pakistan reining in terrorism.

For its part, Pakistan has denied any role in the bombings, dismissing the allegations as "propaganda." The Pakistani government also recently reaffirmed its commitment to a peace accord with India. But these matters are not nearly as clear cut as Pakistan's diplomatic pronouncements. It may be the case that the upper echelon of the Pakistani government, including President Musharraf, had no prior knowledge of, or direct role in, the Mumbai attack. Musharraf was quick to condemn it. But the ISI has long operated as a state within a state. It is possible that the ISI could have directed the attack without Musharraf's explicit endorsement. It is also possible, however, that Musharraf simply looked the other way on the ISI's activities, thereby giving the operation his implicit endorsement.

In either case, the intelligence collected on the ISI's alleged role in the bombing is vitally important to America's "war on terror."

PAKISTAN'S SUPPORT for America's war has been uneven. On the one hand, Musharraf's government has helped track down dozens of high-value al Qaeda operatives, interrupted terrorist attacks against Western targets (such as the plot to down more than one dozen airliners flying out of London earlier this year), and struck suspected terrorist training facilities inside Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan has effectively ceded control of North Waziristan to the Taliban and al Qaeda and released more than 2,500 Taliban and al Qaeda members from jail.

This duplicity may be explained, at least in part, by the ISI's continued desire to use al Qaeda's allies in its proxy war against India. Over the past several weeks, Indian authorities have publicly exposed Pakistan's hand in a variety of clandestine activities. For instance, a high-ranking Pakistani diplomat was expelled under suspicions of espionage. Pakistani efforts to infiltrate the Indian military have been exposed. On October 27, Indian authorities announced that two terrorists with ties to a well-known Pakistani terrorist group were arrested while plotting attacks.

Mumbai police have implicated 11 Pakistanis in the 7/11 attack. These subjects are reportedly connected to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani Islamist group closely allied with both al Qaeda and the ISI. The LET has proven to be especially lethal in attacking Indian targets. In addition to the 7/11 bombings, India has accused the LET of executing numerous terrorist attacks, including the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.

Numerous senior al Qaeda operatives have been tied to the LET in one fashion or another. For example, top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was captured in a LET safe house in early 2002. But Zubaydah's capture, as well as the capture of other high-value LET members--who are imprisoned at terrorist detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay--was aided by Pakistani authorities.

We are left, therefore, with a puzzling set of circumstances. In some cases, it appears that the Pakistanis are more than willing to help hunt down LET members and their al Qaeda allies, at least when they are known to be targeting U.S. and western assets. But in other cases, it seems the Pakistanis are willing to work with the very same groups against their long-time rival, India.
All of which underscores how complicated the fight against terrorism is. America's allies may be loyal in some efforts, but duplicitous in others. There is no easy answer for our uneasy relationship with Pakistan.

Thomas Joscelyn is an economist and writer living in New York.

© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Hanson On The Terror Network

2006-10-26T16:14:00.000-05:00

Over at National Review Online’s The Corner, Victor Davis Hanson touches on a point that I think is essential for understanding the modern Islamist terror network. Hanson writes:

At a meeting the other day with some political scientists, I was lectured by some that there was nothing such as jihadism in the comprehensive sense. That is, that Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. simply have entirely separate agendas, understandable (i.e., Israel, "occupation" of Arab lands) and particularist grievances, etc. rather than a deeply shared anger at the West that originates from a common sense of lost pride and frustration, brought on by recognition of failure when zeal and religious purity do not restore honor or influence in the age of globalization.

The “political scientists” Hanson mentions are, not surprisingly, relaying the conventional wisdom on terrorism. That is, it is widely believed that all of the various terrorist entities in the Middle East can be carved up into neatly drawn ideological boxes. According to this line of thinking, ideological differences coupled with narrowly defined local agendas preclude any sustained cooperation between the various heads of the terrorist hydra.

For example, it is widely believed that the Iranian-controlled and Shiite Hezbollah could never sustain cooperation with the stateless and Sunni al Qaeda. Hezbollah and al Qaeda not only have competing religious sentiments, it is argued, but also widely disparate interests. Hezbollah is mainly focused on completing its takeover of Lebanon and defeating Israel, while al Qaeda’s main goal is (among other goals) to force the U.S. out of the Middle East altogether.

Hanson rightly concludes that this line of thinking is deficient. He offers a handful of historical examples, including the alliance between axis powers in World War II, to prove his point. Ideological or localized agendas have not precluded cooperation between our adversaries in the past.

But while historical analogies are certainly useful, the actual facts of the matter are conclusive. The prevailing paradigm simply does not reflect abundant evidence. Since I am writing a booklet that covers this very same subject, let me share just four brief examples that run counter to the conventional wisdom:

Example # 1: The Relationship between Sunni Sudan and Shiite Iran.

The Clinton administration added Sudan to the State Department’s state-sponsors of terrorism list in 1993. The primary concern at the time was the relationship between the relatively new Sunni Islamist government in Sudan and the Iranian regime. Clinton administration officials made countless references to their fear that Sudan and Iran were working together to export terrorism.

Sudan’s ideological leader, Hassan al-Turabi, a member of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, embraced Iran (as well as Saddam’s Iraq). Turabi’s vision was to bring together as many of the anti-Western, anti-Israel, and anti-American terrorist constituencies as he could. This is what led him, in part, to give bin Laden and his al Qaeda cohorts safehaven in Sudan from 1992 to 1996.

As a consequence of the first Gulf War, Turabi sought to unite terrorist interests, regardless of religious or ideological differences, together against their common enemy: the United States. Turabi calculated that if all these groups pooled their interests they could force America out of the region. The result was a terrorist melting pot in which Sudan became a breeding ground for terrorism with all of the terrorist groups listed by Hanson above and many more represented. Iraqi and Iranian intelligence were heavily represented as well.

It was in this context that al Qaeda’s international designs were forged. Numerous attacks organized on Sudanese soil against U.S. and Western interests followed.

(For more on Turabi’s role in bringing together the international terrorist network, go here and here. Turabi, by the way, is a free man.)

Example #2: Iran’s number one Hezbollah terrorist, Imad Mugniyah, trained al Qaeda’s operatives and has a long-standing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

According to Ali Mohamed, a top al Qaeda operative convicted for his involvement in the August 1998 embassy bombings, Osama bin Laden personally requested Imad Mugniyah’s help in organizing attacks against American interests. Mugniyah is the most ruthless terrorist in history, having run Hezbollah’s attacks against the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, as well as the kidnap and torture (to death) of the CIA’s top man in Lebanon in 1984. Those attacks drove the U.S. out of Lebanon and, according to Ali Mohamed, bin Laden wanted to model his terrorist organization after Hezbollah’s success.

Bin Laden’s wish was granted. Mughniyah’s Hezbollah trained al Qaeda operatives in how to build suicide truck bombs. Some of these same operatives then simultaneously destroyed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, just as Mugniyah’s henchmen destroyed the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in April 1983.

This was not the last time Mughniyah’s fingerprints were found on one of al Qaeda’s attacks. The 9-11 Commission found that a “senior Hezbollah” terrorist - that is, Mughniyah - had personally escorted some of the muscle hijackers.

(For a more complete write-up of example #2, go here.)

Example #3: The Clinton administration recognized the alliance between Hezbollah and al Qaeda in its first indictment of al Qaeda. In addition, Clinton administration officials have long recognized that Iran supported al Qaeda.

(For more on example #3, go here.)

Example #4: Iran helped the Taliban, which had previously been a sworn enemy, as well as al Qaeda escape approaching American-led forces in 2001.

(For more on this, go here.)

These are just a handful of examples, chosen from many, of why the conventional wisdom about terrorism is flat wrong. Hanson is right, for a lot of reasons.

Iran's Handiwork In Iraq

2006-10-13T13:05:00.000-05:00

Michael Rubin comments on the passivity in the press's reporting on the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. I couldn't agree more. Too frequently, press accounts fail to make it clear who is behind much of the killing and violence in Iraq.

On that note, here's a reminder: Iran openly sponsors Shiite militias, arms "insurgents" of all kinds with IED technology, and is, in general, the cause of much violence.

For more on Iran's dirty work in Iraq, go here, here, here, here and here...for starters.

On occasion the mainstream press does report on Iran's hand in the insurgency. (As can be seen in some of the links provided above.) But, in general, it is not a consistent part of the reporting, by any means.

Who Killed Daniel Pearl?

2006-10-13T12:49:00.000-05:00

According to this account from Time Magazine, and other previous reporting, it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11.

Key paragraphs:

Now, several U.S. officials tell TIME that KSM's role in the Pearl murder appears more direct than previously acknowledged — and that the Bush Administration plans to try him for it. The officials tell TIME that KSM confessed under CIA interrogation that he personally committed the murder. Moreover, when he faces a military tribunal at Guantanamo, perhaps as soon as next year, the U.S. plans to charge him not only with the 9/11 plot, but also with direct responsibility for Pearl's death.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) was one of 14 "high value" prisoners recently moved to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from secret CIA prisons overseas. In announcing the transfer on Sept. 6, President Bush also promised to try some of the most important captives in military tribunals, a plan that Congress approved last month.

One former U.S. national security official tells TIME there is no doubt that KSM personally wielded the knife that killed the Wall Street Journal reporter. This official says that Ahmad Omar Saed Sheik insisted under interrogation that taking Pearl's life was not at first part of the kidnap plot — though Sheik also told his questioners that Pearl's kidnappers could never have released him because he was Jewish. But as the scheme unfolded, someone senior to him in the al-Qaeda hierarchy, known as "the fat man," took control of the operation and beheade Pearl.

Sheik never identified KSM as the actual killer, however. The FBI deduced KSM's role only after analyzing a video of the crime, in which only the perpetrator's hands are visible. That video was released by Islamic militants soon after Pearl's murder and then widely shown on Arab television and the Internet. Eventually, the FBI obtained its own version of the original video, as well as the camera used to photograph the murder.

Once KSM was taken into custody in March 2003, a comparison of the hands shown in the video and KSM's own hands, along with other evidence, confirmed the FBI's suspicions. Then, under interrogation, KSM confessed, national security officials told TIME, admitting without remorse that he personally severed Pearl's head and telling interrogators he had to switch knives after the first one "got dull."

Zarqawi's Cousin Convicted In Jordan

2006-09-28T15:55:00.000-05:00

Five terrorists, including Abu Musab al Zarqawi's cousin, have been convicted by a Jordanian court.

Note this part from the AP account I linked to above (emphasis added):

Prosecutors charged the five with exposing the kingdom to retaliatory attacks and harming its relations with an unnamed foreign country — a reference to the United States.

The indictment said the five — Jordanians and Palestinians — sought to enter Iraq through Syria, aided by a network smuggling Arab fighters.

Just a reminder that Syria continues to allow a terrorist smuggling network operate on her soil. Keep that in mind when you hear of foreign fighters coming into Iraq to blow themselves up, in the process killing innocent civilians and contractors as well as American and British soldiers.

The NIE: The Best They Can Do?

2006-09-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

From Investor's Business Daily:

Intelligence: After reading the hotly debated National Intelligence Estimate, we must say that we too are surprised. Not by what the report says, but by its lack of insight. Is this the best our spy agencies have to offer?

Before we get to the report's shortcomings, however, one thing needs to be said: The media have again disgraced themselves by publicly revealing a secret document and then selectively distorting its contents.

It's almost as if the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the wire services can't help themselves. They know they're being used by people within the intelligence bureaucracy with an anti-Bush ax to grind, yet they're willing to be used. ...

That said, having looked at the report, we were surprised how little insight it offered. It mostly read like a paper presented to a graduate seminar on foreign relations -- not a top-secret document containing the collected, focused insights of dozens of highly trained experts. ...

Warning Signs

2006-09-27T14:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Senator Clinton said that her husband would have done more than President Bush did had he received a briefing like the August 6, 2001 PDB.

That's hard to believe since President Clinton himself signed a classified document saying essentially the same thing in December 1998.

There were, in fact, numerous threads of evidence pointing to bin Laden's determination to strike inside the U.S. during Clinton's tenure.

I discuss this in my latest piece, "Warning Signs."

Also, Daniel McKivergan makes a related point here.

Major Al Qaeda Leader Killed in Iraq

2006-09-25T10:30:00.000-05:00

The British have announced that their troops have killed a prominent al Qaeda leader in Iraq. The terrorist, Omar Faruq, was one of al Qaeda's top men inside its Indonesian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah. Faruq escaped from the Bagram base in Afghanistan in 2005, but according to Time Magazine he was initially detained after Abu Zubaydah fingered him in interrogations [Emphasis Added]:

According to a secret CIA document and regional intelligence reports obtained by TIME, U.S. officials already had reason to believe al-Faruq was one of bin Laden's top representatives in Southeast Asia, responsible for coordinating the activities of the region's disparate Islamic militant groups and employing their forces to conduct terror attacks against the U.S. and its allies. According to one regional intelligence memo, the CIA had been told of al-Faruq's role by Abu Zubaydah, the highest ranking al-Qaeda official in U.S. custody and a valuable, if at times manipulative, source of intelligence on the terror network and its plans. Initially, al-Faruq was not as cooperative. Though al-Faruq was subjected to three months of psychological interrogation tactics — a U.S. counterterrorism official says they included isolation and sleep deprivation — he stayed virtually silent.

But early last week al-Faruq finally broke down. On Sept. 9, according to a secret CIA summary of the interview, al-Faruq confessed that he was, in fact, al-Qaeda's senior representative in Southeast Asia. Then came an even more shocking confession: according to the CIA document, al-Faruq said two senior al-Qaeda officials, Abu Zubaydah and Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, had ordered him to "plan large-scale attacks against U.S. interests in Indonesia, Malaysia, (the) Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Cambodia. In particular," the document continues, "(al-)Faruq prepared a plan to conduct simultaneous car/truck bomb attacks against U.S. embassies in the region to take place on or near" the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Al-Faruq said that, despite his arrest, backup operatives were in place to "assume responsibilities to carry out operations as planned." If successfully executed, such a coordinated assault could produce thousands of casualties. Fearing an attack could come at any moment, al-Faruq's interrogators relayed his revelations to the cia's Counterterrorism Center in Langley, Va. Al-Faruq's story tracked with several recent intelligence reports from Southeast Asia about an increase in suspicious activities near American embassies. A day later the U.S. issued its code-orange terror alert. Al-Faruq's threatened attacks never occurred.

I will have more to say about Zubaydah in an upcoming piece. There has been a lot of misinformation recently about his role in al Qaeda's terror network. Some commentators have tried to pretend that he wasn't nearly as important a capture as the Bush administration has claimed. That is false, as demonstrated above. There is more to come on this later.

I think it is worth pointing out too, that Faruq had moved his base of operations to Iraq, even though he was initially ordered to focus on Southeast Asia. This is not surprising. As bin Laden himself has said, Iraq is the central battlefront in this war.

Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq on Saddam's Ties to Al Qaeda

2006-09-14T08:58:00.000-05:00

Collin, a reader, points us to this link from the NY Sun and writes,

"I have a feeling I won't be seeing this covered on the news any time soon."

The New York Sun's Eli Lake writes [Emphasis Added],

A deputy prime minister of Iraq yesterday offered a sharp contradiction of the conventional wisdom here that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda had no connection before the 2003 war, flatly contradicting a recent report from the Senate's intelligence committee.

In a speech in which he challenged the belief of war critics that Iraqis' lives are now worse than under Saddam Hussein, Barham Salih said, "The alliance between the Baathists and jihadists which sustains Al Qaeda in Iraq is not new, contrary to what you may have been told." He went on to say, "I know this at first hand. Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam's regime."

A Kurdish politician who took his high school exams from inside a Baathist prison, Mr. Salih said he was the target of the alliance between jihadists, Baathists, and Al Qaeda in 2001, when a group known as Ansar al-Islam tried to assassinate him. In 2002, envoys of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two Kurdish parties sharing sovereignty over northern Iraq between the two Iraq wars, presented the CIA with evidence that the organization that tried to kill Mr. Salih had been in part funded and directed by Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.

Those words directly contradict a recent report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that declassified a 2005 CIA assessment of Iraq's pre-war ties to Al Qaeda and found that none existed. In an interview after the speech yesterday, Mr. Salih said he was unaware of the CIA assessment. But he added, "There were links between Ansar al-Islam and Al Qaeda. The information at time [in 2002] was quite different. Now, we could not prove this in a court of law, but this is intelligence."

...Mr. Salih, who was in Iran last week on official business for Iraq, also said that he had "candid" conversations with Iranian officials and had raised the issue of improvised explosive devices from Iran getting into the hands of Iraqi insurgents.

Read the whole thing. While our Senate Intelligence Committee puts out a ridiculously erroneous report on Iraq's lack of ties to al Qaeda prior to the war, the deputy prime minister of Iraq explains that that supposedly non-existent alliance tried to kill him.

It's Not Rocket Science

2006-09-13T13:14:00.000-05:00

...It's Academic!

Michael Tanji on the latest Senate "Intelligence" Report [Emphasis Added]:

Disturbingly, the report treats actual and potential source material in a curious, if not outright suspect, manner. Substantial weight is given the statements from top former regime officials with every incentive to lie--including Saddam Hussein himself--while at the same time the report disregards the treasure-trove of documents, audio and video tapes, and computer disks that have not been fully analyzed. ...

Understanding what was going on in Iraq prior to the allied invasion, what we got right in our pre-war intelligence assessments, and where we went horribly wrong, will require and effort that is years away from what any congressional committee is prepared to carry out. Which means that the new Senate Intelligence report is nothing more than an academic exercise designed not to illuminate an important area of inquiry, but to make political hay.

TO BEGIN WITH, understand that we are somewhere in the first quarter of the timeline along which a thorough post-mortem should be carried out. Even under the best of circumstances, it would be impossible to wrap up the history of Saddam's Iraq in four years given that mountains of data have yet to be fully examined--and that vast majority of suspected sites in Iraq that have yet to be explored.

I was involved in the process of exploiting captured document and other media for roughly four years. When the SSCI report says captured media has been given an "initial review" the closest analogy is that it is giving a Cliffs Notes version of the story. If you were honest, you would never say that you have read and understand the intricacies of Shakespeare because you skimmed the Cliffs Notes version. Yet that is what military intelligence, and in turn the SSCI, are saying when they insist that they have not missed anything of significance from media captured in Iraq. ...

Tanji is on point, as usual. As I am going to argue in an upcoming piece though, it's actually worse than that. The report misreports the contents of the two documents it purports to analyze and simply ignores dozens of reports that contradict the authors' preconceived conclusions.

Spook Spin

2006-09-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

My new piece on the most recent Senate "Intelligence" Report is up.

Two things:

(1) It seems that we have more evidence that Tyler Drumheller's, a 26-year veteran of the CIA, story was not accurate. Drumheller told 60 Minutes and a number of other media outlets earlier this year that (via the French, it later turned out) the CIA had recruited Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister, as a top spy inside Saddam's regime. Drumheller insisted that Sabri told the CIA that Saddam didn't have any WMD programs of any kind.

According to an account from the Washington Post earlier this year and evidence cited in the newly released Senate Intelligence Report, that story was not accurate. Sabri actually told the his debriefers that Iraq did have WMD programs.

(2) I found it interesting that the Dems wanted to include Sabri's testimony, but only as far as it supposedly denied any connection between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. They didn't want to include his prewar testimony about WMD's. Why? Well, the former would have cut against the Bush administration, while the latter would have worked in the Bush administration's favor.

That's cherry-picking defined.

In reality, as I have argued, guys like Sabri shouldn't be trusted no matter what they say, unless it can be corroborated in some way.

Basic Mistakes & Foolishness

2006-09-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

The Scrapbook of the new Weekly Standard explains that the new Senate Intelligence Report on Iraq-al Qaeda is a bit lacking when it comes to the basics:

"According to postwar detainee debriefs--including debriefs of Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz--Saddam was resistant to cooperating with al Qa'ida or any other Islamist groups."

This is good enough, apparently, for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. If you read the "Phase II" report issued by the committee late last week, it is clear that the final word on Saddam Hussein's relationships with Islamic terrorists will be given to Saddam Hussein.

According to the report, the deposed dictator was asked whether he might cooperate with al Qaeda because "the enemy of the enemy is my friend." The report uncritically offers his response. "Saddam answered that the United States was not Iraq's enemy."

Unfortunately, the debriefers didn't follow up with a question about his party's Nov. 8, 1998, call for the "highest levels of jihad" against American interests: "The escalation of the confrontation and the disclosure of its dimensions and the aggressive intentions now require an organized, planned, influential and conclusive enthusiasm against U.S. interests."

Where the report is not credulous, it is confused. For instance, the writers of the report seem not to understand that "Shaykh Salman al-Awdah" (p. 72) is the same guy as "Shaikh Sulayman al-Udah" (p. 73) and that he was a spiritual mentor to Osama bin Laden. That Saddam would agree to rebroadcast Awdah/Udah's sermons on Iraqi national TV would seem difficult to reconcile with the idea that Saddam opposed any cooperation with Islamists. At another point, the report claims that Saddam Hussein considered al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi an "outlaw." In the substance of the report, the claim is attributed to a senior Iraqi official. In the conclusions about Zarqawi the same information is attributed to an "al Qa'ida detainee."

Then there's the reporting on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi national who facilitated the travel of Khalid al-Midhar, a 9/11 hijacker, to the key 9/11 planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. No one disputes this. The Senate report notes: "Shakir was a part-time facilitator of Arab visitors at the Kuala Lumpur airport for the Iraqi Embassy." Shakir fled the country one week after the meeting ended. The CIA acknowledged that his disappearance "raised suspicions about his connections and intentions."

More from the CIA: "Shakir's travel and past contact linked him to a worldwide network of Sunni extremist groups and personalities including suspects in the bombing of the 1993 World Trade Center [sic] and indirectly to senior al Qa'ida associates. His relationship with the embassy employee could suggest a link between Baghdad and Shakir's extremist contacts, but it could also be the case of an Iraqi expatriate finding a temporary job for a fellow national." Those "contacts" include Musab Yasin, the brother of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Abu Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi national. (The report never mentions either Yasin.) The "contacts" also include Abu Hajer al Iraqi, an al Qaeda leader described in court testimony as Osama bin Laden's "best friend." No one disputes any of this.

The Senate report, though, finds conclusive the assurances of a foreign government service to the CIA that Shakir had "no link...to any foreign intelligence service, radical religious group or terrorist operation." This finding plainly contradicts the evidence in the possession of the U.S. intelligence community.

On the other hand, it also admirably suits the purposes of Senate Intelligence committee Democrats, who were quick to claim that the report proves Bush misled the country into the Iraq war. If only the Republicans controlled the Senate!

Saddam's Sources

2006-09-10T14:56:00.000-05:00

A newly translated IIS document demonstrates that Saddam had a source inside the Associated Press. Translation provided over at The American Thinker (H/T Power Line):

Republic of Iraq
The Presidency of the Republic
The Intelligence Service
Date: 25/7/2000
Number: 6146
Secret
To: 5th / 4th / 13th Directorates

We were informed from one of our sources (the degree of trust in him is good) who works in the American Associated Press Agency [emphasis added] that the agency broadcasted to through computer to its branches worldwide the following:

1. The new agency for inspecting the Iraqi weapons (UNMOVIC) started on 11/7/2000 a training program for 4 weeks which includes historical, legal, administrative, and political subjects that are related to the weapons inspection in Iraq.

2. The training include lectures about the ballistic missiles and the biological and chemical weapons and the import and export of weapons in addition to a session in security arrangements prepared by the American government. ...

Go here for the full translation.

Would You Trust Him?

2006-09-10T07:44:00.000-05:00

The new “Phase II” Senate Intelligence Report on Iraq’s ties to al Qaeda (or lack thereof) relies heavily on the testimony of former Iraqi officials, including Saddam Hussein and one of his top intelligence officers, Faruq Hijazi.

The authors of the report made no attempt to establish the truthfulness of their claims. They simply cited the Iraqi officials’ testimony unquestioningly. This is simply not good investigative work. The former Iraqi regime officials have an obvious incentive to lie. Many of them, including Saddam, are on trial for their crimes. If they are found guilty, they will most certainly receive a death sentence.

Moreover, an intelligence operative like Faruq Hijazi is trained to lie. He has been trained to operate in the shadows, assiduously covering his trail. However, this did not stop the authors of the “Phase II” report from including his testimony without any sort of caveat.

The “Phase II” report includes roughly five and a half pages on “contacts” between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. Five and one half pages are not enough to really analyze all of the information about prewar and postwar contacts between Iraqi officials and al Qaeda. (I will have more on this in the near future.) Disturbingly, in this cursory examination of contacts, Hijazi’s unquestioned testimony figures prominently.

According to the "Phase II" report, Hijazi admitted meeting with bin Laden only once in 1995 in Sudan. He told his debriefers that “this was his sole meeting with bin Laden or a member of al-Qaeda and he is not aware of any other individual following up on the initial contact.”

This is an obvious lie. Over the Corner Jonah Goldberg points to the transcript of an ABC News segment from January 1999. ABC News reported that a very significant meeting between Hijazi and bin Laden took place within days of Operation Desert Fox in December 1998. Importantly, ABC News was not alone in reporting this event. Media outlets from around the world reported on the meeting and its possibly dire consequences.

As I wrote last year, press outlets from the U.S., Europe and throughout the Arab world reported on the meeting. All of the reporting indicated that the meeting was not some benign event. Something nefarious was afoot. Some of the reporting made it clear that the meeting was part of a larger pattern of collaboration.

There are numerous press accounts from which to choose. But consider this contemporaneous account from the Iraq Foundation, which is a not-for-profit corporation “working for democracy and human rights in Iraq.” Hijazi is no trustworthy source:

…According to news sources, Al-Hijazi has a suspicious and violent past, including torture, spying, smuggling and even possible connections to terrorism. Al-Hijazi had previously been designated ambassador to Canada, but Canada refused to accredit him because of his record.
Al-Hijazi had a career with the first Ba'th security apparatus, Jihaz Hanin, set up by Saddam Hussein to spy on Ba'th party members and purge opponents of the regime. Hanin was in its day a domestic terrorist organization. In the 1980's Al-Hijazi worked under Barzan Tikriti, Saddam's half brother, when Tikriti headed the dreaded General Directorate of Security. This organization was notorious for practicing routine torture, physical liquidation, executions and assassinations of Iraqis suspected of political activity. Thousands of Iraqis were tortured and killed by the Directorate. Al-Hijazi also served as an intelligence officer in several Iraqi embassies in Europe.

During the occupation of Kuwait, Al-Hijazi was reportedly in charge of security arrangements for intelligence activities. Most recently, Al-Hijazi was Deputy Chief of Iraqi Intelligence, the Mukhabarat.

In addition, Al-Hijazi is said to be linked to the wide network of front companies and smuggling activities established by Barzan Tikriti and Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay. News sources report that managing this extensive network was one of Hijazi's chief activities at the Mukhabarat.

Most dramatically, a number of press reports link Al-Hijazi to [Osama] Bin Laden. The reports claim that the two met in 1994 and again in 1998, and there may have been talk about cooperation between Bin Laden and the Iraqi regime.

In short, Hijazi is not a bona fide diplomat, but a thug with blood on his hands, whose principal career was in a variety of criminal activities.

The Iraq Foundation’s account makes it clear that no one should trust Hijazi. He is a violent thug with ties to terrorism. The account doesn’t offer you Hijazi’s full terrorist dossier, but it does give you a sense of his extensive career as one of Saddam’s top intelligence operatives. And there is much more to the December 1998 meeting between Hijazi and bin Laden than the account lets on.

In any event, the “Phase II” report’s authors cited Hijazi’s testimony without mentioning any of this. But, I wouldn’t trust him.

Would you?

Sudan?

2006-09-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

Andy McCarthy over at the Corner notes that the Clinton administration cited the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda as justification for an act of war in August 1998 (i.e. the destruction of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant named al-Shifa).

One of the stronger pieces of evidence that the Clinton administration cited was a collection of NSA intercepts between the plant's management (who, it was claimed, were really working for al Qaeda) and the father of Iraq's chemical weapons program. There is no mention of these intercepts in the recently released Senate Intelligence Report. In fact, there is no mention of al-Shifa or any of the intelligence about Iraq and al Qaeda cooperating on chemical weapons in Sudan at all.

I asked the staffers in my ten minute session with them yesterday why there was nothing about al-Shifa, or any of the intelligence connecting Saddam's chemical weapons program to al Qaeda's front companies in Sudan, in their report. I quickly pointed out that there was evidence from the Clinton administration's days, including Richard Clarke's (NSC) comments, on this relationship. I could have added - and I did mention one or two of the following - that others in the intelligence community [including Michael Scheuer (CIA) and John Gannon (CIA)], countless other reports from the intelligence community and in the media, and numerous officials from the Clinton administration pointed to this evidence as justification for an act of war in August 1998.

Their response?

I am paraphrasing only slightly: This wasn't part of prewar intelligence, we only dealt with claims of training in Iraq.

To which I responded: Why does it matter where this type of cooperation took place?

They didn't have a good answer.

If you want just a sample of the evidence on this, go here and here. To take a look at how some of the former Clinton officials now spin this set of intelligence click on "The Naysayer" link on the right-hand side of this blog.

More On The Senate "Intelligence" Report

2006-09-09T07:57:00.000-05:00

Quite a few people have picked up on the new Senate Intelligence Report's obvious flaws with regards to the issue of Iraq-al Qaeda. Here are some additional links and thoughts:

(1) Dafydd over at Big Lizards further dissects the report's section on Zarqawi. He makes some excellent points, some of which I noticed as well. For example, Dafydd points to page 91 of the report, which says that Saddam personally ordered one of Zarqawi’s minions to be freed. The report doesn’t make much of this fact, however. Instead, the authors give more weight to the Iraqi official’s denials.

As I pointed out in my piece for the Daily Standard yesterday, the report’s authors make no effort to critically examine the testimony offered by former Iraqi officials and intelligence officers. This leads to the inclusion of absurd statements and demonstrable falsehoods (like Saddam Hussein denying that the U.S. was his enemy). The passage that Dafydd cites on Page 91 offers yet another example of how the testimony of senior Iraqi officials was treated as unquestionable gospel.

The report makes much of the fact that Saddam supposedly ordered his minions to hunt down Zarqawi's operatives, but doesn't bother to ask why - if that were true - he would also order one of the terrorists to be released once he was captured. The contradiction is readily apparent.

Abu Yasim Sayyem was the terrorist who Saddam ordered to be released. He was involved in the assassination of Laurence Foley. I note that the authors of this report didn't even bother to re-examine evidence concerning the Foley assassination from the first Senate Intelligence Report. For a part of my take on that evidence go here.

(2) Captain Ed notes that the report was quickly turned "into a partisan squabble, which given the atmosphere in the past decade or more, surprises no one." That's certainly true. It is clear that the authors of the section on Iraq-al Qaeda looked to dismiss evidence of a relationship, rather than weighing and considering the evidence that was available.

(3) Captain Ed also points to AJ Strata's excellent take on the report. AJ hones in on a key point, and I'll quote Capt. Ed's take:

"More to the point, AJ shows where the report openly states that the committee didn't really pursue questions of Iraq's links to terrorism outside of the scope of their mission, ie, comparing pre-war intel to post-war intel, an exercise that doesn't lend itself to the same level of certainty as the WMD question. He also notes this passage in the report that the media skipped in its reporting:

The Committee examined the assessments from the Intelligence Community on the topics discussed in the NIE produced prior to and following the NIE. In most cases, the opinions of the community and individual agencies did not change following the publication of the NIE or following the 2002-2003 United Nations’ inspections in Iraq. The community judgement did change pertaining to the intended use of the Iraq’s UAVs. Specifically, the NIE judgement that Iraq’s attempts to procure U.S. mapping software for its UAVs that was useless outside the U.S., “strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.” A change was made to the UAV judgements in a new NIE published in January 2003 titled Nontraditional Threats to the US Homeland Through 2007.

The procurement of mapping software for the US in a program for ultralight aircraft is more than just suggestive of terror plotting; no other explanation would make sense. Unless Saddam and his boys decided that they wanted to retire from the hectic life of genocidal tyrants and take up ultralight aviation as a hobby in America, the combination clearly describes a potential delivery mechanism for some kind of attack -- probably an anthrax or other airborne biological attack. AJ explains the details."

More to come on this nonsense over the next several days...I think it is pretty clear that there is no effective leadership on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Rules of Evidence

2006-09-08T17:07:00.000-05:00

The Senate Intelligence Committee released two reports today. The first one includes a section on Saddam's ties to al Qaeda. I think the only way to characterize that section is "pure garbage." There was no honest attempt made in the report to weigh and consider the evidence of a relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. None at all.

I quickly composed a piece for The Standard on this. And I mean quickly.

I realize, of course, that this intelligence issue is almost purely a political partisan issue at this point. That's unfortunate because little of what is being written, including this more recent report, has any intellectual honesty at all.

There will be more on my blog later and throughout the next week as well.

The Truth Is Out There...Way Out There

2006-09-08T09:59:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post has an excellent write-up of the wacky (and I mean really wacky) 9-11 conspiracy theories floating around. Here are some key paragraphs:

He felt no shiver of doubt in those first terrible hours.

He watched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and assumed al-Qaeda had wreaked terrible vengeance. He listened to anchors and military experts and assumed the facts of Sept. 11, 2001, were as stated on the screen.

It was a year before David Ray Griffin, an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down the path of disbelief. He wondered why Bush listened to a child's story while the nation was attacked and how Osama bin Laden, America's Public Enemy No. 1, escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora.

He wondered why 110-story towers crashed and military jets failed to intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian official was reprimanded, much less cashiered.

"To me, the report read as a cartoon." White-haired and courtly, Griffin sits on a couch in a hotel lobby in Manhattan, unspooling words in that reasonable Presbyterian minister's voice. "It's a much greater stretch to accept the official conspiracy story than to consider the alternatives."
Such as?

"There was massive complicity in this attack by U.S. government operatives." ...

The phrase that comes to mind is "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."

Reminder

2006-09-07T18:25:00.000-05:00

As news spreads of the latest tape from al Qaeda in Iraq's new leader, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (aka Abu Ayyub al-Masri), it is worth remembering that he set up shop in Baghdad by the middle of 2002.

That is, he set up his operations at the heart of Saddam's neo-Stalinist state months prior to the U.S. led invasion.

This doesn't mean anything, of course.

Senate Intelligence Committee to Release Two New Reports

2006-09-07T16:46:00.000-05:00

From the Senate Intelligence Committee Press Release:

Senate Intelligence Committee to Release Two “Phase II” Reports of the Committees’
Inquiry on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senators Pat Roberts (R-KS), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) today announced the Committee voted to release two of the five reports of the “Phase II” Inquiry into pre-war intelligence with regard to Iraq.

The two reports are:
1. the postwar findings about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and weapons programs and links to terrorism and how they compare with prewar assessments and;

2. the use by the Intelligence Community of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

The Chairman and Vice Chairman said, “We hope to publicly release these two reports on the Committee’s website at noon EST tomorrow. We continue our work on the remaining part of our ‘Phase II’ inquiry.”

The reports tomorrow can be found on the Committee’s website at: http://intelligence.senate.gov/

Show Us The Documents

2006-09-06T10:06:00.000-05:00

The following interesting exchange appeared yesterday on the "Ask Joe Klein" page of Time Magazine's website [note: I have added emphasis to key parts and my commentary appears below]:

Joe,

New documents show AlQaeda was in Iraq before we invaded, but for the sake of argument let's suppose you are right that Zarqawi and AlQaeda weren't, my question is this: "Where would he and his killers have been instead? Would they just have disappeared? Or would they be in some nation where we couldn't reach them because of sovereignity? Would have been any safer with him plotting, planning and killing somewhere else? Why does the "we created him by going into Iraq" crowd, never stop to ask these questions? Cause it doesn't fit the template or because they just don't get the threat of terrorism?

Susan Boyer Brevard, NC

JOE KLEIN: Al Qaeda was pretty much everywhere in the region before the war, but not as the active terrorist force they are today...and certainly not in Iraq. Documents indicate that Saddam had long-term, low-level ties with regional terrorist groups—including Ayman al-Zawahiri, dating back his time with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. There is strong evidence as well that elements of the Special Republican Guard ran terrorist training camps...but we could have dealt with much of that using special forces and targeted air attacks without a full frontal invasion. As for Zarqawi, why on earth didn't we hit his camp on the Iran border of Kurdistan when we could? We were told continually that Zarqawi's group was operating a chemical-weapons training facility...why didn't we take it out? The point is, there are appropriate levels of military activity that can be more effective than full-scale invasion. I'm hoping we're doing exactly this sort of thing in the border areas of Pakistan now.

Tom's comments and questions. Joe Klein's answer reinforces the need to release key documents captured in post-war Iraq to the public. Here are three areas where these documents may better inform the public on Saddam's pre-war activities:

(1) Documents demonstrating the relationship between al Qaeda's #2 and Saddam Hussein. Klein says that documents uncovered in post-war Iraq indicate that "Saddam had long-term, low-level ties with regional terrorist groups - including Ayman al-Zawahiri, dating back [sic: to] his time with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood."

On its face, this is provocative, but not surprising. Let me explain. The documents Klein is describing apparently confirm what we already know: there was a relationship between high-level members of al Qaeda and Saddam's regime. Klein's characterization of these relations is somewhat puzzling, however. How could Ayman al-Zawahiri, #2 in al Qaeda's terrorist empire, and Saddam Hussein, the number one thug of Iraq's Baathist regime, have a "low-level" relationship?

Putting Klein's characterization aside, we already knew that Ayman al-Zawahiri had ongoing ties with Saddam's regime. The 9-11 Commission, which was not bullish on the Iraq-al Qaeda issue, even said so. For example, the Commission's report noted that two meetings in 1998 (out of many) were probably set up by "Bin Ladin’s Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis."

What were Zawahiri and the Iraqis talking about? The 9-11 Commission doesn't offer many details. This may be, in part, because the U.S. intelligence community did not have any good intelligence assets inside either the Iraqi regime or al Qaeda. (See, for example, the Senate Intelligence Report of July 2004.)

Another reason may be related to the Commission's choice of expert witnesses. One of the Commission's key witnesses was Michael Scheuer, who was the first head of the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999. I have written about Scheuer for the Weekly Standard on three occasions. (See here, here, and here.) Scheuer has said on multiple occasions that he was the one tasked with reviewing the CIA's files for evidence of a relationship between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. He claimed that he couldn't find any evidence in 2004, when testifying before the 9-11 Commission. But as I have pointed out several times, he found plenty of evidence of a relationship in 2002 when he published his first book, Through Our Enemies' Eyes.

This ostensible flip-flop did not stop the 9-11 Commission from unquestioningly relying on Mr. Scheuer's testimony, however. That was a mistake.

Now Joe Klein has revealed that there are more documents in Iraq detailing the relationship between Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Iraqi regime. Here are some questions for Joe Klein and the sources he relied on:

- Has Mr. Klein seen the documents? Or, is he relying on what his sources said were in the documents?

- Presumably, the documents are Iraqi intelligence documents. What is in those documents? What did Iraq's intelligence officers say was the purpose of the meetings between the two sides?
- Why have these documents not been released to the public? If there really was no meaningful outcome of these meetings, then why are the documents being kept from the American public? If the documents just report "low-level" ties, which seems doubtful on its face, then what intelligence value could these documents possibly have that would preclude their release to the public?

- The President has ordered the release of the Iraqi Intelligence documents collected by U.S. forces. These documents are being published in pdf format at the FMSO web site. Why haven't the documents described by Klein been included in this collection?

Instead of relying on witnesses such as Scheuer, it is about time the first-hand evidence collected in Iraq was released to the public.

(2) Rosters and other documents pertaining to Saddam's Popular Islamic Conferences. Per above, we know from a variety of reporting that Ayman al-Zawahiri was a regular attendee at Saddam's "Popular Islamic Conferences" in Baghdad. At these rallies, Saddam sought the support of Islamic radicals from around the Middle East during the 1980's in his war against Iran. During the 1990's, he used the conferences to drum up support against the West and, in particular, the U.S. Zawahiri even received $300,000 in funding from the Iraqi regime around the time of one of these conferences in February 1998, just weeks before al Qaeda's infamous fatwa declaring war on the West.

Other documents described by Dr. Ayad Allawi, a long-time CIA source and the first Prime Minister of Iraq, indicate that Ayman al-Zawahiri also attended one such conference in late 1999, alongside the future al Qaeda in Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The FMSO web site recently released a roster of the attendees from the Popular Islamic Conference in 1983. I will have a piece out discussing these attendees in the near future. But, at the very least, this document demonstrates that the Iraqi regime kept detailed records of those in the Islamic community who were willing to come to Saddam's anti-Iran and then anti-West Islamic summits. Questions:

- Are there similar rosters for later years?

- If so, why haven't these been released to the public? Why has only one roster from 1983 been released?

- It appears that video/audio footage from some of these events has also been released on the FMSO web site? Has all of the available evidence been released to the public?

- What possible reason could there be for not releasing such information, if all of it hasn't been already?

(3) Documents and other evidence of Saddam's Terrorist Training Camps. Klein says, "there is strong evidence as well that elements of the Special Republican Guard ran terrorist training camps..." Of course, we already knew that from Stephen Hayes' excellent reporting in the Weekly Standard. Interestingly, corroboration for Hayes' reporting on Saddam's terror training camps is coming from a source who is not at all friendly to the Bush administration or the Iraq war. This should make it even more difficult for critics to simply dismiss Hayes' reporting out-of-hand. [Full disclosure: As many of you are aware, I'm sure, I have co-written several pieces with Hayes.]

It is about time the evidence of Saddam's terrorist training camps was released to the public. More to come later, but this should give you a good start. This information should not be withheld from the American public.

Pakistan's Truces with the Taliban

2006-09-05T15:40:00.000-05:00

From Bill Roggio's The Fourth Rail:

Pakistan's failure to commit the needed resources and political will to uproot al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan in 2001, 2004 and 2006 will haunt the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan for years to come.

According to Adnkronos International, the Taliban is now "calling the shots in North and South Waziristan." The Taliban and Pakistan have agreed on a truce that ensures the Pakistani Army "will not carry out operations against them" in North Waziristan. The tribal Jirga confirms this, and Pakistani troops have now withdrawn from North Waziristan.

These truces are fueling the resurgence of Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and by default Afghanistan (also see "Lost Territories.") ...

Read the whole thing here.

Espionage at the Vatican

2006-09-05T09:25:00.000-05:00

From Reuters [Emphasis Added]:

Pope John Paul was spied on by Vatican informers working for the Polish secret services in the communist era, a Polish cardinal was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

Cardinal Joseph Glemp, archbishop of Warsaw, was quoted as telling Italy’s ANSA news agency that John Paul was the target of espionage between his election in 1978 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

John Paul was “spied on, and how,” ANSA quoted Glemp as saying in Assisi, where he was attending a religious conference.

Glemp was repeating allegations that have surfaced in Poland since John Paul’s death last year. He is one of the highest ranking Polish churchmen to speak about them openly.

“There were spies in the Vatican. Moscow had great interest in knowing what was going on in Rome with a Polish pope in office,” he was quoted as saying.

John Paul was the first pope from a communist country. He supported the Solidarity free trade union which challenged communism in Poland in the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Soviets behind assassination attempt?

Earlier this year, an Italian parliamentary report said Soviet leaders planned the failed assassination attempt on John Paul in 1981 because they feared he would destabilize the East bloc.

Last year, documents released by the Polish National Remembrance Institute, which oversees research into communist-era files, said it had evidence that Father Konrad Hejmo had been an informer for the Polish security services. ...

Go here for more.

Major al Qaeda in Iraq Leader Captured, More Ties to Saddam

2006-09-03T15:02:00.000-05:00

Iraqi authorities have announced that "the second most senior figure in al-Qaida in Iraq" has been captured and that the group suffers a “serious leadership crisis.”

The senior al Qaeda figure has been identified as Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi (aka Abu Humam or Abu Rana) and he was captured just north of Baghdad. There are at least four interesting items to note about al-Saeedi [edit: I have updated this post to include the most recent information about al-Saeedi's career under Saddam]:

(1) The Washington Post reports that al-Saeedi was "an intelligence officer for ousted president Saddam Hussein."

(2) According to this account from the Associated Press, al-Saeedi worked for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who replaced Zarqawi as Iraq in al Qaeda's leader back in June. Al-Masri, it should be recalled, set up shop along with Zarqawi in regime-controlled Iraq well before the U.S.-led invasion. Al-Masri helped set up al Qaeda's cells in Baghdad in mid-2002. It would be interesting to learn what role al-Saeedi played in these operations.

(3) According to the same account from the Associated Press, which relies on Iraq's national security advisor Mouwafak al-Rubaie, al-Saeedi has told his captors that al in Iraq has been working closely with Saddam's former goons. From the AP account:

"...al-Saeedi said al-Qaida in Iraq was cooperating with supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein 'in the fields of exchanging information and logistic support.' "

(4) Perhaps most importantly, again according to the AP:

Al-Saeedi was “directly responsible” for Haitham Sabah Shaker Mohammed al-Badri, the alleged mastermind of the February bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, al-Rubaie added without elaborating.

Al-Badri himself had ties to Saddam's government.

So, four things to keep in mind about al-Saeedi: (1) he was an IIS officer under Saddam (2) he reported to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who set up shop in Baghdad months prior to the war, (3) he has reportedly testified that Iraq in al Qaeda is working with Saddam's former goons and (4) he oversaw al-Badri, who was responsible for the Golden Dome bombing and who also had ties to Saddam's government.

It is exceedingly difficult to discuss al Qaeda in Iraq without mentioning the role that Saddam's regime played in its rise and continuing effectiveness.

Hugo Goes to Damascus

2006-09-01T15:20:00.000-05:00

From the AP:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez received a hero's welcome in Syria, where he said yesterday that the two countries will "build a new world" free of U.S. domination and vowed to one day "dig the grave of U.S. imperialism."

Thousands of Syrians waved banners and Venezuelan flags along Mr. Chavez's route to a meeting with President Bashar Assad.

His visit was the latest in a series of international stops where he has trumpeted his opposition to Washington's global influence and advanced what he calls a "multipolar" vision of world affairs. His trips also coincide with Venezuela's push to win a rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council, over U.S. opposition. ...

Mr. Chavez is courting a Syrian regime that is under U.S. pressure to police its border and stop the flow of arms to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

"No matter how strong the American empire becomes and no matter how much force it uses, it will be defeated," Mr. Chavez said. "We and Syria as well as other countries will be an army of tigers, struggling and strong."

Speaking at the airport shortly after Mr. Chavez arrived, Mr. Assad said the two countries shared a common stand: "rejection of international hegemony," Syria's official news agency said. The remark was an apparent reference to the United States.

Mr. Assad expressed support for Venezuela's bid to obtain a rotating Security Council seat, a race in which the U.S. government is supporting Guatemala.

Mr. Chavez also called for Israeli troops to withdraw from Lebanon and demanded the lifting of an Israeli blockade against Lebanon. A truce ended the monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah on Aug. 14.

The Venezuelan leader has compared Israel's strikes in Lebanon to the Holocaust, and earlier this month withdrew his country's top diplomat from Israel to protest those attacks as well as Israel's actions toward the Palestinians.

With the two leaders looking on, delegates from the two countries signed 13 political and economic agreements. Mr. Chavez also said Venezuela was willing to participate in the construction of a domestic oil refinery that Syria is considering building with a capacity of 200,000 barrels a day. ...

Who Said It?

2006-09-01T12:08:00.000-05:00

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources -- something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

When Saddam Hussein obtains nuclear capabilities, the constraints he feels will diminish dramatically, and the risk to America’s homeland, as well as to America’s allies, will increase even more dramatically. Our existing policies to contain or counter Saddam will become irrelevant.

Americans will return to a situation like that we faced in the Cold War, waking each morning knowing we are at risk from nuclear blackmail by a dictatorship that has declared itself to be our enemy. Only, back then, our communist foes were a rational and predictable bureaucracy; this time, our nuclear foe would be an unpredictable and often irrational individual, a dictator who has demonstrated that he is prepared to violate international law and initiate unprovoked attacks when he feels it serves his purposes to do so.

The global community -- in the form of the United Nations -- has declared repeatedly, through multiple resolutions, that the frightening prospect of a nuclear-armed Saddam cannot come to pass. But the U.N. has been unable to enforce those resolutions. We must eliminate that threat now, before it is too late.

But this isn’t just a future threat. Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.

And he could make those weapons available to many terrorist groups which have contact with his government, and those groups could bring those weapons into the U.S. and unleash a devastating attack against our citizens. I fear that greatly. ..."

Take a guess...

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D)
Vice Chairman on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
October 10, 2002
On the Iraq Resolution

"Clear Evidence" That Iran is Arming Iraqi "Insurgents"

2006-08-24T13:48:00.000-05:00

From AFP:

A senior US military official said there is "clear evidence" that Iran is funding, training and arming Shiite extremists to destabilize Iraq.

"I think it is irrefutable that Iran is responsible for training, funding and equipping some of these Shia extremist groups, and also providing advanced IED technology," said Brigadier General Michael Barbero, using the acronym for "improvised explosive devices."

"And there is clear evidence of that," he added at a Pentagon press conference.

His comments came the same day that Iran turned aside demands by the international community that it halt uranium enrichment as required by a UN Security Council resolution, offering "serious negotiations" instead.

Barbero, deputy operations director of the joint staff, said he had seen no reports of "direct contact" involving Iranian paramilitary or intelligence forces.

But he said he had seen "reports of their involvement and presence there as trainers to train these terrorists and Shia extremist groups."

How to respond to destabilizing Iranian activity was a question for policymakers, Barbero said.
But he said neutralizing the Shiite extremist groups in Iraq "will go a long way to removing their direct influence into the affairs of the sovereign country of Iraq."

In recent weeks, US military forces have stepped up raids against Shiite and Sunni extremist groups in Baghdad in an effort to tamp down a wave of violence that has raised fears of civil war.
The violence last month forced the United States to extend the tours of nearly 4,000 troops, preventing a reduction in the size of the 133,000-strong US force.

"Our intent is to draw down the number of troops," Barbero said. "And, as I said, that will be driven by the conditions on the ground and the requests from the commanders on the ground."

"Way Too Credulous"

2006-08-23T10:04:00.000-05:00

The New York Times offers this review of an upcoming CNN documentary - put together by Christiane Amanpour and Peter Bergen - about bin Laden ("In the Footsteps of bin Laden"):

...But Ms. Amanpour’s diligent and detailed work does not save the material from its dissonant presentation. The documentary is riven by a contradiction that still seems to define most television reporting on Mr. bin Laden and his terrorist organization, Al Qaeda.

On the one hand, the producers here are attentive to Mr. bin Laden’s skill at media manipulation. On the other, they themselves seem half-seduced by the portrait of the pure-hearted Arab revolutionary that has so captivated parts of the Muslim world. With the heavy rotation of soulful portraits of the soft-voiced prophet of jihad with Super 8-style movies of the warrior on horseback, parts of “In the Footsteps of bin Laden” could almost double as a recruiting video for Al Qaeda.

Mr. bin Laden’s childhood friends express their love and admiration for him, and talk feelingly of his modesty, generosity, loyalty and deep piety. Important historical figures like Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, give exclusive interviews, in which they present, without challenge, partial and self-serving versions of history. Similarly, Mr. bin Laden’s authorized biographer speaks uncritically of the political justification for killing American civilians on Sept. 11.

Finally, there’s something way too credulous about “In the Footsteps of bin Laden.” The documentary spends almost no time with critics in the Arab world who see Mr. bin Laden as a dangerous fanatic who may have pushed the world to the brink of a global catastrophe. Hasn’t Mr. Bergen learned anything in the eventful nine years since he met the terrorist? The documentary’s view that Mr. bin Laden’s zeal for jihad was corrupted into a murderous, revolutionary ideology by Egyptians like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri seems like exactly the kind of thing Saudis like Mr. al-Faisal might tell impressionable visitors.

Note: Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

The "So-Called Plot": It's All A Distraction

2006-08-20T20:05:00.000-05:00

One of the mainstream media's favorite talking heads on terrorism is Larry Johnson, who formerly worked for the CIA and the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism. Johnson is one of several former intelligence-types who journalists turn to for a quick quote.

Here is his latest commentary on the UK airliner bomb plot. In Johnson's view, there was a plot but the would-be terrorists "lacked a viable terrorist plan ready for execution." The Bushies hyped this bust though. Why? Because they wanted to distract the public from Seymour Hersh's reporting in the New Yorker. No, I am not kidding.

In a piece titled "Bush's Weapon of Mass Deception," Johnson writes [Emphasis Added]:

...I have no doubt that British intelligence had succeeded in penetrating a group of Muslim extremists who had big dreams about hurting the United States, but they lacked a viable terrorist plan ready for execution. We also know that the Bush administration, which was being regularly briefed by the Brits about the plot, pushed London to act prematurely. What is particularly galling is that no one at the Bush White House, apparently, felt compelled to look for ways to boost aviation security in the United States. Instead, they sought to create a firestorm of fear in order to distract public attention from the devastating article written by Sy Hersh. One of Sy's key points:

The Bush administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

That is the kind of news the White House would like to bury, particularly as a cease-fire took hold in Lebanon that left Hezbollah standing ten feet tall. As Keith Olbermann showed the other night, the Bush administration has been zealous about trotting out bogus threats when there is political bad news afoot. If I'm right about this latest incident, Keith Olbermann has a new item to add to his list of ten. ...

This is the type of luminary our media turns to regularly for commentary on terrorism.

Think about that.

Zawahiri's Son-in-Law & the UK Terror Plot

2006-08-20T09:38:00.000-05:00

Was Ayman al-Zawahiri's son-in-law behind the most recent UK airliner bomb plot? Reports coming out of Pakistan are making the claim. But, thus far, the precise details are not clear.

Outlook India quotes the Pakistani newspaper Dawn [Update: Here is the original Dawn report.]:

A son-in-law of al Qaeda number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri is believed to be the mastermind of the terrorist plot to blow up US-bound flights from UK, according to Pakistani intelligence sources.

"The mastermind in the planes bombing plot is Zawahiri's son-in-law. He is the guy being looked for," 'Dawn' newspaper quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying.

The official did not name Zawahiri's son-in-law but said he met one or some of the plotters at a place close to the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant is known to have several sons-in-law. One of them is reported to have been killed in a bombing run at an Al Qaeda hideout in Tora Bora following the US attack in 2001, the second is said to be in Iranian custody while a third one is in an Egyptian prison.

One report said that one of Zawahiri's daughters had married a son of Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden's two sons, Mohammad bin Laden and Saad bin Laden, are reported to be in Iranian custody, together with Saiful Adil, Sulman Abu Gaith, Shauqi Al Islamboli and Abu Mohammad Al Misri.

Saiful Adil and Abu Mohammad Al Misri are wanted for their role in the 1998 East African embassy bombings, while Islamboli is brother of Capt Khalid Islamboli who assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadaat on October 6, 1981.

One of Zawahiri's sons-in-law, Abdur Rehman Al-Maghribi, was reported to have been killed in a US airstrike in Bajaur Agency in January 2006. It is not clear whether the son-in-law in question is Al-Maghribi or someone else, and if it is him then when did the meeting take place and whether he indeed was killed in that airstrike.

Iran Test-fires Short-Range Missiles

2006-08-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

From the Associated Press [Emphasis Added]:

Iran test-fired 10 surface-to-surface short-range missiles on Sunday, a day after it launched a series of large-scale military exercises throughout the country, state-run television reported. The Saegheh missile had a range of between 50 and 150 miles, the report said. It did not specify whether the missile was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, but it was not believed to be.

State-run television said the missile was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of the country's missile technology originated from other countries.

Iran said it launched the new military exercises Saturday to introduce a new defensive doctrine.

"We have to be prepared against any threat and we should be a role model for other countries," local newspapers quoted army spokesman Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, as saying earlier this week. ...

Other Countries? How about Russia and China, our partners on the UN National Security Council, in particular?

Charity for Terror?

2006-08-19T10:14:00.000-05:00

From The Times of London:

THE Pakistan earthquake appeal has emerged as a potential link between some of the terror suspects arrested over the alleged plot to destroy transatlantic aircraft using liquid bombs, The Times has learnt.

A charity founded to help orphans and disaster victims provides a connection between some individuals being questioned by police on suspicion of plotting “unimaginable mass murder”.

Crescent Relief London was created by Abdul Rauf, from Birmingham. Two of his sons were arrested as part of the bombing inquiry and are among the 23 suspects still being held by police after the alleged attempt to bomb planes flying between London and the United States.

The Charity Commission is looking at reports of links between several British charities and the alleged bomb plot. The public gave £30 million for earthquake relief, much of it raised in mosques and donated to locally based charities.

The discovery came as the BBC reported last night that, according to sources, martyrdom videos had been discovered on at least six laptops during searches by police investigating the alleged plot. ...

Former Pakistan Intel Chief: Israel is "Main Enemy"

2006-08-18T13:38:00.000-05:00

Speaking of the "mixed bag" that is Pakistan, MEMRI brings us this quote from Pakistan's former intelligence chief:

"The Jews have always caused the wars. Mecca was only conquered after the destruction of Khaybar. Mecca was not captured in battle. This indicates that the war was not against the polytheists. Even today, our war is not against America or Europe. Our basic war is against Israel, or the so-called State of Israel. When Pakistan was established, so was India, but we didn't know that the Jews... [Their state] was established along with ours. It is our main enemy. Pakistan was established in 1947 and Israel was established in 1948. It is either us or them. We cannot live together."

Football and the Israeli Mob

2006-08-18T13:35:00.000-05:00

A bit off topic for this blog, but...Maurice Clarett and the Israeli mob?

"Bizarre" is an understatement.

Hezbollah's Arms Dealer

2006-08-18T12:55:00.000-05:00

Last year, Israel openly worried about Russian arms making their way to Hezbollah. Those concerns were reportedly well-founded. From the Associated Press:

Israeli officials said Friday that a senior delegation went to Moscow this week to complain that Russian-made anti-tank missiles were used by Hezbollah guerrillas in their 34-day conflict with Israeli forces in Lebanon.

Asaf Shariv, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that the delegation had gone to Russia, but did not elaborate.

The anti-tank missiles proved to be one of Hezbollah's most effective weapons in combat in south Lebanon, killing many of the 118 Israeli soldiers who died in the clashes. ...

Russia doesn't hide the fact that it supplies Syria and Iran with advanced conventional weaponry. And Putin's regime is certainly aware that those arms make their way to Hezbollah.

Bomb Pakistan? No.

2006-08-18T12:28:00.000-05:00

Wow. Apparently, according to Mother Jones, the point of my brief 500-word piece last week was to "float" the idea of bombing Pakistan.

Of course, that wasn't the point at all. The point was - simply put, so that Mother Jones can understand it - that our relations with Pakistan are a mixed bag. As I wrote, Musharraf's government should be given credit for helping to break up the largest terrorist plot since 9-11. On the other hand, the plot was launched by al Qaeda operatives from (reportedly) Pakistani soil. So, the question arises: What do we do about it?

There are no easy answers. For the record, I am not arguing for the indiscriminate bombing of Pakistan - or any bombing at all, actually. The one bombing I even mentioned was a limited attack on a house where Ayman al-Zawahiri was thought to be holding court. That attack missed al Qaeda's number 2, but did kill other senior al Qaeda operatives.

That's all.

Al Qaeda Plotter Arrested?

2006-08-17T14:32:00.000-05:00

According to this report from ABC News, Matiur Rehman - a senior al Qaeda operative who was reportedly involved in the recent failed airliner plot - has been arrested in Pakistan.

Marx and Moussaoui

2006-08-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

I missed this interesting anecdote by Daniel Pipes earlier this month.

Teaching Hate

2006-08-17T12:02:00.000-05:00

From Ken Timmerman at Front Page Magazine [Emphasis Added]:

A new study of 115 Iranian school textbooks concludes that Iran is preparing its children for war, and is willing to risk massive casualties for the opportunity to defeat America in a world-wide cataclysmic confrontation.

“Iran’s is a war curriculum,” the study said. “Iran prepares its school children to fight the West – America in particular – as an indispensable complementary phase of the Islamic Revolution.”

From the Fifth grade on, Iran’s revolutionary regime portrays itself in government textbooks “as the champion of all non-Western nations, Muslim and non-Muslim, in a fateful struggle against Western hegemony in the world,” the study concluded.

In the vision of Iran’s leaders that is indoctrinated into young Iranians from an early age, “the Muslims, and the world oppressed nations in general, should wage a global war against the infidel oppressors, especially America,” the study reports, using language drawn directly from the Iranian textbooks. ...

From the Baath Party to Terrorism

2006-08-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

From the AFPS [Emphasis Added]:

Iraqi forces captured two wanted men in separate operations in and near Baghdad yesterday. Both operations were part of Operation Together Forward, the recent security crackdown in the Baghdad area.

One early morning operation led to the capture of a known terrorist cell leader in southern Baghdad. Iraqi security forces, assisted by coalition advisers, conducted a precision raid in the Rasheed district, capturing an individual known to be a former Baath Party member who now leads a terrorist cell in Baghdad’s Dora area. One other individual, a subordinate cell leader, also was detained during the raid.

In a separate early morning raid, Iraqi forces captured the leader of a terrorist cell that specialized in making improvised explosive devices.

Iraqi army forces conducted the raid as coalition force advisers looked on in the Abu Ghraib area of Baghdad and captured their primary target. Officials believe this cell leader has been active for the past several months. Four other individuals also were detained during the raid.

No Iraqi or coalition forces or civilians were injured in either operation, officials said. ...

Iran's War

2006-08-17T07:57:00.000-05:00

Reminder: Iran is already at war with America in Iraq.

From Iran Focus:

Baghdad, Aug. 16 – An array of weapons made in Iran were discovered in Iraq’s southern port city of Um Qasr, the Iraqi television channel al-Zora reported on Monday.

In the weapons cache were hundreds of Katyusha rockets and mortar shells as well as several thousand light arms, the report said, adding that the weapons had all been manufactured in neighbouring Iran.

The weapons were discovered in the city’s al-Hora district, it said.

Um Qasr, the country’s largest deepwater port city, is close to the city of Basra which Iraqi officials say has become a hub for agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

Got My Ideology

2006-08-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

ABS-CBN Interactive on Hezbollah and al Qaeda [Emphasis Added]:

Intelligence reports, telephone intercepts, court documents as well as books and other open sources document a tactical alliance between the Middle East's two most dangerous terrorist groups, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, which began in the late 1990’s.

According to Rohan Gunaratna, in his book Inside Al-Qaeda:Global Network of Terror, al Qaeda forged ties with Iran and Lebanon as well as Hezbollah to carry out Osama bin Laden’s goal of uniting Shia and Sunni terrorist groups against a common enemy.

That is supported by interviews with intelligence officials conducted by ABS-CBN as well as court documents and telephone intercepts obtained by ABS-CBN.

The primary link, like in most of al Qaeda’s efforts, began on the personal front – with bin Laden, befriending and working closely with Hezbollah’s military chief, Imad Mughniyah, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.

That relationship grew and led to training sessions conducted by Hezbollah for al Qaeda operatives. ...

The cooperation between Shia and Sunni groups did not take place just in the Middle East.

Gunaratna claims that the first signs in Asia were seen in links between "Hezbollah and al Qaeda associate groups such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which facilitated and supported Hezbollah’s operations in the Asia-Pacific in the late 1990’s." In a telephone interview with ABS-CBN, an MILF member confirmed the working relationship between Hezbollah and the MILF.

Terrorism analyst Rommel Banlaoi, who teaches at the Philippines National Defense College, concurs, saying, "Al Qaeda and Hezbollah worked together in 1999-2000. In fact, there was one Indonesian member of Hezbollah who was arrested [at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport]."

Intelligence documents obtained by ABS-CBN name the Indonesian – Pandu Yudhawinata, who trained in MILF camps and was arrested after police monitored the phone calls of an MILF leader working with Muslim charities.

Many of those charities, intelligence officials tell ABS-CBN, were penetrated and exploited by the Qaeda-Hezbollah alliance.

The MILF denies any operational ties with al Qaeda, but former MILF chief Hashim Salamat admitted in an interview with the BBC that the MILF did receive funding from bin Laden in the late 1980’s.

Another intelligence document obtained by ABS-CBN also links Hezbollah to the Abu Sayyaf, whose members were trained by Qaeda operatives beginning in the late 1980’s.

The document states, "a letter intercepted on 21 January 1995 established the connections between the Abu Sayyaf and the pro-Iranian Shia Hezbollah."

It states the leaders of the two groups trained together in Syria and confirms Hezbollah’s links to al Qaeda.

Hezbollah has repeatedly denied it has links to al Qaeda, saying this is propaganda spread by US intelligence. But the same charge is made by at least two other governments in Southeast Asia – with the links to the MILF and Abu Sayyaf documented by Philippine intelligence.

General Peter Pace: Iran Fighting Two Proxy Wars

2006-08-15T22:25:00.000-05:00

General Peter Pace tells it like is concerning Iran's war on America and her allies. From the DOD [Emphasis Added]:

Iran is fighting two proxy wars, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told servicemembers here Aug. 13.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace told servicemembers gathered at the camp chapel that Iran is “fighting a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah” in Lebanon. Iran also is fighting a proxy war against Iraq and the United States by supporting elements inside Iraq.

Pace said the preferred method of dealing with Iran is via diplomacy. The international community must place pressure on Iran to end its support of the Hezbollah terror group in southern Lebanon, he said.

Hezbollah launched raids across the Israeli-Lebanese border and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers July 12. This sparked retaliation by Israel. A United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect yesterday. Iran is the principle national sponsor of Hezbollah.

In Iraq, officials believe Iran has trained many members of Shiite militia groups. There are also allegations that Iran is supplying the groups with weapons, including deadly shaped charges, and places to train and plan.

“There is a lot of diplomacy that may be used, a lot of international pressure that can be used, a lot of international dialogue that can be used with the Iranian government to let them know that we don’t appreciate what they are doing,” Pace said.

Al Qaeda Affiliate Beheads Kidnap Victim

2006-08-15T22:13:00.000-05:00

Al Qaeda's affiliate in the Philippines, Abu Sayyaf, has beheaded one of the group's two kidnap victims. (Side note: There are many pieces of evidence - including Iraqi intelligence documents - connecting to Abu Sayyaf to Saddam's regime.) From ABS-CBN Interactive:

Suspected Abu Sayyaf guerillas beheaded one of two kidnapped victims in Jolo island, where security forces were battling the terrorist group allied with the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah network, officials said.

Officials said the severed head of Jeffrey Selvin, 27, was found by civilians in front of the police headquarters in downtown Jolo at around 6 a.m. Saturday. His body had not been recovered.

The man and his mother, Jacky, 58, were kidnapped July 27 outside their house on Gandasuli Road in Jolo. The woman, whose fate remains unknown, owns a bakery in Jolo. ...

More Arrests in the Failed Airline Bomb Plot?

2006-08-15T22:09:00.000-05:00

15 more arrested in Pakistan?

September 11 Ties

2006-08-15T17:18:00.001-05:00

Recent reports indicate that the terrorists who tried to carry out the foiled airline bomb plot in London are connected to at least one 9-11 conspirator: Said Bahaji.

From Expatica we learn:

A German weekly news magazine, Focus, meanwhile reported that one of those arrested this week had had contacts with Nese Bahaji, the wife of Said Bahaji, who is still wanted worldwide as a suspected plotter of the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks.

He had shared an apartment with some of the Hamburg students killed in those attacks and vanished from Germany in September 2001.

And from the London Times [Emphasis added]:

THE German authorities are investigating contacts between a Briton being questioned over the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airlines and a key figure in the September 11, 2001, terrorist cell.

Intelligence sources said that, at Britain’s request, they were examining possible links between the suspect and Said Bahaji, the computer expert in the Hamburg cell that planned the suicide hijackings in 2001.

Bahaji shared an apartment in Hamburg with Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker, and Ramzi Binalshibh, the planner of 9/11. He fled Germany for Pakistan a week before the attacks in New York and Washington and has never been caught. ...

The German Interior Ministry said that inquiries were being conducted into apparent contacts between individuals in Germany and a Briton arrested in connection with the terrorist plot. A spokeswoman said: “There are close contacts between the German authorities and the British. We are conducting inquiries into communications between Germany and certain individuals.”

Sources in Berlin said that they were examining e-mail traffic between a Briton and Bahaji’s wife, Nese, in Hamburg during 2004-05. The writer of the e-mails — who is now under arrest — is thought to have been acting as a conduit for Bahaji to contact his spouse.

Bahaji, who is of Moroccan descent, fled Germany on September 4 2001. Several of the key figures in the Hamburg cell, including Mohamed Atta, attended his wedding in Hamburg in October 1999.

Details On Three Key al Qaeda Operatives Arrested in the UK

2006-08-13T22:39:00.000-05:00

From The Sunday Times (UK) [Emphasis Added]:

SECURITY sources believe that a man arrested in last week’s anti- terror raids in Britain is Al-Qaeda’s leader in this country.

Home Office officials say that one of those arrested is suspected not only of masterminding the foiled plot to bring down up to nine transatlantic airliners, but also of involvement in other planned atrocities over the past few years.

They believe that he was instrumental in sending the ringleader of at least one previous British terror plot for training at a camp in Pakistan last year. He is described by counter-terrorist officials at MI5 as the senior figure in a British terror network involving Kashmiri, north African and Iraqi cells. ...

The investigation into the suspected Al-Qaeda leader in Britain and his UK associates was considered by Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5’s director-general, to be the security service’s single most important line of inquiry.

He is suspected of being behind two “pipelines” which saw potential terrorist recruits being sent for training at camps in Pakistan and to join the “holy war” in Iraq.

The Al-Qaeda leader — who cannot be named for legal reasons— acts as a suspected hub in a network of extremist groups. These include Kashmiri and north African groups based in this country. He is linked to a second suspect also in Britain who has “played a major role in facilitating support for the Iraq jihad”.

A third associate is an Iraqi who came to Britain in 2004 and worked on providing support for British extremists who wanted to travel to Iraq to fight the “holy war”.

MI5 said he acquired weapons in preparation for an unspecified attack in Britain. He was detained in January last year pending deportation to Iraq. ...

Needless to say, it will be interesting to learn the identity of the three al Qaeda terrorists mentioned in the London Times article: (1) the al Qaeda leader in Britain, (2) the second suspect who “played a major role in facilitating support for the Iraq jihad,” and (3) the Iraqi who came to the UK in 2004 and recruited terrorists for jihad in Iraq.

Who Are We Fighting In Iraq?

2006-08-12T15:42:00.000-05:00

In part, Iran and its proxies.

From The New York Times [Emphasis Added]:

Iran is pressing Shiite militias here to step up attacks against the American-led forces in retaliation for the Israeli assault on Lebanon, the American ambassador to Iraq said Friday. Iran may foment even more violence as it faces off with the United States and United Nations over its nuclear program in the coming weeks, he added.

The Iranian incitement has led to a surge in mortar and rocket attacks on the fortified Green Zone, said the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The four-square-mile Green Zone, protected by layers of concrete blast walls and concertina wire on the west bank of the Tigris River here, encloses baroque palaces built by Saddam Hussein that now house the seat of the Iraqi government and the American Embassy.

The Shiite guerrillas behind the recent attacks are members of splinter groups of the Mahdi Army, the powerful militia created by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, Mr. Khalilzad said.

The splinter groups have ties to Iran, which is governed by Shiite Persians, and to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Arab militia in Lebanon that has been battling Israel for a month, the ambassador added.

There is evidence that Iran is pushing for more attacks, he said, without offering any specifics. But he acknowledged that there was no proof that Iran was directing any particular operations by militias here.

“Iran is seeking to put more pressure, encourage more pressure on the coalition from the forces that they are allied with here, and the same is maybe true of Hezbollah,” Mr. Khalilzad said in an interview Friday in his home inside the Green Zone.

His remarks are the first public statements by a senior Bush administration official directly linking violence in Iraq to American support of Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, and to growing pressure by the United States over Iran’s nuclear program. Until now, American officials have not publicly drawn a direct connection between Shiite militant groups here and Hezbollah in Lebanon. ...

The New York Times is absolutely right about that. The Bush administration has been terribly lax in explaining the role that Iran and its terror proxies play in destabilizing Iraq. American troops are not just fighting a coalition of Saddam's Baathists and jihadists. They are also fighting foreign powers, such as Iran and Syria.

Edward Jay Epstein On the 9-11 Commission Report & the CIA

2006-08-12T02:17:00.000-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal, Edward Jay Epstein:

Behind the 9/11 Report

Co-chairmen of the commission detail how the investigation unfolded. But a question remains: Was their work as effective as their publicity?

By EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN

Without Precedent By Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. HamiltonKnopf, 370 pages

In July 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, popularly known as the 9/11 Commission, published its final report. Coming in the midst of the presidential campaign, it won the quick endorsement of both candidates and wide acceptance in the media. In "Without Precedent," the commission's co-chairmen, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, offer an inside account of their investigation of the 9/11 tragedy. The book's title is somewhat of a misnomer. There were of course dozens of precedents for high-level bipartisan inquiries, such as the Warren Commission's investigation of the JFK assassination. More to the point, there was a precedent for the investigation of the 9/11 attack: the Joint Inquiry by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission was required to use the Joint Inquiry's report as its starting point and to limit itself to fill in what that report had not already covered.

The most notable difference between these two investigations was their public relations -- or, in Messrs. Kean and Hamilton's apt phrase, their "public face." The co-chairmen assumed that it was vital to be perceived "as having full access to the most secretive material in the government." To build this impression, they recount in the book how they prevailed in their battle for information with a secretive Bush administration, an evasive military bureaucracy and recalcitrant New York City officials.

They also had to cultivate the media. So both chairmen appeared on the TV talk shows, gave joint press interviews and did everything possible to build an aura of openness around the investigation -- hoping to avoid, as they explained, "the kinds of conspiracy theorizing that have followed in the wake of other inquiries."

For the commission to succeed, Messrs. Kean and Hamilton had to nurture the impression that the commissioners had seen all the evidence regarding 9/11 and had independently assessed it. In reality, however, the 9/11 Commission was neither exhaustive nor independent. If the investigation had truly been as exhaustive as advertised, it would have made a genuine effort to weigh evidence that ran counter to its thesis.

But it did not. Consider how the 9/11 Commission dealt with Capt. Scott Phillpott, a high-ranking naval intelligence officer who asserted that through data mining his military intelligence unit, code-named Able Danger, had identified Mohamed Atta as a potential terrorist in 2000 and even had his photograph on a chart. Since the staff could not find any such chart in the documents that it had obtained from the Pentagon, and because Capt. Phillpott's account "failed to match up" with the staff's conclusion that Atta was unknown to U.S. intelligence prior to 9/11, this putative identification of Atta was omitted from the commission's report (and a number of commissioners were not informed about it).

Later, the Pentagon said that at least four other intelligence officers in the unit had confirmed that they had seen the photograph of Atta or recalled hearing Atta's name prior to 9/11. The Pentagon also explained one possible reason the chart with Atta's photo was missing: The military had destroyed many Able Danger records in 2001.

To be sure, there were reasons to be skeptical about eye-witness accounts, but an exhaustive investigation would have at least heard them. Nor was the 9/11 Commission able to independently evaluate or verify crucial information it received from intelligence agencies. Although the CIA had imprisoned seven al Qaeda conspirators who had planned, directed and coordinated the 9/11 attack, the agency refused to give the commission access to the prisoners. In the case of the Warren Commission, Chief Justice Earl Warren went to Jack Ruby's prison cell to personally question Oswald's killer. In the case of the 9/11 Commission, the commissioners were not allowed to speak to, see or know the whereabouts of conspirators.

The commission could not even question the prisoners' CIA interrogators about the way information had been obtained from them. The co-chairmen admit in "Without Precedent" that they "had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information." But apparently that did not discourage them from accepting, essentially at face value, information from the prisoners, delivered via a CIA "project manager," if it would fill in gaps in the commission's investigation.

For example, the CIA reported that one key prisoner, Ramzi Binalshibh, had said co-conspirator Atta "did not meet with anyone" when he went to Prague in June 2000 -- even though Binalshibh himself was not in Prague and had no first-hand knowledge. He further alleged that on another two journeys, Atta went to Spain solely to talk with him and met no other conspirator -- but Binalshibh was not in Spain during all of Atta's visits. And, again through the medium of the CIA project manager, Binalshibh informed commissioners that Osama bin Laden would not have allowed Atta to meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer because the al Qaeda leader was upset with Saddam Hussein's treatment of Muslims.

Even though such contributions were indeed unverifiable -- particularly the one that required Binalshibh to read bin Laden's mind -- the 9/11 Commission came to rely on this information, giving it the benefit of the doubt when conflicting information surfaced.

For instance, the commission uncovered CIA documents that threatened to complicate matters by dragging Iran into the 9/11 conspiracy: The documents revealed that Iran had "apparently facilitated" the travel of most of the 9/11 "muscle hijackers" in flights from Afghanistan by not stamping their passports, and that Imad Mugniyah, the Hezbollah terrorist group's infamous chief of terrorist operations, had flown with the hijackers. But the commissioners merely referred the "troubling" matter to the CIA project manager. At that point, the report was only one week away from publication. The project manager quickly ran the information past the agency's prisoners and sent a reply back "just in time for inclusion in the Report," Messrs. Kean and Hamilton write. Result: "We found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack." Such CIA feeds permitted the commission to hew to its theory that al Qaeda carried out 9/11 with no help from any outside party or government.

With this book, Messrs. Kean and Hamilton have shown how a government-appointed commission managed to create the appearance, if not the reality, of an exhaustive independent investigation and artfully transformed itself into a lobby for the reorganization of the intelligence establishment. Now that is without precedent.

Mr. Epstein is the author of "Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth," and he is currently writing a book about the 9/11 Commission.

Two Links

2006-08-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

My brief piece on the Pakistani al Qaeda terror network that is behind both the 7/7 bombings and this most recent failed plot is up at the Daily Standard. More later.

You can also check out a symposium over at the National Review Online, which includes R. P. Eddy, Frank Gaffney, Victor Davis Hanson, Heather Mac Donald, Daniel Pipes, and Jim Robbins and myself.

The Pakistani Link

2006-08-10T19:06:00.000-05:00

Just like the 7/7 bombings, numerous early leads point to the terror network in Pakistan as the source of the failed airliner bomb plot. From the NY Times [Emphasis Added]:

...The American counter-terrorism official who described plans for the dry run said several of the suspected plotters arrested in Britain had traveled to Pakistan in the past two weeks and may have met with at least one person suspected of having links to Al Qaeda.

The suspected Qaeda operative was arrested within the past two days, the official said. That arrest impelled the British officials to round up the two dozen suspects for fear that they would become wary of detection.

All of the plotters are British citizens, most of Pakistani descent, the official said. ...

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Members Found in Hezbollah's Dead

2006-08-10T19:02:00.000-05:00

From Reuters [emphasis added]:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard have been found among Hizbollah guerrillas slain by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, Israel's Channel 10 television reported on Wednesday citing diplomatic sources.

It said the Iranians were identified by documents found on their bodies, but gave no further details on how many were discovered or when. Neither the Israeli military nor Hizbollah representatives in Beirut had immediate comment on the report.

Iran, like fellow Hizbollah patron Syria, insists its support for the Shi'ite guerrilla group is purely moral.

Israel says many of the rockets being fired against its civilian and military targets are Iranian made, and that Hizbollah fighters taking on its forces trained in Iran. Washington also accuses Tehran of actively funding Hizbollah.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are traditionally very close to fellow Shi'ite Muslims in Hizbollah and were deployed in south Lebanon in the 1980s.

The Airline Bomb Plot

2006-08-10T10:09:00.000-05:00

Three quick links and thoughts on the airline bomb plot:

(1) Pakistani Intelligence helped? The London Times is reporting that Pakistani Intelligence help thwart the plot. The Times also passes along this nugget from Pakistan:

Today Pakistani security forces Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, leader of the outlawed Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, (LeT) under house arrest. The largest of the separatist groups fighting the Indian forces in Kashmir, the LeT has also been blamed by Indian authorities for last month's train bombings in Bombay which killed more than 200 people.

(2) Liquid explosives. There are a number of reports, including this one from the AP, saying that the plotters wanted to use liquid explosives in their carry-on luggage to blow up the planes. It is worth noting, as some reports do, that this was the Ramzi Yousef's modus operandi in the mid-1990s. Yousef, whose uncle KSM orchestrated 9/11, was plotting to blow up a dozen aircraft in mid air when he was arrested. Yousef had wanted to use liquid-based explosives mixed on board the aircraft.

(3) Al Qaeda plot? Although it is too early to tell who the plotters are, exactly, Rohan Gunaratna hits the nail on the head concerning likely al Qaeda involvement:

..."The scope or the magnitude of this attack is much larger than previous attacks," said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.

He added that everything known so far points to involvement by Osama bin Laden's terror group.

"It is a classic al-Qaida tactic. It is a hallmark of al-Qaida to carry out coordinated, simultaneous attacks, and the aviation domain is certainly known to al-Qaida. They have obvious experience in working around that system and extensive knowledge of the aviation domain."...

Iran, North Korea & Missiles

2006-08-03T08:25:00.000-05:00

Since the Iranian president keeps calling for the destruction of Israel, the following may be a good piece of information to keep top-of-mind. From Reuters:

North Korea has been working closely with Iran to develop its long-range ballistic missiles, possibly using Chinese technology, and is building large bases to prepare for their deployment, a South Korean state-run think tank said.

North Korea is also building new sites near the Demilitarized Zone with the South for short-range missiles and is deploying missiles with improved precision that can strike most of Japan, the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) said in a report.

"The development of Taepodong-2 is conducted jointly with Iran, and it is possible China's technology is used in the development of the Taepodong-2 engine," said the IFANS report, which Reuters obtained on Thursday.

The collaboration on the long-range Taepodong-2 is part of an international network, including Pakistan, that made it possible for the impoverished North to develop and deploy missiles despite scarce resources and limited testing, the study said.

With more than 1,000 missiles of various ranges, North Korea has come to have the world's fourth-largest arsenal and is at the center of ballistic missile proliferation, IFANS said, "not only in terms of the weapons themselves but also the technology."

North Korea fired seven missiles on July 5, including the Taepodong-2, which U.S. officials said failed seconds into its flight and fell into waters between Japan and the Korean peninsula.
Christopher Hill, the top U.S. envoy to talks on the North's nuclear program, said last month one or more Iranians watched the North's missile launch, deepening concerns about the ties between two countries with troubling nuclear capabilities.

The Taepodong-2 is the product of joint efforts with Tehran, coinciding with Iran's development of the Shehab-5 and 6 missiles, the report said. "It is highly possible that design and technology from China, which has an arms trade with Iran, were used."

The Taepodong-2's failure was probably because its first-stage booster rocket did not separate, the report said, the latest in a series of problems with the missile, including an explosion during an engine test in 2002.

TACTICAL MISSILES

The Iranian connection in the North's missile program dates back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when Pyongyang tested and began shipping its Scud-type missiles to Iran, the report said.

The Scud-based arsenal continues to be a threat because, through modification, the weapons "have achieved leaping progress in terms of precision, high mobility and quick firing rates," the IFANS report said.

The North's purchase of out-dated Soviet submarines in the 1990s, with launch and stabilization systems intact, has raised concern that North Korea might be trying to arm submarines with tactical missiles, it said.

The North is building a missile command base 50 km (30 miles) north of the Demilitarized Zone for as many as 30 mobile launch pads for the Scud-type Hwasong missiles that can hit military and industrial targets deep in the South, IFANS said.

"With the deployment of Rodong and SSN-6 missiles and the pursuit to deploy the Taepodong-2, the North is pushing ahead with the construction of new sites and silos" on the east coast and on the border with China, the IFANS report said.

Iran "Frees" Bin Laden's Son to Work With Hezbollah

2006-08-02T14:20:00.000-05:00

Dan Darling passes along this link from Reuters. Quoting Die Welt, a German newspaper, Reuters reports:

Iran has freed a son of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from house arrest, a German newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Die Welt said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard released Saad bin Laden on July 28 with the aim of sending him to the Syria-Lebanon border. It linked the reported move to the outbreak of war between Israel and Lebanese-based Hizbollah.

"From the Lebanese border, he has the task of building Islamist terror cells and preparing them to fight together with Hizbollah," Die Welt said, quoting intelligence information.

"Apparently Tehran is counting on recruiting Lebanese refugees in Syria for the fight against Israel, using bin Laden's help," it added in a preview of a report to appear in its Thursday edition. ...

A couple of points:

(1) I don't believe that Iran's "arrest" of senior al Qaeda leaders was real. Tehran was providing safehaven to senior al Qaeda operatives and probably used the "arrest" story as a cover.

(2) It is interesting that according to Die Welt bin Laden's son will be working with Hebollah, no? If true, this is still more evidence that the Sunni-Shiite divide is not nearly as wide as many here in the West imagine.

India: 52 Terror Training Camps in Pakistan

2006-08-02T11:51:00.000-05:00

From The Times of India (H/T: Counterterrorism Blog):

As many as 52 terrorist training camps are reported to be existing in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the Government is continuing to inform the international community of these developments, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday.

Insurgent groups also continue to misuse Bangladesh territory for sanctuary, training camps, transportation or arms and transit and were being supported by intelligence agencies, both civil and military, of Bangladesh.

This was stated by Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahmed in reply to a written question.

He said there were reportedly 52 terrorist camps in Pakistan and PoK and the Government has, in its interaction at all levels, continuously stressed the fact that Islamabad needs to take effective steps to dismantle the infrastructure of support to terrorism on a permanent basis. ...