Muslim leader in U.S. 'intelligence coup'

CNN.Com / Law Center ^ | Thursday, July 29, 2004 Posted: 10:28 PM EDT (0228 GMT) | From CNN Justice Producer Terry Frieden

[Fedora]

Here's something else Papeca had to say elsewhere:

Dead Terrorist in Baghdad

But we do know something else about Abu Nidal, which we will do well to remember as we grapple with prospects for a Middle East "peace." Although he was universally considered to be a mortal enemy of Yasser Arafat (Fatah passed a death sentence on him in the Seventies), there is good reason to believe that this was a monumental deception. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former acting chief of the Romanian intelligence service during Ceausescu's dictatorship, the Abu Nidal Organization was actually created by Arafat with a double purpose. On the one hand, it enabled Arafat to pose as a moderate, compared to the violent acts carried out by Abu Nidal. On the other, it provided Arafat with a band of assassins that could eliminate any PLO leader that met with Arafat's disapproval. Pacepa has proved to be an extremely accurate source of information ever since he defected to the West in 1978, and he says that the information about Abu Nidal comes straight from Arafat himself during a conversation with Ceausescu.

[Fedora]

Abu Nidal Organization: Iraq, extremists

After being expelled from Iraq, the organization moved to Syria, where it worked to undermine peace plans involving Jordan, Israel, and the PLO. In turn, Syria expelled the Abu Nidal Organization in 1987, probably under U.S. pressure to distance itself from terrorists, at which point Libya took it in. In 1999, in an attempt to rid itself of international sanctions, Libya kicked out the Abu Nidal Organization.