Friends of Wolfowitz's say his initial reaction was that Iraq was probably a party to the attacks. He had already studied the work of Laurie Mylroie, an investigator who has labored to connect Iraq to earlier terrorist attacks, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and now an ardent student of clues connecting Saddam to Sept. 11. The Clinton administration treated Mylroie as, in her words, ''a nut case,'' but Wolfowitz -- then spending the Clinton years as dean of the prestigious School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins -- listened to her 90-minute briefing on the evidence trail and wrote a sympathetic blurb for her book blaming Iraq for the first trade-center attack. After Sept. 11, he encouraged his friend R. James Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director, to visit England as a consultant to a Justice Department mission and sniff out evidence of Iraqi connections. Woolsey contends that evidence connecting Iraq with terrorist assaults on America, while circumstantial, is ''about as clear as these things get.'' Few others go that far, Wolfowitz included. He can describe the evidence in detail, the clandestine meetings between Iraqi intelligence and figures who may have been Al Qaeda operatives, and says he finds it intriguing but not conclusive.Remember the name R. James Woolsey. We will be hearing a lot more from him, when we move on to the next act of this "three act play."
Oh, I always pay attention when Woolsey speaks. Ever since last year when I read that he was one of the top people who know what's going on, I've listened to him. And can you believe he was the one clintoon wouldn't meet with for 2 years in the early 90s? Woolsey couldn't get a meeting with the toon to brief him. Unbelievable.