CIA's Woolsey Tells Court: Iraq Involved in 9/11

NewsMax.com ^ | 3/07/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

Former CIA Director James Woolsey offered bombshell testimony this week in a lawsuit brought by the families of World Trade Center victims that implicates Saddam Hussein in the 9/11 attacks.

The one-time Clinton administration intelligence chief described what he said was a conspiracy between al Qaeda and Baghdad. As evidence he offered accounts from Iraqi defectors who have described a Boeing 707 jet parked on the ground at the terrorist training camp Salman Pak. The plane, the eyewitnesses insist, was used as a hijacking school prior to 9/11.

Since 1995 Saddam's most elite terror operatives had allegedly used Salman Pak to train al Qaeda recruits to overcome U.S. flight crews using methods employed on 9/11, according to London's Observer newspaper. In Nov. 2001, dozens of other reports, including several in the New York Times, covered news of Saddam's Salman Pak hijacking school based on the defectors' accounts.

"I believe it is definitely more likely than not that some degree of common knowledge between (al Qaeda and Iraq) was involved here," Woolsey told a Manhattan Federal Court on Monday, according to the New York Daily News.

He compared the relationship between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terror network to two Mafia families "who hate each other, kill each other from time to time but are still capable of working together against a common enemy," according to testimony quoted by the Associated Press.

At the very least, Saddam Hussein is guilty of aiding and abetting the activities of al-Qaeda, Woolsey contended.

He also offered evidence suggesting that Baghdad had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

A July 21, 2001 article in an Egyptian newspaper article headlined, "America, an Obsession with Osama bin Laden" indicated that Baghdad knew what was coming three months later, the former U.S. intelligence chief told the court. The report, written by an Iraqi, predicted bin Laden would target both New York City and the Pentagon.

Woolsey noted a line in the story that predicted bin Laden would "strike America on the arm that is already hurting," explaining that the phrase was likely a reference to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

No Iraqi journalist would write such a report without his government's knowledge and approval, Woolsey testified.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Al-Qaeda
Saddam Hussein/Iraq

[ladtx]

I suppose we can expect to see this covered by the big 3's news reports this evening. < /sarcasm>

[RoughDobermann]

We need to give inspections more time, period!

[ventana]

Things that make you go: hmmmmmm. V's wife.

[justshutupandtakeit]

These things make me go "grrrrr."

[alloysteel]

If this is true, it directly contradicts all the blather pouring out of the anti-war crowd, who continue to insist that there could not be any ties between Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein. After all, bin Ladin is a DEVOUT Muslim, and Saddam is only going to mosque for show, he is much too irreverent to be able to communicate with the most conscientious of believers. Couldn't possibly be working together.

[Mister Baredog]

"I believe it is definitely more likely than not that some degree of common knowledge between (al Qaeda and Iraq) was involved here," Woolsey told a Manhattan Federal Court on Monday, according to the New York Daily News

So does this mean that if other media outlets don't cover this then it isn't true?

[aristeides]

"I believe it is definitely more likely than not that some degree of common knowledge between (al Qaeda and Iraq) was involved here," Woolsey told a Manhattan Federal Court on Monday, according to the New York Daily News.

In a civil suit in the U.S., the standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence. That means all you have to show is that something is more likely than not. Very different from proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

[SunStar]

The information on Salman Pak has been available for over a year... No one in the "mainstream" believed it.

[aristeides]

No one in the "mainstream" believed it.

Was it that they didn't believe it, or that they didn't choose to let their audience know that they believed it?

[Seeking the truth]

Salman Pak has been known for much longer than a year.

[piasa]

Some additional bits of info on Iraq-Al Qaeda ties the left either doesn't know, doesn't want to know, or is deliberately trying to smear from my post #2064 (This is by no means all of what is available out there)

[Plummz]

Where is Salman Pak? Is this another of those "terror training camps" protected by US/UK planes in the northern no-fly zone?

[Orangedog]

Salman Pak, Baghdad, and Kabul should each have been designated test sites for 10 megaton warheads as before the smoke cleared after 9/11.

[aristeides]

Salman Pak is a suburb of Baghdad.

[kabar]

If this is true, it directly contradicts all the blather pouring out of the anti-war crowd, who continue to insist that there could not be any ties between Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein.

Agree. This has always been a nonsensical argument. The United States allied itself with the Soviet Union to defeat Hitler. Throughout history, alliances among nations and political groups have shifted depending upon the objective. If they share a common objective, the conflicting ideologies of the groups usually don't matter.

[FirstTomato]

Since 9/11 I've done extensive reading on the whole of the Middle East,and the attacks by Muslim radicals in the last few decades on American interests, and after analyzing the information, and using a little bit of common sense, I am convinced that there was a Iraqi connection to both 93 WTC and 9/11.

It makes sense. Its logical. The info is out there, only it requires that folks be able to draw lines from point A to point B, which many people refuse to do.

I'm also convinced we're in the middle of World War III, a war which has been waged against us by Islamofascists for decades, and 9/11 was only the date on which we entered.

[VRWCmember]

I have yet to see anyone else connect the very obvious dots that both Iraq and Al Qaeda refuse to use a "U" after the "Q" in their names. Coincidence? I think not.

[Alberta's Child]

I agree with a lot of what you said, but the comment about the "Islamofascists" is dead wrong.

Based on conversations I've had over the last few days, I am now convinced that Iraq has had a role in every terrorist attack against the U.S. since 1993. I'm also now certain that "radical Islam" is nothing more than a front that is used to mask Iraq's involvement (the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sealed that one for me).

This does not, however, necessarily mean that I am behind the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Before this happens, I have one condition for the Bush administration: Come clean on the incompetence and malfeasance in various Federal agencies that has had such a devastating impact on this country over the last ten years.

[HighRoadToChina]

Mega BUMP!