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Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

In 1947 the then Columbia University quaterback Gene Rossides led Columbia to a stunning football victory that ended national power Army's 32-game unbeaten streak. Now more than 55 years later, Rossides is still taking on elements of America's Defense Complex. Rossides charges that the United States, on the misleading advice of certain elements within the Defense Department, is playing cozy with a brutal regime in Turkey. In a recent Op-ed column for Hellenic News of America, Rossides, a former Assistant Treasury Secretary, calls for the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. Rossides charges that "Wolfowitz has committed major mistakes...

The Pentagon is accusing Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of distorting the intelligence work of its No. 3 civilian official, and calling on the Democrat to prove his charges or retract them.     It is unusual for the Pentagon to formally take on a sitting senator. In this case, the challenge came in a letter to Mr. Rockefeller on Friday from Powell A. Moore, the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs.     "On behalf of the department, I request that, if you have any evidence supporting the serious charge you floated during your press conference, you provide it to the department,"...

Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links By Julian Coman in Washington (Filed: 11/07/2004) A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'eda, according to the Senate intelligence committee. The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee's review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday. According to dramatic testimony contained in the...

A U.S. senator this week told NewsMax.com's Washington correspondent Wes Vernon of previously overlooked evidence linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. Testimony going back to months before the war in Iraq shows that the Bush administration had reliable intelligence of the link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. That would tend to throw cold water on some of the news reports on the stormy hearings of the 9/11 commission that suggest there was no link between the bloody dictator and the terrorists who later plotted the 9/11 attacks. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith told senators in October 2002...

In February 2002, Christina Shelton, a career Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was combing through old intelligence on Iraq when she stumbled upon a small paragraph in a CIA report from the mid-1990's that stopped her. It recounted a contact between some Iraqis and al Qaeda that she had not seen mentioned in current CIA analysis, according to three defense officials who work with her. She spent the next couple of months digging through 12 years of intelligence reports on Iraq and produced a briefing on alleged contacts Shelton felt had been overlooked or underplayed by the CIA. Her boss, Douglas...

Jan. 28, 2004--Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit legal watchdog group, sent a letter to President Bush asking that he call upon the White House Counsel to investigate Vice President Cheney's confirmation of leaked classified information in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News on January 9, 2004. Federal law prohibits leaking classified information. Confirming information that has already been leaked is also prohibited. In his Jan. 9th interview, Mr. Cheney referred his interviewer to a story that appeared in The Weekly Standard's November 24, 2003 issue. The story, written by Stephen F. Hayes, discussed...

In my last column, I referenced a memo prepared by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, in which he listed 50 items of connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The memo was prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and was leaked to The Weekly Standard. The column prompted the usual responses, including an agitated letter to the editor linking me to Goebbels. But, I also received a more rational e-mail demanding a retraction and apology. The demand was based on a quote from the Defense Department, issued just after publication of the Feith memo, stating "News reports that the...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. American officials caution that Mr. Ani may...

Those who still insist there “isn’t one scintilla of evidence” or “no proof” of a Saddam Hussein-Osama bin Laden connection must have missed the authoritative article by the noted author and terrorism expert, Stephen F. Hayes, in the November 24th edition of the magazine “Weekly Standard,” (www.weeklystandard.com) with the title “Case Closed.” Hayes has appeared often in the media, and is generally considered an “expert” on international terror. In his article, “Case Closed,” he critiques an official memorandum from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith to the Chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing 50 instances of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration....

Anybody have a link to the full text of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith's memo to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the one written about in the "Weekly Standard" and ignored by the "corporate controlled right wing media"? ;)

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITT SUBJECT: Saddam – bin Laden Connection Last Friday, David Ignatius published an op-ed in the Washington Post commenting on the Weekly Standard article by Stephen Hayes that drew on a Defense Department document detailing contacts between Saddam’s Iraq and Bin Laden’s al Qaeda. The crux of Ignatius’s criticism of Hayes claim of an Iraq – al Qaeda connection is that the CIA and British intelligence had “an unusually well-placed source in Iraq who told them before the war that in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had indeed considered such an operational relationship with...

<p>The fall of Baghdad has produced new evidence to buttress the Bush administration's prewar contention that Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda had a long history of contacts.</p> <p>The most conclusive evidence comes in a highly detailed list of intelligence reports revealed last month in the Weekly Standard. Senior Iraqis were said to have traveled to Sudan in the mid-1990s to teach bin Laden's operatives how to make sophisticated truck bombs.</p>

You can understand why the media might ignore the Saddam-Osama memo, but what about the Bush administration? ON THE SURFACE, it might seem like a simple case of media bias. In the November 24, 2003, WEEKLY STANDARD, Stephen F. Hayes summarized and quoted at length a recent, secret Pentagon memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo laid out--in 50 bullet points, over 16 pages--the relationship between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Much of the intelligence in the memo was detailed and appeared to be well-sourced and well-corroborated. The story generated lots of discussion...

From the December 8, 2003 issue: You can understand why the media might ignore the Saddam-Osama memo, but what about the Bush administration? ON THE SURFACE, it might seem like a simple case of media bias. In the November 24, 2003, WEEKLY STANDARD, Stephen F. Hayes summarized and quoted at length a recent, secret Pentagon memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo laid out--in 50 bullet points, over 16 pages--the relationship between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Much of the intelligence in the memo was detailed and appeared to be well-sourced and well-corroborated....

From the December 8, 2003 issue: You can understand why the media might ignore the Saddam-Osama memo, but what about the Bush administration?ON THE SURFACE, it might seem like a simple case of media bias. In the November 24, 2003, WEEKLY STANDARD, Stephen F. Hayes summarized and quoted at length a recent, secret Pentagon memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo laid out--in 50 bullet points, over 16 pages--the relationship between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Much of the intelligence in the memo was detailed and appeared to be well-sourced and well-corroborated. The...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A conservative US magazine said it had obtained a classified US government memo purporting to prove that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had contacts with al-Qaeda and was implicated in the September 11, 2001 attacks. "Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources," says an article in Monday's edition of The Weekly Standard. "The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies." However a skeptical commentary on the Weekly Standard article in Newsweek magazine suggests the Pentagon (news - web sites)...

The Saddam-Osama Memo (cont.) A close examination of the Defense Department's latest statement. THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT late Saturday, November 15, issued a statement that began: "News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate." The statement didn't specify the "inaccurate" news reports, but most observers have inferred that the main report in question was an article in the most recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD--Case Closed: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden....

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written...

Former CIA director James Woolsey said over the weekend that there's no question Iraq and al Qaeda worked together to plan attacks against U.S. interests during the decade leading up to 9/11, saying the evidence of an operational relationship was "a slam dunk." Commenting on a memo issued by the Defense Department to the Senate Intelligence Committee and revealed by the Weekly Standard late Friday, Woolsey told CNN's "Late Edition," "Anybody who says there is no working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence going back to the early '90s, they can only say that if they're illiterate." "This is...