Some analysts suspect bin Laden slipped into Iran

WASHINGTON -- Some within the U.S. intelligence community think Osama bin Laden is in eastern Iran, instead of the rugged tribal areas of Pakistan's northwestern frontier, where most American officials think he is still on the run.

U.S. officials said in interviews that the Iran theory, which is held by a minority, is based on bits of intelligence information and the fact that months of CIA intelligence operations, along with search-and-destroy sweeps by thousands of Pakistani troops, have failed to find the al Qaeda leader or his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Asked whether the U.S. intelligence community thinks bin Laden may be in Iran, a senior administration official told The Washington Times, "Some people think he is."

That source said there is great frustration, especially within the inner circle around Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, that bin Laden has not been caught or even unequivocally spotted in Pakistan's border region. The frustration is fueling speculation that bin Laden may not be there after all.

Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and House Armed Services Committee member, writes in his new book, "Countdown to Terror," that a reliable Iranian source he identifies only as "Ali" told him that bin Laden has been in Iran for some time.

"The course of world events have established incontrovertibly that Ali is a high credible source of reliable intelligence on Iranian and other terrorist activities," Mr. Weldon writes.

But the Bush administration's official position is that bin Laden is most likely in the border region straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan and that he is hidden by tribal allies.

"The consensus is that bin Laden remains in the border region," said a U.S. intelligence official.

Asked about reports that bin Laden is in Iran, which borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the official said, "That would be a big risk for the Iranians. ... There are all kinds of rumors that these guys go in and out of Iran, but that always struck me as odd."

Bin Laden lived near Kandahar, Afghanistan, the Taliban cultural headquarters, until the 2001 U.S. invasion. He moved north to the Tora Bora mountain range, then slipped across the border into Pakistan.

Gone are the heady predictions of early 2004, when the U.S. command in Afghanistan predicted bin Laden would be killed or captured by year's end. No commander is making such predictions now, and privately, some officers say the trail has gone cold.

Bush administration officials have accused Iran, a U.S.-designated sponsor of terrorism, of harboring al Qaeda lieutenants who escaped from Afghanistan in 2001.

The administration has stopped short of providing the names of the al Qaeda fugitives or suggesting that bin Laden is among them.

The U.S. also has intelligence that Abu Musab Zarqawi, who heads al Qaeda in Iraq, has slipped in and out of Iran since 2003 to evade capture. Officials say that is why Mr. Rumsfeld and the new Iraqi government have publicly warned Iraq's neighbors not to take in Zarqawi, whom Islamic Web sites say was wounded and needed medical care.

Washington thinks one of bin Laden's sons as well as a top operations chief are in Iran.

Iran denies harboring al Qaeda, but has said it has arrested and detained some members.

"Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and House Armed Services Committee member, writes in his new book,

"Countdown to Terror,"

that a reliable Iranian source he identifies only as "Ali" told him that bin Laden has been in Iran for some time."

"The course of world events have established incontrovertibly that Ali is a high credible source of reliable intelligence on Iranian and other terrorist activities," Mr. Weldon writes."

Also this from The New York Sun six months ago...

"Congressman Warns of Iranian Attack on U.S.

by Eli Lake - Staff Reporter of The New York Sun

December 14, 2004

WASHINGTON - A senior Republican congressman has been warning America's intelligence community for more than a year of an alleged Iranian plot to crash commercial airliners into a New Hampshire nuclear reactor.

Since February 2003, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania has held a series of secret meetings in Paris with a former high-ranking official in the Shah's government who has correctly predicted, according to Mr. Weldon, a number of internal developments in Iran ranging from the regime's atomic weapons programs to its support for international terrorism, including Al Qaeda.

Based on two informants inside the mullahs' inner circle, Mr. Weldon's source, whom he code-named "Ali," relayed allegations to the Pennsylvania lawmaker that an Iranian-backed terrorist cell is seeking to hijack Canadian airliners and crash them into an American reactor. The target of the operation was only identified by Ali as SEA, leading Mr. Weldon to predict it was the Seabrook reactor in New Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston. Ali told the congressman that the attack was first planned for between November 23 and December 3, 2003, but was postponed to take place after this year's presidential election.

For nearly two years, Mr. Weldon tried to quietly press the CIA and a Senate panel that oversees Langley to follow up on the intelligence his Iranian source in Paris was providing. But these efforts came to nothing, according to Mr. Weldon. So now Mr. Weldon is going public. The congressman said in an interview last week that he intended to publish a book early next year outlining the intelligence he has collected from various sources that he said will detail an Iranian plot to conduct a more lethal attack on America than September 11, 2001.

"I get a lot of wackos who come to see me, who claim to have information," he said. "In this case, this source came to me from a former member of Congress, a Democrat. I followed up a lead. That lead developed an ongoing process of information-sharing for two years that I took to the highest levels of the intelligence community.

In Washington, the new book from Mr. Weldon, based in part on his meetings with Ali, will provide fresh ammunition for the Republicans against an intelligence community perceived by the White House as hostile to the president's policies.

Last month, the new director of the CIA, Porter Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent many of the most senior analysts and operations officers into early retirement. In a speech he gave to the staff at Langley, Mr. Goss had to remind the employees that the president sets national security policy.

But if Mr. Weldon's source turns out to be right, America could also be losing a valuable intelligence asset on Iran, a country where most intelligence analysts in America concede the CIA has too few human sources.

The congressman's experience with America's spy service in the last year echoes frustrations from other American officials and analysts who have cultivated Iranians willing to provide America with intelligence, but who have been ignored. After a December 2001 meeting in Rome between Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, the State Department and CIA went out of their way to shut down the channel. Mr. Franklin is now the target of a grand jury investigation into alleged espionage activities for passing information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

A summary of Ali's predictions were outlined in a November 2003 letter to the Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Roberts from Kansas. In its opening lines, Mr. Weldon wrote, "This letter is to warn you of an intelligence failure in the process of happening."

Later in the letter, Mr. Weldon, who is the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote, "I am not asserting that such an attack shall occur. But given [Ali's] record of accurate predictions, shouldn't the Intelligence Community at least be investigating his story?"

The letter and an accompanying memo titled, "Ali: a Credible Source," goes into detail about information Mr. Weldon's source provided that was later confirmed in the press. For example, Ali first passed on the Iranian threat to the reactor at a Paris meeting on May 17, 2003.

On August 22, 2003, the Toronto Star reported the arrest of 19 people in Canada for immigration violations who were suspected of being connected in a terrorist conspiracy. One of the men in the cell was taking flight lessons and had flown an airplane directly over an Ontario nuclear power plant, according to the newspaper.

So, impressed with the quality of his source's information, Mr. Weldon met in 2003 with the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, to plead his case to get funding for Ali. But the CIA, according to the Pennsylvania lawmaker, demanded to know the identities of Ali's sources inside Iran, a condition Mr. Weldon said was unreasonable given the high-risk espionage.

"I took this straight to the top," Mr. Weldon said in an interview. "I wanted to work through the channels but I did not get anywhere."

Frustrated with the CIA's response, Mr. Weldon took his case to the Senate panel that oversees the agency.

He pressed them in the 2003 letter to hold a hearing on the matter and urge the CIA to get Ali the money to continue to pay off his sources inside the Islamic republic. According to Mr. Weldon, the committee did not respond in any meaningful way. "One or two senior people called the chief of staff. Not the kind of response I wanted. I had to get this off my shoulders," he said in an interview.

Mr. Weldon said more of Ali's intelligence will be shared in his forthcoming book, which he promised would "shake Washington."

He said that the manuscript, which he has just completed, details how Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, "has set up a separate entity in the government the president does not know about, which includes all the terrorist groups connected to bin Laden and others. They are avowed to consummate a major attack inside the United States. In the book I name this plot."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.