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Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A01 On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the...

Dearborn man pleas guilty to aiding terror group 3/2/2005, 3:36 a.m. ET The Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — A Dearborn man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. According to federal prosecutors, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, 33, hosted meetings in his home in late 2002 where a guest speaker from Lebanon solicited donations for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. The government didn't identify the speaker at the meetings. It said the money was intended for Hezbollah's orphans of martyrs program to benefit the families of those killed...

On MSNBC now -- videos of "mysterious cannisters" that appear to be Russian in origin.

SYDNEY: There is clear evidence Iraq had a biological weapons programme even though none of the armaments have been found there since US-led forces invaded the country, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Thursday. Downer cited a US Central Intelligence Agency report released yesterday, which said two trucks had been discovered in northern Iraq filled with laboratory equipment, as proof that Iraq had such a programme. No prohibited weapons were found in the trucks, but US intelligence officials say the vehicles fit a description from an Iraqi source of a mobile biological weapons laboratory. "The equipment has now been...

The sordid tale now making the rounds in the "mainstream" press of a rogue Pentagon intelligence operation has all the elements of an urban legend: heavy breathing, a secret basement office "down by the ramp" and government officials who form a hidden alliance based on long-ago ties to an obscure but influential university guru. Only the work of a few good men with the courage to face up to this "cabal" - and a few crusader-journalists to help them - can make the demons scatter and scare the dark ones into the light. Or so the story goes on those...

Hide in Plane Sight Family of Possible 727 Pilot: "He Is Not a Terrorist" W A S H I N G T O N, June 18 - While international authorities continue their search for a missing jetliner, fearful that it could be used in a terror attack, the family of the American believed to have been piloting the aircraft worries about his fate. Workers at Luanda Airport in Angola watched dumbfounded on May 25 as a Boeing 727 taxied down the runway and took off - without permission. The plane - which ABCNEWS has learned was refitted to haul...

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has suggested the US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. An investigation would expose US forces to ICC scrutiny for the first time. Delivering her annual report to members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Monday, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would decide “imminently” whether to ask judges for permission to launch a full-blown investigation as to whether US military forces and CIA operatives may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan through the “cruel or violent” interrogation of detainees. Bensouda said the Taliban, Afghan government forces and US...

Powell Plans 'Candid' Dialogue in Syria By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) says he plans to have a "good, strong, candid" dialogue with Syrian officials when he travels to Damascus. "We have issues with the Syrian government that I am going there to talk about," Powell said Thursday. He said they included support for terrorist organizations, development of weapons of mass destruction and a need to seal the border with Iraq (news - web sites) to stop former officials from taking refuge in Syria. "I will not hold back...

Saddam Hussein ordered Iraq's central bank to withdraw $1 billion for his youngest son the day before the invasion to stop it falling into foreign hands, according to a leaked letter apparently written by the former dictator. In a hand-written note to the bank's governor, marked "top secret" and dated March 19, 2003, the former president told Isam Huwaish to give $920 million and 90 million euros to his son Qusay and another man, al-Mashriq newspaper reported yesterday. The Iraqi national broadsheet reproduced the letter, which appears to bear Saddam's signature. Saddam sent bank a hand-written note Employees of the...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors who accuse nine U.S. citizens and two other men of conspiring to join a Muslim terror group presented an address list and other evidence Friday to try to link the suspects to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group. But the evidence wasn't enough to persuade U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to keep one defendant, Sabri Benkhala, in jail. Brinkema ordered Benkhala released to home detention at his father's house in Falls Church, upholding a previous release order issued by a magistrate. "There's no question the government has raised some significant issues here," the judge said....

Ashley-based soldiers face hearing today Supporters of troops accused of beating Iraqis gripe about camp where probe started. By LAUREN ROTH lroth@leader.net As four Ashley-based military police officers head to a hearing today on charges they assaulted Iraqi prisoners, the soldiers' supporters describe disorder, incompetence and mistakes by commanders at Camp Bucca. "Those that initiated this ridiculous investigation and those that perpetuated the volatile circumstances will feel the burden of responsibility that this series of injustices command," wrote David Girman, brother of one of the reservists, in an eight-page letter to congressmen and media. From phone calls and e-mails between...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI made a series of arrests in three states Friday of men suspected of ties to an anti-U.S. terrorist organization whose main goal is driving India out of the disputed Kashmir territory in South Asia. The arrests of at least seven suspects were made in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, said federal law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity. Federal charges against the men, and several others who are overseas, were to be announced later in the day. The men are alleged to be part of an extremist Muslim organization called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is on the...

Al-Qaeda's third-ranked leader and alleged mastermind of the Riyadh bombings has been seized in Iran, intelligence sources say. The United States has identified Saif al-Adel as the most senior al-Qaeda member linked to the attacks that killed 34 people, including one Australian, earlier this month. Intelligence sources said al-Adel, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard, approved the bombing plans before his capture by Iranian security forces nine days before the attack. Iran is thought to want to handover al-Adel to Washington, in return for senior leaders in the anti-Iranian terrorist group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). He would probably be deported to...

It is now emerging from intelligence sources that the reason the United States was able to give Saudi Arabia the heads-up it ignored on the terror bombings in Riyadh, is because the CIA had been intercepting communications between al-Qaeda operatives in Arabia and Iran. The hits themselves helped to clarify co-ordinates; and there is thus little doubt remaining in American minds that Iran is sheltering senior al-Qaeda leaders. The ayatollahs are most likely trying to integrate surviving al-Qaeda resources with those of Hezbollah, their own main horse in terror international. I read some hint of that into the strange remarks...

TEHRAN, Iran — In a reversal, Iran left open the possibility Thursday it may have top Al Qaeda (search) operatives in custody, including the terror network security chief suspected by U.S. officials of planning attacks in Saudi Arabia (search). Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi's comments to The Associated Press contradicted his statement Monday, when he was quoted as telling state-run radio that Al Qaeda members detained in Iran (search) "are not senior members of the group." More

<p>TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's foreign minister said Friday that the al-Qaida operatives Iran now has in custody were arrested before the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and couldn't have been involved in the attacks.</p> <p>"There is no possibility that they were able to do any (bombing) operation nor could they lead these kind of military operations," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters at one of several impromptu news conferences he's held recently to counter American accusations that his country is failing to fight terrorism. "When they are in prison all their connections are cut with the outside."</p>

Like father, like son, assert U.S., European and Arab intelligence agencies who believe one of Osama bin Laden's youngest children is beginning to call the shots at the Iranian branch of al-Qaida. Saad bin Laden is one of an estimated 400 operatives of the terror network recruited and protected by Tehran's hard-line clerics, according to the Washington Post. Tehran's elected government, headed by the reformist President Mohammed Khatami, does not appear to have control over this group, called the Jerusalem Force. The Post reports the 24-year-old bin Laden is computer savvy and fluent in English. His father groomed him for...

A SEBEGALESE Muslim cleric deported from Italy as a danger to state security was quoted today as telling a pan-Arab newspaper that he had met three times with Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The cleric, Abdel Qadir Mamour, told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat in an interview by telephone from Dakar, Senegal, that he had the meetings with bin Laden in Sudan from 1993 to 1996. Mamour said bin Laden had provided money to finance his trading in diamonds between Africa and Belgium, but did not say how much money was involved or if bin Laden was...

CAIRO (AP)--Saudi police reportedly arrested the kingdom's most wanted terrorist on Thursday, according to pan-Arab satellite TV station Al-Arabiya. The Saudi-owned station reported late Thursday that police captured Faris Ahmed Jamaan Al Showeel al-Zahrani in Abha, a town 800 kilometers southwest of the capital, Riyadh. According to the Cable News Network, the Saudi Interior Ministry said an operation targeting the man was still going on. Saudi authorities released a list of 26 most wanted terrorists following a series of bombings in Riyadh on May 12, 2003, that killed 26 people. On Nov. 8, another suicide attack on a Riyadh...