Sgt Schultz
07-16-2004, 10:03 AM
British report links al Qaeda, Baghdad
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 15, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A British government report made public yesterday provides new information showing that al Qaeda terrorists had contacts with Iraqi intelligence in developing chemical arms and that the group worked with a Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist.
The special report by former top civil servant Robin Butler on British prewar intelligence found gaps in reporting on Iraq's weapons and also disclosed new details of terrorist activities of al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is leading attacks in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
On al Qaeda's efforts to obtain nuclear arms, the report stated that Osama bin Laden set up a laboratory in Afghanistan in 1999 and that a former Pakistani nuclear scientist, Bashir Mahmoud, was "associated with the Taliban or al Qaeda."
For al Qaeda's chemical arms development, the report said, intelligence reports from 1999 identified al Qaeda member Abu Khabbab as "an explosives and chemicals expert who ran training courses which included information on how to make and use poisons."
Those reports were confirmed after the ouster of the Taliban, when U.S. troops found videos showing chemical arms tests on animals and chemical arms training manuals.
The British report also said Khabbab was developing biological agents, a claim that was confirmed by the discovery of a laboratory in Kandahar and evidence that scientists had been recruited for weapons work.
A March 2003 British intelligence report stated that Zarqawi "has established sleeper cells in Baghdad, to be activated during a U.S. occupation of the city."
"These cells apparently intend to attack U.S. targets using car bombs and other weapons," the report said, noting that "it is also possible that they have received [chemical-biological] materials from terrorists in the [Kurdish Autonomous Zone]."
The report also said that "al Qaeda-associated terrorists continued to arrive in Baghdad in early March."
The report traced the history of intelligence on al Qaeda's interest and actions in seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons from the late 1990s.
A January 2000 intelligence report stated that bin Laden in the autumn of 1999 "had recruited ... chemicals specialists."
"Our assessment remains that [bin Laden] has some toxic chemical and biological materials and an understanding of their utility as terrorist weapons. But we have yet to see hard intelligence that he possesses genuine nuclear material."
Then after the September 11 terrorist attacks, British intelligence warned that bin Laden's suicide-attack philosophy "had changed the calculus of threat."
The spy service concluded that terrorists now sought to "cause casualties on a massive scale, undeterred by the fear of alienating the public or their own supporters" that had been a constraining factor in the 1990s, the report said.
"In the context of [bin Laden's] jihad, casualties and destruction could be an end in themselves as much as a means to an end," the report said, quoting a 2001 intelligence report. "He has no interest in negotiation and there is no indication that he can be deterred."
British intelligence assessments of connections between al Qaeda and Saddam's government were similar to U.S. intelligence assessments, the report said, adding that there were "contacts between al Qaeda and the Iraqi Directorate General of Intelligence since 1998."
"Those reports described al Qaeda seeking toxic chemicals as well as other conventional terrorist equipment," the report said. "Some accounts suggested that Iraqi chemical experts may have been in Afghanistan during 2000."
The British concluded that the contacts did not lead to "practical cooperation" because of mutual distrust.
"Intelligence nonetheless indicates that ... meetings have taken place between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al Qaeda operatives," the report said. "Some reports also suggest that Iraq may have trained some al Qaeda terrorists since 1998. Al Qaeda has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided."
British report undermines Wilson on prewar data
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 15, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The British government yesterday bolstered President Bush's assertion that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, casting further doubt on former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's claims to the contrary.
The conclusion was reached by Robin Butler, who once was Britain's top civil servant, in a major report on prewar intelligence that came five days after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reached a similar conclusion in its report.
Taken together, the British and U.S. reports appear to undermine Mr. Wilson's criticism of Mr. Bush, which led to a criminal investigation of the White House and made the retired diplomat a media darling.
"It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999," the British report said. "The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium.
"Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible," the report added.
That buttressed an assertion by Mr. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Yesterday, the British report called that assertion "well founded." The report was cited by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told Parliament: "It expressly supports the intelligence on Iraq's attempts to procure uranium from Niger in respect of Iraq's nuclear ambitions."
The State of the Union assertion rankled Mr. Wilson, who said he found no evidence of such an attempted purchase during a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger. Mr. Wilson arrived in the African nation in late February 2002.
"I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," he wrote in the New York Times 18 months later. "Niger formally denied the charges."
Mr. Wilson, who opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom and works as an adviser to Democratic Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, accused Mr. Bush of twisting the facts "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
The accusation set off a feeding frenzy in the media that intensified after conservative columnist Robert Novak mentioned in a July 2003 column that Mr. Wilson's Niger trip had been suggested by his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA employee.
That prompted Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, to ask the Justice Department to begin a criminal investigation into whether the White House had leaked Mrs. Plame's name to Mr. Novak. The president himself was interviewed recently by an investigator on the case.
Mr. Wilson, who did not return phone calls yesterday, has publicly accused White House political strategist Karl Rove of leaking the name, although he has provided no evidence to back up that accusation.
"It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs," he told an audience on Aug. 21, 2003.
Earlier this year, Mr. Wilson parlayed the controversy into a book, "The Politics of Truth," in which he insisted that his wife was not the one who had suggested that the CIA send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Mr. Wilson wrote. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
But that assertion was disputed by the Senate intelligence committee report last week.
"Interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife ... suggested his name for the trip," the report stated.
According to the Senate report, Mrs. Plame boasted to her CIA superiors about Mr. Wilson's contacts with Niger.
"My husband has good relations with both the [prime minister of Niger] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity," she wrote in a Feb. 12, 2002, memo to her superiors, cited in the Senate report.
When the CIA gave her the green light to enlist her husband for the mission, she told Mr. Wilson that "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Iraq to buy uranium from Niger, according to the report.
Like the British report, the United States did not back away from Mr. Bush's State of the Union assertion. The U.S. report said Mr. Wilson did little to change the CIA's belief that Iraq had tried to buy uranium.
"The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessment of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal," the U.S. report said. "For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."
Mr. Wilson has defended his position by pointing out that some documents linking Iraq with Niger were forgeries. U.S. and British officials said the forgeries may have been a red herring to cloud the issue and, in any event, did not surface until after the link had been established.
"The forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it," concluded the report by Mr. Butler.
White House deputy spokesman Trent Duffy said the Butler report "speaks for itself" and declined further comment, citing the Justice Department's ongoing leak probe.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 15, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A British government report made public yesterday provides new information showing that al Qaeda terrorists had contacts with Iraqi intelligence in developing chemical arms and that the group worked with a Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist.
The special report by former top civil servant Robin Butler on British prewar intelligence found gaps in reporting on Iraq's weapons and also disclosed new details of terrorist activities of al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is leading attacks in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
On al Qaeda's efforts to obtain nuclear arms, the report stated that Osama bin Laden set up a laboratory in Afghanistan in 1999 and that a former Pakistani nuclear scientist, Bashir Mahmoud, was "associated with the Taliban or al Qaeda."
For al Qaeda's chemical arms development, the report said, intelligence reports from 1999 identified al Qaeda member Abu Khabbab as "an explosives and chemicals expert who ran training courses which included information on how to make and use poisons."
Those reports were confirmed after the ouster of the Taliban, when U.S. troops found videos showing chemical arms tests on animals and chemical arms training manuals.
The British report also said Khabbab was developing biological agents, a claim that was confirmed by the discovery of a laboratory in Kandahar and evidence that scientists had been recruited for weapons work.
A March 2003 British intelligence report stated that Zarqawi "has established sleeper cells in Baghdad, to be activated during a U.S. occupation of the city."
"These cells apparently intend to attack U.S. targets using car bombs and other weapons," the report said, noting that "it is also possible that they have received [chemical-biological] materials from terrorists in the [Kurdish Autonomous Zone]."
The report also said that "al Qaeda-associated terrorists continued to arrive in Baghdad in early March."
The report traced the history of intelligence on al Qaeda's interest and actions in seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons from the late 1990s.
A January 2000 intelligence report stated that bin Laden in the autumn of 1999 "had recruited ... chemicals specialists."
"Our assessment remains that [bin Laden] has some toxic chemical and biological materials and an understanding of their utility as terrorist weapons. But we have yet to see hard intelligence that he possesses genuine nuclear material."
Then after the September 11 terrorist attacks, British intelligence warned that bin Laden's suicide-attack philosophy "had changed the calculus of threat."
The spy service concluded that terrorists now sought to "cause casualties on a massive scale, undeterred by the fear of alienating the public or their own supporters" that had been a constraining factor in the 1990s, the report said.
"In the context of [bin Laden's] jihad, casualties and destruction could be an end in themselves as much as a means to an end," the report said, quoting a 2001 intelligence report. "He has no interest in negotiation and there is no indication that he can be deterred."
British intelligence assessments of connections between al Qaeda and Saddam's government were similar to U.S. intelligence assessments, the report said, adding that there were "contacts between al Qaeda and the Iraqi Directorate General of Intelligence since 1998."
"Those reports described al Qaeda seeking toxic chemicals as well as other conventional terrorist equipment," the report said. "Some accounts suggested that Iraqi chemical experts may have been in Afghanistan during 2000."
The British concluded that the contacts did not lead to "practical cooperation" because of mutual distrust.
"Intelligence nonetheless indicates that ... meetings have taken place between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al Qaeda operatives," the report said. "Some reports also suggest that Iraq may have trained some al Qaeda terrorists since 1998. Al Qaeda has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided."
British report undermines Wilson on prewar data
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 15, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The British government yesterday bolstered President Bush's assertion that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, casting further doubt on former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's claims to the contrary.
The conclusion was reached by Robin Butler, who once was Britain's top civil servant, in a major report on prewar intelligence that came five days after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reached a similar conclusion in its report.
Taken together, the British and U.S. reports appear to undermine Mr. Wilson's criticism of Mr. Bush, which led to a criminal investigation of the White House and made the retired diplomat a media darling.
"It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999," the British report said. "The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium.
"Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible," the report added.
That buttressed an assertion by Mr. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Yesterday, the British report called that assertion "well founded." The report was cited by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told Parliament: "It expressly supports the intelligence on Iraq's attempts to procure uranium from Niger in respect of Iraq's nuclear ambitions."
The State of the Union assertion rankled Mr. Wilson, who said he found no evidence of such an attempted purchase during a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger. Mr. Wilson arrived in the African nation in late February 2002.
"I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," he wrote in the New York Times 18 months later. "Niger formally denied the charges."
Mr. Wilson, who opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom and works as an adviser to Democratic Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, accused Mr. Bush of twisting the facts "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
The accusation set off a feeding frenzy in the media that intensified after conservative columnist Robert Novak mentioned in a July 2003 column that Mr. Wilson's Niger trip had been suggested by his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA employee.
That prompted Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, to ask the Justice Department to begin a criminal investigation into whether the White House had leaked Mrs. Plame's name to Mr. Novak. The president himself was interviewed recently by an investigator on the case.
Mr. Wilson, who did not return phone calls yesterday, has publicly accused White House political strategist Karl Rove of leaking the name, although he has provided no evidence to back up that accusation.
"It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs," he told an audience on Aug. 21, 2003.
Earlier this year, Mr. Wilson parlayed the controversy into a book, "The Politics of Truth," in which he insisted that his wife was not the one who had suggested that the CIA send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Mr. Wilson wrote. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
But that assertion was disputed by the Senate intelligence committee report last week.
"Interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife ... suggested his name for the trip," the report stated.
According to the Senate report, Mrs. Plame boasted to her CIA superiors about Mr. Wilson's contacts with Niger.
"My husband has good relations with both the [prime minister of Niger] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity," she wrote in a Feb. 12, 2002, memo to her superiors, cited in the Senate report.
When the CIA gave her the green light to enlist her husband for the mission, she told Mr. Wilson that "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Iraq to buy uranium from Niger, according to the report.
Like the British report, the United States did not back away from Mr. Bush's State of the Union assertion. The U.S. report said Mr. Wilson did little to change the CIA's belief that Iraq had tried to buy uranium.
"The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessment of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal," the U.S. report said. "For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."
Mr. Wilson has defended his position by pointing out that some documents linking Iraq with Niger were forgeries. U.S. and British officials said the forgeries may have been a red herring to cloud the issue and, in any event, did not surface until after the link had been established.
"The forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it," concluded the report by Mr. Butler.
White House deputy spokesman Trent Duffy said the Butler report "speaks for itself" and declined further comment, citing the Justice Department's ongoing leak probe.