Report: Iraq Document Details Bin Laden Contacts

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iraqi intelligence agents contacted Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990s as part of an effort by Baghdad to work with foes of the Saudi ruling family, The New York Times reported on Friday, citing a newly disclosed document.

U.S. officials described the document as an internal Iraqi intelligence report detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, the newspaper said.

The contacts described in the report came before bin Laden's al Qaeda organization had become a full-fledged terrorist group, the Times said.

The document states that Iraq (news - web sites) agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered, the newspaper said. There was no further indication of collaboration, the Times said.

President Bush (news - web sites) insists that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had a dangerous relationship with al Qaeda.

But the bipartisan commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks has said there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" even though there were contacts between Iraqis and al Qaeda, including a Sudan meeting between bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officers.

The newspaper said the newly released document was obtained from the Iraqi National Congress as part of a trove that the exile group gathered after Saddam was toppled last year. Some of the intelligence provided by the group has been discredited.

A U.S. government task force studied the document and concluded it appeared authentic, the newspaper said.

[obby]

But wait there's more..............

Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam

By Rowan Scarborough

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements. The issue arose again this month after the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reported there was no "collaborative relationship" between the old Iraqi regime and bin Laden.

Democrats have cited the staff report to accuse Mr. Bush of making inaccurate statements about a linkage. Commission members, including a Democrat and two Republicans, quickly came to the administration's defense by saying there had been such contacts. In fact, during President Clinton's eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Mr. Bush cited the linkage, in part, to justify invading Iraq and ousting Saddam. He said he could not take the risk of Iraq's weapons falling into bin Laden's hands. The other pronouncement is contained in a Justice Department indictment on Nov. 4, 1998, charging bin Laden with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

The indictment disclosed a close relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, which included specialists on chemical weapons and all types of bombs, including truck bombs, a favorite weapon of terrorists. The 1998 indictment said: "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq." Shortly after the embassy bombings, Mr. Clinton ordered air strikes on al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and on the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. To justify the Sudanese plant as a target, Clinton aides said it was involved in the production of deadly VX nerve gas. Officials further determined that bin Laden owned a stake in the operation and that its manager had traveled to Baghdad to learn bomb-making techniques from Saddam's weapons scientists. Mr. Cohen elaborated in March in testimony before the September 11 commission.

He testified that "bin Laden had been living [at the plant], that he had, in fact, money that he had put into this military industrial corporation, that the owner of the plant had traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program." He said that if the plant had been allowed to produce VX that was used to kill thousands of Americans, people would have asked him, " 'You had a manager that went to Baghdad; you had Osama bin Laden, who had funded, at least the corporation, and you had traces of [VX precursor] and you did what? And you did nothing?' Is that a responsible activity on the part of the secretary of defense?"