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Question:
Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon
dispatched special-operation units to seize Iraqi intelligence
files located at Foreign Service, Mukhabarat and other
arms of Iraq intelligence. Could these documents resolve
the issue surrounding Iraq's alleged sponsorship of
terrorism directed at the US?
Answer:
Yes, these documents could substantiate, or disprove,
many of the allegations of Iraq's secret operations.
The Iraqis were, as UN inspectors discovered in examining
documents about the Iran-Iraq war, meticulous record
keepers. The principal bases for the Iraq Intelligence
service abroad was a dozen or so of its embassies. We
know from Iraqi diplomatic defectors such as Jabir Salim
that officers at these embassies regularly reported
back to Baghdad on arrangements they made for safe houses
for discreet meetings, bank accounts for laundered funds,
travel documents for agents and disbursement of covert
funds. These documents would cast light on at least
five alleged operations:
a) The Prague Meeting
Czech intelligence reported a meeting between Iraq
Consul al-Ani and Mohamed Atta in April 2001. Since
al-Ani was expelled shortly afterwards, he presumably
would have had to have filed a report about his activities
for Iraq intelligence, as would other officers to whom
he reported. As he was the first Iraq officer to be
expelled from the Czech Republic, this would be an issue
of some importance to his superiors and even Saddam
Hussein.
b) The Radio Free Europe Plot
Jabir Salim, al-Ani's predecessor at the embassy at
Prague, said after he defected that Baghdad had ordered
him to organize a terrorist bombing of Radio Free Europe's
headquarters in Prague and it supplied him with $150,000.
Since this occasioned a major scandal in Prague, his
superiors would have had to provide an accounting of
what happened and the whereabouts of the funds allocated
for this project.
c) The Yasin Sanctuary.
Abdul Rahman Yasin, a conspirator in the first World
Trade Center bombing, was provided with a visa to come
to Iraqi in 1993. The potentially dangerous decision
to shelter a wanted fugitive presumably was based on
an account by the Mukhabarat of his activities concerning
the World Trade Center bombing.
d) The Yousef Legend.
Ramzi Yousef, another conspirator in the 1993 attack
on the World Trade Center, was provided with false documentation
that facilitated his escape from New York under the
name of Abdul Basit Mahmood Abdul Karim. According to
Laurie Mylroie's book, Study of Revenge, this documentation
required altering information in Kuwait's Interior Ministry
files at a time when they were in Iraq's custody. If
so, there presumably would be a record of the preparation
of this legend from the Kuwait biographical data, and
an accounting of why Iraq made it available to Ramzi
Yousef.
e) The Bush Assassination Attempt
On April 14, 1993, Ra'ad al-Asadi and Wali al-Ghazali,
both Iraqi nationals, were arrested with a bomb they
confessed they planned to use to assassinate former
President George Bush while he was visiting Kuwait.
The bomb had been supplied to them in Basra, Iraq. If
they had been recruited by the Iraq Intelligence service,
as the CIA concluded, there presumably would be reports
on the operation, and a damage assessment of its failure.
Collateral question:
Has such documentation been found? If these documents
are not found, does it prove the converse?
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