Question:
Richard Clarke credits himself, and President Clinton,
with ending Saddam's support of terrorism. Following
Saddam's failed attempt to assassinate ex-President
George Bush Sr. in Kuwait, the U.S. had retaliated in
June 1993 with a cruise missile attack on Baghdad.
Although the missiles did little damage (other than
accidentally killing a prominent female artist),
Clarke writes (p. 84) in Against All Enemies: "it
seemed that Saddam had gotten the message.
Subsequent to that June 1993 retaliation, the U.S. intelligence
and law enforcement community never developed any evidence
of further of Iraqi support for terrorism directed against
Americans."
Is it true that U.S. intelligence received no
further evidence of Iraqi involvement in terrorism after
June 1993?
Answer:
No, U.S. intelligence, and own Clarke's
counterterrorism unit, received reports of Iraqi
terrorist involvement. In 1998-199, for example,
both CIA and FBI reported Iraqi intelligence service's
plan to use terrorists to blow up America's Radio Free
Europe facility in Prague (which also housed Radio Free
Iraq.)
Iraq tasked Jabir Salim, the Iraq consul in Prague,
with the terrorist job, and provided him with $150,000
in two payments to recruit free-lance terrorists in
1998. The Iraqi plan failed because Salim, along
with his family and the money, defected in December
1998 to British intelligence and revealed the plot
plot to western intelligence services.
|