Intelligence

CIA report rebuts claims of Iraq-al-Qaida link

Bradenton Herald | 10/05/2004 | CIA report rebuts claims of Iraq-al-Qaida link

WARREN P. STROBEL, JONATHAN S. LANDAY and JOHN WALCOTT

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A new CIA assessment undercuts the White House's claim that Saddam Hussein maintained ties to al-Qaida, saying there's no conclusive evidence that the regime harbored Osama bin Laden associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The CIA review, which U.S. officials said Monday was requested some months ago by Vice President Dick Cheney, is the latest assessment that calls into question one of President Bush's key justifications for last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The new assessment follows the independent Sept. 11 commission's finding that there was no "collaborative relationship" between the former Iraqi regime and bin Laden's terrorist network.

While intelligence officials cautioned that information about al-Zarqawi remains incomplete, Bush, Cheney and other top officials have publicly made al-Zarqawi the linchpin of their contention that Saddam's Iraq had ties to al-Qaida. Questions about whether the president and other officials overstated the intelligence about Iraq and omitted contradictory information and analysis are now at the center of the campaign debate over Iraq policy.

Since the Sept. 11 commission's judgment in June, Bush and Cheney have repeatedly said that al-Zarqawi was an associate of bin Laden and received safe haven from Saddam. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld backed away Monday from such claims, apparently as a result of the new CIA assessment.

Bush and Cheney have charged that Saddam's regime allowed al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian native, to travel to Baghdad and to set up cells of his Islamic terrorist network in the Iraqi capital. Al-Zarqawi is now a major figure who's directing part of the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq. He has appeared in videos in which U.S. and other hostages are executed, often by beheading.

"Zarqawi's the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida. He's the person who's still killing. He's the person, remember the e-mail exchange between al-Qaida leadership and he himself about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom," Bush said in the Rose Garden in June.

Al-Zarqawi "was in and out of Baghdad. He ordered the killing of an American citizen from Baghdad - (U.S. Agency for International Development official Laurence) Foley," Bush said Saturday in Ohio. "This is before . . . we went in. Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction. I understood - I understand today that the connection between weapons of mass destruction and the terrorist network is the biggest threat we face."

According to a senior administration official and intelligence officials familiar with the review, at Cheney's request CIA analysts spent several months reviewing new material gathered since Baghdad fell last year and re-examining earlier intelligence.

A U.S. official familiar with the new CIA assessment said intelligence analysts were unable to determine conclusively the nature of the relationship between al-Zarqawi and Saddam.

"It's still being worked," he said. "It (the assessment) . . . doesn't make clear-cut, bottom-line judgments" about whether Saddam's regime was aiding al-Zarqawi.

He said the report contained new details of al-Zarqawi 's prewar activities in Iraq, including the arrests in late 2002 or early 2003 of three of his "associates" by the regime.

"This was brought to Saddam's attention and he ordered one of them released," he said, providing no further details.

"What is indisputable is that Zarqawi was operating out of Baghdad and was involved in a lot of bad activities," he said, including ordering Foley's killing.

The report didn't conclude that Saddam's regime had provided "aid, comfort and succor" to al-Zarqawi, a senior administration official said.

He added that there are now questions about earlier administration assertions that al-Zarqawi received treatment at a Baghdad hospital in May 2002.

"The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything," another U.S. official said.

October 6, 2004 at 03:25 PM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Top of page | Blog Home