Looking for some Bin Laden INFO.
- Thread starter KBR80
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Well, as long as you have your shovel out, you can SHOVE THAT.
And for the record, look at your posts you maggot.... ever notice you sling crap on me and say I am publishing "innuendo" and yet somehow you never manage to post anything that refutes what I put up?
Pathetic, dude. Genuinely pathetic.
And for the record, look at your posts you maggot.... ever notice you sling crap on me and say I am publishing "innuendo" and yet somehow you never manage to post anything that refutes what I put up?
Pathetic, dude. Genuinely pathetic.
Right, except all the threads where I post current information has it backed up by endless URL's to sites and you don't seem to be able to post anything in rebuttal. You're just another pathetic whiner who has had his ass kicked too many times. Like I said, I answered the originators question with information I obtained off the internet. If you care to research it, you will find out what Clinton attacks were leveled at OBL and when. I am not going to bother because you don't want information, you are just doing more attacks on me.
If you think what I posted is wrong, why don't you post some links to sites that dispute it?
Yeah, that's what I thought I heard you say. Go back in your cave.
If I get really bored I would waste the time researching a dead horse topic, but it won't do any good: you spend your life with blinders on in lock step behind Bush. You wouldn't know the truth if you tripped over it.
Here's One:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,560893,00.html
According to US intelligence officials, teams of American officers were sent to Afghanistan to work with anti-Taliban organisations in an effort to track down and kill the man who is now the prime target of the American military.
The plans were initiated under the Clinton administration despite the fact that there was a ban on foreign assassinations at the time. Mr Clinton admitted last week that secret attempts to assassinate Bin Laden had been made by the CIA in 1998.
"At the time, we did everything we can do," he said. "I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it."
"This was a top priority for us over the past several years and not a day went by when we didn't press as hard as we could," said the national security adviser in the Clinton administration, Samuel Berger.
CIA offered bounty for Bin Laden
Anti-Taliban leader promised cash for capture
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday October 1, 2001
The Guardian
The CIA offered Afghanistan's anti-Taliban opposition leader a substantial bounty three years ago for the capture of Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, it emerged yesterday.
At the heart of the CIA's attempt to capture or kill Bin Laden was a plan to work with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan opposition leader who was himself murdered two days before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Large sums of money were offered if Bin Laden was either caught or assassinated.
Further details of the clandestine operations, published yesterday in the New York Times, demonstrate the problems the US faces in attempting to track down Bin Laden, whether using cruise missiles or financial inducements.
According to US intelligence officials, teams of American officers were sent to Afghanistan to work with anti-Taliban organisations in an effort to track down and kill the man who is now the prime target of the American military.
The plans were initiated under the Clinton administration despite the fact that there was a ban on foreign assassinations at the time. Mr Clinton admitted last week that secret attempts to assassinate Bin Laden had been made by the CIA in 1998.
"At the time, we did everything we can do," he said. "I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it."
White House lawyers had determined that the killing could be justified as an act of self-defence or an act of war which they claimed would have been permissible under international and US law. In the event, the attempts failed and the closest the US came to killing Bin Laden was on August 20 1998, when sea-launched cruise missiles were fired at a meeting he was due to attend near Khost in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden had left the gathering of around 300 of his supporters an hour or so before the missiles were fired and the attack killed 20 or 30 members of his al-Qaida terrorist network.
According to the New York Times report, American officers met Massoud in northern Afghanistan and held discussions about helping to build an anti-Taliban alliance.
It is understood that he was asked to provide intelligence information that would lead to Bin Laden's capture or death. Massoud was offered large sums of money for his organisation in return for achieving either aim.
Efforts to deal with Bin Laden supposedly intensified after the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in east Africa.
But it is not clear how much effort Massoud expended in trying to carry out the CIA's wishes and it is believed that he was more interested in continuing his guerrilla war against the Taliban than embarking on an unpredictable operation for a foreign power.
Other anti-Taliban groups may also have attempted to assassinate Bin Laden without the encouragement or backing of the CIA. One unnamed group is said to have attacked a convoy in which Bin Laden was supposed to be travelling but without success. The group supposedly knew that the US would have approved such an attack.
"This was a top priority for us over the past several years and not a day went by when we didn't press as hard as we could," said the national security adviser in the Clinton administration, Samuel Berger.
But it is accepted that intelligence officers regarded as a slim possibility a major attack on the US such as occurred on September 11.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,560893,00.html
According to US intelligence officials, teams of American officers were sent to Afghanistan to work with anti-Taliban organisations in an effort to track down and kill the man who is now the prime target of the American military.
The plans were initiated under the Clinton administration despite the fact that there was a ban on foreign assassinations at the time. Mr Clinton admitted last week that secret attempts to assassinate Bin Laden had been made by the CIA in 1998.
"At the time, we did everything we can do," he said. "I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it."
"This was a top priority for us over the past several years and not a day went by when we didn't press as hard as we could," said the national security adviser in the Clinton administration, Samuel Berger.
CIA offered bounty for Bin Laden
Anti-Taliban leader promised cash for capture
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday October 1, 2001
The Guardian
The CIA offered Afghanistan's anti-Taliban opposition leader a substantial bounty three years ago for the capture of Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, it emerged yesterday.
At the heart of the CIA's attempt to capture or kill Bin Laden was a plan to work with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan opposition leader who was himself murdered two days before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Large sums of money were offered if Bin Laden was either caught or assassinated.
Further details of the clandestine operations, published yesterday in the New York Times, demonstrate the problems the US faces in attempting to track down Bin Laden, whether using cruise missiles or financial inducements.
According to US intelligence officials, teams of American officers were sent to Afghanistan to work with anti-Taliban organisations in an effort to track down and kill the man who is now the prime target of the American military.
The plans were initiated under the Clinton administration despite the fact that there was a ban on foreign assassinations at the time. Mr Clinton admitted last week that secret attempts to assassinate Bin Laden had been made by the CIA in 1998.
"At the time, we did everything we can do," he said. "I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it."
White House lawyers had determined that the killing could be justified as an act of self-defence or an act of war which they claimed would have been permissible under international and US law. In the event, the attempts failed and the closest the US came to killing Bin Laden was on August 20 1998, when sea-launched cruise missiles were fired at a meeting he was due to attend near Khost in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden had left the gathering of around 300 of his supporters an hour or so before the missiles were fired and the attack killed 20 or 30 members of his al-Qaida terrorist network.
According to the New York Times report, American officers met Massoud in northern Afghanistan and held discussions about helping to build an anti-Taliban alliance.
It is understood that he was asked to provide intelligence information that would lead to Bin Laden's capture or death. Massoud was offered large sums of money for his organisation in return for achieving either aim.
Efforts to deal with Bin Laden supposedly intensified after the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in east Africa.
But it is not clear how much effort Massoud expended in trying to carry out the CIA's wishes and it is believed that he was more interested in continuing his guerrilla war against the Taliban than embarking on an unpredictable operation for a foreign power.
Other anti-Taliban groups may also have attempted to assassinate Bin Laden without the encouragement or backing of the CIA. One unnamed group is said to have attacked a convoy in which Bin Laden was supposed to be travelling but without success. The group supposedly knew that the US would have approved such an attack.
"This was a top priority for us over the past several years and not a day went by when we didn't press as hard as we could," said the national security adviser in the Clinton administration, Samuel Berger.
But it is accepted that intelligence officers regarded as a slim possibility a major attack on the US such as occurred on September 11.
two
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
"So these six very powerful people--the President, the head of the Pentagon, the head of the NSC, the head of the CIA, the head of the State Department and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have got a real dilemma," says Tim Weiner, New York Times reporter. "They want to strike back, but where? Where can you hurt him? Where can you take him down? Where can you do him damage? The problem is, they may not have struck him where it hurt the most."
In the past, the U.S. has taken a law enforcement stance to terrorist attacks: the FBI attempts to uncover who was responsible and bring them to trial in the U.S. The attack on the U.S. embassies, however, was deemed an act of war against the U.S. The advisory group discussed a military response and it was recommended that the U.S. attack bin Laden's network and attempt to destroy his base of operations.
The advisors had a list of potential targets that had been developed by the CIA over many months of investigating bin Laden and his terrorist network, "Al Qaeda." They eventually decided on two sites:
1) the camps in Afghanistan which they believed would be the site of a large meeting of terrorist leaders later that month; and
2) a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan where they believed bin Laden's network had been producing chemical weapons.
In Afghanistan, approximately 70 cruise missiles hit three alleged bin Laden training camps. An estimated 24 people were killed. But if they wanted to kill bin Laden, they failed. Bin Laden was not at the camps when the bombs hit. In the Sudan, approximately 13 cruise missiles hit a pharmaceutical plant. The night watchman was killed.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
"So these six very powerful people--the President, the head of the Pentagon, the head of the NSC, the head of the CIA, the head of the State Department and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have got a real dilemma," says Tim Weiner, New York Times reporter. "They want to strike back, but where? Where can you hurt him? Where can you take him down? Where can you do him damage? The problem is, they may not have struck him where it hurt the most."
In the past, the U.S. has taken a law enforcement stance to terrorist attacks: the FBI attempts to uncover who was responsible and bring them to trial in the U.S. The attack on the U.S. embassies, however, was deemed an act of war against the U.S. The advisory group discussed a military response and it was recommended that the U.S. attack bin Laden's network and attempt to destroy his base of operations.
The advisors had a list of potential targets that had been developed by the CIA over many months of investigating bin Laden and his terrorist network, "Al Qaeda." They eventually decided on two sites:
1) the camps in Afghanistan which they believed would be the site of a large meeting of terrorist leaders later that month; and
2) a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan where they believed bin Laden's network had been producing chemical weapons.
In Afghanistan, approximately 70 cruise missiles hit three alleged bin Laden training camps. An estimated 24 people were killed. But if they wanted to kill bin Laden, they failed. Bin Laden was not at the camps when the bombs hit. In the Sudan, approximately 13 cruise missiles hit a pharmaceutical plant. The night watchman was killed.
http://wais.stanford.edu/Terrorism/terrorism_clinton.htm
Clinton: CIA and Bin Laden
Ex-President Bill Clinton said that the Central Intelligence Agency scuttled his plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden - even though he had already approved the missions. "I had approved in general three other operations against bin Laden," Clinton said during an AOL online interview about his new book, My Life.
Clinton: CIA and Bin Laden
Ex-President Bill Clinton said that the Central Intelligence Agency scuttled his plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden - even though he had already approved the missions. "I had approved in general three other operations against bin Laden," Clinton said during an AOL online interview about his new book, My Life. "And the CIA came back and said the evidence is insufficient to think that he was at the sites we were going to bomb." I have not read My Life. Informed comments would be welcome.
Randy Black saya: "I am not familiar with what President Clinton. Correction: says
On AOL), however, Clinton said others were responsible. Correction AOL
Randy Black saya: "I am not familiar with what President Clinton may or may not have said in My Life, but excerpts from the AOL interview include the statement: "Clinton said the primary reason he didn't give the order to attack bin Laden after an initial failed airstrike in 1998 was that he didn't want to violate the airspace of Middle Eastern nations and that he feared the collateral damage would be too great. (the deaths of local innocents)"
Source: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/6/24/121918.shtml
Another excerpt from the AOL interview: Clinton all but admitted that in hindsight, he made the wrong call: "Now, after he murdered 3,100 of our people and others who came to our country seeking their livelihood, you may say, 'Well, Mr. President, you should have killed those 200 women and children.' "But at the time," he insisted, "we didn't think he had the capacity to do that. And no one thought that I should do that. Although I take full responsibility for it."
On AOL), however, Clinton said others were responsible for bungling the hunt for bin Laden. "There's not a shred of evidence that I denied either the military or the intelligence services of our country anything when they were after the terrorists in general and bin Laden in particular," he told AOL. "I gave them the full authority to proceed and to do whatever we could. And I wish we'd been successful in getting him." (His statements seem to contradict each other.) Other testimony by the CIA station chief in Pakistan and retired General Wayne Downing seems to indicate that Clinton created the barrier, not the other way around. "We were not prepared to take the military action necessary,” said retired Gen. Wayne Downing, who ran counter-terror efforts for the current Bush administration and is now an NBC analyst. “We should have had strike forces prepared to go in and react to this intelligence, certainly cruise missiles * either air- or sea-launched * very, very accurate, could have gone in and hit those targets,” Downing added. Gary Schroen, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, says the White House required the CIA to attempt to capture bin Laden alive, rather than kill him.
What impact did the wording of the orders have on the CIA’s ability to get bin Laden? “It reduced the odds from, say, a 50 percent chance down to, say, 25 percent chance that we were going to be able to get him,” said Schroen. A Democratic member of the 9/11 commission says there was a larger issue: The Clinton administration treated bin Laden as a law enforcement problem. Bob Kerry, a former senator and current 9/11 commission member, said, “The most important thing the Clinton administration could have done would have been for the president, either himself or by going to Congress, asking for a congressional declaration to declare war on al-Qaida, a military-political organization that had declared war on us.”
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/
Clinton: CIA and Bin Laden
Ex-President Bill Clinton said that the Central Intelligence Agency scuttled his plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden - even though he had already approved the missions. "I had approved in general three other operations against bin Laden," Clinton said during an AOL online interview about his new book, My Life.
Clinton: CIA and Bin Laden
Ex-President Bill Clinton said that the Central Intelligence Agency scuttled his plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden - even though he had already approved the missions. "I had approved in general three other operations against bin Laden," Clinton said during an AOL online interview about his new book, My Life. "And the CIA came back and said the evidence is insufficient to think that he was at the sites we were going to bomb." I have not read My Life. Informed comments would be welcome.
Randy Black saya: "I am not familiar with what President Clinton. Correction: says
On AOL), however, Clinton said others were responsible. Correction AOL
Randy Black saya: "I am not familiar with what President Clinton may or may not have said in My Life, but excerpts from the AOL interview include the statement: "Clinton said the primary reason he didn't give the order to attack bin Laden after an initial failed airstrike in 1998 was that he didn't want to violate the airspace of Middle Eastern nations and that he feared the collateral damage would be too great. (the deaths of local innocents)"
Source: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/6/24/121918.shtml
Another excerpt from the AOL interview: Clinton all but admitted that in hindsight, he made the wrong call: "Now, after he murdered 3,100 of our people and others who came to our country seeking their livelihood, you may say, 'Well, Mr. President, you should have killed those 200 women and children.' "But at the time," he insisted, "we didn't think he had the capacity to do that. And no one thought that I should do that. Although I take full responsibility for it."
On AOL), however, Clinton said others were responsible for bungling the hunt for bin Laden. "There's not a shred of evidence that I denied either the military or the intelligence services of our country anything when they were after the terrorists in general and bin Laden in particular," he told AOL. "I gave them the full authority to proceed and to do whatever we could. And I wish we'd been successful in getting him." (His statements seem to contradict each other.) Other testimony by the CIA station chief in Pakistan and retired General Wayne Downing seems to indicate that Clinton created the barrier, not the other way around. "We were not prepared to take the military action necessary,” said retired Gen. Wayne Downing, who ran counter-terror efforts for the current Bush administration and is now an NBC analyst. “We should have had strike forces prepared to go in and react to this intelligence, certainly cruise missiles * either air- or sea-launched * very, very accurate, could have gone in and hit those targets,” Downing added. Gary Schroen, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, says the White House required the CIA to attempt to capture bin Laden alive, rather than kill him.
What impact did the wording of the orders have on the CIA’s ability to get bin Laden? “It reduced the odds from, say, a 50 percent chance down to, say, 25 percent chance that we were going to be able to get him,” said Schroen. A Democratic member of the 9/11 commission says there was a larger issue: The Clinton administration treated bin Laden as a law enforcement problem. Bob Kerry, a former senator and current 9/11 commission member, said, “The most important thing the Clinton administration could have done would have been for the president, either himself or by going to Congress, asking for a congressional declaration to declare war on al-Qaida, a military-political organization that had declared war on us.”
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/
http://okc.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=64
Clinton: CIA Nixed My Plans to Get bin Laden .
osted on Thursday, June 24 @ 17:02:22 CDT by admin Politics: Clintons
Ex-President Bill Clinton said Thursday morning that the Central Intelligence Agency scuttled his plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden - even though he had already approved the missions.
"I had approved in general three other operations against bin Laden," Clinton said during an AOL online interview about his new book, "My Life." "And the CIA came back and said the evidence is insufficient to think that he was at the sites we were going to bomb." [More below...]
"So they recommended we not do it and we took their recommendation," he added, in remarks that contradict an earlier account he gave in a February 2002 address about those operations.
Just five months after the 9/11 attacks, Clinton said the primary reason he didn't give the order to attack bin Laden after an initial failed airstrike in 1998 was that he didn't want to violate the airspace of Middle Eastern nations and that he feared the collateral damage would be too great.
"Now, if you look back - in the hindsight of history, everybody's got 20/20 vision - the real issue is, should we have attacked the al-Qaeda network in 1999 or in 2000 in Afghanistan," Clinton told the Long Island Association in February 2002.
"Here's the problem. Before September 11 we would have had no support for it - no allied support and no basing rights. So we actually trained to do this. I actually trained people to do this. We trained people.
"But in order to do it, we would have had to take them in on attack helicopters 900 miles from the nearest boat - maybe illegally violating the airspace of people if they wouldn't give us approval. And we would have had to do a refueling stop."
In the same speech, Clinton said he decided against another mission to get bin Laden because he feared it would kill innocent women and children.
"Now, I had one other option. I could have bombed or sent more missiles in. As far as we knew he never went back to his training camp. So the only place bin Laden ever went that we knew was occasionally he went to Khandahar, where he always spent the night in a compound that had 200 women and children.
"So I could have, on any given night, ordered an attack that I knew would kill 200 women and children that had less than a 50 percent chance of getting him."
Clinton: CIA Nixed My Plans to Get bin Laden .
osted on Thursday, June 24 @ 17:02:22 CDT by admin Politics: ClintonsEx-President Bill Clinton said Thursday morning that the Central Intelligence Agency scuttled his plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden - even though he had already approved the missions.
"I had approved in general three other operations against bin Laden," Clinton said during an AOL online interview about his new book, "My Life." "And the CIA came back and said the evidence is insufficient to think that he was at the sites we were going to bomb." [More below...]
"So they recommended we not do it and we took their recommendation," he added, in remarks that contradict an earlier account he gave in a February 2002 address about those operations.
Just five months after the 9/11 attacks, Clinton said the primary reason he didn't give the order to attack bin Laden after an initial failed airstrike in 1998 was that he didn't want to violate the airspace of Middle Eastern nations and that he feared the collateral damage would be too great.
"Now, if you look back - in the hindsight of history, everybody's got 20/20 vision - the real issue is, should we have attacked the al-Qaeda network in 1999 or in 2000 in Afghanistan," Clinton told the Long Island Association in February 2002.
"Here's the problem. Before September 11 we would have had no support for it - no allied support and no basing rights. So we actually trained to do this. I actually trained people to do this. We trained people.
"But in order to do it, we would have had to take them in on attack helicopters 900 miles from the nearest boat - maybe illegally violating the airspace of people if they wouldn't give us approval. And we would have had to do a refueling stop."
In the same speech, Clinton said he decided against another mission to get bin Laden because he feared it would kill innocent women and children.
"Now, I had one other option. I could have bombed or sent more missiles in. As far as we knew he never went back to his training camp. So the only place bin Laden ever went that we knew was occasionally he went to Khandahar, where he always spent the night in a compound that had 200 women and children.
"So I could have, on any given night, ordered an attack that I knew would kill 200 women and children that had less than a 50 percent chance of getting him."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,556906,00.html
"We also trained commandos for a possible ground action but we did not have the necessary intelligence to do it in the way we would have had to do it."
Clinton told CIA to target Bin Laden
Special report: attack on America
Guardian Unlimited special: terrorism crisis
Special report: George Bush's America
Gary Younge in Washington
Monday September 24, 2001
The Guardian
Bill Clinton gave the CIA instructions to get Osama Bin Laden dead or alive, but lacked sufficient information or international support to carry the order out, the former US president said this weekend.
Government sources have said the Clinton administration gave the Central Intelligence Agency approval to conduct covert operations targeting bin Laden in 1998, following the bombings that year of two US embassies in east Africa.
Echoing President George Bush's approach, if not his words, Mr Clinton said: "At the time we did everything we can do. I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it.
"We also trained commandos for a possible ground action but we did not have the necessary intelligence to do it in the way we would have had to do it."
"We also trained commandos for a possible ground action but we did not have the necessary intelligence to do it in the way we would have had to do it."
Clinton told CIA to target Bin Laden
Special report: attack on America
Guardian Unlimited special: terrorism crisis
Special report: George Bush's America
Gary Younge in Washington
Monday September 24, 2001
The Guardian
Bill Clinton gave the CIA instructions to get Osama Bin Laden dead or alive, but lacked sufficient information or international support to carry the order out, the former US president said this weekend.
Government sources have said the Clinton administration gave the Central Intelligence Agency approval to conduct covert operations targeting bin Laden in 1998, following the bombings that year of two US embassies in east Africa.
Echoing President George Bush's approach, if not his words, Mr Clinton said: "At the time we did everything we can do. I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it.
"We also trained commandos for a possible ground action but we did not have the necessary intelligence to do it in the way we would have had to do it."
http://www.sptimes.com/News/093001/Worldandnation/CIA_tried_to_have_bin.shtml
CIA tried to have bin Laden killed
©New York Times
© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 30, 2001
WASHINGTON -- The CIA secretly began to send teams of American officers to northern Afghanistan about three years ago in an attempt to convince the leader of the anti-Taliban Afghan opposition to capture and perhaps kill Osama bin Laden, the New York Times reports.
The covert effort, which has not been previously disclosed, was based on an attempt to work with Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was then the military leader of the largest anti-Taliban group in the northern mountains of Afghanistan, and to have his forces go after bin Laden. Massoud was himself killed only two days before the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the CIA believes he was assassinated by members of bin Laden's organization.
The CIA's clandestine efforts to deal with Massoud were among the most sensitive and highly classified elements of a broader long-term campaign, continuing unsuccessfully through the end of the Clinton administration and into the Bush administration, to destroy bin Laden's terrorist network. The American campaign against bin Laden intensified after the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, which transformed the Saudi-born exile into America's most wanted terrorist.
Former Clinton administration officials say they sympathize with their successors in the Bush administration who now confront bin Laden, and defend their own efforts as the best possible in a world that lacked the current sense of urgency about al-Qaida.
CIA tried to have bin Laden killed
©New York Times
© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 30, 2001
WASHINGTON -- The CIA secretly began to send teams of American officers to northern Afghanistan about three years ago in an attempt to convince the leader of the anti-Taliban Afghan opposition to capture and perhaps kill Osama bin Laden, the New York Times reports.
The covert effort, which has not been previously disclosed, was based on an attempt to work with Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was then the military leader of the largest anti-Taliban group in the northern mountains of Afghanistan, and to have his forces go after bin Laden. Massoud was himself killed only two days before the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the CIA believes he was assassinated by members of bin Laden's organization.
The CIA's clandestine efforts to deal with Massoud were among the most sensitive and highly classified elements of a broader long-term campaign, continuing unsuccessfully through the end of the Clinton administration and into the Bush administration, to destroy bin Laden's terrorist network. The American campaign against bin Laden intensified after the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, which transformed the Saudi-born exile into America's most wanted terrorist.
Former Clinton administration officials say they sympathize with their successors in the Bush administration who now confront bin Laden, and defend their own efforts as the best possible in a world that lacked the current sense of urgency about al-Qaida.
http://www.udel.edu/global/agenda/2002/readings/wp-ciatrackedbinladen.html
CIA Paid Afghans To Track Bin Laden
Team of 15 Recruits Operated Since 1998
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page A01
For four years prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the CIA paid a team of about 15 recruited Afghan agents to regularly track Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to well-placed sources.
The team had mixed results, ranging from excellent to total failure. Once every month or so, the team pinpointed bin Laden's presence in a specific building, compound or training camp, and that location was then confirmed by the CIA through communications intelligence or satellite overhead photography. On two occasions, the team reported firing on bin Laden's caravan, though the agency could not independently validate this.
On some rare days, the team provided a specific location, and the CIA was able to obtain three or four verifications from other intelligence sources, confirming bin Laden's whereabouts. For other periods, the team would lose track of him. "There would be a week or two when he [bin Laden] would be out of pocket," said one person with firsthand knowledge of the team's work.
The existence of the tracking team was one of the most tightly held secrets in the CIA over the past several years and suggests that the U.S. search for bin Laden in Afghanistan was more concentrated and aggressive than previously disclosed.
However, the United States never launched an attack on bin Laden based on information provided by the tracking team. Bin Laden remains at large despite the collapse of the Taliban regime that harbored him and the presence of hundreds of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. U.S. officials say they do not know where he is.
The creation of the tracking team was part of a covert CIA operation to capture or kill bin Laden launched first by the Clinton administration and continued under President Bush. In fact, Bush was considering an even more ambitious plan to destroy bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in the summer before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, well-placed sources said.
The National Security Council drafted a proposal for a new CIA covert action program that would have cost as much as $200 million a year. It would have had two main components. First, the CIA would have been authorized to destabilize the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan. Second, the CIA would have launched a program to destroy bin Laden's organization worldwide.
The plan was almost ready to be presented to Bush when the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, officials said.
Since the attacks, Bush has authorized a much more sweeping and lethal CIA program against bin Laden. The cost will be more than $1 billion, most of it for covert action in Afghanistan and around the world.
Bin Laden is one of the most elusive figures in modern history, and the frustration felt by hundreds of U.S. soldiers and intelligence operatives scouring the mountains in eastern Afghanistan is familiar to top U.S. policymakers. In the past four years, bin Laden moved about Afghanistan at irregular times, suddenly departing at night and not keeping to a travel pattern or schedule. There was evidence of decoy caravans, and bin Laden may have used disguises and even traveled at times in an ambulance. He stayed mostly in the Kandahar and Jalalabad areas.
The terrorist leader was tracked during much of that time by the special CIA-organized team, which still has a classified code word name. Sources declined to offer many details about the identity of the Afghan operatives, though they indicated some were part of the same family.
One key source said that the team had information about bin Laden's location a majority of the time: "Bottom line: We had eyes on him most of the time."
Some officials in the CIA, White House and Pentagon were skeptical of the team reports because much of the time there was no independent verification and at times other intelligence contradicted the team's reports.
"Though they provided 'eyes on' the target," a senior Bush administration official said, "the weakness was that they were not American 'eyes on' the target so there was never the necessary high level of confidence" about their information without confirmation from other intelligence.
A key problem was translating information provided by the trackers into action. Before Sept. 11, U.S. policy in the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration required confirmation that bin Laden would be in a specific location six to 10 hours in the future -- the minimum time required to fire a Tomahawk cruise missile from a Navy ship or submarine nearly 1,000 miles away in the Arabian Sea.
"We never could say where he would be in the future so an attack could be launched," said an intelligence operative. "It was a maddening chase."
Added another person with firsthand knowledge of the dilemma: "Who could say which hut or which tent he might be in in 10 hours? . . . [Bin Laden] might go for a walk or out, or have a meeting away or suddenly pull up at the oddest times for no apparent reason.
"We just could not anticipate his whereabouts and give the decision-makers a level of confidence that if they shot missiles he would be there," this source added.
Said a former senior Clinton administration official about any possible attack on bin Laden, "We did not want to rely on one source."
Indeed, the most public U.S. effort to kill bin Laden apparently did not involve intelligence from the tracking team. In August 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered a Tomahawk missile attack on bin Laden, sending at least 70 missiles into the Khost camp near the Pakistan border where bin Laden was supposed to be attending a conference or meeting of his al Qaeda network. Bin Laden left the camp one or more hours before the missiles landed.
The intelligence for the attack came chiefly from communications showing that bin Laden had ordered a gathering of his operatives on that date at Khost.
Despite the failure to get bin Laden, the tracking team functioned from early 1998 to this Sept. 11 as one of the CIA's most valued intelligence assets. The team reports were "the spine" of the intelligence gathering on bin Laden, a key source said.
"It was the best game in town," another source said. CIA Director George J. Tenet often told senior government officials only that he had "eyes on the ground" reports about bin Laden but did not provide precise details about the source.
The team of about 15, which could break into smaller tracking units, had the capability of providing daily reports to a special CIA unit, called the "bin Laden station," created to monitor bin Laden and his network.
The members were paid less than $1,000 a month, the sources said. Technically, the team members were a category of human intelligence, or HUMINT, but because of the low cost -- several hundred thousand dollars a year, less expenses and equipment -- one source called it "cheap intelligence," or CHEAPINT.
"These guys were often daring, taking all the risk themselves," the source said. "We never knew the full story about motive and reliability, but we loved them."
Opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden became increasingly difficult over the years, especially after the 1998 Tomahawk missile attack. And neither the Clinton nor the early Bush administration would authorize a larger, riskier operation such as sending a Special Forces unit into Afghanistan to attack him.
"He was always surrounded by Taliban as a first layer of defense," a source said, "and then he would have al Qaeda fighters providing security so there was a high risk if we sent a Special Forces team in -- a prohibitively high risk."
Just before or after Sept. 11, the team members lost track of bin Laden but stayed in Afghanistan. "They are now fighters," an official said. "The irony has not been lost. . . . Instead of the 15, there are literally thousands looking for the same guy."
CIA Paid Afghans To Track Bin Laden
Team of 15 Recruits Operated Since 1998
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page A01
For four years prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the CIA paid a team of about 15 recruited Afghan agents to regularly track Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to well-placed sources.
The team had mixed results, ranging from excellent to total failure. Once every month or so, the team pinpointed bin Laden's presence in a specific building, compound or training camp, and that location was then confirmed by the CIA through communications intelligence or satellite overhead photography. On two occasions, the team reported firing on bin Laden's caravan, though the agency could not independently validate this.
On some rare days, the team provided a specific location, and the CIA was able to obtain three or four verifications from other intelligence sources, confirming bin Laden's whereabouts. For other periods, the team would lose track of him. "There would be a week or two when he [bin Laden] would be out of pocket," said one person with firsthand knowledge of the team's work.
The existence of the tracking team was one of the most tightly held secrets in the CIA over the past several years and suggests that the U.S. search for bin Laden in Afghanistan was more concentrated and aggressive than previously disclosed.
However, the United States never launched an attack on bin Laden based on information provided by the tracking team. Bin Laden remains at large despite the collapse of the Taliban regime that harbored him and the presence of hundreds of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. U.S. officials say they do not know where he is.
The creation of the tracking team was part of a covert CIA operation to capture or kill bin Laden launched first by the Clinton administration and continued under President Bush. In fact, Bush was considering an even more ambitious plan to destroy bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in the summer before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, well-placed sources said.
The National Security Council drafted a proposal for a new CIA covert action program that would have cost as much as $200 million a year. It would have had two main components. First, the CIA would have been authorized to destabilize the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan. Second, the CIA would have launched a program to destroy bin Laden's organization worldwide.
The plan was almost ready to be presented to Bush when the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, officials said.
Since the attacks, Bush has authorized a much more sweeping and lethal CIA program against bin Laden. The cost will be more than $1 billion, most of it for covert action in Afghanistan and around the world.
Bin Laden is one of the most elusive figures in modern history, and the frustration felt by hundreds of U.S. soldiers and intelligence operatives scouring the mountains in eastern Afghanistan is familiar to top U.S. policymakers. In the past four years, bin Laden moved about Afghanistan at irregular times, suddenly departing at night and not keeping to a travel pattern or schedule. There was evidence of decoy caravans, and bin Laden may have used disguises and even traveled at times in an ambulance. He stayed mostly in the Kandahar and Jalalabad areas.
The terrorist leader was tracked during much of that time by the special CIA-organized team, which still has a classified code word name. Sources declined to offer many details about the identity of the Afghan operatives, though they indicated some were part of the same family.
One key source said that the team had information about bin Laden's location a majority of the time: "Bottom line: We had eyes on him most of the time."
Some officials in the CIA, White House and Pentagon were skeptical of the team reports because much of the time there was no independent verification and at times other intelligence contradicted the team's reports.
"Though they provided 'eyes on' the target," a senior Bush administration official said, "the weakness was that they were not American 'eyes on' the target so there was never the necessary high level of confidence" about their information without confirmation from other intelligence.
A key problem was translating information provided by the trackers into action. Before Sept. 11, U.S. policy in the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration required confirmation that bin Laden would be in a specific location six to 10 hours in the future -- the minimum time required to fire a Tomahawk cruise missile from a Navy ship or submarine nearly 1,000 miles away in the Arabian Sea.
"We never could say where he would be in the future so an attack could be launched," said an intelligence operative. "It was a maddening chase."
Added another person with firsthand knowledge of the dilemma: "Who could say which hut or which tent he might be in in 10 hours? . . . [Bin Laden] might go for a walk or out, or have a meeting away or suddenly pull up at the oddest times for no apparent reason.
"We just could not anticipate his whereabouts and give the decision-makers a level of confidence that if they shot missiles he would be there," this source added.
Said a former senior Clinton administration official about any possible attack on bin Laden, "We did not want to rely on one source."
Indeed, the most public U.S. effort to kill bin Laden apparently did not involve intelligence from the tracking team. In August 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered a Tomahawk missile attack on bin Laden, sending at least 70 missiles into the Khost camp near the Pakistan border where bin Laden was supposed to be attending a conference or meeting of his al Qaeda network. Bin Laden left the camp one or more hours before the missiles landed.
The intelligence for the attack came chiefly from communications showing that bin Laden had ordered a gathering of his operatives on that date at Khost.
Despite the failure to get bin Laden, the tracking team functioned from early 1998 to this Sept. 11 as one of the CIA's most valued intelligence assets. The team reports were "the spine" of the intelligence gathering on bin Laden, a key source said.
"It was the best game in town," another source said. CIA Director George J. Tenet often told senior government officials only that he had "eyes on the ground" reports about bin Laden but did not provide precise details about the source.
The team of about 15, which could break into smaller tracking units, had the capability of providing daily reports to a special CIA unit, called the "bin Laden station," created to monitor bin Laden and his network.
The members were paid less than $1,000 a month, the sources said. Technically, the team members were a category of human intelligence, or HUMINT, but because of the low cost -- several hundred thousand dollars a year, less expenses and equipment -- one source called it "cheap intelligence," or CHEAPINT.
"These guys were often daring, taking all the risk themselves," the source said. "We never knew the full story about motive and reliability, but we loved them."
Opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden became increasingly difficult over the years, especially after the 1998 Tomahawk missile attack. And neither the Clinton nor the early Bush administration would authorize a larger, riskier operation such as sending a Special Forces unit into Afghanistan to attack him.
"He was always surrounded by Taliban as a first layer of defense," a source said, "and then he would have al Qaeda fighters providing security so there was a high risk if we sent a Special Forces team in -- a prohibitively high risk."
Just before or after Sept. 11, the team members lost track of bin Laden but stayed in Afghanistan. "They are now fighters," an official said. "The irony has not been lost. . . . Instead of the 15, there are literally thousands looking for the same guy."
OHHH! Poor baby!
Is everyone picking on you? 
You may want to check out the closed post where you said Salman Pak was false and "no one" could show you a photo; where you said that Iraq did not shelter Abu Nidal, "he was like a tourist". Or where you said that Saddam had NO TIES to terrorism.
I posted sourced documents directly refuting all your un-substantiated hearsay that I questioned. But I know that you HAVE seen that post, but you would rather act like the poor victim of the big meanies.Now that someone has finally called you on your long record of trolling, all you can come up with is to name call. How typical! When you can't back up your assertions, you attack the questioner. But that's understandable. It's common for people that are not very articulate or are unsophisticated to resort to anger when they are unable to express themselves intellegently.
I'm glad to see that you FINALLY showed some verification for something you posted. But you are posting answers to questions that no one asked. No one said that Clinton DIDN"T want to get bin Laden. The question was if there were opportunities to get him that Clinton passed on. Personally, I don't know if he did or didn't, and I don't care! But you've still failed to back up YOUR claim that he didn't, dude!
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And for the record:
I am always polite to people who disagree and even those who post actual information that conflicts with mine. That's the point of the internet, but the message is this: if you shoot personal attacks at me and call me a liar or accuse me of posting info that can't be backed up, you are sticking an arm in a meat grinder. Most people aren't stupid enough to be humiliated twice, but some people learn more slowly than others.
I am always polite to people who disagree and even those who post actual information that conflicts with mine. That's the point of the internet, but the message is this: if you shoot personal attacks at me and call me a liar or accuse me of posting info that can't be backed up, you are sticking an arm in a meat grinder. Most people aren't stupid enough to be humiliated twice, but some people learn more slowly than others.
That's another thing that doesn't fly with me: lying about what I said. NOWHERE did I say Clinton never passed on possible opportunities... if you read my post I acknowledged he DID refuse to approve a missile hit because collateral damage was too high. Try reading my post and stop lying about them.
For the record my opinion (and Clinton's) is that if we knew what OBL was going to do, he would have accepted higher risk and taken more shots... and probably still missed. Bush has used the combined armed forces in Afghanistan when OBL was "treed" and couldn't get him. But all Bushniks like to say that it would have been a done deal if that COWARD Clinton had just let the CIA do whatever they wanted.... yeah, we sure found out lately how efficient the CIA is and how reliable their intel was didn't we? Bottom line, we don't know that OBL would have been any easier to nail then than when Bush went after him and failed miserably.
And for the record, you only posted one thing right about me: I have zero tolerance left for liars and hypocrites and that is what the repubs are with respect to Clinton. When he used military force in Kosovo, they bitched he was creating a diversion from scandal. Now in hindsight, they are pissing that he DIDN'T use enough force to go after Bin Laden even though 9/11 had not yet occurred. And all the pissing about not taking OBL when he was "handed over in chains", even though the FBI is on record as saying we had no legal grounds to hold him and did not have enough evidence to make any charges stick.
Get real. Stop trying to blame everything on Clinton and open your eyes. He wasn't a great president but he used force when it would stop genocide and he tried to stroke the mess he got dumped with in themiddle east. The mess is still there, but looking back it's clear both Reagan and Bush I made gargantuan blunders that were shortsighted and laid the seeds for the mess we now are stuck with. I hope I live long enough to hear one republican admit Reagan does NOT belong on Mount Rushmore and that some of GWB's mess is of his own doing because he is surrounded by YES men and he won't listen to anything else.
Ronald Reagan was certainly well off track on some issues, but at least until he got shot and started toeing the line (or his delegates had greater roles perhaps), he was right on track on some key issues. And he actually had some real class with it. He's the only president we've had in forty odd years that I could have any respect for. The rest, Clinton, George I and II included, we could have done without altogether. I certainly do not worship at the feet of Ronald Reagan, but if he does not deserve to be on Mt Rushmore, the others don't deserve to have their names on a fleet of garbage barges.
Bounty...
Did your previously cited 'documentation' come to you by fax from a Kinko's in Killeen, Tx. ?
Everyone recognizes you for what you are...a leftist troll full of Clinton agitprop. Your socialist sources and cut and paste arguements have grown really tiresome and lame. Disinformation taken from anonymous sources and massaged to fit your harebrained theories fools no one, much less convinces them. Perhaps it's time that you take your whining, complaining and anti-American conspiricy theories and find another game of jacks. No one is interested anymore. NO-BOD-Y. It is to laugh.
Did your previously cited 'documentation' come to you by fax from a Kinko's in Killeen, Tx. ?
Everyone recognizes you for what you are...a leftist troll full of Clinton agitprop. Your socialist sources and cut and paste arguements have grown really tiresome and lame. Disinformation taken from anonymous sources and massaged to fit your harebrained theories fools no one, much less convinces them. Perhaps it's time that you take your whining, complaining and anti-American conspiricy theories and find another game of jacks. No one is interested anymore. NO-BOD-Y. It is to laugh.
LMAO
Some Bin Laden Info from a related thread
But the administration has continued to link Saddam Hussein, a man Bin Laden has called "an apostate, an infidel and a traitor to Islam", with al-Qa'ida.
Even members of the intelligence community remain sceptical. "What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as a cast-iron case," said one insider. "That really is not good enough."
http://www.president-bush.com/osamabinhussein.html
Ordinary Americans think Bin Laden
and Saddam are the same man...
By Paul Lashmar and Raymond Whitaker
When did the "war against terror" become a campaign against Saddam Hussein rather than Osama bin Laden? Less than a month after the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, some hawkish members of the US administration were stressing a connection with Iraq, but the shift did not become clear until George Bush's State of the Union address in January last year, when the "axis of evil" was unveiled.
Suddenly Baghdad was in the frame, and al-Qa'ida receded into the background. For several months the name of Bin Laden has barely passed President Bush's lips; although al-Qa'ida was name-checked in the latest State of the Union speech a few days ago, its leader was not mentioned. Instead Washington has acted as though the link between Iraq and terrorism were self-evident. The rest of the world has been more sceptical, especially since the administration's attempts to offer proof of the connection have been successively demolished, at least once by the CIA. If the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, is to use Iraq's terrorist leanings as a cause of war when he speaks to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, he will have to offer far more convincing evidence than has been produced up to now.
Soon after "9/11", American intelligence officials were telling journalists, with a striking level of detail, that one of Iraq's top intelligence officers had met Mohamed Atta, leader of the 19-man suicide squad. Abu Amin, one of Iraq's most highly decorated intelligence officers, was said to have met Atta in Prague some five months before the attacks on New York and Washington. Czech intelligence officers who saw the encounter said that they had no idea who the man greeting Saddam's envoy was, but after 9/11, US intelligence was identifying him as Atta.
Following the wave of anthrax attacks that terrorised the US and brought the capital to a virtual standstill, the same US officials were briefing again. This time they suggested that a flask of anthrax spores had been given to Atta during another meeting in Prague, apparently confirming that Iraq was assisting his group of al-Qa'ida terrorists.
The only problem is that both these stories were untrue. The allegation of the Prague meetings - first made by Czech intelligence - was extensively investigated by the Czech government. President Vaclav Havel informed the White House that the allegation could not be substantiated. The CIA's director, George Tenet, told Congress last October that the CIA could find no supporting evidence.
As for the anthrax attacks, the widely held view in the US now is that they were the work of a deranged American defence scientist and that the anthrax spores were stolen from America's own stocks.
But the administration has continued to link Saddam Hussein, a man Bin Laden has called "an apostate, an infidel and a traitor to Islam", with al-Qa'ida. In his State of the Union address last week, President Bush said he had new evidence of the link: "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody, reveal that Saddam aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qa'ida." Nothing was produced to support the assertion.
Magnus Ransthorp, a terrorism expert at St Andrews University, said justifying the war on Iraq by accusing President Saddam of both concealing weapons of mass destruction and supporting Bin Laden "is like mixing apples and oranges". But the strategy appears to have been very successful domestically. As one observer commented, "ordinary Americans ... repeat these claims, and sometimes seem to think Bin Laden and Saddam are the same man".
Britain weighed in last week, when the BBC was shown intelligence data indicating that al-Qa'ida had built a small "dirty bomb" in western Afghanistan while the Taliban regime was still in power. But there was no evidence of any Iraqi involvement, and the report served as a reminder that while the world's attention is focused on Iraq, the war against terrorism in Afghanistan is far from over.
In the past few days US and Afghan forces have been engaged in the heaviest fighting in nearly a year against a group allied to the Taliban and al-Qa'ida, and a mine demolished a bridge, killing at least 15 people aboard a minibus crossing at the time.
Dr Ransthorp believed the US would seek to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qa'ida through Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A Jordanian leader of al-Qa'ida, he was badly wounded in the leg in the allied bombing of Afghanistan. In late 2001, say US intelligence sources, he sought treatment in Iran but was deported and fled to Baghdad, where his leg was amputated. Afterwards Zarqawi is said to have gone to northern Iraq and joined up with Ansar al-Islam, a militant Islamist group of 700 Kurds who control a string of villages in the Kurdish self-rule area.
Ansar al-Islam is the second string to America's evidence. The group is said to boast some 120 al-Qa'ida refugees who are helping fight a turf war with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Some US sources say it is run by Saddam's intelligence agency. The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has accused it of being involved with the Algerian-linked ricin poison plot uncovered in north London.
But American officials had the opportunity to make a case against its leader, Mullah Krekar, when he was detained in the Netherlands last September. They did not do so and he now lives as a refugee in Norway. On Friday he denied links between Ansar al-Islam and Saddam, saying: "Not in the past, not now and not in the future. I am a Kurdish man, Saddam is our enemy." He also denied any link with the ricin plot.
US officials also say that al-Qa'ida members held at Guantanamo Bay, Diego Garcia and elsewhere have told their interrogators that Baghdad was attempting to train al-Qa'ida in the use of chemical weapons, but there is no independent verification of this. It has also been pointed out that al-Qa'ida may be seeking to provoke a US war with Iraq.
"There are other countries more significant in their links with al-Qa'ida than Iraq," said Dr Ransthorp. "Look at Iran, which has allowed the transit of al-Qa'ida members."
Even members of the intelligence community remain sceptical. "What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as a cast-iron case," said one insider. "That really is not good enough."
But the administration has continued to link Saddam Hussein, a man Bin Laden has called "an apostate, an infidel and a traitor to Islam", with al-Qa'ida.
Even members of the intelligence community remain sceptical. "What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as a cast-iron case," said one insider. "That really is not good enough."
http://www.president-bush.com/osamabinhussein.html
Ordinary Americans think Bin Laden
and Saddam are the same man...
By Paul Lashmar and Raymond Whitaker
When did the "war against terror" become a campaign against Saddam Hussein rather than Osama bin Laden? Less than a month after the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, some hawkish members of the US administration were stressing a connection with Iraq, but the shift did not become clear until George Bush's State of the Union address in January last year, when the "axis of evil" was unveiled.
Suddenly Baghdad was in the frame, and al-Qa'ida receded into the background. For several months the name of Bin Laden has barely passed President Bush's lips; although al-Qa'ida was name-checked in the latest State of the Union speech a few days ago, its leader was not mentioned. Instead Washington has acted as though the link between Iraq and terrorism were self-evident. The rest of the world has been more sceptical, especially since the administration's attempts to offer proof of the connection have been successively demolished, at least once by the CIA. If the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, is to use Iraq's terrorist leanings as a cause of war when he speaks to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, he will have to offer far more convincing evidence than has been produced up to now.
Soon after "9/11", American intelligence officials were telling journalists, with a striking level of detail, that one of Iraq's top intelligence officers had met Mohamed Atta, leader of the 19-man suicide squad. Abu Amin, one of Iraq's most highly decorated intelligence officers, was said to have met Atta in Prague some five months before the attacks on New York and Washington. Czech intelligence officers who saw the encounter said that they had no idea who the man greeting Saddam's envoy was, but after 9/11, US intelligence was identifying him as Atta.
Following the wave of anthrax attacks that terrorised the US and brought the capital to a virtual standstill, the same US officials were briefing again. This time they suggested that a flask of anthrax spores had been given to Atta during another meeting in Prague, apparently confirming that Iraq was assisting his group of al-Qa'ida terrorists.
The only problem is that both these stories were untrue. The allegation of the Prague meetings - first made by Czech intelligence - was extensively investigated by the Czech government. President Vaclav Havel informed the White House that the allegation could not be substantiated. The CIA's director, George Tenet, told Congress last October that the CIA could find no supporting evidence.
As for the anthrax attacks, the widely held view in the US now is that they were the work of a deranged American defence scientist and that the anthrax spores were stolen from America's own stocks.
But the administration has continued to link Saddam Hussein, a man Bin Laden has called "an apostate, an infidel and a traitor to Islam", with al-Qa'ida. In his State of the Union address last week, President Bush said he had new evidence of the link: "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody, reveal that Saddam aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qa'ida." Nothing was produced to support the assertion.
Magnus Ransthorp, a terrorism expert at St Andrews University, said justifying the war on Iraq by accusing President Saddam of both concealing weapons of mass destruction and supporting Bin Laden "is like mixing apples and oranges". But the strategy appears to have been very successful domestically. As one observer commented, "ordinary Americans ... repeat these claims, and sometimes seem to think Bin Laden and Saddam are the same man".
Britain weighed in last week, when the BBC was shown intelligence data indicating that al-Qa'ida had built a small "dirty bomb" in western Afghanistan while the Taliban regime was still in power. But there was no evidence of any Iraqi involvement, and the report served as a reminder that while the world's attention is focused on Iraq, the war against terrorism in Afghanistan is far from over.
In the past few days US and Afghan forces have been engaged in the heaviest fighting in nearly a year against a group allied to the Taliban and al-Qa'ida, and a mine demolished a bridge, killing at least 15 people aboard a minibus crossing at the time.
Dr Ransthorp believed the US would seek to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qa'ida through Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A Jordanian leader of al-Qa'ida, he was badly wounded in the leg in the allied bombing of Afghanistan. In late 2001, say US intelligence sources, he sought treatment in Iran but was deported and fled to Baghdad, where his leg was amputated. Afterwards Zarqawi is said to have gone to northern Iraq and joined up with Ansar al-Islam, a militant Islamist group of 700 Kurds who control a string of villages in the Kurdish self-rule area.
Ansar al-Islam is the second string to America's evidence. The group is said to boast some 120 al-Qa'ida refugees who are helping fight a turf war with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Some US sources say it is run by Saddam's intelligence agency. The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has accused it of being involved with the Algerian-linked ricin poison plot uncovered in north London.
But American officials had the opportunity to make a case against its leader, Mullah Krekar, when he was detained in the Netherlands last September. They did not do so and he now lives as a refugee in Norway. On Friday he denied links between Ansar al-Islam and Saddam, saying: "Not in the past, not now and not in the future. I am a Kurdish man, Saddam is our enemy." He also denied any link with the ricin plot.
US officials also say that al-Qa'ida members held at Guantanamo Bay, Diego Garcia and elsewhere have told their interrogators that Baghdad was attempting to train al-Qa'ida in the use of chemical weapons, but there is no independent verification of this. It has also been pointed out that al-Qa'ida may be seeking to provoke a US war with Iraq.
"There are other countries more significant in their links with al-Qa'ida than Iraq," said Dr Ransthorp. "Look at Iran, which has allowed the transit of al-Qa'ida members."
Even members of the intelligence community remain sceptical. "What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as a cast-iron case," said one insider. "That really is not good enough."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-12feb2003-37.htm
Bin Laden calls Saddam 'infidel' but backs Iraq
A taped message purportedly from Osama bin Laden has warned Arab nations against supporting a war against Iraq but has branded Saddam Hussein an infidel.
In the recording, a man's voice is heard calling on Iraqis to draw on Al Qaeda's experience from fighting United States forces at the Tora Bora complex in Afghanistan.
The BBC reports from Baghdad that the quality of the tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera television was poor and the timing for Iraq even worse.
The Iraqi Government has repeatedly tried to distance itself from Al Qaeda and advice reputedly from Osama bin Laden is unlikely to be welcome in Baghdad at this critical juncture.
The message calls on Iraqis to make suicide attacks and talks of the importance of drawing the enemy into long, close and tiring fighting.
It calls the Americans crusaders and says anyone who helps them or fights with them should know he is an apostate - a person who has foresaken religion.
Others will see the tape as likely to help the US as it tries to cement a case against Iraq.
The US says the tape confirms a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
http://www.afn.org/~iguana/archives/2002_09/20020906.html
Wait a sec, bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein
September 2002
Steven Zunes
In the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks, there were leaks to the media about alleged evidence of a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the hijackers of the doomed airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Subsequent thorough investigations by the FBI, CIA, and Czech intelligence have found no evidence that any such meeting took place. None of the hijackers were Iraqi, no major figure in Al Qaeda is Iraqi, and no funds to Al Qaeda have been traced to Iraq.
It is unlikely that the decidedly secular Baathist regime--which has savagely suppressed Islamists within Iraq--would be able to maintain close links with Osama bin Laden and his followers. In fact, Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal, his country's former intelligence chief, noted that bin Laden views Saddam Hussein "as an apostate, an infidel, or someone who is not worthy of being a fellow Muslim" and that bin Laden had offered in 1990 to raise an army of thousands of mujaheddin fighters to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
Iraq's past terrorist links have primarily been limited to such secular groups as Abu Nidal, a now-largely defunct Palestinian faction opposed to Yasir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. At the height of Iraq's support of Abu Nidal in the early 1980s, Washington dropped Iraq from its list of countries that sponsored terrorism so the U.S. could bolster Iraq's war effort against Iran. Baghdad was reinstated to the list only after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even though U.S. officials were unable to cite any increased Iraqi ties to terrorist groups...
Although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insists that Iraq is backing international terrorism, he has been unable to present any evidence that they currently do so. In fact, the State Department's own annual study Patterns of Global Terrorism did not list any serious act of international terrorism by the government of Iraq. [/B][/QUOTE]
Bin Laden calls Saddam 'infidel' but backs Iraq
A taped message purportedly from Osama bin Laden has warned Arab nations against supporting a war against Iraq but has branded Saddam Hussein an infidel.
In the recording, a man's voice is heard calling on Iraqis to draw on Al Qaeda's experience from fighting United States forces at the Tora Bora complex in Afghanistan.
The BBC reports from Baghdad that the quality of the tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera television was poor and the timing for Iraq even worse.
The Iraqi Government has repeatedly tried to distance itself from Al Qaeda and advice reputedly from Osama bin Laden is unlikely to be welcome in Baghdad at this critical juncture.
The message calls on Iraqis to make suicide attacks and talks of the importance of drawing the enemy into long, close and tiring fighting.
It calls the Americans crusaders and says anyone who helps them or fights with them should know he is an apostate - a person who has foresaken religion.
Others will see the tape as likely to help the US as it tries to cement a case against Iraq.
The US says the tape confirms a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
http://www.afn.org/~iguana/archives/2002_09/20020906.html
Wait a sec, bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein
September 2002
Steven Zunes
In the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks, there were leaks to the media about alleged evidence of a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the hijackers of the doomed airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Subsequent thorough investigations by the FBI, CIA, and Czech intelligence have found no evidence that any such meeting took place. None of the hijackers were Iraqi, no major figure in Al Qaeda is Iraqi, and no funds to Al Qaeda have been traced to Iraq.
It is unlikely that the decidedly secular Baathist regime--which has savagely suppressed Islamists within Iraq--would be able to maintain close links with Osama bin Laden and his followers. In fact, Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal, his country's former intelligence chief, noted that bin Laden views Saddam Hussein "as an apostate, an infidel, or someone who is not worthy of being a fellow Muslim" and that bin Laden had offered in 1990 to raise an army of thousands of mujaheddin fighters to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
Iraq's past terrorist links have primarily been limited to such secular groups as Abu Nidal, a now-largely defunct Palestinian faction opposed to Yasir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. At the height of Iraq's support of Abu Nidal in the early 1980s, Washington dropped Iraq from its list of countries that sponsored terrorism so the U.S. could bolster Iraq's war effort against Iran. Baghdad was reinstated to the list only after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even though U.S. officials were unable to cite any increased Iraqi ties to terrorist groups...
Although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insists that Iraq is backing international terrorism, he has been unable to present any evidence that they currently do so. In fact, the State Department's own annual study Patterns of Global Terrorism did not list any serious act of international terrorism by the government of Iraq. [/B][/QUOTE]
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