Iraq and Terrorism, Part 1

From the March 23, 2004 hearing before the 9/11 Commission, there are (1) links between the 1993 WTC bombing plotters, Al Qaeda and Iraq, (2) the presence of Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas in Iraq, and (3) links between Al Qaeda, Iraq and the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that the Clinton administration struck in 1998 after the African embassy bombings:

LEHMAN: Well, specifically on the '93 attack on the World Trade Center, we have been told by some very senior officials that the complete picture, the evidence of the Al Qaida links of the perpetrators, were really not made known until after -- shared within the government until after the trial of the blind sheik. And the links of Abdel Rahman Yasin, for instance, were not widely known within the government.

When did you, if you could think back, become aware of the close and many links between the '93 plotters and Al Qaida?

ALBRIGHT: I can't remember exactly. I mean, I think that, you know, we began to know more about Al Qaida sometime in '96, '97. We knew bin Laden was a financier that was involved in a variety of activities. But I honestly can't tell you exactly when I became aware of the various linkages.

LEHMAN: Did you know about Abdel Rahman Yasin and his fleeing to Baghdad and his support and cooperation with Saddam's intelligence service? Did you see any significance in that? He being, of course, one of the main plotters of the '93 bombing.

ALBRIGHT: I can't say that I remember that.

LEHMAN: Just on that theme, the fact that Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas were there along with Yasin, would this have been a reason to begin to look a bit at what the Iraqi secret service was doing with Al Qaida, with or without Saddam's knowledge?

ALBRIGHT: Again, my sense of all of this was that there were shadowy connections among a variety of groups. But in terms of this kind of specificity, frankly, that was not something that as secretary of state I would have been looking into.

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COHEN: Senator Gorton, let me give you a real case involving actionable intelligence, the so-called pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. I want to use that as an example because there we were given information that bin Laden, following the bombings of the embassies in East Africa, was seeking to get his hands on chemical and biological weapons to kill as many people as he could.

We were real concerned about that. I was very concerned about that.

COHEN: Intelligence started to come in about this particular plant. They had been gathering information on it, and I think I point this out in my written testimony, but, frankly, I apologize for not getting it to you much sooner. I was still working on it as of yesterday, last night.

But to give you an example, this particular facility, according to the intelligence we had at that time, had been constructed under extraordinary security circumstances, even with some surface-to-air missile capability or defense capabilities.

That the plant itself had been constructed under the security measures, that the plant had been funded, in part, by the so-called military industrial corporation, that bin Laden had been living there, 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, and that the CIA had found traces of EMTA nearby the facility itself.

According to all the intelligence, there was no other known use for EMTA at that time other than as a precursor to VX.

Under those circumstances, I said, that's actionable enough for me -- that that plant could in fact be producing not baby aspirin or some other pharmaceutical for the benefit of the people, but it was enough for me to say we should take it out -- and I recommended that.

Now, I was criticized for that, saying, you didn't have enough. And I put myself in the position of coming before you and having someone like you say to me, "Let me get this straight, Mr. Secretary, we've just had a chemical weapons attack upon our cities or our troops and we've lost several hundred or several thousand. And this is the information which you had at your fingertips. You had a plant that was built under the following circumstances, had you manager that went to Baghdad, you had Osama bin Laden who had funded at least the corporation, and you had traces of EMTA and did you what? You did nothing? Is that a responsible activity on the part of the Secretary of Defense?"

And the answer is pretty clear.

So I was satisfied, even though that still is pointed as a mistake, that it was the right thing to do then. I would do it again, based on that kind of intelligence.