http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/ClarkesIraq.htm
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.
