-Caveat Lector-
>From The New Republic
THE IRAQ CONNECTION.
Blood Baath
by R. James Woolsey
Post date 09.13.01
Issue date 09.24.01
In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on
terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden. And he may well be responsible. But
intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do
well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether
perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored,
supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.
To this end, investigators should revisit the 1993 bombing of the World
Trade Center. A few years ago, the facts in that case seemed
straightforward: The mastermind behind the bombing, who went by the alias
Ramzi Yousef, was in fact a 27-year-old Pakistani named Abdul Basit. But
late last year, AEI Press published Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's
Unfinished War Against America, a careful book about the bombing by AEI
scholar Laurie Mylroie. The book's startling thesis is that the original
theory of the attack, advanced by James Fox (the FBI's chief investigator
into the 1993 bombing until his replacement in 1994) was correct: that
Yousef was not Abdul Basit but rather an Iraqi agent who had assumed the
latter's identity when police files in Kuwait (where the real Abdul Basit
lived in 1990) were doctored by Iraqi intelligence during the occupation of
Kuwait. If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right, then it was Iraq
that went after the World Trade Center last time. Which makes it much more
plausible that Iraq has done so again.
According to the theory of the 1993 bombing embraced by federal prosecutors
and the Clinton administration, Yousef/Abdul Basit was just another Middle
Eastern student who became radicalized in his early twenties. But it is
worth noting that the only two publicly reported items suggesting that
Yousef and Abdul Basit are the same man could very easily have been
products
of Iraqi tampering with Kuwaiti police files: a few photocopied pages from
earlier Abdul Basit passports that had clearly been tampered with, provided
by Yousef in New York in 1992 to get a Pakistani passport in Abdul Basit's
name, and fingerprints matching Yousef's found in Abdul Basit's police file
in Kuwait. It is also worth noting that Abdul Basit and his family, who
lived in Kuwait, disappeared during the Iraqi occupation, and the family
has
never reappeared. Was this a random tragedy of war or part of an effort to
set up a false identity for Yousef?
Moreover, the Fox/Mylroie theory--that Yousef, via Iraqi intelligence,
stole
Abdul Basit's identity--would explain a number of troubling differences
between Abdul Basit in the summer of 1989 (when he left the United Kingdom
after three years of study) and Yousef in September 1992 (when he arrived
in
New York). If the two are indeed the same man, then, over the course of
three years, he would have: (a) grown four inches (from five foot eight
inches to six feet) in his twenties; (b) put on between 35 and 40 pounds;
(c) developed a deformed eye; (d) developed smaller ears and a smaller
mouth; (e) gone from being an innovative computer programmer to being
computer-challenged; (f) aged substantially more than three years in
appearance; and (g) changed from being a quiet, smiling young man
respectful
to women to a rather different one (a sound file in Yousef's computer, for
example, includes his voice saying "Fuck, fuck, fuck" and "Shut up, you
bitch").
What incentive would the U.S. government have had to overlook these
changes,
stipulate that Abdul Basit and Yousef were the same person, and turn away
from any suggestion that Saddam was behind the first WTC attack? One can
only speculate. But by arguing that the 1993 WTC bombing and a separate,
FBI-thwarted plot to bomb New York tunnels and buildings were connected as
parts of a common conspiracy, prosecutors made convicting the participants,
under the very broad seditious conspiracy law, far simpler. As for the
Clinton administration itself, there would be less need to confront Saddam,
and perhaps less need to make hard choices, if it didn't finger him as
being
behind the WTC bombing.
And indeed, ever since Fox's ouster, federal prosecutors and the White
House
have hewed to the line that most terrorist attacks on the United States are
either the products of "loose networks" of folks who just somehow come
together or are masterminded by the mysterious and unaccountable bin Laden.
Explicit state sponsorship, especially by Iraq, has not been on the agenda.
The Clinton administration, meanwhile, treated Saddam--in former National
Security Adviser Sandy Berger's famous metaphor--like the mole in an
international version of the "Whack-a-Mole" carnival game: If you bopped
him
on the head, he'd stay in his hole for a while. But what has he been doing
while he's down there? If Fox and Mylroie are right, quite possibly
planning, financing, and backing terrorist operations against the United
States.
As of yet, there is no evidence of explicit state sponsorship of the
September 11 attacks. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Does it not seem curious that bin Laden issues fatwas, pushes videotapes,
quotes poems, and orders his followers to talk loudly and often about his
role in attacks on us? Does someone want our focus to be solely on bin
Laden's hard-to-reach self, and not on a senior partner?
If we hope to answer that question, the 1993 WTC bombing is a good place to
start looking. No one other than the prosecutors, the Clinton Justice
Department, and the FBI had access to the materials surrounding that case
until they were presented in court, because they were virtually all
obtained
by a federal grand jury and hence kept not only from the public but from
the
rest of the government under the extreme secrecy requirements of Rule 6(e)
of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Now a new administration, a new attorney general, and a new FBI director
should investigate the materials that Abdul Basit handled while in the
United Kingdom in 1988 and 1989, which were taken into custody by Scotland
Yard. If those materials have Yousef's fingerprints on them, then the
Fox/Mylroie theory is likely wrong. But if they don't, then Yousef was
probably a creature of Iraqi intelligence. Which means that Saddam still
considered himself at war with the United States in 1993. And, tragically,
he may still today.
R. JAMES WOOLSEY is a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C. He
served as director of central intelligence from February 1993 to January
1995.
================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
