The New York Sun
February 23, 2004
EX-CHIEF OF CIA KEEPS DATE FOR A POWER LUNCH
His Host in Iraq Once Sat in U.S. Jail
By ELI LAKE Staff Reporter of the Sun

    YETHREB, Iraq - When Haidar al-Bandar was released from his eighth
Immigration and Naturalization Service prison in 2000, he invited his lawyer
to lunch in his hometown once Saddam Hussein's regime fell.

    On Saturday, his lawyer, R. James Woolsey, finally took Mr. Bandar up on
his invitation and was greeted with applause by his tribe, al-Timimi.

    "When Haidar and I first met, Haidar was in prison in the United States
and Saddam was in power. Now Saddam is in prison, and Haidar is quite
rightly free.I'm glad to see it's the other guy behind bars," Mr. Woolsey
said.

    He was speaking to an audience of American soldiers, tribal elders, and
representatives of the Iraqi National Congress,under a painting of Imam Ali.
Yethreb is a Shiite outpost in the heart of the "Sunni triangle" that has
won a reputation as the center of Iraqi resistance to the American presence
here.

    Mr. Woolsey is better known as President Clinton's first director of
central intelligence and as a frequent commentator in the press before the
war trumpeting the links between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

    Before the Iraq question became central in Washington, Mr.Woolsey
represented a group known as the "Iraqi six," members of the Iraqi
resistance evacuated by America from northern Iraq in 1996 only to be
detained on supposed national security grounds once arriving in America.

    In 1998, Mr.Woolsey was brought onto the case because the INS had used
secret evidence provided by the CIA to suggest that the six resistance
fighters once supported by the agency now presented a risk to America's
national security.

    In 2000, Mr. Bandar moved to Lincoln, Neb., after Mr.Woolsey gained
access to the secret evidence with pressure from Congress. But after the
fall of Saddam he was able to move back home, where he is an adviser to the
governing council on democracy and debaathification. He said he was
renovating a vacant property on the banks of the Tigris near here that
belonged to his family.

    "I felt so happy when he came to my home. He released me from jail," Mr.
Bandar said over a feast of noodles, rice, and lamb presented on large steel
platters.

    The town was run down, relying on an electric pump and outside basin for
water. Like so many Shiite villages, Yethreb was denied many basic services
under Saddam.

    Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan, the commander of the 223rd military
intelligence battalion that covers the Sunni triangle, said that when he was
given money for rebuilding schools in the town, he had to improvise. "We
would rebuild a school from one brick or one piece of stone," he said. Since
the fall of Baghdad, his soldiers have built seven schools in the area for
$50,000 each.

    While constructing schools may not seem like the work of battalion
responsible for gathering human intelligence, Colonel Ryan insists that it
is vital.

    "A big part of our job is to show people that there is no financial
motivation to placing a bomb along the roadside," he said.

    Colonel Ryan is particularly close with al-Timimi. The hosts of the
lunch here have even said he is an honorary member of the tribe, calling him
Timothy Ryan al Timimi. And the colonel says this relationship has paid off.
He said that a few weeks ago an unmanned aerial vehicle turned up near here,
and he "found out about it immediately. Before, a UAV would have been
stripped clean before we would get to it."

    While the colonel did not have exact statistics on the number of attacks
against Americans in the Sunni triangle since the capture of Saddam Hussein
in December, he said they had declined in the area.

    "I will tell you that as the U.S. forces have developed techniques to
counter insurgent activities, the former regime elements have begun to focus
their attacks on soft targets like the police headquarters. They are trying
to get the big media shocker, big bangs for less bucks," he said.

    The colonel also said the counterinsurgency has begun to run out of
money.

    Colonel Ryan said individuals planning attacks often pay local villagers
to carry out the attacks. "Six months ago, someone might say, 'here's one
hundred dollars to put a bomb on the road.' As democracy and the free market
take hold, there is more to work with than to work against."

    The Timimi tribe is working with the American forces here. This weekend'
s lunch in honor of Mr. Woolsey was the second one with Americans this
month. As the tribe's elders gathered for tea at the end of the meal, a
young girl handed a rose to an American adviser for the Iraqi National
Congress who was accompanying Mr. Woolsey on the visit. The recipient of the
flower, Francis Brooke, placed it in his lapel and said,"See, I told you
they would throw flowers."

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