Saddam and al-Qaeda: connecting the dots

Adam Daifallah

National Post

Saturday, June 26, 2004

THE CONNECTION: HOW AL-QAEDA'S COLLABORATION WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN HAS ENDANGERED AMERICA

By Stephen F. Hayes

HarperCollins

194 p.p., $29.95

Perhaps more than any other major Western city, Washington, D.C. is dominated by groupthink. Because the U.S. capital is brimming with ambitious people wanting to climb the social and political ladder, there is a natural fear of slipping down a few rungs by espousing unorthodox or contrarian views.

In the lead-up to and the aftermath of the war in Iraq, official Washington decided that the notion that Saddam Hussein might have co-operated with al-Qaeda was bunk. The mainstream media and the bien-pensants inside the Beltway dismissed the Bush administration's claims of such a relationship, alleging an absence of evidence and the conflict between al-Qaeda's Islamism and Saddam's secularism. That seemed to suffice as proof.

Stephen F. Hayes, a writer for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, deserves credit for trying to poke holes in this widely accepted wisdom. Since the war against terrorism was one of the Bush administration's three rationales for war with Iraq -- the other two being weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and humanitarian concern for the Iraqi people -- this subject deserves further examination, especially considering details that have emerged since the war ended and the recent report dismissing Iraq-al-Qaeda links from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Hayes has been on the case for nearly two years, and has reported on the subject extensively in the magazine. He uses publicly available documents, interviews, sources in the intelligence community and some of his own digging to put forward the strongest case to date showing links between between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

This short but timely book mostly contains information previously reported by the author and others. Some new evidence is introduced, but much like others who have tried to prove the existence of a nexus, Hayes writes about a series of potential smoking guns but offers no conclusive proof.

For example, Hayes reveals for the first time a murky character named Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. Shakir is believed to have been an Iraqi intelligence agent, and was present at an al-Qaeda meeting where planning for the USS Cole bombing and the attacks of September 11 took place. Shakir's name has been discovered by Pentagon investigators on three lists of Saddam Fedayeen soldiers. But this information, along with the fact that Shakir was captured and let go twice after September 11, is all we really know about him. Could Shakir's presence at an al-Qaeda plenary session show Iraqi involvement in the World Trade Center attacks? Yes. But Hayes is unable to make any certain conclusion.

He relies heavily on a memo from Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defence for policy in the Bush administration, in which the links between Saddam and al-Qaeda are spelled out in the most detail. That memo, submitted to the U.S. Senate intelligence committee last year, has been the subject of intense criticism. Indeed, some would argue it has been discredited. (The Pentagon even put out a statement after Hayes broke the memo story, calling it "inaccurate." Hayes dismisses the statement as a classic "non-denial denial.")

The departing director of the CIA, George Tenet, publicly reported at least eight meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and al-Qaeda terrorists. The most contentious of these claims is a purported meeting between the September 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in 2001. It is widely believed that Atta was in Prague in 2000, but whether he returned in April, 2001, for the said meeting is still uncertain. Again, Hayes provides substantial evidence to show that the meeting took place, but offers no unimpeachable proof.

The Connection strings together every available morsel of evidence that would show an Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship. Though the case is strong, this book will probably not convert any naysayers. By its very nature, the interpretation of intelligence data is subjective. Finding ironclad proof is rare. For some, a framed and signed photo of Saddam and bin Laden breaking pita bread would not be enough.

One thing is clear, however: Saddam's commitment to terrorism and his desire to take down the United States were unflinching. As Hayes reminds us, the Iraqi tyrant dispatched intelligence agents around the world to strike U.S. targets. He tried to assassinate George H.W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993. There is serious evidence, as argued by author Laurie Mylroie in her book The War Against America and by Hayes here, that Iraq was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. In 1998, Saddam rubber-stamped an attempt to bomb the Prague headquarters of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. And of course, the Iraqi dictator took pride in sending cheques of US$25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

This quickie book shows signs of haste; there is no index or footnoting. Too much ink is spilled criticizing the mainstream press for its lack of attention to the book's subject. Nevertheless, Hayes deserves credit for challenging the Washington consensus. He has asked questions and done the research that others have neglected. And he has made a more convincing case for this thesis than anyone so far, the Bush administration included.

-Adam Daifallah, a member of the Post's editorial board, covered the lead-up to the Iraq war as a Washington correspondent of The New York Sun.