T1a B43 Iraq- Al Qaeda News Clips Fdr- Entire Contents- Media Reports- 1st Pgs For Ref 025

FORWARD : News

JUNE 20, 2003

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Oil for Food Sales Seen As Iraq Tie To Al Qaeda U.S. Probes Bank Network By MARC PERELMAN FORWARD STAFF The hunt for Saddam Hussein's money could provide some clues to one of the claims made by the Bush administration to justify its war in Iraq — the possible link between the former Iraqi regime and the Al Qaeda terrorist group. Two entities, a shadowy banking network linked by the administration to Al Qaeda and a Saudi oil company close to the Taliban regime, were involved in buying oil from Saddam Hussein under the United Nations' oil-for-food program, the Forward has learned. The now-defunct program allowed Iraq to buy food and medicine with its oil proceeds under U.N. supervision. Although the oil sales in question were legal and approved by the U.N., several observers say the system involved kickbacks and was used by Saddam to buy political support and to finance intelligence activities and even terrorist groups. "It seems very plausible that some of the oil money went to terrorism financing," a terrorism-financing expert closely monitoring Iraq said on condition of anonymity. "I believe this actually happened." Among Iraq's oil customers since 1997 is a Liechtenstein-based company called Galp International Trading Establishment, a subsidiary of Portugal's main oil company, according to a list of oil purchasers obtained by the Forward. The U.N. has not published the list. The company chose as its legal representative in Liechtenstein — a tax haven known for hosting thousands of shell companies — a company called Asat Trust, according to Liechtenstein business records. Asat Trust was designated by the United States and the U.N. as a financier of Al Qaeda through its links to Al Taqwa, a cluster of financial entities spanning the globe from the Bahamas to Italy and controlled by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The operation raises the possibility that Iraq quietly funneled money to Al Qaeda by deliberately choosing an oil company working with one of the terrorist group's alleged financial backers.

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7/14/03

1) U.N. Group Finds No Hussein-AI Qaeda Link By TIMOTHY L O'BRIEN New York Times UNITED NATIONS, June 26 -- The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the United Nations Security Council to track Al Qaeda told reporters here today that his five-member team had found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's administration in Iraq. A report issued by the monitoring group did find that, despite "marked successes" in the fight against Al Qaeda, a new generation of Qaeda-trained terrorists, as well as veterans of the group, continue to threaten the global community. The report praises the capture of several senior Qaeda operatives and successful efforts to block the group's access to the international banking system, but said recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and elsewhere suggest that Al Qaeda "and its associated groups still pose a significant threat to international peace and security." Michael Chandler, the chairman of the monitoring group, cautioned that the absence of evidence linking Mr. Hussein to Al Qaeda was not definitive. 'That doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist," Mr. Chandler said, but simply that his team has found no such evidence. During Security Council testimony in February, before the United States-led war with Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that Al Qaeda training camps existed in northeastern Iraq. Mr. Chandler acknowledged Mr. Powell's findings today and did not contest them, noting that the camps Mr. Powell referred to may have been destroyed by American military strikes. The report raised alarms about Al Qaeda's potential access to nuclear and chemical weapons and its continuing ability to finance its activities through charities and the drug trade. "There is evidence, from Al Qaeda training manuals and other intelligence, that Al Qaeda has investigated the ways and means of developing" nuclear, chemical and biolgical weapons, the report stated. The report also painted an ominous picture of a new generation of Qaeda operatives, who apparently first surfaced in the recent bombings in Casablanca, Morocco. The reason for Al Qaeda's resilience, the report said, is its religious zeal. 'They retain strong appeal among Islamic extremist elements around the world and are able to draw on a substantial number of cadres trained in Afghanistan or in other training centers associated with the Al Qaeda network," the report stated. 'There are also indications that the Al Qaeda network has been able to reconstitute its levels of support." Previous reports produced by Mr. Chandler's monitoring committee have drawn criticism for inexact or inaccurate data, but federal law enforcement authorities and members of diplomatic missions to the United Nations said today's report was well grounded. In its analysis of terrorist financing, the report notes that the successful vetting of the banking system for terrorist funds has forced Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to rely more heavily on informal financial networks known as hawalas to move money. The report also deplores that the United Nations list of Al Qaeda operatives and associates of Osama bin Laden is relatively short, a problem it attributes to the unwillingness or inability of some countries to provide names to the monitoring group. Most of the names so far, officials here said, have come from the United States.

2) UN terrorism unit finds no link between Iraq, Al Qaeda By Dafna Linzer Associated Press NEW YORK -- A United Nations terrorism committee has found no evidence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda but did not investigate specific Bush administration claims of such ties, officials said Thursday. The terrorism committee has just completed a draft report charting efforts by countries to track and shut down Osama bin Laden's operations. The report notes success in the war on terrorism stemming from the arrests of some top Al Qaeda figures. But it also says the group has been able to reconstitute support and benefit from loopholes to continue acts of terrorism worldwide. Nowhere in the 42-page draft is there any mention of Iraq or claims that it served as a haven for Al Qaeda. "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said Michael Chandler, the committee's chief investigator. The committee first heard of alleged ties during Secretary of State Colin Powell's February presentation to the Security Council before the Iraq war. "It had never come to our knowledge before Powell's speech, and we never received any information from the United States for us to even follow up on," said Abaza Hassan, a committee investigator. U.S. diplomats said Powell had laid out all the evidence to the council. "We know that Iraq provided some training to Al Qaeda in chemical weapons development, and we also know there were clear contacts between them that can be documented," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission at the UN. Powell insisted in his presentation that Saddam Hussein's regime was allowing a senior Al Qaeda member named Abu Musab Zarqawi to operate from Baghdad. Zarqawi has been indicted for the murder of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan on Oct. 28, 2002. The alleged connections were cited by the administration as one of the key reasons for going after Hussein. But the committee saw no need to investigate Zarqawi's movements and deliberately stayed away from investigating Iraq. "There are other committees in the United Nations that deal with Iraq," Chandler said. "We have concentrated our efforts where clearly Al Qaeda was active." One of the places it is looking into is Iran. The United States has said senior Al Qaeda figures are in Iran, and officials were investigating whether they were linked to a May attack in Saudi Arabia. Chandler, who visited the Iran-Afghanistan border in October, said he had been satisfied then with steps the Iranians were taking.

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We should be able to check some of this out. Philip

Original Message From: Katsu Furukawa [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 3:21 PM To: [email protected] Subject: On Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection Standard Weekly The Al Qaeda Connection, cont. More reason to suspect that bin Laden and Saddam may have been in league. by Stephen F. Hayes 07/11/2003 5:45:00 PM

THE INDISPENSABLE Glenn Reynolds has linked to an article in the Nashville Tennessean written by a Tennessee judge who believes he is in possession of documents linking^Saddam Husl3e~±n^and Osama bin Laden. The judge\is Gilbert S. Merritt, a federal appeals court judge invited to help Iraqis construct a legal system in postwar Iraq. He is, according to Reynolds, "a lifelong Democrat and a man of unimpeachable integrity." Here is an excerpt of his account: The deciHaent shows that an Iraqi intelligence offixjer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed ^) as-signed to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.'' The document shows that it was written over the signature of Uday Saddam Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein. The story of how the document came about

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7/15/03

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Delete | Reply | Reply to All | Forward | Redirect | Blacklist | Message Source | Resume | Save as | Print Back to INBOX Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 22:39:51 -0400 From: Philip Zelikow ^ To: "" 4P Reply-to: "" 4J Subject: FW: Saddam's al Qaeda Connection : The evidence mounts, but the administration says surprisingly little. ® 2 unnamed text/html 32.28 KB H

We need to follow up, if any of this is true. There are a variety of very specific assertions ...

Philip

Saddam's al Qaeda Connection From the September 1 / September 8, 2003 issue: The evidence mounts, but the administration says surprisingly little. by Stephen F. Hayes 09/01/2003, Volume 008, Issue 48

KIDS KNOW exactly when it comes—the point when you're repaving a driveway or pouring a new sidewalk, right before the wet concrete hardens completely. That's when you can make your mark. The Democrats seem to understand this. For months before the war in Iraq, the Bush administration claimed to know of ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. For months after the war, the Bush administration has offered scant evidence of those claims. And the conventional wisdom-that there were no links-is solidifying. So Democrats are making their mark.

"The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction." So claimed Al Gore in an August 7 speech. "There is evidence of exaggeration" of Iraq-al Qaeda links, said Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who recently launched an investigation into prewar intelligence. "Clearly the al Qaeda connection was hyped and exaggerated, in my view," said Senator Dianne Feinsten. Chimed in Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, as reported in the National Journal, "The evidence on the al Qaeda links was sketchy." Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate side of that committee, agrees. "The evidence about the ties was not compelling."

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8/26/03