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In 2003, the Bush administration alleged that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda might conspire to launch terrorist attacks on America, and used this allegation, among others, to persuade Congress and the American people to invade Iraq. Many believe that Saddam Hussein's regime had links to al-Qaeda. Reports of contacts between the two were published in various newspapers and magazines.

This is distinct from the al-Qaeda presence involved in the Iraqi insurgency.

Template:TotallyDisputed

Timeline

The following timeline lists allegations of Saddam Hussein's government contacts with and support for al Qaeda. It is important to note that not all of the specific claims about meetings are credible or can be substantiated with other evidence, and that many of the intelligence agencies and experts who have analyzed the evidence have concluded that no substantial links exist.

1994

• Baghdad - Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the bombers in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, flees to Iraq where he moves in with a relative and receives a monthly stipend from the regime (). Some FBI agents on the scene, including Assistant Director James Fox, the agent-in-charge, speculated that Iraq might have had a hand in the bombing. Rita Katz, who directs the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute, noted: "While there may be indications that Abdul Rahman Yasin may have worked for the fallen Iraqi regime, evidence significantly linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein still remains unconvincing." Neil Herman, who headed the FBI investigation into the 1993 World Trade Center attack, noted that despite Yasin's presence in Baghdad, there was no evidence of Iraqi support for the attack. "We looked at that rather extensively," he told CNN terrorism analyst Peter L. Bergen. "There were no ties to the Iraqi government." Bergen writes, "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack." During the 9/11 Commission Hearings, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke was asked about whether Yasin going to Iraq established a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 1993 WTC attack. His response was unequivocating: "But the investigation, both the CIA investigation and the FBI investigation, made it very clear in '95 and '96 as they got more information, that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack. And the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was al-Qaida; not Iraq. The Iraqi government because, obviously, of the hostility between us and them, didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists. But the allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation." (9/11 Commission Hearing, 24 March 2004 )

1998

• Baghdad - Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda second-in-command, allegedly meets Taha Yasin Ramadan, Iraqi vice-president (). The source of this claim appears to be Yossef Bodansky's controversial 1999 book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (p. 322), which makes many similar unsourced claims. There are no footnotes in the book, and there has been no other independent confirmation of this claim, which was republished uncritically by William Safire in a column in October 2001.

2002

• May – July -- Abu Musab al Zarqawi allegedly recuperated in Baghdad after being wounded in the war in Afghanistan. Dozens of his followers came to Baghdad as well. The United States, through a foreign intelligence service, notified Saddam Hussein’s government that Zarqawi was living in Baghdad under an alias. “A foreign government service asserted that the IIS (Iraqi Intelligence Service) knew where al-Zarqawi was located despite Baghdad’s claims that it could not find him.” (Page 337) "Senate Report on PreWar Intelligence on Iraq" Nevertheless, no evidence has emerged of any collaboration between Zarqawi and Saddam's government. According to Jason Burke, "Stories that an injured leg had been amputated in Baghdad as al-Zarqawi was cared for by Saddam Hussein's personal physicians proved false." (Jason Burke, Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam London: I.B. Tauris, 2004) p. 326). And Spenser Ackerman wrote in the Washington Monthly that "if Zarqawi's ties to al Qaeda were loose, his ties to Saddam were practically non-existent." In addition, Zarqawi did not identify himself with bin Laden nor swear allegiance to him until October 2004. Before that time terrorist experts considered him an "independent actor" who was setting himself up as a "competitor to bin Laden" rather than an al Qaeda operative. Jason Burke writes, "What Powell did not say was that al-Zarqawi ... had operated independently of bin Laden, running his own training camp in the west of Afghanistan near Herat. It was a small operation and al-Zarqawi was not considered a significant player, by militants or Western and Middle Eastern intelligence services, at the time. It is likely that al-Zarqawi had some contact with bin Laden but never took the bayat and never made any formal allegiance with the Saudi or his close associates. Instead he was one of the thousands of foreign activists living and working in Afghanistan during the late 1990s.... al-Zarqawi was a rival, not an ally, of the Saudi." (p. 270). Interestingly, even though no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Zarqawi has emerged, the White House continued to insist on such a connection, and Colin Powell made this claim a feature of his February 2003 speech to the United Nations (which has been heavily criticized). Nevertheless, the White House on several occasions nixed Pentagon plans to attack Zarqawi. Former National Security Council member Roger Cressey noted, "People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists." It has been suggested by military officials that the White House let Zarqawi's camp continue to operate inside Iraq because destroying the camp "could undercut its case for war against Saddam." While U.S. officials now think reports of al-Zarqawi's leg being amputated are incorrect, they still believe that al-Zarqawi may have received medical treatment in Baghdad. However, a CIA report in late 2004 concluded that there was no evidence Saddam's government was involved or even aware of this medical treatment, and found "no conclusive evidence the Saddam Hussein regime had harbored Zarqawi." One U.S. official summarized the report: "The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything."

2005

• May -- Seif al-Adl, the leader of al-Qaeda's security committee, publishes a testament on the internet about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist in Iraq who swore allegiance to bin Laden in October 2004. Among other things, the al-Qaeda leader clarifies the relationship between Zarqawi's group and the new Iraq: “contrary to what the Americans continuously claimed, al-Qaeda did not have any connection with Saddam whatsoever. American attempts to connect Saddam to al-Qaeda were in order to create excuses and legitimate causes to invade Iraq. So after we were trapped in Iran, after being forced out of Afghanistan, it became inevitable that we would plan to enter Iraq through the north, which was free from American control. It was then that we moved south to join our Sunni brothers."

Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq

Looking at pre-war intelligence on Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence examined “the quality and quantity of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, ties to terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein’s threat to stability and security in the region, and his repression of his own people;” and “the objectivity, reasonableness, independence, and accuracy of the judgments reached by the Intelligence Community.”

Based on the information the CIA made available to the Senate Committee, the committee published a series of conclusions in the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. These included the following:

Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship. (Page 346)

Conclusion 94. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably and objectively assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that the most problematic area of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida were the reports of training in the use of non-conventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons. (Page 346)

Conclusion 95. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment on safehaven – that al-Qaida or associated operatives were present in Baghdad and in northeastern Iraq in an area under Kurdish control – was reasonable. (Page 347)

Conclusion 96. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise. (Page 347)

Conclusion 97. The Central Intelligence Agency’s judgment that Saddam Hussein, if sufficiently desperate, might employ terrorists with a global reach – al-Qaida – to conduct terrorist attacks in the event of war, was reasonable. No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaida in conducting terrorist attacks. (Page 348)

Statements

• While speaking at the Pentagon on February 17 1998, President Bill Clinton warned of the "reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." These "predators of the twenty-first century," he said "will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

• "Al-Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al-Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq." -- Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney in an indictment of Osama bin Laden, unsealed November 4 1998 (Page 128)

• "We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad," -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, September 2002

• "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade. ... We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities." -- CIA Director George J. Tenet, October 2002

• "We could find no provable connection between Hussein and al-Qaeda." Senior CIA official, summing up conclusions of a 2003 report by the Directorate of Intelligence, 4 March 2004.

• "There is no doubt in my mind that trained them in how to prepare and deliver anthrax and to use terror weapons." -- Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, after reading classified intelligence as a member of the congressional commission investigating the September 11 attacks

• "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda, ever" -- Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism official under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, March 21 2004

• "The al-Shifa facility had been under surveillance for some time because of a variety of intelligence reports, including HUMINT reports identifying it as a WMD-related facility, indirect links between the facility and bin Laden and the Iraqi chemical weapons program, and extraordinary security – including surface-to-air missiles – used to protect it during its construction. The direct physical evidence from the scene obtained at that time convinced the U.S. intelligence community that their suspicions were correct about the facility’s chemical weapons role and that there was a risk of chemical agents getting into the hands of al-Qaeda, whose interest in obtaining such weapons was clear." William Cohen, former Secretary of defense in a sworn statement to the 9/11 Commission, March 23 2004 (Page 9)

• Interviewer, 31 January 2003: "Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?" President Bush: "I can't make that claim."

• "What I have said, however, to the liaison committee, and this is backed up by the evidence we have from intelligence, submitted to me by the joint intelligence committee, is that, yes, on the one hand, we do not know of a link between Iraq and the September 11 attack. But on the other hand there are unquestionably links between al-Qaida and Iraq. Just how far those links go is a matter of speculation. This isn't a static situation. It is changing. We are getting fresh intelligence in the entire time." Tony Blair, February 5 2003

• "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. ... There's numerous contacts between the two" -- President George W. Bush, June 18 2004

• "In my judgment, Saddam assessed Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda as a threat rather than a potential partner to be exploited to attack the United States. Bin Laden wanted to attack Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990 rather than have the Saudi government depend on foreign military forces." Judith Yaphe CIA counterterrorism analyst who specialized in Iraq during the George H. W, Bush administration, Boston Globe (3 August 2003).

• Stephen Hayes's book, titled "The Connection", details this alleged link and is entirely based upon a report by the Undersecretary of Defense, Douglas Feith - which has since been characterized by the Pentagon as 'inaccurate'. It "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of Defense Intelligence Agency .

• An article in the Times Online quotes a recently-leaked 'Top Secret' UK government memo: marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "C {(head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove) states that} military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WDM. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Times Online

• "In 125 separate appearances, they (Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice) made {...} 61 misleading statements about Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda" -- Report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform - Minority Staff pdf

• "We owe it to the memories of those who lost their lives September 11 to remember, to reflect, and bring justice to those responsible.

"We also have a similar obligation not to use the events of 9/11, and the great loss which so many endured, as a pretext for launching a war against Iraq.

"Iraq was not responsible for 9/11.

"Iraq has not been linked to 9/11.

"Yet here we are on the anniversary of that grim day, and the Administration is attempting to reframe 9/11 by beating the drum for war against a nation not connected to 9/11." -- Dennis Kucinich, Washington, 10 September 2002

• "Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11." - North Carolina Representative Robin Hayes, Republican, vice-chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, interviewed on CNN, June 29, 2005

Carol Costello:"But there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected in any way to al-Qaida."

Hayes: "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. There's evidence everywhere. We get access to it. Unfortunately others don't. But the evidence is very clear."

Costello: "What evidence is there?"

Hayes: "The connection between individuals who were connected to Saddam Hussein, folks who worked for him, we've seen it time and time again."

Costello: "Well, are you saying that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11?"

Hayes: "I'm saying that Saddam Hussein -- and I think you're losing track of what we're trying to talk about here -- Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11."

Costello: " no evidence ."

Hayes: "Well, I'm sorry, you haven't looked in the right places."

"I haven't seen compelling evidence of that" -John McCain, asked about Hayes' statements

"I think it undermines the confidence of the American people. I think it shows a contempt for the American people. Unless Robin is going to some tippy-top secret briefing, I'm not sure what Robin’s source of information is." - North Carolina Representative Brad Miller, Democrat

"Extensive research reveals that the facts are clear - Saddam Hussein and Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorists' attacks." - North Carolina Representative G. K. Butterfield, Democrat, who serves with Hayes on the Armed Services Committee

• "I have not seen one.... I have never seen any evidence to suggest there was one." Colin Powell, when asked whether there had been a "connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attack of 9/11". 20/20 interview, September 9, 2005.

Sources

• Congressional Research Service, Iraq and Al Qaeda: Allies or Not? (5 February 2004)
• Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Pre-War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (7 July 2004)
• "The ties that bound Iraq to bin Laden" By Stephen F Hayes
• "Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view" - Jane's Foreign Report
• Robert S. Leiken, The Truth About the Saddam-Al-Qaeda Connection, In the National Interest (November 2004)
• Iraq-al Qaeda link comes in focus (Washington Times)
• The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections (TCS)
• The Connection (Weekly Standard)
• Dubious link between Atta and Saddam (MSNBC)
• 9/11 panel sees no link between Iraq, al-Qaida (MSNBC)
• Ex-Officials Dispute Iraq Tie to al-Qaida (AP)
• Case Decidedly Not Closed (MSNBC)
• DoD Statement on News Reports of Al Qaeda and Iraq Connections (dept. of Defense)
• Iraq On the Record - The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq (U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Gov't Reform - Minority Staff, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA))

• Toronto Star report filed by Mitch Potter (Toronto Star)

• Iraq
• Al-Qaeda
• Conspiracy theories
• Causes and prelude of the 2003 Iraq conflict