Saddam and Terrorism

WE THANK THE WEEKLY STANDARD for reminding its readers of the criticisms we made of the Bush administration's linkage of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda ("Not What They Supposed," April 14). It would have been nice if Stephen F. Hayes--in his indefatigable quest to prove that connection--hadn't distorted our arguments with such clear dishonesty and complete disregard of the written record. Much of his story is devoted to accusing us of maintaining that Saddam's regime was not implicated in terrorism. Yet in the July 20, 2003, New York Times op-ed that he cites in his opening paragraph, we wrote: "Don't misunderstand--we should all be glad to see the Iraqi people freed from Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and the defeat of Iraq did spell the demise of the world's No. 4 state sponsor of international terrorism." As officials who helped coordinate the U.S. government's annual listing of state sponsors of terror, we could hardly have thought otherwise, and we have written about Iraqi support for terror elsewhere, including in The Age of Sacred Terror, which your reviewer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, called "a near-masterpiece." Later, Hayes complains that Clinton officials who once noted the links between Iraq and the al Shifa chemical plant in Sudan had "largely disowned these claims," yet Daniel Benjamin said plainly in the September 30, 2002, New York Times op-ed: "A Sudanese effort to procure chemical weapons, which Mr. bin Laden had invested in, seemed to rely on an Iraqi production method." Then Hayes goes on to suggest that we scanted Iraq's ties with al Qaeda and used quotations from the Iraqi Perspectives Project to prove that there was a connection. He implies that we said there were no contacts between the two sides, yet as we wrote in our book The Next Attack (2005), even though the two sides' interests diverged, "that does not mean they had no contact or did not at times sniff around each other to see if they might become allies. The Middle Eastern tradition of keeping tabs on all groups, friendly or not, persists, and the U.S. intelligence community was aware of a few meetings between bin Laden's men and Saddam's." Moreover, not one of the quotations Hayes cites demonstrates a direct link to al Qaeda. Instead, several passages discuss connections with organizations that were not part of al Qaeda, such as the Islamic Group in Egypt (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya), or to discussions of joint efforts of which there is no further proof. There is no acknowledgment anywhere of the delusory nature of Saddam's regime--a theme of the Iraqi Perspectives Project that Hayes could hardly have missed if he had done more than cherry-pick useful quotes--which suggests that the documents he cites may have been as fictional as others that were circulating within the Iraqi bureaucracy. Even more important, Hayes is prepared to accept the word of Iraqi documents while ignoring the adamant denials of top al Qaeda operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah that there was any cooperation between al Qaeda and Iraq. (The only al Qaeda operative who said otherwise, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, appears to have done so during a harsh interrogation, and he later recanted.) In short, nothing in this or any of Hayes's numerous articles dents our conclusions or that of the 9/11 Commission that "we have seen no evidence that [the contacts] ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States." George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have long since given up on this connection. Yet Stephen F. Hayes and THE WEEKLY STANDARD fight on, like the Japanese soldiers who emerged from the jungles of the Philippines decades after World War II ended. Someone should tell them their side has surrendered. DANIEL BENJAMIN & STEVEN SIMON Washington, D.C.

STEPHEN F. HAYES RESPONDS: Before U.S. investigators had translated and analyzed the detritus of the former Iraqi regime, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon assured us that this captured material would provide critical insights about Iraq and terrorism. To determine the truth about Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, they wrote on July 20, 2003, "military and intelligence officials need only comb through the files of Iraq's intelligence agency and a handful of other government ministries."

Now they are chiefly concerned that these documents might be "fictional" and, judging from their determination to avoid engaging on the substance of these Iraqi files, seem interested only in what they might tell us about the "delusory" regime of Saddam Hussein.

It's not hard to understand why. Benjamin and Simon have argued for years that Iraq and al Qaeda were "natural enemies" and that secularists like Saddam Hussein would not support jihadists like Osama bin Laden. They were wrong. According to the authors of the Iraqi Perspectives Project, the captured Iraqi documents confirm that Iraq and al Qaeda were indeed willing to "work together" and that the Iraqi regime was, in fact, willing "to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be a part of al Qaeda."

In the opening of their July 2003 article--an argument claiming that Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror--Benjamin and Simon refer to "Iraq's supposed links to terrorists." So before they even offered their perfunctory acknowledgment of Iraq's involvement in global terrorism, they dismissed the significance of this fact and mocked those who took it seriously.

Thanks to the Iraqi regime's own files, we now know much more about these very real links to terrorists. Benjamin and Simon are not interested.

Take Ayman al Zawahiri, the man who has served as Osama bin Laden's chief deputy for more than two decades. The authors of the study wrote: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." Internal Iraqi documents indicate that Saddam Hussein supported Zawahiri's group for years. There is no indication he stopped. Multiple high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officials have corroborated these written records. And yet Benjamin and Simon ignore it.

Benjamin and Simon offer their only substantive complaint when they chide me for failing to include the one time either of them cited an Iraq-al Qaeda connection.

Well, in his article back in 2002, Benjamin interrupted his long list of reasons why Iraq and al Qaeda were not linked with this rather jarring non sequitur: "Later, an indirect link appeared. A Sudanese effort to procure chemical weapons, which Mr. bin Laden had invested in, seemed to rely on an Iraqi production method."

He left it at that. It turns out there is a lot more to that story than Benjamin suggests. (And Benjamin and Simon tell the entire story quite convincingly in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror.) On August 20, 1998, in response to al Qaeda attacks two weeks earlier on U.S. embassies in East Africa, Bill Clinton ordered airstrikes against the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory outside Khartoum. To justify the action, no fewer than six Clinton administration officials said the Iraqis had aided al Qaeda's efforts to produce chemical weapons. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told CNN that the U.S. intelligence community had collected "information that Iraq has assisted chemical weapons activity in Sudan" and "information linking bin Laden to the Sudanese regime and to the al Shifa plant." To strengthen these claims, Clinton administration officials took the extraordinary step of discussing intercepted communications. Even on background, it's something government officials rarely do for fear of jeopardizing the sources and methods of obtaining such information. In this case, the intercepted calls revealed that Emad al Ani, the head of Iraq's VX nerve agent program, was working with an arm of the Sudanese military with close ties to bin Laden. William Cohen, Clinton's secretary of defense, told the 9/11 Commission that an executive from the al Shifa plant "traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program."

I asked Benjamin about this in an email back in 2003. He explained:

The Iraqi connection with al Shifa, given what we know about it, does not yet meet the test as proof of a substantive relationship because it isn't clear that one side knew the other side's involvement. That is, it is not clear that the Iraqis knew about bin Laden's well-concealed investment in the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation. The Sudanese very likely had their own interest in VX development, and they would also have had good reasons to keep al Qaeda's involvement from the Iraqis. After all, Saddam was exactly the kind of secularist autocrat that al Qaeda despised. In the most extreme case, if the Iraqis suspected al Qaeda involvement, they might have had assurances from the Sudanese that bin Laden's people would never get the weapons. That may sound less than satisfying, but the Sudanese did show a talent for fleecing bin Laden. It is all somewhat speculative, and it would be helpful to know more.

What Benjamin neglected to mention was the relationship between the Sudanese military and intelligence officials and al Qaeda. According to court testimony from senior al Qaeda terrorist Jamal al Fadl and others, Sudanese intelligence provided security at al Qaeda training camps in Sudan and al Qaeda operatives worked hand-in-glove with Sudanese military and intelligence officials.

Benjamin's claim, then, boils down to this: The U.S. intelligence community knew that Iraq was helping al Qaeda with chemical weapons production but neither the Iraqis nor al Qaeda did. Although it's hard for me to understand why he would have wanted me to include this in my original piece, I'm happy to air his full views now.

Let's assume, against all logic, that Benjamin is correct. Isn't it still a problem that Iraq was unwittingly providing assistance to al Qaeda on WMD production? Benjamin and Simon still maintain that Iraq was a distraction from the global war on terror.

How does one qualify as a target in that effort if not by providing the technology for the world's most deadly weapons to the world's most deadly terrorist group?

Benjamin and Simon conclude their response to my piece with an amusing insult, a misleading claim, and a false one.

I laughed out loud the first time I read the Japanese-soldier put down--in another magazine, from another writer. Benjamin and Simon cite two lines from the 9/11 Commission report to support their case that there was no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. But they conveniently ignore the explanation of those lines given by 9/11 co-chairman Tom Kean at the press conference to introduce the report. He said, directly: "There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." And contrary to their claims that Dick Cheney has "given up" connecting Iraq and al Qaeda, he did so quite emphatically at a press conference in Baghdad on March 17. So their insults are banal, their arguments are dishonest, and they are careless with facts.

It is true, as they point out, that they have not changed their conclusions about Saddam Hussein's support for al Qaeda. But that says much more about their refusal to accept evidence showing they are wrong than it does about the evidence itself.

© Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.