Timeline of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations

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This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. In 2003, American terrorism analyst Evan Kohlman said in an interview:

While there have been a number of promising intelligence leads hinting at possible meetings between al Qaeda members and elements of the former Baghdad regime, nothing has been yet shown demonstrating that these potential contacts were historically any more significant than the same level of communication maintained between Osama bin Laden and ruling elements in a number of Iraq's Persian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait. In 2006, a report of postwar findings by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that:

Postwar findings have identified only one meeting between representatives of al Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein's regime reported in prewar intelligence assessments. Postwar findings have identified two occasions, not reported prior to the war, in which Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al Qa'ida operative. The Intelligence Community has not found any other evidence of meetings between al'Qa'ida and Iraq. The same report also concluded that:

Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al Qaeda to provide material or operational support.

According to the sworn testimony of al Qaeda member Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al 'Owhali in 2001, Osama bin Laden delivered a lecture in Pakistan in 1988. During this lecture he spoke against Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party by warning his listeners about Saddam's expansionist ambitions in the Middle East.

During an interview with Peter Bergen, Khaled Batarfi, an old friend of Osama bin Laden, said that bin Laden had already predicted Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and had begun preparations for war against Saddam. According to Batarfi, Bin Laden had said, "We should train our people, our young and increase our army and prepare for the day when eventually we are attacked. This guy [Saddam] can never be trusted." Batarfi himself went on to say about bin Laden: "He doesn't believe [Saddam] is a Muslim. So he never liked him nor trusted him."

Saddam Hussein's army invades Kuwait. In response to the perceived threat to Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden offers to bring an army of jihadist fighters to protect the kingdom against Saddam. The Saudi royal family's decision to seek help from American troops rather than from bin Laden's jihadists is considered a turning point in bin Laden's life. The presence of American troops in the Arabian peninsula after the end of the Gulf War became, for bin Laden, a key piece of evidence that the U. S. was at war with Islam. Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the former head of the Saudi intelligence agency Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah, noted of bin Laden: "I saw radical changes in his personality as he changed from a calm, peaceful and gentle man interested in helping Muslims into a person who believed that he would be able to amass and command an army to liberate Kuwait. It revealed his arrogance." While bin Laden continued to oppose Saddam's Baathist government, he was also vocal in criticizing the U. N. sanctions against Iraq. Bin Laden's bodyguard recalls that his intentions included not only the liberation of Kuwait but also "rescuing the Iraqi people from the domination of the Ba'th Party  Sheikh Osama bin Laden was dreaming of this."

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing occurred on 26 February. One of the conspirators was Abdul Rahman Yasin, an American of Iraqi descent born in Bloomington, Indiana. After the attack he fled to Iraq where he allegedly moved in with a relative and received support from the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government claimed they imprisoned Yasin in 1994, where he remained until at least 2002. Iraq made an offer to the Clinton Administration to trade Yasin in 1998, but the Clinton administration rejected the offer. The Iraqis made a similar offer to the Bush Administration in 2003 but this offer was also spurned. An anonymous intelligence official claimed that Iraq required the U. S. to sign a statement discussing Yasin's whereabouts that was at odds with the U. S. "version of the facts." Former Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, however, claimed that the offers were made without conditions. The same Intelligence official stated that the Iraqi's wanted the US to "sign a lengthy document that included information about Yasin's whereabouts since 1993, and how they had tried to turn him over. "We refused to sign," said the official, "Because we believe their version was inaccurate." The US, he said, offered to sign a simple receipt acknowledging that the Iraqis had turned Yasin over to us. But they did not respond." Neil Herman, who headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (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 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. counter terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke was asked about whether Yasin going to Iraq established a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 1993 World Trade Center 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.

Farouk Hijazi, former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, allegedly meets with Osama bin Laden in Sudan. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counter terrorism official Vincent Cannistraro claimed that bin Laden rejected Hijazi's overtures, and concluded that bin Laden did not want to be "exploited" by Iraq's secular administration. According to The Guardian:

Most analysts believe, however, that the ideological differences between the Iraqis and the terrorists were insurmountable. It is thought that bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad, or holy war.

A handwritten note that is a part of the Operation Iraqi Freedom documents collection (released by the U. S. government in 2006) suggests that a representative of Saddam's government met with bin Laden in Sudan on 19 February 1995. According to the note, bin Laden suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. An ABC News article, which reported on the document, notes that eight months after the date of this document, al Qaeda staged an attack in Riyadh. Neither ABC nor any other source has offered information suggesting that Iraq participated in planning these attacks, and the Iraqi government has never been accused of such participation, and ABC notes that the militants who attacked the facility "later confessed on Saudi TV to having been trained by Osama bin Laden." The ABC article further notes that "the document does not establish that the two parties did in fact enter into an operational relationship," and also that the contacts may have "been approved personally by Saddam Hussein." The ABC article also cautions that "this document is handwritten and has no official seal." CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen commented, "The results of this meeting were  nothing. Two subsequent attacks against American forces in Saudi Arabia – a car bombing that year and the Khobar Towers attack in 1996 – were carried out, respectively, by locals who said they were influenced by Mr. bin Laden and by the Saudi branch of Hezbollah, a Shiite group aided by Iranian government officials." The New York Times reported that a "joint intelligence task force" concluded that the document "appeared authentic". The document, which asserts that bin Laden "was approached by our side," states that bin Laden previously "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative," but was willing to meet in Sudan. At the meeting, bin Laden requested that sermons of an anti Saudi cleric be rebroadcast in Iraq. That request, the document states, was approved by Baghdad. The document also states that Iraqi intelligence officers began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of [bin Laden's departure from Sudan]". The Iraqi document states that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."

On 7 December 1997, in a meeting between U. S. and Taliban officials, the Taliban's acting Minister of Mines and Industry, Armad Jan, tells the U. S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Karl Inderfurth, that the Taliban "had frustrated Iranian and Iraqi efforts to contact" bin Laden. Inderfurth, however, disagreed with this claim, and told The Washington Times, "I never saw any evidence in anything I was doing where there were any Iraqi connections."

Daniel Benjamin, head of the U. S. National Security Council's counterterrorism division, heads an exercise aimed at a critical analysis of the CIA's contention that Iraq and al Qaeda would not team up. "This was a red team effort," he said. "We looked at this as an opportunity to disprove the conventional wisdom, and basically we came to the conclusion that the CIA had this one right." He further stated that

No one disputes that there have been contacts over the years. In that part of the America hating universe, contacts happen. But that's still a long way from suggesting that they were really working together.

Osama bin Laden issues a fatwa urging jihad against all Americans. In his fatwa, bin Laden states

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. He also states that one of his reasons for the fatwa is the "Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people." Bin Laden mentions aggression against Iraq four times in the fatwa. A more important reason is the perceived American aggression against Muslims, which is mentioned seven times.

According to Inigo Gilmore of London's Telegraph, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, i. e., the Mukhabarat, arranged for an envoy from bin Laden to travel from Sudan to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi officials. Gilmore's claim is based on three stapled pages that he claims to have found in the Mukhabarat headquarters in early 2003, which he smuggled out of the building while it was guarded by American troops. Gilmore stated that the CIA had already been through the building for intelligence "but they seem to have missed this particular document." According to the handwritten documents, the Al Qaeda envoy stayed at the al Mansour Melia, a first class hotel. A letter with this document states that the envoy was a trusted confidant of bin Laden. It also reads

According to the above, we suggest permission to call the Khartoum station [Iraq's intelligence office in Sudan] to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above mentioned person to Iraq. And that our body carry all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden. The letter refers to al Qaeda's leader as an opponent of the Saudi Arabian regime and says that the message to be conveyed to bin Laden through the envoy "would relate to the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The meeting was allegedly extended by a week and the document "recommends contacts with bin Laden." Based on these documents the Telegraph stated that these "Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime." According to the Observer, however, these Baghdad talks "are thought to have ended disastrously for the Iraqis, as bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad."

The U. S. Department of Justice files an indictment against Osama bin Laden. This indictment repeats the disputed claim that

<blockquote>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. By 2001, however, based on several reviews of the evidence prompted by the Bush Administration, Clarke changed his view. To date, no evidence of such an "understanding" or "agreement" has ever materialized. Clarke notes in his book Against All Enemies that many of the contacts cited by supporters of the invasion as proof of Iraq and al Qaeda cooperation "actually proved that al Qaeda and Iraq had not succeeded in establishing a modus vivendi."

The Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, allegedly meets with bin Laden in Afghanistan. An article that appeared in theCorriere della Sera, a newspaper published in Milan, was translated by the CIA and read

Saddam Hussayn and Usama bin Ladin have sealed a pact. Faruk Hidjazi, the former Director of the Iraqi Secret Services and now the country's Ambassador to Turkey, held a secret meeting with the extremist leader on 21 December. The newspaper had quotes from Hijazi, without specifying the source of the quotes. Former CIA counterterrorism official Vincent Cannistraro notes that bin Laden rejected Hijazi's overtures, concluding that he did not want to be "exploited" by Iraq's secular regime. Hijazi, who was arrested in April 2003, denied any such meeting took place. US officials are, however, apparently skeptical of his claim.

Saddam Hussein allegedly cuts off all contact with al Qaeda, according to Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, a former Iraqi intelligence officer in U. S. custody. Farouk Hijazi allegedly orchestrated the visit. According to Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard, Hijazi "has confirmed to U. S. officials that he met Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994 [though he] denies meeting with al Qaeda officials in 1998, but U. S. officials don't believe him. ".

An Iraqi national with connections to the Iraqi embassy, and possibly a lieutenant colonel in the Fedayeen Saddam, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir al Azzawi, supposedly helped arrange a top level al Qaeda meeting attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, and by Tawfiq bin Attash, who was responsible for the USS Cole bombing. The CIA has, however, concluded that while Shakir al Azzawi was indeed an Iraqi with connections to the Iraqi embassy in Malaysia, he is a different person from a Fedayeen officer with a similar name. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in 2002 that, the "CIA received information that Shakir was not affiliated with al Qa'ida and had no connections to the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service]."

According to David Rose, a reporter for Vanity Fair, Marwan al Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, two of the 9/11 hijackers, supposedly met with an unidentified Mukhabarat officer. Rose claims he was told this story by members of the Iraqi National Congress. Their credibility, however, has since been impugned on this matter.

A general in the Iraqi intelligence, Habib Faris Abdullah al Mamouri, allegedly meets with Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 hijacker Daniel McGrory, the reporter who claims this information came from Italian intelligence, admits, "There is no proof the men were in direct contact." A June or July meeting in Rome is completely at odds with everything known about Atta's whereabouts in mid 2001.

Abu Zubayr, an al Qaeda cell leader in Morocco, allegedly meets with Ramzi bin al Shibh, who was a facilitator for the 9/11 attacks. It is alleged that Abu Zubayr was also an officer in the Iraqi Mukhabarat. Abu Zubayr was arrested in Morocco in 2002, and while news accounts widely noted that he was "one of the most important members of Al Qaeda to be captured," no mainstream source substantiated (or even mentioned) the allegation that the Saudi citizen, abu Zubayr, worked for the Iraqi Mukhabarat.

Jane's reports that Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, claims that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri. According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured in October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan.

15 April, Washington, D. C.: Senator Carl Levin releases newly declassified intelligence documents which suggest that Administration claims of a relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda contradicted the conclusions of the intelligence community. Levin said, "These documents are additional compelling evidence that the Intelligence Community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary." May: In an interview with Al Hayat, Jordanian King Abdullah II revealed that Saddam Hussein had rejected repeated requests from Jordan to hand over Abu Musab al Zarqawi. According to Abdullah, "We had information that he entered Iraq from a neighboring country, where he lived and what he was doing. We informed the Iraqi authorities about all this detailed information we had, but they didn't respond." King Abdullah told the Al Hayat that Jordan exerted "big efforts" with Saddam's government to extradite al Zarqawi, but added that "our demands that the former regime hand him over were in vain.". Shortly after Abdullah's interview, former Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi responded to Abdullah's claim in an interview with al Hayat: "The words of the Jordanian King are correct and important. We have proof of al Zawahiri's visit to Iraq [in September 1999], but we do not have the precise date or information on al Zarqawi's entry, though it is likely that he arrived around the same time." He was also quoted as saying that after Zarqawi entered the country, he "began to form a terrorist cell, even though the Iraqi services do not have precise information on his entry into the country." Allawi told al Hayat that this information was discovered by the Iraqi secret service in the archives of the Saddam Hussein regime. The New Yorker reported, "Zarqawi was treated in a Baghdad hospital but disappeared from Baghdad shortly after the Jordanian government asked Iraq to extradite him." The Senate Report on Prewar Intelligence stated "As indicated in Iraqi Supportfor Terrorism, the Iraqi regime was, at a minimum, aware of al Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad in 2002 because a foreign government service passed information regarding his whereabouts to Iraqi authorities in June 2002. Despite Iraq's pervasive security apparatus and its receipt of detailed information about al Zarqawi's possible location, however, Iraqi Intelligence told the foreign government service it could not locate al Zarqawi." The Associated Press translated a letter, obtained from The Operation Iraqi Freedom documents, dated 17 August 2002 from an Iraqi intelligence official which asked agents in the country to be on the lookout for Abu Musab al Zarqawi and another unnamed man whose picture was attached. The letter said there were reports the two could be in Iraq and directed Iraqi security officials to be on the alert as a matter of "top priority." Attached were three responses in which agents said there was no evidence al Zarqawi or the other man were in Iraq. ABC news translated the same documents and reported that in correspondences dated August 2002 "the letter on page seven  says that information coming from 'a trustworthy source' indicates that subjects who are interested in dealing with al Qaeda are in Iraq and have several passports. Follow up on the presence of those subjects is ordered, as well as a comparison of their pictures with those of Jordanian subjects living in Iraq. (This may be referring to pictures of Abu Musaab al Zarqawi and another man on pages 4–6.)" ABC noted that "The document does not support allegations that Iraq was colluding with al Qaeda." The Army's Foreign Military Studies Office website translates the letter to say, "The IIS [TC: Iraqi Intelligence Service], General Director ordered the following: 1 Instructing your sources to continue their surveillance of the above mentioned individuals in your area of operations and inform us once you initiate such action. 2 Coordinate with Directorate 18 to verify the photographs of the above mentioned with photos of the members of the Jordanian community within your area of operations. 3 Conduct a comprehensive survey of all tourist facilities (hotels, furnished apartments, and leased homes). Give this matter your utmost attention. Keep us informed." (For more information on Zarqawi and Saddam, see above, May–July 2002). 23 May: Iyad Allawi, in the interview with Al Hayat, states that Saddam's government "sponsored" the birth of al Qaeda in Iraq, coordinating with other terrorist groups, both Arab and Muslim. Allawi was quoted as saying, "The Iraqi secret services had links to these groups through a person called Faruq Hajizi, later named Iraq's ambassador to Turkey and arrested after the fall of Saddam's regime as he tried to re enter Iraq. Iraqi secret agents helped terrorists enter the country and directed them to the Ansar al Islam camps in the Halbija area." 23 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." Al Adl described the U. S. invasion of Iraq as a boon to al Qaeda: "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap." 8 September: Former U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is interviewed on ABC and tells Barbara Walters that his February 2003 speech to the United Nations was "a blot" on his record. "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me." Asked specifically about a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, Powell responded, "I have never seen a connection. I can't think otherwise because I'd never seen evidence to suggest there was one." July: Corporal Jonathan "Paco" Reese of the Pennsylvania National Guard, one of the Americans responsible for guarding the captured Saddam Hussein when he was in American custody, tells GQ magazine that the ousted leader insisted that he had no relationship with Osama bin Laden. October: In Newsweek of 26 October 2005, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball describe a "secret draft CIA report" which stated, according to "two counterterrorism analysts familiar with the classified CIA study who asked not to be identified", that "Zarqawi probably did travel to the Iraqi capital in the spring of 2002 for medical treatment. And, of course, there is no question that he is in Iraq now orchestrating many of the deadly suicide bombings and attacks on American soldiers. But before the American led invasion, Saddam's government may never have known he was there. The reason: he used an alias and was there under what one U. S. intelligence official calls a 'false cover.' No evidence has been found showing senior Iraqi officials were even aware of his presence." November: The New York Times answers the question as to what new evidence do the Democrats have regarding pre war intelligence? The document provides the earliest and strongest indication there were doubts about the reliability of Ibn al Shaykh al Libi, an al Qaeda official in American custody, voiced by American intelligence agencies, Jehl writes. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as 'credible' evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons." On 22 November, the National Journal's Murray Waas describes the existence of the highly classified 21 September 2001 PDB described above, informing President Bush that there was no credible evidence of collaboration between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda. December: Vanity Fair publishes excerpt of counterterrorism expert Peter Bergen's new book, which cites Pakistani biographer Hamid Mir's interview with Osama bin Laden. Regarding Saddam Hussein, Mir commented that bin Laden "condemned Saddam Hussein  He gave such kind of abuses that it was very difficult for me to write." 9 December: Doug Jehl continues to report in The New York Times on the questionable nature of al Libi's statements regarding ties between Saddam hussein and Al Qaeda, stating that "current and former government officials" had described to him "A classified Defense Intelligence Agency report issued in February 2002 (see above) that expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility on questions related to Iraq and Al Qaeda  based in part on the knowledge that he was no longer in American custody when he made the detailed statements, and that he might have been subjected to harsh treatment. They said the C. I. A. 's decision to withdraw the intelligence based on Mr. Libi's claims had been made because of his later assertions, beginning in January 2004, that he had fabricated them to obtain better treatment from his captors. American officials had not previously acknowledged either that Mr. Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Mr. Libi contended that his statements had been coerced."

3 January: CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen's book The Osama bin Laden I Know is published. Christina Lamb, the foreign affairs correspondent for the London Sunday Times, noted that the book "makes clear that [bin Laden] had no link with Saddam Hussein. On the contrary, he told his childhood friend Batarfi, 'This guy can never be trusted.'" In the book, Bergen discusses his conversations with bin Laden's Pakistani biographer Hamid Mir (see above, December 2005). Among other things, Mir tells Bergen that bin Laden cursed Saddam, and said "the land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is fucking his mother." 4 January: Newsweek publishes information about recently declassified slide show presentation prepared for a secret Pentagon briefing in 2002. The topic of the briefing was links between Saddam and al Qaeda, and the slides include previously unpublished information about allegations that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi official in April 2001. While Deroy Murdock claimed that the slides were new evidence that the meeting might have occurred, Newsweek then reported that "four former senior intel officials who monitored investigations into Atta's alleged Iraqi contacts say they never heard the airport anecdote." Another intelligence official "rejected" the anecdotal evidence. Newsweek concluded that the briefing "helped keep the tale alive" even though it had been rejected by intelligence experts. 9 July: Paul Bremer writes the following in his book, My Year in Iraq : "The secret Mukhabarat document I'd seen back in July showed that Saddam had made plans for an insurgency. And the insurgency had forces to draw on from among several thousand hardened Baathists in two northern Republican Guard divisions that had joined forces with foreign jihadis." 21 January: Osama bin Laden tape is released in which the terrorist leader addresses American citizens, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq has led to a situation in which "there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality." 11 February: U. S. Representative Pete Hoekstra (R Mich), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, appeared on MSNBC to discuss the "Saddam Tapes." Reports claim Saddam discusses WMD and links to terrorists on these tapes. Some 12 hours of these tapes were aired at The Intelligence Summit conference from 17 to 21 February. Hoekstra called for the U. S. government to put the remaining 35,000 boxes of documents on the internet so Arabic speakers around the world can help translate the documents. Attorney John Loftus, the controversial president of the Intelligence Summit, claims the tapes provide evidence that Saddam had ties to terrorists. Representative Hoekstra later said he felt the tapes were primarily of "historical interest" and cautioned, "I tried to stay away from whatever claims Loftus was making." 14 February: Combating Terrorism Center at West Point published a study of al Qaeda titled Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting al Qa'ida's Organizational Vulnerabilities. The study was based on documents seized from al Qaeda and recently declassified from the Harmony database. The papers offer insight into the history of the movement, organizational structure, tensions among leadership and the lessons learned. One of the papers examines the lessons learned from jihad in Syria; the al Qaeda writer concluded that one of the lessons learned from that experience is the influence of secular Baathist thinking distorts the message of jihad. This writer advises the movement no longer allow the jihad message to be influenced by the Iraqi Baath message. The writer called the Iraqi and Syrian Baath parties "renegades" and noted that "the alliance with them was catastrophic." He also noted that these parties had "no influence or effect on the battle field." The writer identifies Saddam's Iraq one of the "apostate regimes that abandoned Islam." Another document in the collection lists Saddam as well as Arafat and Hikmatyar among Islamic leaders who lack "manhood" and suggests that "they are useless. Beware of them." 15 February: The ABC television news program Nightline airs translations of taped conversations of Saddam Hussein speaking candidly with advisers. On the ABC transcript of one of the tapes, Saddam is heard speaking with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz discussing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Saddam specifically mentions that he had warned the United States in 1989 (when the two countries were allies) that terrorists would eventually gain access to weapons of mass destruction. "Terrorism is coming," the Iraqi leader is translated as saying. I told the Americans a long time before 2 August [1990, the day Iraq invaded Kuwait and the U. S./Iraqi relationship changed dramatically] and told the British as well, I think Hamed was there keeping the meeting minutes with one of them, that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction. What prevents this technology from developing and people from smuggling it? All of this, before the stories of smuggling, before that, in 1989. I told them, 'In the future, what would prevent that we see a booby trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?' Saddam later adds, "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq." Reporter Sherrie Gossett wrote that the excerpts of the tapes presented at the Intelligence Summit were "vague, cryptic, nonsensical, insignificant" and notes that "the most hyped excerpts are also subject to wide ranging interpretations." A spokeswoman for John Negroponte, the Directorate of National Intelligence, noted that "Intelligence community analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq's weapons programs, nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey Group report." ABC News reporter Brian Ross commented that people on both sides of this controversy will use these tapes to support their side. 23 February: Abdel Bari Atwan publishes a book titled The Secret History of Al Qa'ida. In it, he writes:

Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al Qaeda's ideology, Saddam established contact with the 'Afghan Arabs' as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed. In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Ba'ath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance. According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis. On arrival in Iraq, Al Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddam's caches. Most commentators agree that Al Qaeda was present in Iraq before the US invasion. The question is for how long and to what extent. What is known is that Zarqawi took a direct role in Al Qaeda's infiltration. In March 2003 – it is not clear whether this was before or after the invasion began – he met Al Qaeda's military strategist, an Egyptian called Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi, and agreed to assist Al Qaeda operatives entering Iraq. 16 March: The Pentagon, at the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, begins releasing the Arabic language documents obtained during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. These documents have been hailed by some supporters of the invasion as a possible "smoking gun" connecting Saddam's Iraq to al Qaeda terrorists and Representative Hoekstra has been calling for their release to the public; those released so far, however, fail to provide evidence of any such connection. According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, the release of the documents "looks like an effort to discover a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq." The Pentagon cautions that the government "has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." One of the documents, which seems to have been trumpeted by Stephen Hayes earlier in the year as proof that "thousands" of al Qaeda terrorists were trained in Iraq between 1999 and 2002 to fight in Afghanistan, is according to the Pentagon simply an investigation of a rumor. The Pentagon synopsis of the document reads: "Fedayeen Saddam received news of a rumor that 3,000 volunteers from Iraq and Saudi Arabia had traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Mujahideen against the US. This letter is a request to investigate the rumor to determine whether it is true." The document includes names and photographs of suspected al Qaeda members, including Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The Pentagon summary of the document indicates that Iraqi intelligence suspected these people to be members of al Qaeda but provides no indication that they trained or supported them. Indeed, an Associated Press translation of the document suggests that the letter warned Iraqi agents to "be on the lookout" for Zarqawi and other al Qaeda agents; AP reports that "Attached were three responses in which agents said there was no evidence al Zarqawi or the other man were in Iraq." The Los Angeles Times notes that "the documents do not appear to offer any new evidence of illicit activity by Hussein, or hint at preparations for the insurgency that followed the invasion." 18 May: Former NSA Chief General Michael Hayden testifies before the Senate Hearing on his nomination as Director of Central Intelligence. During the hearing, Hayden is questioned by Senator Carl Levin (D MI) on the pressure exerted by Douglas Feith's Office on the intelligence community over the question of Saddam's links to al Qaeda. Hayden explained that he was not comfortable with Feith's analysis: "I got three great kids, but if you tell me go out and find all the bad things they've done, Hayden, I can build you a pretty good dossier, and you'd think they were pretty bad people, because that was I was looking for and that's what I'd build up. That would be very wrong. That would be inaccurate. That would be misleading." He also acknowledged that after "repeated inquiries from the Feith office" he put a disclaimer on NSA intelligence assessments of Iraq/al Qaeda contacts. 16 June: Fox News posts on its website the translation of a 76 page notebook belonging to an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent named Khaled Abd El Majid. The notebook is part of the Operation Iraqi Freedom documents. The translation process was supervised by Ray Robison, who claims that the translation details a meeting between an unnamed Iraqi official and Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani cleric known for his close ties to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime. The meeting allegedly took place on 28 November 1999. While the Taliban harbored al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden beginning in 1996, and until Operation Enduring Freedom, the notebook translation makes no reference to al Qaeda. According to the translation by Robinson's team, Rahman states the following: "And he (Mullah Omar) desires to get closer relations with Iraq and that Iraq may help us in reducing our problems. Now we are facing America and Russia. He requested the possibility of Iraq intervening to build a friendship with Russia since Russia is no more the number one enemy. And we request Iraq's help from a brotherly point of view. They are ready for this matter and they prefer that the relation between Iraq and Taliban be an independent relation from Hekmatyar's relation with the Taliban. We want practical steps concerning this issue and especially the relationship with the Taliban and (not clear, but could be Iraq)  Concerning the relations between the Taliban and Iraq I was informed that they are going to start those relations in a secret manner and they are waiting for the answer and I will inform them that you will answer them through the embassy (translator's note: could be through the Iraqi embassy of Kabul, if they had one, or Islamabad in Pakistan)." The notebook also contains a transcript of a meeting between Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice president of Iraq. At this meeting, Rahman tells the vice president, "I met Mullah Omar the leader of Afghanistan and he welcomed the establishment of Islamic relations with Iraq and we foresee to tell them about our needs and they would like to have contacts with Russia but they feel that the Russians (unclear) with Afghanistan, they go to America (RR: probably means that the Russians side with the US against the Taliban). And they (RR: probably the Taliban) say that now we do not feel that Russia is our enemy and we do not know why they support the Northern Alliance (RR: non Pashtun Afghani militant groups seeking to topple the Taliban). They (RR: probably the Taliban) want Iraq to intervene with Russia. According to the translation conducted by Ray Robinson's team, Rahman and Ramadan are quoted as saying:

Fazlur Rahman: What is happening in Afghanistan is a violation of the human rights of this country, where Usama bin Laden is one person and the fate of millions cannot be tied to him. (Translator's note: Probably at that time the U. S. is forcing sanctions or pressures on Afghanistan because it is providing sanctuary to bin Laden)

Vice President: Can you blockade a country (RR: probably Afghanistan) because of the presence of one man (RR: probably referring to UBL)? This time she (America) got the resolution from the Security Council and it is number 77 (or 771) (RR: probably Security Council Resolution 771 in 1992 concerning Bosnia) relative to Iraq (RR: probably is making a comparison between 771 and a new resolution on Iraq most likely UNSCR 1284 passed Dec 1999 about WMD and humanitarian efforts). And it is the first time that the parliament of a country (U. S. Congress) speaks after a resolution (unclear) and comes out through the Security Council. It is ignorant to send memos and complain to the Security Council because it is a tool in the hands of America the master of oppression and if we do that it does not mean that we are boycotting the diplomatic process. Also the monetary fund (Translator's note: probably the International Monetary Fund) is in the hand of America and she helps according to her interests. My personal stand is with his (RR: probably UBL) call to fight America. At the end of the meeting, the vice president is quoted as saying "I gave Mr. President an overview about Afghanistan and its issues." 6 July: An apparent training manual for Arab operatives working inside Afghanistan that was recovered in an Iraqi government computer file and written before 11 September 2001 is translated by Fox News. One of the instructions states, "In rest areas a brother should not show his military ID." The training manual also instructs Arab operatives inside Afghanistan to dress like Afghan tribesmen, to avoid being followed ("Routine is the enemy of security"), to always be armed, and "to behave as if enemies would strike at any moment." The manual also cautions Arabs to "beware of rapid and spontaneous friendships with Afghans who speak Arabic," and "always make sure about the identity of your neighbors and classify them as regular people, opponents or allies." In his analysis of the document, Ray Robinson states: "The document also appears to be a professional military intelligence letter of instruction. These men have military IDs. The instruction references an intelligence manual. The letter mentions 'trusted' Afghans, so we know they are working in cooperation with forces in Afghanistan. It is highly unlikely that any military would send a semi permanent contingent with families into Afghanistan for cooperation or training unless the Afghan organization was stable and in control. It therefore seems likely that these soldiers are working closely with the Taliban." 8 September: Washington, D. C. – Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released two reports constituting Phase II of its study of pre war intelligence claims regarding Iraq's pursuit of WMD and alleged links to al Qaeda. These bipartisan reports included "Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments" and "The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress". The reports concluded that, according to David Stout of The New York Times, "there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had prewar ties to Al Qaeda and one of the terror organization's most notorious members, Abu Musab al Zarqawi." The "Postwar Findings" volume of the study concluded that there was no evidence of any Iraqi support of al Qaeda, al Zarqawi, or Ansar al Islam. The "Iraqi National Congress" volume concluded that "false information" from INC affiliated sources was used to justify key claims in the prewar intelligence debate and that this information was "widely distributed in intelligence products" prior to the war. It also concluded that the INC "attempted to influence US policy on Iraq by providing false information through defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists." The Senate report noted that in October 2002, "the DIA cautioned that the INC was penetrated by hostile intelligence services and would use the relationship to promote its own agenda." 14 September: Washington, D. C. – In a speech to the Brookings Institution, the Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Barham Salih, who was imprisoned in Saddam's Iraq, contradicted the Senate Report, asserting that "The alliance between the Baathists and jihadists which sustains Al Qaeda in Iraq is not new, contrary to what you may have been told. I know this at firsthand. Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by Al Qaeda affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam's regime." He was referring to Ansar al Islam, an organization that the Senate Committee concluded that Saddam's government spied on, but did not support. Salih claims to have presented the CIA with evidence in 2002 of an assassination attempt against him by Ansar al Islam that was funded by Saddam's Republican Guard. Salih acknowledges of his claim that "we could not prove this in a court of law, but this is intelligence." The Senate Report concluded that prewar interactions between Saddam Hussein's government and Ansar al Islam were attempts by Saddam to spy on the group rather than to support or work with them. "Postwar information reveals that Baghdad viewed Ansar al Islam as a threat to the regime and that the IIS attempted to collect intelligence on the group."

In February 2007, a Pentagon Inspector General report found that Douglas J. Feith, who was under secretary of Defense for Policy for United States president George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision makers."