by Palamedes
 
11/20/01 BWC II: U.S. Accuses Counties of Violating BWD

The United States yesterday charged several nations with violating the Biological Weapons Convention… In addition, Bolton said the al-Qaeda terrorist network had tried to acquire biological weapons, possibly with state assistance.

“While the United States is not prepared, at this time, to comment on whether rogue states may have assisted a possible al-Qaeda biological weapons program, rest assured that the United States will not rely alone on treaties or international organizations to deal with such terrorist groups or the states that support them,” Bolton said.

After al-Qaeda, Iraq causes the most concern for the United States, Bolton said, adding that the country produced biological weapons after signing the treaty in 1972 and ratifying it in 1991. Iraq has probably continued to improve its biological weapons program since U.N. on-site inspections ended three years ago, Bolton said.

11/26/01 Threat Assessment: States Help Terrorist Seek WMD

Now that senior U.S. officials have publicly fingered six countries for aggressively pursuing biological weapons, Bush administration officials recently said it is no coincidence that the accused also top the U.S. State Department’s list of nations that harbor terrorists.

Regimes in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria and Sudan are not only pursuing deadly chemical and biological weapons, they are simultaneously backing terrorist groups with track records of committing vicious mass-casualty attacks among innocent civilians, according to U.S. officials and documents.

“These are state sponsors of terrorism and they are also pursuing, or may already possess, chemical and biological weapons,” said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council. “We’ll do everything we can to prevent terrorist groups from acquiring or developing chemical or biological weapons.”

…“There is the possibility that those states have transferred, may have transferred or will transfer [chemical or biological] technologies to terrorist groups or other second-hand outfits who act on their behalf,” added Cheryl Loeb, a research associate with the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

…“There is no question [Iraq] sponsors terrorism,” said Charles Duelfer, who from 1993 until last year was a top leader of the U.N. special commissions that probed Iraq for evidence of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

“There is no doubt that they are pursuing weapons of mass destruction,” Duelfer continued. “Are you then going to trust [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein, with his track record, and believe that he wouldn’t share his weapons of mass destruction with terrorists who would use them? Weapons that, quite conceivably, could never be traced back to Baghdad?”

…Arnaud de Borchgrave, director of the CSIS Global Organized Crime Project, said a high-level CIA official recently told him that Iraq has been supplying useful information on al-Qaeda since the attacks in New York City and Washington.

“Of course there is a link” between major terrorist groups and various countries, said de Borchgrave, a 55-year veteran journalist who has interviewed both Saddam Hussein and Libyan President Muammar Qadhafi a few times each. But the states and terrorist groups simply swap favors by exchanging information and safe houses, not by working in concert together, he added.

The Bush administration would be naive if it thinks it could “kill two birds with one stone” by attacking countries that harbor terrorists under the guise that the host countries could supply the terrorists weapons of mass destruction, he said.

De Borchgrave, however, conceded that there is a history of states hiring terrorists to carry out attacks on their enemies—in many cases the target being the United States—a tactic that dates back to the early stages of the Cold War. Often those who carry out the attacks do not have direct contact with those who ordered them, he noted.

11/30/01 Iraq: U.N. Sanctions, Adds Import Controls

…Meanwhile, debate has continued in the United States and among its allies about the wisdom of focusing on Iraq as the next stage of the war on terrorism. The Bush administration appears to be preparing to widen the war beyond Afghanistan, according to the Economist. “Afghanistan is just the beginning of the war against terror. There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them. We will not be secure as a nation until all of these threats are defeated,” U.S. President George W. Bush said last week. Earlier this week he demanded that Iraq allow weapons inspectors to return or face unspecified consequences (see GSN, Nov. 27).

Some U.S. analysts and government officials have pushed for expanding the war to Iraq, the Economist said, but it remained unclear if the United States would militarily intervene in Iraq as part of the next phase in the war. Saddam Hussein is one of a number of leaders supporting terrorism, but not the only one, said Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. deputy secretary of defense. The next phase could involve Iraq but could also focus on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Economist said (Economist, Nov. 30).

The Bush administration was divided into two camps, according to Lawrence Kaplan in the New Republic. One group, including the U.S. State Department, wanted to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but to limit any campaign to destroying Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Kaplan advocated the option supported by the other group—which includes the Pentagon leadership—to destroy Hussein all together (Lawrence Kaplan, New Republic, Dec. 10).

1/24/02 Iraq: Remove WMD Threat, Strategists Say 

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein poses a serious threat to U.S. security and the United States must act decisively and quickly to remove him from power, policy experts Robert Kagan and William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard (see GSN, Nov. 30, 2001).

“It is almost impossible to imagine any outcome for the world both plausible and worse than the disease of Saddam with weapons of mass destruction,” wrote Kagan, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Kristol, the magazine’s editor. They argued that the threat Hussein poses is worse than the potential consequences of overthrowing him.

The threat posed by Iraq is “enormous” and grows daily, the authors wrote. To allow Hussein to remain in control would allow other regimes involved in terrorism and weapons of mass destruction to expand.

Containment and deterrence concepts no longer apply because Hussein could secretly provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

“How in the world do we deter that?” the authors wrote. Hussein has a history of assisting terrorist organizations, including Abu Nidal (see GSN, Nov. 26, 2001). Reports from defectors and former U.N. weapons inspectors confirm that a terrorist training camp exists in Iraq (see GSN, Nov. 8, 2001).

2/6/02 Iraq I: U.S. Lacks Evidence of Iraqi Tie to Terrorism

Several U.S. intelligence officials have said the CIA has no evidence linking Iraq to anti-U.S. terrorist organizations, according to today’s New York Times. There is also no evidence that Iraq has provided weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, although concerns remain about Iraq’s programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, the Times reported.

The Times article came after U.S. President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech last week (see GSN, Jan. 30) in which he claimed that Iraq poses a threat to U.S. security due to its support for terrorism and attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction (James Risen, New York Times, Feb. 6).

“Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade,” Bush said (White House transcript, Jan. 29).

U.S. intelligence officials said, however, that the United States does not have enough information to prove Iraq has supported anti-U.S. terrorism (see GSN, Jan. 24). The last known Iraqi attempt at terrorism was a failed operation to assassinate former U.S. President George Bush in 1993.

Some recent reports indicated that Iraq could have ties to terrorists, but intelligence officials said the information provided no substantial evidence. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Mohamed Atta, a leader of the terrorists who hijacked the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a mid-level Iraqi intelligence officer, in Prague, but the meeting does not necessarily tie Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein probably would not have trusted such important information to a mid-level officer, U.S. intelligence officials said.

Abu Nidal, a Palestinian terrorist who was active in the 1970s and early 1980s, moved to Iraq, intelligence agencies learned in 1998, but there is no evidence that Abu Nidal has participated in anti-U.S. activities since moving to Iraq, officials said (see GSN, Nov. 26, 2001).

2/8/02 Threat Assessment: Critics Question Basis for Bush “Axis of Evil” Charge

WASHINGTON — Citing CIA Director George Tenet’s Wednesday congressional testimony, some national security analysts are challenging the Bush administration’s rationale for labeling Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil.”

President George W. Bush coined the phrase in his State of the Union address last month, saying the three countries “could” someday attempt to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction and effectively marking them targets in the U.S.-led global war on terrorism.

The intelligence chief’s prepared testimony, presented annually to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, however, did not indicate the three countries have been a source of that technology for terrorists (see GSN, Feb. 7). Nor did an unclassified bi-annual report to Congress issued by the CIA last week detailing global WMD threats. They pointed instead to the Internet and former Soviet states.

“There may be evidence linking these states to terrorists,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But there is no publicly available evidence indicating that any state has given materials, designs or expertise to these terrorist groups that would help them acquire weapons of mass destruction.”

…“It is very unlikely that any country, including Iraq, would actually provide a weapon of mass destruction to a group they don’t control,” said Cirincione. “It’s against their own self-interests. And if they needed any proof of the validity of that, all they have to do is look at what happened to the Taliban.”

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington and expert on secret foreign nuclear weapons programs, however, envisions a scenario in which Iraq might someday transfer such technology to terrorists for use against the United States.

“If the Iraqi regime was about ready to go down the tubes, would it reach out and use terrorists as a delivery vehicle? Probably of a biological agent,” he said. “So I think you can’t ignore that.”

Otherwise, “separate from a doomsday scenario for a regime, I don’t see any motivation for any of the regimes to do that.”

Tenet in his spoken question-and-answer session, however, seemed to suggest evidence about a WMD connection and consideration of what might be in the three countries’ interests are not considered relevant to determining whether they should be targets of the terror campaign.

“Nobody dismisses anything. Everybody's on the table, and these networks of terrorism should no longer be thought about purely in terms of the state's interests, what [states] say publicly, what their obvious interests are and how they see the benefit in hurting the United States,” he said.

3/12/02 U.S. Response: Administration Keeps Pressure on "Rogue" Regimes 

WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush, in a major speech, yesterday reaffirmed the U.S. policy of including regimes that have both pursued weapons of mass destruction and supported terrorism in the U.S.-led international campaign against terrorism.

…“Here is what we already know,” he said. “Some states that sponsor terror are seeking or already possess weapons of mass destruction; terrorist groups are hungry for these weapons, and would use them without a hint of conscience. And we know that these weapons, in the hands of terrorists, would unleash blackmail and genocide and chaos.”

“These facts cannot be denied, and must be confronted,” he said, speaking on the White House South Lawn six months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

…Indicating the seriousness with which he takes the matter, Bush last month called the probability of a terror-sponsoring nation providing weapons of mass destruction to a terrorist group a “nightmare scenario that we must not let happen.”

3/19/02 Al-Qaeda-Iraq: Groups Are Tied, Kurdish Sources Say 

Kurdish sources say Iraq has direct links to al-Qaeda and has possibly smuggled chemical and biological weapons into Afghanistan, according to an article in the current issue of the New Yorker (see GSN, March 12).

Iranian smuggler Muhammad Jawad said in 2000 he had an assignment from al-Qaeda to smuggle to Afghanistan canisters filled with liquid and attached to refrigerator motors provided by the Iraqi intelligence organization, the Mukhabarat.

Jawad said he smuggled the canisters to Taliban officials at the Afghan border and, on al-Qaeda orders, killed the smugglers who helped him. Jawad said he did not know what the canisters held but assumed it was a type of chemical or biological weapon.

Kurdish officials said they also could not guess what was in the canisters but said the matter “is something that is worth an American investigation.”

5/1/02 Iraq: U.S. Says No Link Between Sept. 11 Hijacker, Iraq

U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to find evidence of a rumored connection between an Iraqi intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, the alleged leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 6).

Advocates of a U.S. military campaign against Iraq have pointed to the alleged connection as evidence of Iraqi involvement with al-Qaeda, according to the Post. In November, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman told U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that Atta had visited Prague to meet with suspected Iraqi intelligence agent Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani.

U.S. and Czech officials suspected that Atta and al-Ani had planned to attack Radio Free Iraq in Prague, which broadcasts programs critical of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to the Post. Surveillance cameras apparently detected al-Ani surveying the radio facility in April 2001, and a Middle East informant later told Czech intelligence that he had seen Atta meeting with al-Ani around the same time.

FBI and CIA analysts, however, said after investigating thousands of travel documents, they found no evidence that Atta “left or returned to the U.S.” during the time he was supposedly in Prague, a senior administration official said.

6/21/02 Iraq: Al-Qaeda Operatives Hide in Iraq, Some U.S. Officials Say 

Bush administration officials believe Al-Qaeda operatives are using Iraq as a hideout in the aftermath of the U.S.-led campaign to oust Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, March 20). Some analysts and officials believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is aware of al-Qaeda’s presence in his country, according to the Times.

“You cannot convince me Saddam does not know they are in Iraq,” a senior administration official said. “It adds up to tacit complicity for Iraq and Iran to serve as safe havens for al-Qaeda.”

If Hussein is knowingly tolerating al-Qaeda’s presence, it would provide a justification for the United States to attack Iraq, some analysts said.

8/2/02  Iraq I: Hussein Might Have Link to Al-Qaeda; Post-Hussein Costs High

A senior Bush administration official said that, despite doubts within the CIA and FBI, evidence “holds up” that alleged al-Qaeda member and Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague five months before the attacks on New York and Washington, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, May 9).

Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said in October 2001 that Atta had flown to Prague in April 2001 and met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a vice consul at the Iraqi Embassy who was later expelled from the Czech Republic on suspicion that he was an intelligence agent. If true, the meeting might provide a link between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda, possibly justifying a U.S. military campaign to overthrow Hussein, according to the Times (see GSN, July 29).

The CIA and FBI, however, decided previously that there is no hard evidence behind the Czech report. There is evidence Atta had “passed through” Prague in 1999 and 2000, and it is possible that he visited again in spring 2001, but there is no hard evidence to substantiate that he met with al-Ani, a U.S. intelligence official said. The CIA has not been asked to reevaluate the case, the official added, and the agency had found “no known support by Saddam for al-Qaeda cells.”

On the other hand, a federal law enforcement official said yesterday that the FBI has been reviewing a possible Atta-Iraq link with “renewed vigor” in the last few weeks. The official said that he does not know whether the FBI has found any clear connections but that the case is one of the “more urgent” priorities.

The administration official said Hussein poses several threats to the United States, including links to international terrorism.

“There is growing evidence that that includes organizations like al-Qaeda. That would be a mortal threat to the United States,” the official said.

8/24/02 – William Safire: Interrogations link Al Qaeda to Iraq

Brent Scowcroft and his leave-Saddam-alone acolytes on the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board insist that "there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations." But here are two names of intense current interest to American counterterror agents:

One is Fowzi Saad Obeidi, an Iraqi intelligence officer. Under the name Abu Zubair, Saad headed a force of 120 Arab terrorists backed by about 400 renegade Kurds who were remnants of a defeated separatist group.

Their "Supporters of Islam" organization was sent by Saddam into the portion of northern Iraq under U.S. aerial protection to assassinate the democratic Kurdish leadership and to establish crude chemical warfare facilities in villages near the Iranian border.

The other name is of a senior Al Qaeda commander, Abu Omer Kurdi. Known at Qaeda headquarters in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, by the name Rafid Fatah, this aide to Osama bin Laden helped train many of these infiltrators and accompanied them on their mission.

Several of their attempts to kill the Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani or their deputies late last year, with the latest strike at a top aide just last week, were bloodily repulsed, with a score of the terrorists captured - including the Saddam agent, Saad, and the Qaeda operative, Kurdi.

However, the terrorist mission to set up facilities to weaponize poisons in Iraqi Kurdistan has been more successful. One produces a form of cyanide cream that kills on contact. A shipment of this rudimentary panic-spreader, produced by what interrogators say is a Qaeda-Saddam joint venture, was recently intercepted in Turkey on its way to terror cells in the West. These chemicals are not weapons of mass destruction, but for individuals who touch it - 'tis enough, 'twill do.

Such verification of data obtained from the captured terrorists awakened CIA bureaucrats who for nearly a year waved reporters away from evidence of Qaeda-Iraqi links lest it justify U.S. action. Belatedly, a CIA team interrogated some of the terrorists held in northern Iraq - comparing what they found with information gleaned from Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

Even religiously motivated terrorists crack in dismay at how much their CIA interrogator already knows. When added to prisoners' family details provided by Kurdish sources, the scope of U.S. knowledge led captives in Kurdistan to talk about poison production and Iraqi links because they figured there was little left to hide.

The new information has changed much intelligence analysis. The CIA has even stopped discrediting reports from Czech intelligence about a different point of Qaeda-Saddam contact: the meeting between a Sept. 11 hijackers' leader, Mohamed Atta, and a top Saddam spymaster in Prague.

But the new evidence of Saddam's close connection with terrorists seeking to kill Kurds under American air protection and to export crude poison weaponry poses an immediate operational problem: Should the United States send in special forces to find and root out the hidden facilities near the Iraq-Iran border? The answer, apparently, is, "Not now." Why? For the same reason America has not sent anti-tank weapons and gas masks to the 70,000 Kurdish fighters eager to join an American effort to topple the Iraqi dictator: It might provide a provocation for Saddam to take out the lightly armed Kurds before America has forces in place to launch a coordinated assault, probably early next year.

Let's not pretend we must "make the case" that Saddam personally directed the events of Sept. 11. The need to strike at an aggressive despot before he gains the power to blackmail the United States with the horrific weapons he is building and hiding is apparent to most Americans, including those who will bear the brunt of the fight.

But it would make sense for him to use his new weaponry through terrorist cutouts. That is why it is worthwhile to discover and expose the likelihood of Saddam's previous and present connections to mass murder.

That is why people who oppose the finishing of this fight - on strategic, self-justifying, political or pacifist grounds - should open their minds to the signs that terror's most dangerous supporter can be found in Baghdad.

9/26/02 Iraq II: White House Says Hussein, Al Qaeda Connected 

U.S. President George W. Bush, along with other senior U.S. officials, yesterday alleged possible connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network (see GSN, Aug. 2).

Bush said he was concerned Hussein and al-Qaeda could decide to work together, adding that the two were already almost indistinguishable.

“The danger is, is that they work in concert,” Bush said during a White House meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. “The danger is, is that al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam’s madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world.”

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer attempted to decrease the specificity of Bush’s allegations, according to the Washington Post. Bush’s comments reflected what he feared could happen, Fleischer said. It would be a mistake to wait for a concrete proof that Hussein and al-Qaeda were working together, he said.

“In the shadowy world of terrorism, sometimes there is no precise way to have definitive information until it is too late,” Fleischer said.

Other senior Bush administration officials yesterday commented on possible ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda. A few hours before Bush’s comments, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also indicated a possible connection.

“I have no desire to go beyond saying the answer is yes,” Rumsfeld said when reporters asked if there were links between Hussein and al-Qaeda (Mike Allen, Washington Post, Sept. 26).

The United States has clear evidence of contacts between senior Iraqi officials and al-Qaeda operatives, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday. Several captured al-Qaeda operatives have said that Iraq provided training in developing chemical weapons, she said.

“So, yes, there are contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda,” Rice said in an interview with PBS’s Online NewsHour. “We know that Saddam Hussein has a long history with terrorism in general. And there are some al-Qaeda personnel who found refuge in Baghdad.”

The United States is not attempting to connect Hussein with the Sept. 11 attacks, Rice said, adding that more details could yet emerge.

“But, yes, there clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented,” she said. “There clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there's a relationship here” (Margaret Warner, PBS Online NewsHour, Sept. 25).

9/27/02 Unwanted Debate on Iraq-Al Qaeda Links Revived

In a series of statements over the past 48 hours, the Bush administration has reignited debate over an issue it laid aside weeks ago: whether there is evidence of substantive, ongoing ties between al Qaeda and the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said there is evidence of links between al Qaeda and Iraq, which he said had been discussed during a CIA briefing for NATO defense ministers meeting in Warsaw. On Wednesday, President Bush spoke of "the danger . . . that al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness," and noted that "you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

Wednesday night, White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said al Qaeda captives, "in particular some high-ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al Qaeda in chemical weapons development. . . . And there are some al Qaeda personnel who found refuge in Baghdad" after U.S. attacks against them began in Afghanistan last October.

While the comments appeared to announce new proof of such ties, administration officials offered no details to substantiate them, leaving what some officials acknowledged was a confusing picture of both the strength and the substance of the evidence

"We have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some members who have been in Baghdad," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday. "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between al Qaeda and Iraqi officials going back a decade, and, as Condi said, of chemical and biological agent training."

But Rumsfeld, back from Warsaw, took a somewhat different approach. He told reporters that rather than the "chemical and biological training" Rice and Fleischer said was provided by Iraq, there was "credible evidence that al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities." That report, he said, had come from only one source.

Another senior administration official with access to current intelligence, who asked that his name not be used, said that the report, dating from "the 1990s," included "no indication that those contacts were ever made or that they ever got anything."

While there was evidence that "senior al Qaeda . . . have been in Baghdad in recent periods," Rumsfeld said he did not know if they were there now. The second official, again referring to intelligence information, said that "just how high those people were, or whether they were there with the knowledge and support of the Iraqis, is unknown."

"We had dots," another senior official explained. "Now we have more dots. The density of the dots is increasing. Can we connect them categorically? No. Al Qaeda people have sought refuge" in Iraq, the official said. "Can we say Saddam Hussein welcomed them? We can't say that. You look for some kind of consensus on [intelligence] analysis, but it's very subjective."

It was the murky nature of intelligence reporting that led Bush and his advisers to decide weeks ago to focus their appeals to Congress and the United Nations for tough new measures against Iraq on the most clear-cut case they could make. Hussein's continuing efforts to assemble an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and defiance of a decade of U.N. Security Council resolutions were considered beyond dispute.

10/20/02 - Jim Hoagland: CIA's New Old Iraq File

Imagine that Saddam Hussein has been terrorist training and other lethal support to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for years. You can't imagine that? Sign up over there. You can be a Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Or at least you could have been until recently. As President Bush's determination to overthrow the Iraqi dictator has become evident to all, a cultural change has come over the world's most expensive intelligence agency: Some analysts out at Langley are now willing to evaluate incriminating evidence against the Iraqis and call it just that.

That development has triggered a fierce internal agency struggle pitting officials whose careers and reputations were built on the old analysis of the Iraqis as a feckless, inert and inward-looking bunch of thugs against those willing to take a fresh, untilted look at all the evidence.

One breeze of change came in President Bush's Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati. Among the terror-related items that were declassified for the speech was an agency finding that Iraq is developing "a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles" to deliver chemical and biological weapons on U.S. targets.

That was new stuff, delivered by a determined and effective CIA collection effort earlier this year. Agency information also allowed the president to assert (accurately) that "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

That's actually old new stuff, stored in CIA files since the mid-1990s. But that intelligence was quietly buried during the Clinton years, when the need not to know very much about Iraq and terrorism was very strong.

This is how war is waged inside the CIA: The upstarts who are challenging the agency's long-standing and deeply flawed analysis of Iraq are being accused of "politicizing intelligence," a label that is a reputation-killer in the intelligence world. It is also a protective shield for analysts who do not want, any more than the rest of us, to acknowledge that they have been profoundly and damagingly mistaken.

The "politicization" accusation suggests that those who find Iraqi links to al Qaeda are primarily interested in currying favor with the Bush White House. It comes primarily from those who won favor in the Clinton years with an analysis based on the proposition that an Arab nationalist such as Saddam Hussein would never cooperate with the Islamic fanatics of al Qaeda. They are now out in the cold in the Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz era.

Their work is only one part of a monumental record of failure on Iraq by the CIA, which has at different moments sought to understand, support, co-opt and then overthrow Hussein. The agency succeeded in none. Considering the extent of that failure, it is no surprise that Bush has until now relied little on the Langley agency for his information on Iraq. There is simply no way to reconcile what the CIA has said on the record and in leaks with the positions Bush has taken on Iraq.

One year before Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the agency produced a National Intelligence Estimate saying that Iraq was too exhausted and internally occupied to think about war. A supervisor's request to analysts to take a second look at those findings triggered accusations of "politicizing intelligence," says a former CIA official involved in that debate. The mistaken view prevailed and guided the CIA's assessment in July 1990 that no invasion of Kuwait was about to occur.

Such misjudgments have continued until today. After four months of inconclusive debate following Sept. 11, the agency produced a new analysis last spring titled: "Iraq and al Qaeda: A Murky Relationship." It fails to make much of a case for anything, I am told. It echoes the views of Paul Pillar, the national intelligence officer for the Middle East and South Asia, and other analysts who have consistently expressed doubts that Iraq has engaged in international terrorism or trained others to do so since 1993.

More damaging to their case than the accumulating new evidence to the contrary is "old" information long available in CIA files: Iraqi intelligence officers meeting in Khartoum and Kandahar with Osama bin Laden, the nonaggression pact Saddam and Osama reached in 1993, training in Baghdad for international terrorism and the multiple trips to Prague made by Mohamed Atta, the head of the Sept. 11 suicide squads, are all there. These specific reports and much more have been explained away and minimized rather than thoroughly investigated.

Congress should not expect the CIA "to be 100 percent flawless all the time," Director George Tenet complained defensively on Thursday as he was buffeted by questions about the agency's failure to anticipate Sept. 11. The problem is broader, he said: "The country's mind-set has to be changed fundamentally."

The man has a point. But Congress can reasonably expect the agency not to be wrong close to 100 percent all the time on such an important subject as Iraq.

And the place for Tenet to start changing mind-sets is right there at Langley. Unless, of course, he agrees with that mind-set.

10/24/02 Pentagon Sets Up Intelligence Unit 
 

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior advisers have assigned a small intelligence unit to search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists that the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked, Pentagon officials said today.

Some officials say the creation of the team reflects frustration on the part of Mr. Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other senior officials that they are not receiving undiluted information on the capacities of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and his suspected ties to terrorist organizations.

But officials who disagree say the top civilian policy makers are intent on politicizing intelligence to fit their hawkish views on Iraq.

In particular, many in the intelligence agencies disagree that Mr. Hussein can be directly linked to Osama bin Laden and his network, Al Qaeda, or that the two are likely to make common cause against the United States. In addition, the view among even some senior intelligence analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency is that Mr. Hussein is contained and is unlikelyto unleash weapons of mass destruction unless he is attacked.

But Mr. Rumsfeld's inner circle of advisers view Mr. Hussein's record, which includes aggression against Kuwait and the use of poison gas against his people, as much more alarming, and they are not willing to risk leaving him in power. They cite numerous intelligence findings indicating links between the Iraq and senior Qaeda leaders.

The four- to five-person intelligence team was established by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and another strong advocate for military action against Mr. Hussein. It was formed not long after the Sept. 11 attacks to take on special assignments in the global war on terror.

The team's specialty is using powerful computers and new software to scan and sort documents and reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The team's current task, described by one official as "data mining," is to glean individual details that may collectively point to Iraq's wider connections to terrorism, but which may have been obscured by formal assessments that play down the overall Iraqi threat.

In an interview tonight, Mr. Wolfowitz said the members of the special intelligence team "are helping us sift through enormous amounts of incredibly valuable data that our many intelligence resources have vacuumed up." He emphasized, "They are not making independent intelligence assessments."

He described "a phenomenon in intelligence work, that people who are pursuing a certain hypothesis will see certain facts that others won't, and not see other facts that others will."

"The lens through which you're looking for facts affects what you look for, "he added.

But as adherents of different views on the Iraqi threat use intelligence findings to argue their case, Mr. Wolfowitz said, "It should not permit youto create facts or deny facts."

"The correct process is one that surfaces as many facts as possible," he added.

By law, the sprawling American intelligence bureaucracy is managed by the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who also is in charge ofthe best-known spy organization, the Central Intelligence Agency. Separate intelligence units also are operated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Departments of State, Energy and the Treasury.

But nearly 80 percent of the overall budget for intelligence is within the Defense Department and managed by Mr. Rumsfeld. This classified sum is divided among such organizations as the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the intelligence arms of the armed services.

Agencies like the N.S.A. and the D.I.A. in effect have two masters, since the defense secretary controls the budget and is a significant client of their information, while the director of central intelligence watches over the entire constellation of spy organizations.

Tension between the defense secretary and the C.I.A., which has resented moves by Mr. Rumsfeld to beef up the Pentagon's role in intelligence gathering, has been intensifying, according to one defense official.

"There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Defense Department and the intelligence community, to include its own Defense Intelligence Agency," the official said. "Wolfowitz and company disbelieve any analysis that doesn't support their own preconceived conclusions. The C.I.A. is enemy territory, as far are they're concerned."

Senior Pentagon aides reject that criticism, with Mr. Wolfowitz saying tonight that both he and Mr. Rumsfeld rely on their C.I.A. briefings as "our main source of information."

But other senior Pentagon officials say Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr.Feith are consciously challenging "cherished beliefs and assumptions" that they believe prevent intelligence analysts from focusing on certain information. In addition, those officials said, Mr. Rumsfeld and his senior advisers are laboring to strip away risk assessments that they say should be left to policy makers.

"Yes, there's frustration, but don't make this out to be a conspiracy," said another Defense Department official. "We're not politicizing intelligence. We're just trying to get another angle on this."

Or as another top Pentagon aide described the team's purpose: "We've seen a distinct need for multiple sources of intelligence for some time. It's an ongoing supplementary effort to insure that top policy makers get the most information possible."

Although the team was created one year ago, its existence is only now becoming known outside of Mr. Rumsfeld's inner circle as the debate over the administration's Iraq policy intensifies.

The new team is the latest example of an often contentious relationship between Mr. Rumsfeld and his top policy makers on one side, and intelligence agencies on the other.

Mr. Rumsfeld, for example, has moved to strengthen his control over the military's intelligence apparatus by proposing a civilian position reporting directly to him to manage the sprawling operation.

He is also considering ways to expand the role of Special Operations forces in the campaign against terrorism, including getting them more deeply involved in long-term covert operations that traditionally have been the domain of the C.I.A.

The work of the new team at the Pentagon is becoming well known among senior-level officials throughout the Bush administration.

One senior administration official defended the effort, saying that regardless of whether analysis of intelligence reports is done by intelligence agencies or policy makers, both are at some level "informed speculation." The official said it should not be surprising that there are differences of opinion in a large administration.

Mr. Rumsfeld voiced his concerns this week about the difficulty of predicting the most dramatic threats to national security. During a Pentagon news briefing on Tuesday, he quoted from a National Intelligence Estimate written on March 21, 1962.

That summary of findings said it was "unlikely that the Soviet bloc will provide Cuba with strategic weapons," Mr. Rumsfeld said, noting however that the Cuban missile crisis came the following October.

10/25/02 Rumsfeld Denies Rift Exists Between Pentagon and C.I.A 

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went to great lengths today to describe a collegial, cooperative relationship between the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, even as he noted "differences of opinions" over how to interpret data on terrorist cells and adversary states like Iraq.

"It is an excellent relationship between the Department of Defense and the intelligence community," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

"There are always going to be people who have different intelligence views within the agency, and there's no question but that on some of these important terrorism issues, you're seeing differences of opinions out of the intelligence community and the Central Intelligence Agency," he added.

Mr. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon's senior leaders ask tough questions of the intelligence reports they receive, but he described the debate as "effective interaction."

He spoke at an afternoon news conference that his aides said was organized specifically to respond to reports of rifts between the Pentagon's senior civilian leaders and the C.I.A., and to counter those who say Mr. Rumsfeld and his advisers are trying to mold intelligence findings to bolster thosein the administration who advocate attacking Iraq.

Mr. Rumsfeld cited an editorial in The New York Times on Wednesday that called on him to present what he described as "bulletproof" evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, and also an article today in the newspaper describing an intelligence unit at the Pentagon assigned to mine reports from other spy agencies for information on Al Qaeda and Iraq that had been missed or ignored.

Advocates of the unit's work say its assignment is to use powerful computers and new software to mine for data on the capacities of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and of his suspected ties to terrorist groups – information that might have been diluted or even ignored by intelligence analysts who do not believe in the severity of the Iraqi threat.

But critics have said the team is at work finding only information that fits the most hawkish views on Iraq and risks politicizing the intelligence process. Should America go to war to topple Mr. Hussein, then public support requires a full and fair discussion of the evidence against the Iraqi leader, the critics say.

Mr. Rumsfeld said today that information he cited last month on Iraq's links to Al Qaeda was "bulletproof" because it was compiled and vetted by the C.I.A.

"When I said something was bulletproof, I was referring to the five or six sentences that I had read here off of a piece of paper which I'd received from the agency," he said.

Mr. Rumsfeld had cited information indicating that contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq stretched back a decade and had increased since 1998, that Qaeda members had been in Baghdad, and that Al Qaeda had sought help in acquiring weapons of mass destruction from Iraq.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, said that when he or Mr. Rumsfeld testify in closed-door hearings of Congress, they draw directly on texts prepared by the C.I.A. so that the administration can present a unified view on threats to national security.

Mr. Wolfowitz said the work of the new Pentagon intelligence unit was responsive to specific questions from Pentagon officials and that it was valuable as another source of information.

"I don't think that the facts that may be uncovered by people who think there is more of a connection are the reliable facts, and the facts that are uncovered by people who think there isn't one are unreliable facts," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "I just think that the two different perspectives will give you different sets of information, and I sure as heck wouldn't want to be dependent on only one or the other."

10/25/02 Pentagon Team Told to Seek Details of Iraq-Al Qaeda Ties 

The Pentagon's civilian leadership has ordered a small team of defense officials outside regular intelligence channels to focus on unearthing details about Iraqi ties with al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.

In addition, Pentagon authorities are seeking to take over an intelligence-gathering program once funded through the State Department under the Iraqi Liberation Act. State Department officials, skeptical of the program's efficiency and the wisdom of running a separate intelligence operation, have decided to drop the program. But the Pentagon wants to keep it alive and is looking for a way to finance its costs of more than $1million -- money used in part to help pay Iraqi informants or bring them out of Iraq.

The special Pentagon information-gathering team was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to take on a variety of counterterrorism assignments. Set up by Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary for policy, the four- to five-member group has been given the task of sifting through much of the same databases available to government intelligence analysts but with the aim of spotlighting information the spy agencies have either overlooked or played down, officials said.

At a news conference yesterday, Rumsfeld denied suggestions that the initiative was meant to compete with the CIA or other intelligence agencies. He said it was intended simply to assist policymakers in assessing the intelligence they receive.

"Any suggestion that it's an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think would be a misunderstanding of it," Rumsfeld said.

But the effort comes against a backdrop of persistent differences between the Pentagon and CIA over assessments of Iraq. Rumsfeld and senior aides have argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has strong links to international terrorism, poses an imminent threat and cannot be constrained from eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. The CIA's publicly released reports have painted a murkier view of Iraq's links to al Qaeda, its weapons capabilities and the likelihood that Hussein would use chemical or biological weapons unless attacked.

"The Pentagon is setting up the capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the realm of the agency," said Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who has met with the people in the new Pentagon office. "They don't think the product they receive from the agency is always what it should be."

"They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq."

Rumsfeld insisted yesterday that his relations with Tenet were very good,saying that he has lunch with the CIA chief once a week.

"George Tenet and I couldn't have a closer relationship," he said, adding at another point: "I'm not unhappy at all about intelligence."

Rumsfeld described his involvement with the information-gathering group as limited to a single briefing on a subject he did not specify. He was so impressed with the briefing, he said, that he directed it be given to Tenet.

Defense officials characterized the information team, whose existence was first disclosed yesterday by the New York Times, as an ad hoc group that has two full-time members and a rotating set of several others. It is known officially as the "policy counter terrorism evaluation group."

"The makeup has changed over the time it was established," an official said, declining to elaborate on the participants' background.

This is not the first time Rumsfeld and his aides have aroused concerns about Pentagon policymakers treading into traditional provinces of the intelligence community. Rumsfeld has proposed creating a civilian undersecretary post to oversee the Defense Intelligence Agency and the rest of the military's extensive intelligence operation. And earlier this year, a proposal to establish an office of "strategic information" under Feith was aborted after reports it might be used to spread disinformation abroad --activity historically carried out covertly by the CIA.

Rumsfeld took over the top Pentagon job with his views of the intelligence community heavily influenced by his experience as chairman of a 1998 commission on the ballistic missile threat to the United States. The commission, which concluded that the threat was more urgent than government analysts had predicted, was highly critical of the methods and training of the intelligence agencies.

Referring to his commission experience yesterday, Rumsfeld said he was impressed by "the importance of having well-informed users of intelligence

interact with the suppliers of intelligence, with the analysts." He added that "there is a very effective interaction going on."

11/21/02 An Al Qaeda-Iraq link materializing?

The Bush administration has never been able to make a convincing case of the connection between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Reports of a meeting between hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in the months before Sept. 11 remain unsubstantiated. Indeed, there were signs pointing to hostility between the Islamic extremists and the secular regime of Saddam Hussein. Osama bin Laden was said to have called Mr. Hussein an "apostate" and an "infidel."

But more recently there have been indications that the two have been finding common cause in the conflict with America, at least for propaganda purposes. The bin Laden audiotape, delivered to the Al Jazeera TV network in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Nov. 12, three days before the tensely awaited deadline for an Iraqi response to the UN weapons inspection resolution, offered support to the Baghdad regime. Bin Laden (the tape is now generally accepted as authentic) likened the suffering of the Iraqis to the plight of the Palestinians and said recent terrorist attacks were "merely a reciprocal reaction to what Bush, the modern-day Pharaoh, did by murdering our children in Iraq." The terrorist leader warned several nations by name against aiding "the criminal gang in Washington" and threatened retaliation against Islamic countries "allied with the tyrannical US government."

Iraq seemed to acknowledge the link with Al Qaeda in its intemperate letter to the UN delivered the next day, agreeing to "deal with" the demand to resume weapons inspection. The letter said that American aggression against Muslims and Arabs was the basic reason the US had to close embassies and "restrict its interests in many parts of the world while reaping the hatred of the peoples of the world."

Since then, a written statement from Al Qaeda, received by Al Jazeera addresses Americans, saying, "You are placing Muslims under siege in Iraq, where children die every day ... how weird that you do not care for 1.5 million Iraqi children who died under siege but when 3,000 of your compatriots died, the whole world was shaken." This is as far as Al Qaeda has ever gone in embracing the cause of Iraq. If there was no such link between the two before, they certainly seem interested in establishing that there is one now and that Islamic terrorists are rallying around this secular - but anti-American - regime.

1/29/03 – William Safire: Clear ties of terror link Iraq to Al Qaeda

In the days following the Sept. 11 attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell could find "no clear link" between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

One soon appeared. On Sept. 24, 2001, I reported: "The clear link between the terrorist in hiding (Osama) and the terrorist in power (Saddam) can be found in Kurdistan, that northern portion of Iraq protected by U.S. and British aircraft. … Kurdish sources tell me (and anyone else who will listen) that the Iraqi dictator has armed and financed a fifth column of Al Qaeda mullahs and terrorists."

The CIA would not listen. Through credulous media outlets, the agency - embarrassed by its pre-Sept. 11 inadequacies - sought to discredit all intelligence about this force of 600 terrorists. Called Ansar al Islam, and led by bin Laden's Arabs trained in Afghanistan, they were sent in with Saddam's support to establish an enclave in the no-flight zone. One assignment was to assassinate the free Kurds who made up the only anti-Saddam leadership inside Iraq.

Well armed and financed by both Iraq and Iran, this affiliate of Al Qaeda has since provided a haven for bin Laden followers exfiltrating from Afghanistan. They tried to assassinate an articulate Kurdish leader, Barham Salih, killing several bodyguards, but their target escaped and several killers were captured. National Security Council members did not learn about this bloody engagement, one of them told me a week afterward, until they read about it in The New York Times.

The Kurds induced the captives and some defectors to reveal that the Ansar cell of Al Qaeda had begun producing poisonous chemicals for export. One product was reported here to be a cyanide cream being smuggled through Turkey. The operation was set up by a man with a limp, the informants said, a key bin Laden lieutenant, Abu Musaab Zarqawi.

The CIA continued to pooh-pooh any connection between Ansar and Saddam. But Jeff Goldberg of The New Yorker and more recently C.J. Chivers of The New York Times went into Iraq and interviewed some of the captured terrorists. Such reporting eroded the "no clear link" line of opponents of action against Saddam. Late last summer, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared publicly, "There are Al Qaeda in a number of locations in Iraq," which was met with a derisive "no one's got proof" headline. The CIA resisted a proposal to send a covert force into Iraqi Kurdistan to destroy the secret chemical weapons lab.

On Oct. 8 of last year President George W. Bush made public a little more of what had been learned. "Some Al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq," he told a Cincinnati audience. "These include one very senior Al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

That was Zarqawi. Long sought in Jordan for terrorist attacks - most recently the assassination of the U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman - he joined bin Laden in Afghanistan. After the Taliban defeat, Zarqawi slipped out of that country through Iran and made his way to a Baghdad hospital, where his injured leg was treated or amputated, certainly with the knowledge of Saddam's mukhabarat secret police. He was then dispatched to Al Qaeda's Ansar cell in Iraqi Kurdistan, reported the captives who worked with him in the mountains, to create the terrorist poison laboratory.

British intelligence believes the limping terrorist took one of his products, ricin, to Algerian contacts in Turkey. This is a poison that can be delivered in warheads and one well known to Iraqi chemists, who cannot speak to UN inspectors. Two weeks ago, a British detective, Stephen Oake, was killed while arresting Algerians suspected of making ricin in Manchester.

U.S. "counterterrorism officials" are still in angry denial about the pattern they refused to see that connects Qaeda terrorists in hiding with Iraqi terrorists in power.

But even the Bush administration's most reluctant warrior has come to accept the validity of the link that embattled Kurds have been trying to warn America of since Sept. 11, 2001: Saddam and the followers of bin Laden are bedfellows.

Iraq, Powell concluded last weekend in Davos, Switzerland, has "clear ties to terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda."

2/2/03 Split at CIA and FBI on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda 

The Bush administration's efforts to build a case for war against Iraq using intelligence to link it to Al Qaeda and the development of prohibited weapons has created friction within United States intelligence agencies, government officials said.

Some analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said.

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said.

The tension within the intelligence agencies comes as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is poised to go before the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to present evidence of Iraq's links to terrorism and its continuing efforts to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

Interviews with administration officials revealed divisions between, on one side, the Pentagon and the National Security Council, which has become a clearinghouse for the evidence being prepared for Mr. Powell, and, on the other, the C.I.A. and, to some degree, the State Department and agencies like the F.B.I.

In the interviews, two officials, Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary, and Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security adviser, were cited as being most eager to interpret evidence deemed murky by intelligence officials to show a clearer picture of Iraq's involvement in illicit weapons programs and terrorism. Their bosses, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, have also pressed a hard line, officials said.

A senior administration official said discussions in preparation for Mr. Powell's presentation were intense, but not rancorous, and said there was little dissension among President Bush's top advisers about the fundamental nature of President Saddam Hussein's government. "I haven't detected anyone who thinks this a not compelling case," the official said.

Mr. Bush asserted in his State of the Union address this week that Iraq was protecting and aiding Qaeda operatives, but American intelligence and law enforcement officials said the evidence was fragmentary and inconclusive.

"It's more than just skepticism," said one official, describing the feelings of some analysts in the intelligence agencies. "I think there is also a sense of disappointment with the community's leadership that they are not standing up for them at a time when the intelligence is obviously being politicized."

Neither George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, nor the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, have publicly engaged in the debate about the evidence on Iraq in recent weeks, even as the Bush administration has intensified its efforts to build the case for a possible war.

The last time Mr. Tenet found himself at the center of the public debate over intelligence concerning Iraq was in October, when the Senate declassified a brief letter Mr. Tenet wrote describing some of the C.I.A.'s assessments about Iraq.

His letter stated that the C.I.A. believed that Iraq had, for the time being, probably decided not to conduct terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical or biological weapons against the United States, but the letter added that Mr. Hussein might resort to terrorism if he believed that an American-led attack was about to begin.

Alliances within the group of officials involved have strengthened the argument that Mr. Bush should take a firm view of the evidence. "Wolfowitz and Hadley are very compatible," said one administration official. "They have a very good working relationship."

There were some signs that Mr. Powell might not present the administration's most aggressive case against Iraq when he speaks to the United Nations, leaving such a final definitive statement to the president in some future address.

"You won't see Powell swing for the fences," the official said. "It will not be the end-all speech. The president will do that. The president has to lay it out in a more detailed way."

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Thursday that Mr. Powell would not assert a direct link between the Iraqi government and the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

In demonstrating that there are links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, Mr. Powell is expected to focus on intelligence about possible connections between Mr. Hussein, an Islamic militant group that may have produced poisons in a remote region of northern Iraq and a Qaeda terrorist leader, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. Much of the intelligence has been publicly known for months.

Some of the most recent intelligence related to Mr. Zarqawi centers on charges that he orchestrated the plot on Oct. 28 in Amman, Jordan, in which two Qaeda followers — under Mr. Zarqawi's direction — stalked and shot to death Laurence Foley, an American diplomat.

In December, the Jordanian authorities announced that the two men had confessed to killing Mr. Foley and that they had been directed by Mr. Zarqawi.

The connection to the Foley killing was important because the United States had evidence that Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, had spent time in Baghdad earlier in 2002. American officials describe Mr. Zarqawi as a major figure in Al Qaeda's leadership and say that after he was wounded in the fighting in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, he made his way to Iraq in the spring of 2002.

He was hospitalized in Baghdad for treatment of his wounds, and then disappeared in August, after Jordanian officials told the Iraqi government they knew he was there. There have been recent reports that he is in hiding in northern Iraq, but that has not yet been confirmed.

But despite Mr. Zarqawi's earlier presence in Baghdad, American officials have no evidence linking Iraqi officials to Mr. Foley's killing, or direct evidence that Mr. Zarqawi is working with the Iraqi government.

"All they know is that he was in the hospital there," one official said.

If he is in northern Iraq, American officials believe that Mr. Zarqawi may be with members of a militant group there called Ansar al-Islam. There is evidence that he has links to the group, and that he may have been working with it to develop poisons for use in terrorist attacks, possibly including a recent plot to poison the food supply of British troops.

But intelligence officials say there is disagreement among analysts about whether there are significant connections between Ansar al-Islam and the Baghdad government. Some administration officials, particularly at the Pentagon, have argued that Ansar al-Islam has close ties to the Iraqi government, but other intelligence officials say there is only fragmentary evidence of such a link.

Intelligence professionals have expressed fewer reservations about the administration's statements concerning Iraq's weapons programs. There is broad agreement within intelligence agencies that Iraq has continued its efforts to develop chemical, biological, and probably nuclear weapons, and that it is still trying to hide its weapons programs from United Nations inspectors.

Officials said the United States had obtained communications intercepts that show Iraqi officials coaching scientists in how to avoid providing valuable information about Iraq's weapons programs to inspectors. At the United Nations, Mr. Powell may also display American satellite photographs showing Iraqi officials moving equipment and materials out of buildings before they can be inspected by the United Nations.

Still, there have been disagreements over specific pieces of intelligence used publicly by the White House to make its case, including the significance of one report that Iraq had imported special aluminum tubes for use in its nuclear weapons program.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Mr. Armitage acknowledged that the administration had at times relied on inconclusive reports that had not served to strengthen Washington's case.

2/2/03 False Trails that Lead to the Al-Qaeda 'Links'

Since the aftermath of 11 September, it has been the Holy Grail of Bush administration hardliners: to link Iraq with al-Qaeda - and join up its war on terrorism with its policy of regime change in Baghdad.

Last week it was promised again, first by President George Bush in his State of the Union address and later by Tony Blair, who said he 'knew' of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. US Secretary of State Colin Powell says those links will be revealed this week. But with only weeks before the expected outbreak of war, sceptics are asking how real - and how new - the evidence of that link will be.

That Saddam Hussein has supported terrorism in the past, as claimed by Bush, is no revelation. It is well-documented and accepted at times even by Iraq. Iraq has played host to the Abu Nidal Organisation; it has publicly offered cash incentives to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and Saddam's intelligence agents were implicated in a plot to kill George Bush senior.

But the question that remains unresolved is whether there is any evidence that Saddam is in bed with al-Qaeda. The answer is likely to devolve to two lines of investigation - both of which, Bush administration officials will say, lead directly from Saddam to al-Qaeda.

The first connection, Powell is certain to allege, is a one-legged Jordanian wounded in the allied bombing of Afghanistan, who the Bush administration will argue is that missing link. He is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Stories about al-Zarqawi have been carefully fed to the media, suggesting his key role as the connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam. Most of them have been unsourced. And all have been dismissed by those who have followed the career of this veteran of the global jihad, who was fighting for Islam long before the world had heard of Osama bin Laden and whose al-Qaeda credentials have, in part, been created to fulfil the agendas of those who want him for other reasons.

So it is al-Zarqawi who is credited with being al-Qaeda's chemist-in-chief - an expert in weapons of mass destruction. It is al-Zarqawi, too, who is credited with being the mastermind behind a plot to use ricin to poison food at a British military base and other Allied military sites across Europe.

What is known about the career of this master terrorist? According to Jordanian intelligence, al-Zarqawi fled Afghanistan in late 2001, first to Iran, from where he was expelled, and then to Baghdad, where he received treatment for his wounds and had his leg amputated. It was while he was in Baghdad that the old campaigner's phone calls home were intercepted by the Jordanians and passed to colleagues in US.

Jordan's interest in al-Zarqawi is twofold. The country has named him as being behind the killing of US aid official Lawrence Foley, 60, in Jordan last October, on the basis of the confessions of two involved in the killing who say al-Zarqawi supplied them with weapons and money for attacks.

There is a second version of the al-Zarqawi story, supplied by German intelligence. Here his real name is Ahmed al-Kalaylah. They say he is al-Qaeda's combat commander, appointed to orchestrate attacks on Europe, and place him among the top 25 in the al-Qaeda hierarchy.

Each version could have elements of truth but both are are at odds with the facts known about his career in terrorism. According to jihadists who knew him in Afghanistan, al-Zarqawi's CV - though vicious - is less interesting than some make out.

They say that, despite fighting in the CIA-backed war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, he does not adhere to the ideology of al-Qaeda, a view shared by the CIA. Indeed, his name does not figure on its list of the 22 most wanted Islamic terrorists and he has never been mentioned in the list of senior al-Qaeda men in bin Laden's entourage in Afghanistan.

So why has al-Zarqawi suddenly been elevated to the position of a senior bin Laden lieutenant? The answer, say some, is that the Jordanians need a figure like al-Zarqawi to clamp down on their own Islamist extremists. One London-based Islamist said: 'If you want the key to the al-Zarqawi story, then look at the source of the information. The Jordanians have wanted their own bin Laden figure for some time and he fits the profile.'

'He's just an ordinary man,' said a former Arab mujahid who fought in the Afghan war against the Russians. 'He arrived in Afghanistan in 1990 and fought against Russia in Khosht in 1991.' He said that when the Taliban stormed to power, he chose to stay and in 1999 formed a close-knit group of Jordanians linked to the traditional Islamic-resistance group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

There, al-Zarqawi ran a guesthouse in Logo, a one-hour drive west of Kabul in an area ruled by the anti-Taliban warlord Gulbedin Hekmatyar. 'He lived with a group of 30-40 Jordanians of the Muslim Brotherhood,' said the source. 'There wasn't even a training camp.'

If the link to al-Zarqawi is at best circumstantial, the second connection that the Bush administration apparently plans to develop is equally tendentious. That connection is to the al-Ansar group, which, like al-Zarqawi, is also sheltering in Kurdish northern Iraq. The leader of this group, also expected to be name checked by Powell this week, is Mullah Krekar.

His group certainly is nasty, but what baffles many is that, despite the allegations about his group, he remains at large, living unmolested by the authorities in Norway.

Unlike al-Zarqawi, Krekar can speak for himself. 'I can say to you that this is not true that I am a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda,' Krekar, 47, said in an interview in yesterday's Los Angeles Times. 'I will wait until Wednesday, and if Powell says anything against me, I can use documents to prove it is not true. Everything: that we have chemical bombs, [ties to] Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, all of those things.'

Despite claims by US officials that he is a terrorist specifically linked to al-Qaeda, they also admit they do not have the evidence to charge him, despite two interviews with the FBI.

'I told the FBI, "I can come to America and prove it's not true in your court",' said Krekar, who studied Islamic theology with a founder of al-Qaeda and has praised bin Laden. 'I am not an enemy of America.'

Krekar also purports to puncture another alleged US link between his group and Saddam - via fellow al-Ansar leader, Abu Wael, who is accused of being an Iraqi intelligence liaison to the group. Krekar scoffs at the claim, alleging, to the contrary, that Iraqi agents tried to poison Wael in 1992 and would kill him if they could. Krekar adds what many in the intelligence community claim: 'Our aim has always been the toppling of the Iraqi Baath regime.'

Which leaves us with what? Veteran CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, who heads the National Security Project and maintains contacts with former colleagues, summarises what many in the intelligence community on both sides of the Atlantic believe.

'I've talked to my sources at the CIA,' he said last week, 'and all of them are saying the evidence [of a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam] is simply not there.'

What is the evidence that Iraq supports terrorism?

Iraq is one of half a dozen countries designated by the US as supporters of terrorism, although most groups are inactive. It hosts the Abu Nidal Organisation and other Palestinian splinter groups like the Palestine Liberation Front, but so too have neighbouring countries - and they are not about to be invaded. More recently Saddam has supported groups with agendas more closely identified with Iraq's regional relationships, including the Mujahideen e-Khalq group of dissidents fighting Iran. Saddam has also offered 'rewards' of up to $25,000 to families of 'martyrs' killed fighting the Israelis. But it is unclear if any money has been paid out.

Is it true that Iraq has supported terrorism against the US?

In 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) plotted to assassinate, with a car bomb, former US President George Bush and the Emir of Kuwait. Kuwaiti authorities thwarted the plot and arrested 16 suspects, led by two Iraqi nationals. During the Gulf war Saddam ordered some clumsy operations against US interests with little impact. Claims of an Iraqi intelligence link to Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, are now largely discounted.

What about al-Qaeda?

The evidence on al-Qaeda is very flimsy. Claims of a meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 suicide bombers, are shaky at best. So too is knowledge of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden's, who is said to have been in Baghdad for medical treatment. President George Bush has pointed to the existence of al-Ansar, a jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda in Kurdistan, which shares Saddam's agenda of fighting the Kurds. But it operates in territory not controlled by Iraq. Others point to the fact that Iraqis are held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - but so too are citizens of Britain, France, Russia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and many other nations. Despite comments by Tony Blair that he knows of 'links between Iraq and al-Qaeda' intelligence officers remain dubious.

2/5/03 Remarks to the United Nations Security Council 

Secretary Colin L. Powell - New York City

…My friends, the information I have presented to you about these terrible weapons and about Iraq's continued flaunting of its obligations under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a subject I now want to spend a little bit of time on, and that has to do with terrorism.

Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it's the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations that have no compunction about using such devices against innocent people around the world.

Iraq and terrorism go back decades. Baghdad trains Palestine Liberation Front members in small arms and explosives. Saddam uses the Arab Liberation Front to funnel money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in order to prolong the Intifadah. And it's no secret that Saddam's own intelligence service was involved in dozens of attacks or attempted assassinations in the 1990s.

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.

Zarqawi, Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties, and one of the specialties of this camp, is poisons.

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp.

The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch -- imagine a pinch of salt -- less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote. There is no cure. It is fatal.

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region.

After we swept al-Qaida from Afghanistan, some of those members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.

Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During his stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al-Qaida affiliates based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.

Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year, an al-Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was "good," that Baghdad could be transited quickly.

We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, include the poison cell plotters. And they are involved in moving more than money and materiel. Last year, two suspected al-Qaida operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide.

From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond. We in the United States, all of us, the State Department and the Agency for International Development, we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan, last October. A despicable act was committed that day, the assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of Jordan. The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder. After the attack, an associate of the assassin left Jordan to go to Iraq to obtain weapons and explosives for further operations. Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier.

Now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.

As my colleagues around this table and as the citizens they represent in Europe know, Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia. According to detainees Abu Atiya, who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks.

Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested. The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe.

We know about this European network and we know about its links to Zarqawi because the detainees who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the network. Three of those he identified by name were arrested in France last December. In the apartments of the terrorists, authorities found circuits for explosive devices and a list of ingredients to make toxins.

The detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence again proved him right. When the British unearthed the cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the destruction of the cell.

We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.

We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades-long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and al-Qaida. Going back to the early and mid-1990s when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an al-Qaida source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that al-Qaida would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early al-Qaida ties were forged by secret high-level intelligence service contacts with al-Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with al-Qaida.

We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.

Saddam became more interested as he saw al-Qaida's appalling attacks. A detained al-Qaida member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist al-Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by al-Qaida's attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.

Iraqis continue to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al-Qaida members on document forgery.

From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the al-Qaida organization.

Some believe, some claim, these contacts do not amount to much. They say Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and al-Qaida's religious tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al-Qaida together, enough so al-Qaida could learn how to build more sophisticated bombs and learn how to forge documents, and enough so that al-Qaida could turn to Iraq for help in acquiring expertise on weapons of mass destruction.

And the record of Saddam Hussein's cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999 and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.

Al-Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaida. Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.

This senior al-Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of al-Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al-Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al-Qaida leader Muhammad Atif, did not believe that al-Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help.

Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq. The support that this detainee describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abdallah al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gasses. Abdallah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.

As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades. Saddam was a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a name, and this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is new. The nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.

With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies.

2/5/03 Weak Link

As part of Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council today, he said there was a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network" — the nexus being a small, little known terrorist group called Ansar al-Islam, which is now at the center of the U.S. case. Powell showed a satellite photograph of what he said was a chemical weapons training center in Northern Iraq, used by al Qaeda and protected by Ansar al-Islam.

"Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq," said Powell.

The group, whose name means "Supporters of Islam," rules a remote portion of the autonomous northern Kurdish territories in Iraq near the Iran border, which is not controlled by Saddam Hussein. In fact, their leaders say they seek to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his government.

In an interview with ABCNEWS, the man considered the leader of Ansar al-Islam, Majamuddin Fraraj Ahmad, who is also known as Mullah Krekar, denied all allegations that he is in any way linked to Iraq.

"They are our enemy," he said, adding that his group opposes Saddam Hussein because, unlike Osama bin Laden, Saddam is not a good Muslim.

"We believe that Saddam Hussein, him and his group and his ministers also outside of Islam zone," said Krekar.

Ansar al-Islam's 600 or so members impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law on the several thousand villagers under their control, much the way the Taliban did in Afghanistan. At least 40 of their members claim training in Taliban and al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.

Krekar fought with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, along with other Ansar leaders named Abu Wa el and Abdullah Saifii, who fought in Chechnya with al Qaeda and have been harboring many members of al Qaeda in Iraq since the war in Afghanistan.

Krekar lives openly in Oslo, Norway — far from Iraq — where he sought asylum after he says Saddam tried to kill him. "[Saddam Hussein's secret police] tried to poison me … in June of 1990."

2/11/03 Prisoner casts doubt on Iraq tie to Al Qaeda 

HAMBURG, Germany -- A former Al Qaeda recruit told German authorities last year that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi(*), portrayed by the Bush administration as the critical link between Osama bin Laden's group and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was actually opposed to Al Qaeda.

In voluminous statements given to German federal police after his April arrest, Shadi Abdallah, a 26-year-old Jordanian who claims to have served briefly as a bin Laden bodyguard, maintained that Zarqawi was allied instead with Iraq's enemy, the fundamentalist Islamic government of Iran.

Abdallah, arrested after he was overheard by police discussing weapons and munitions in a phone call with Zarqawi, later painted a picture of Zarqawi that appears to be in stark contrast to the image unveiled last week by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

It is possible that Zarqawi, who Powell said visited Baghdad for medical treatment last spring, has forged new bonds with bin Laden and Iraq since Abdallah's arrest. But in some of his 22 separate police interrogation sessions spanning seven months last year, copies of which were obtained by the Chicago Tribune, Abdallah declared that Zarqawi, a one-legged Jordanian who is now at large, had "links with all [terrorist] groups with the exception of Al Qaeda."

"He is against Al Qaeda," Abdallah said.

Abdallah, who said he grew closer to Zarqawi after first being recruited into his terrorist training camp in Afghanistan three years ago, also detailed the objectives of Zarqawi's network to his German interrogators, directly contrasting them with the aims of Al Qaeda.

Even if Zarqawi's links to bin Laden and Iraq are recent, Abdallah's statements lay out a deeper history that appears to bolster the arguments of skeptics outside the U.S. government who say the Bush administration's case linking Al Qaeda and Iraq is weak.

In his speech last week, Powell told the UN Security Council that Zarqawi provides the crucial link between Iraq and bin Laden's network. The administration is using the argument to press its case for military action against Hussein's regime.

The alleged link between Hussein and Zarqawi substantiates a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder," Powell said.

Zarqawi's network is known to intelligence officials in the Middle East, Europe and the U.S. as Al-Tawhid.

In 1999 Zarqawi was linked by Jordanian and U.S. officials to an alleged plot to attack Israeli and American tourists in Jordan during the worldwide year 2000 celebration. More recently, Zarqawi's operatives were blamed for the assassination last October of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat gunned down in Amman, Jordan.

3/22/03 C.I.A Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports 

The recent disclosure that reports claiming Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger were based partly on forged documents has renewed complaints among analysts at the C.I.A. about the way intelligence related to Iraq has been handled, several intelligence officials said.

Analysts at the agency said they had felt pressured to make their intelligence reports on Iraq conform to Bush administration policies.

For months, a few C.I.A. analysts have privately expressed concerns to colleagues and Congressional officials that they have faced pressure in writing intelligence reports to emphasize links between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda.

As the White House contended that links between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda justified military action against Iraq, these analysts complained that reports on Iraq have attracted unusually intense scrutiny from senior policy makers within the Bush administration.

"A lot of analysts have been upset about the way the Iraq-Al Qaeda case has been handled," said one intelligence official familiar with the debate.

That debate was renewed after the disclosure two weeks ago by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the claim that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger was based partly on forged documents. The claim had been cited publicly by President Bush.

"The forgery heightened people's feelings that they were being embarrassed by the way Iraqi intelligence has been handled," said one government official who has talked with C.I.A. analysts about the issue.

The forged documents were not created by the C.I.A. or any other United States government agency, and C.I.A. officials were always suspicious of the documents, American intelligence officials said.

But the information still ended up being used in public by Mr. Bush. Intelligence officials said there was other information, which was deemed to be credible, that raised concerns about a possible uranium connection between Niger and Iraq.

Several analysts have told colleagues they have become so frustrated that they have considered leaving the agency, according to government officials who have talked with the analysts.

"Several people have told me how distraught they have been about what has been going on," said one government official who said he had talked with several C.I.A. analysts. None of the analysts are willing to talk directly to news organizations, the official said.

A senior official of the agency said no analysts had told C.I.A. management that they were resigning in protest over the handling of Iraqi intelligence. At the State Department, by contrast, three foreign service officers have resigned in protest over Mr. Bush's policies.

The official said some analysts had been frustrated that they had frequently been asked the same questions by officials from throughout the government about their intelligence reports concerning Iraq. Many of these questions concern sourcing, the official said.

The official added that the analysts had not been pressured to change the substance of their reports.

"As we have become an integral component informing the debate for policy makers, we have been asked a lot of questions," the senior C.I.A. official said. "I'm sure it does come across as a pressured environment for analysts. I think there is a sense of being overworked, a sense among analysts that they have already answered the same questions. But if you talk to analysts, they understand why people are asking, and why policy makers aren't accepting a report at face value."

Another intelligence official said, however, that many veteran analysts were comparing the current climate at the agency to that of the early 1980's, when some C.I.A. analysts complained that they were under pressure from the Reagan administration to take a harder line on intelligence reports relating to the Soviet Union.

The official said the pressure had prompted the agency's analysts to become more circumspect in expressing their analytical views in the intelligence reports they produced.

"On topics of very intense concern to the administration of the day, you become less of an analyst and more of a reports officer," the official said.

The distinction between an analyst and a reports officer is an important one within the C.I.A. A reports officer generally pulls together information in response to questions and specific requests for information. An intelligence analyst analyzes the information in finished reports.