SpyTalk

Mr. Stein,

Your site is always an interesting read. I do not know enough about the proposed operation to comment either way at this point. Mr. Faddis may very well be right that the DOD botched an opportunity to kill al Qaeda terrorists in northern Iraq. However, I noticed this in a reply from Mr. Faddis to Mr. Di Rita:

"The area in question was within the area in northern Iraq, which was outside of Saddam's control and had been for many years. In fact, technically, this Islamic mini-state existed within the no-fly zone enforced by U.S. aircraft. ... I continue to hear people talking about going after AQ inside Iraq, by which they mean inside the territory controlled by Saddam. There was no such AQ presence prior to the invasion. Saddam was a secular dictator. He regarded Islamic radicals as a grave threat to his regime. He would never tolerate the existence of such organizations on his soil. AQ came to Iraq (entered the area that had been controlled by Saddam) in the aftermath of our invasion."

This is wrong, as a matter of fact, and also exhibits the same sort of naiveté that has infected much of the discussion of Saddam's terrorist ties. Of course, there is nothing to suggest that Saddam was "behind 9/11" or anything of that sort. And the extent of Saddam's ties to al Qaeda is certainly debatable, as is whether or not those ties necessitated military action. However, Mr. Faddis' description of pre-war Iraq is betrayed by countless other sources. I won't rehearse all of the evidence here, but I'll give you some quick examples.

In his book, George Tenet, Faddis' boss, has been quite clear about the presence of senior al Qaeda terrorists such as Thirwat Shihata and Yussef Dardiri in Baghdad. Both of these terrorists were long-time operatives for Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda's number two. Tenet, citing the testimony of a senior al Qaeda detainee, described them as "Egyptian Islamic Jihad's best operational planners." No one, as far as I can tell, disputes that they were there. And they were not alone. Other al Qaeda terrorists operated out of Baghdad as well, including Abu Musab al Zarqawi. It strains credulity to believe that Saddam did not at least tacitly accept their presence and, in fact, that is the conclusion Tenet says he and his analysts within the CIA came to.

Mr. Faddis claims that the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq in which the al Qaeda terrorists were operating were "outside of Saddam's control." That is true, particularly as compared to Saddam's neo-Stalinist capital of Baghdad. However, Mr. Faddis must surely be aware that Saddam's intelligence agencies had a heavy footprint in these areas. And Mr. Tenet has explained that the intelligence the CIA collected prior to the war suggested not only that "more than a dozen al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists converged on Baghdad" in the summer of 2002, but they also "had found a comfortable and secure environment in which they moved people and supplies to support Zarqawi's operations in northeastern Iraq." So, the al Qaeda terrorists in northern Iraq did collaborate with their brethren in Baghdad. Incidentally, a number of al Qaeda terrorists and associates have confirmed this collaboration as well. And NBC's chief Middle East correspondent Richard Engel, who does not hold favorable opinions of the Iraq war, has confirmed in his books that he saw Islamic radicals who were probably al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad.

I could cite dozens of other facts and pieces of reporting in this vein. But, for the sake of brevity, I want to address the meme that Saddam was a secular dictator incapable of colluding with Islamic radicals.

Hassan al Turabi, the one-time ruler of Sudan, is as radical as they come. He gave safe haven to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda from 1991 to 1996 and sponsored al Qaeda's activities in a number of ways. In an article in the New York Times during the time he harbored al Qaeda he referred to Saddam Hussein as a "close friend." Hamas is a radical Sunni terrorist organization with the same ideological roots as al Qaeda, and they even share a common founding father (Sheikh Abdullah Azzam). Saddam openly sponsored Hamas, housed and trained Hamas terrorists on Iraqi soil and, according to Iraqi intelligence documents recovered in post-Saddam Iraq, even had a "quid pro quo" relationship with the group. Saddam sponsored the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist organization, from the late 1970's onward and many of that group's members went on to play key roles inside al Qaeda. Saddam also regularly hosted conferences for Islamic radicals from throughout the Middle East and Africa in Baghdad. Members of al Qaeda are known to have attended at least some of these conferences, which were organized by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's righthand man.

I could go on and on, but the idea that Saddam could never cooperate with Islamic radicals or work with them is patently false. Some within the CIA (but not Tenet and some of the CIA's counterterrorism analysts) have adopted that idea as a talking point, but it was never based in fact.

Authenticated Iraqi intelligence documents recovered in post-Saddam Iraq also demonstrate a host of other ties between Saddam and Islamic radicals, including al Qaeda. He did not control the organization, and he was not some mastermind behind al Qaeda's many endeavors. But he did ally with the group at times - and the notion that his regime would not do so because of ideological differences is not credible.

Cheers,

Tom Joscelyn