csua.org/u/5ax -> www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr114.xml
He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy. There is nothing in the document that provides any clue to the identity of the targets, although Iraqi officials say it is a coded reference to the September 11 attacks. The second item contains a report of how Iraqi intelligence, helped by a small team from the al-Qaeda organisation, arranged for an unspecified shipment from Niger to reach Baghdad by way of Libya and Syria. Iraqi officials believe this is a reference to the controversial shipments of uranium ore Iraq acquired from Niger to aid Saddam in his efforts to develop an atom bomb, although there is no explicit reference in the document to this. Habbush writes that the successful completion of the shipment was the fruit of your excellent secret meeting with Bashir al-Asad the Syrian president on the Iraqi-Syrian border, and concludes: May God protect you and save you to all Arab nations. While it is almost impossible to ascertain whether or not the document is legitimate or a clever fake, Iraqi officials working for the interim government are convinced of its authenticity, even though they decline to reveal where and how they obtained it. It is not important how we found it, said a senior Iraqi security official. The important thing is that we did find it and the information it contains. A leading member of Iraqs governing council, who asked not to be named, said he was convinced of the documents authenticity. There are people who are working with us who used to work with Habbush who are convinced that it is his handwriting and signature. We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddams dealings with al-Qaeda, and this document shows the extent of the old regimes involvement with the international terrorist network. This is the second document published by this newspaper that appears to highlight Saddams links with al-Qaeda. Earlier this year the Telegraph published details of another Iraqi intelligence document that indicated Saddams regime was attempting to set up a meeting with Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, who was then based in Sudan. Intelligence experts point out that a memo such as that written by Habbush would of necessity be vague and short. Trained intelligence officers hate putting anything down in writing, said one former CIA officer. Certainly the memos detail concerning Mohammed Atta and Abu Nidal fits in with the known movements of the two terrorists in the summer of 2001. Abu Nidal, the renegade Palestinian terrorist responsible for a wave of outrages in the 1980s, such as the 1985 bomb attacks on Rome and Vienna airports, was based in Baghdad, under Saddams personal protection, for most of his career. Having briefly relocated to Libya, Abu Nidal returned to Baghdad at some point in early 2001. At the time it was assumed that Saddam had lured the Palestinian terrorist back to help the Iraqi leader plan a number of terrorist attacks aimed at destabilising American plans to remove him. In particular, Saddam wanted Abu Nidal to revive his network of sleeper cells in Europe and the Middle East to carry out a new wave of attacks. During 2001 Abu Nidal lived in a number of houses in the Baghdad area, including a spacious home in the al-Dora district where he is reported to have met Atta. The relationship between Abu Nidal and Saddam, however, quickly turned sour, mainly because - as the Telegraph reported at the time - the ageing Palestinian leader was reluctant to accede to Saddams request to train al-Qaeda fighters in sophisticated terrorist techniques. Abu Nidal was murdered in August 2001, although the Iraqis tried to claim that he had committed suicide. Habbush appeared at a hastily arranged press conference in Baghdad in an attempt to persuade the sceptical Arab media that Abu Nidal had taken his own life after Iraqi investigators had uncovered a plot to assassinate Saddam. Although Western intelligence agencies have attempted to trace Attas movements in the months preceding September 11, there remain several periods during which his precise whereabouts are unknown. Having moved to Florida from Hamburg in 2000, Atta is known to have made at least two trips from the US to Europe in 2001. In between, American investigators have concluded from a detailed examination of Attas credit cards and phone records, that he spent most of the spring and early summer of 2001 in Florida, interspersed by occasional domestic trips. The only confirmed sighting of Atta during this period, however, was on April 26 when he was pulled over for a traffic violation in Florida. This traffic offence, taken with other evidence collated by FBI agents, is one of the reasons that CIA officials have discounted the report that Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague earlier in the month the Czech authorities claim Atta was in Prague on April 8. Yesterday the New York Times reported that Ani, who was taken into US custody last July, had told American interrogators that he had not met Atta in Prague. The Prague meeting does not appear very convincing, said Lorenzo Vidino, a terrorism analyst at The Investigative Project, a non-profit organisation that investigates international terrorism, in Washington. But even if that meeting did not take place you have to remember that Atta used a large number of aliases when he travelled. It is not inconceivable that Atta slipped out of the US undetected sometime in the first half of 2001. The US Congressional report into the September 11 attacks states that Atta used 16 to 17 known aliases, although American intelligence experts concede that there may have been others. It is entirely conceivable, then, that Atta secretly made his way to Baghdad to undertake training with Abu Nidal a few months before the September 11 attacks. But as long as Saddam and his senior intelligence operatives remain at large, it is impossible to assess just how much they knew about, and were involved in, the planning and execution of the September 11 atrocities.
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