In the middle of a long and fascinating piece on his regrets about the Iraq War, former New Yorker writer, Jeffrey Goldberg, now with the Atlantic Monthly, discusses the new Institute for Defense Analyses report on Iraq and Terrorism. Unlike, virtually every other reporter, he appears to have actually it. "Before the war," he writes, "I believed that Saddam was a supporter of terrorist groups."
The report on Saddam's terrorist ties released last week by the Joint Forces Command confirms this (not that you would know it from the scant press coverage of the study). The study, citing captured Iraqi documents, indicates that Saddam's regime supported various jihadist groups, including Ayman al-Zawahiri's, and including Kurdish Islamist groups, about whom I have reported. But read the study for yourself; it's actually quite an achievement of translation and analysis.
Goldberg is not new to the subject. (It's telling that those of us who have written about Saddam Hussein's support for jihadist terror are encouraging people to read the actual report for themselves.) Before the war, he wrote two articles about Iraq and terrorism and the IDA study confirms several elements of his reporting. Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad.
The allegations include charges that Ansar al-Islam has received funds directly from al Qaeda; that the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam; that Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al Qaeda [bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri] in Baghdad in 1992; that a number of al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory [in Iraq] controlled by Ansar al-Islam; and that Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
In a Kurdish prison, Goldberg interviewed Qassem Hussein Mohammed, a 20-year veteran of Iraqi Intelligence, who claimed that he had been a bodyguard for Ayman al Zawahiri when the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad visited Saddam Hussein in 1992. Muhammad also said that he was sent to northern Iraq by Iraqi Intelligence to find a man named Abu Wa'el, a top official in both Saddam's intelligence services and Ansar al-Islam. "[Abu Wa'el] is an employee of the Mukhabarat," Muhammad told Goldberg. "He's the actual decision-maker in [Ansar al-Islam], but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat." Others reported on Abu Wa'el. A PBS investigative series hosted by Jamie Rubin, the State Department spokesman under Bill Clinton, reported extensively on Wa'el's activities with Ansar al Islam. Rubin said the charges were hard to "prove" but introduced the report this way:
Tonight, we examine the nature of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Ten years after the Gulf War and Saddam is still there and still continues to stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Now there are suggestions he is working with al Qaeda, which means the very terrorists who attacked the United States last September may now have access to chemical and biological weapons.
For more on Ansar al Islam's relationship with Iraqi Intelligence in this piece with Tom Joscelyn.