In October, 1993, however, New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh assailed the government's case as "seriously flawed," noting among other problems that seven bomb experts had told him that the devices were mass-produced and probably not even manufactured in Iraq.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who met with Saddam when he served as U.S. charge d'affaires in Baghdad during the Gulf War, said he found the plot "odd."

"[Saddam] had to have had some idea that his ability to run operations outside Iraq was not very good, because we had foiled so many things before the war. So you have to ask why someone who was a risk-taker but clearly not suicidal would undertake to assassinate a former president of the United States," pointed out Wilson.