Yesterday, I posted a summary of the first part of the IDA's Saddam and Terrorism report that the administration was originally going to release with a little fanfare, but then pulled the press plug and slipped it out quietly. You can find that summary here... I joked that I read the report, so you don't have to, but..
No, actually you should read this report. You can find it here... on the right-hand side(big pdf!)
I think you should read it because anything the current administration doesn't want you to easily access must be GOOD stuff. I mean, they canceled a press conference about the release of the report so as to avoid being asked questions about it. So read it-- get informed about what is in this report and perhaps more importantly, what is NOT in this report. Then ask questions... ask Congressmen what they think of the report...ask journalists to ask questions of administration officials...keep asking.
What follows is a summary of the second main part of the paper: State Relationships with Terrorist Groups.
MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS
+ Iraq was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism. One of the documents used for the report was a list of the organizations the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) cooperated with. The list was compiled For Saddam in 1993, and includes the Fatah-Revolutionary Council, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Afghani Islamic Party, and the Jam'iyat Ulama Pakinstan (Pakistan Scholars Group). The list also detailed the nature of the relationships with the various groups-- for example the relationship with the Islamic Ulama Group (Islamic Scholars Group) is described as:
It was established in 1948 and is very influential in large areas of Pakistan, especially in the northern districts. They rely on financial support from Iraq and Libya. The party is led by Ahmed Nu/mani. He has strong relations with our agency since 1981 and is ready to carry out any assignment we task him with.
(from p. 15)
NURTURING ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
+ Captured Iraqi documents indicate that Saddam was training Arab foreign nationals in Iraqi training camps prior to OPERATION DESERT STORM. One document is a list of foreign fighters who carried out operations during the 1991 war with the US.
+ Saddam's intelligence services were ordered to maintain contact with any revolutionary movement in Arab countries (p.17).
He sought to work with any group who would help further Iraq's interests.
+ Interestingly, many of these nationalist groups changed in the 1990's and "two movements, one pan-Arab and the other pan-Islamic were seeking and developing supporters from the same demographic pool." (p.17) There was an obvious overlap in the revolutionary groups that Saddam and Osama bin Laden wished to keep tabs on and work with, but the two movements were working toward fairly different purposes. Saddam was seeking to make Iraq the center of the Arab world, while bin Laden and other leaders of the Islamist movement viewed these groups as partners for in their Jihad.
+ Part of the IIS M8 Directorate of Liberation Movements 2002 annual report is a list of activities it calls "exemplary events." These activities included re-equipping and training Palestinian fighters at Iraqi camps, establishing fighter schools for Arab volunteers and later Iraqi volunteers, and "training groups from the occupied territories [Palestine] on light weapons and tanks in secret thirty-day courses."(p. 20)
+ This same report also identified handicaps the IIS felt were hindering their work. I found these to be quite interesting:
- not enough sedans were available to give one to each key officer
- foreign intelligence officers were not given permission to leave the country to study their areas of responsibility
- the lack of an internet connection within IIS caused them to miss many news events (but the establishment of ONE e-mail address for IIS was listed as significant accomplishment)
ONE e-mail address for the entire intelligence service...no internet connection at all?! I was kind of surprised by this, but I am not an intelligence officer.
OUTREACH PROGRAM
+ The Saddam regime tried to make common cause with Islamic radicals. These groups were viewed in terms of how they could further his mission.
+ A memorandum from late September 2001 reports on efforts to stir up religious movements against the Kuwait royal family. The goal was to infiltrate the organizations to revive their intelligence network in Kuwait.
+ Saddam's funding of the families of Palestinian suicide bombers is well-known, and in 2002, there were plans made to have each brigade of the al Quds Army build an Israeli settlement replica so fighters could train. (p. 22)
"QUID PRO QUO"
+ Palestinian terror groups (particularly Hamas) were willing to do whatever Saddam wanted in return for financial support. There is a description by a Palestinian representative of armed terror cells around the world hidden in refugee populations. These cells were in "France, Sweden, Denmark, and other places," and in this description given after the 9/11 attacks on the US, the representative indicates that that these cells could be used to force the United States to back out if it ever invaded Iraq." (p. 25)
+ In the 1990's, as mentioned above, the nature of these revolutionary groups changed. Loyalties and services offered became commodities, and Saddam, Osama bin Laden, and the Iranian leadership all were competitors for support. (pp. 17 & 25)
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Again, as in Part 1, it is clear that Saddam used whatever means he deemed necessary and were available to get to what he wanted. He was not a good man, and he definitely was "stirring the pot" in the Middle East. Yet, nothing indicates that he was any sort of imminent threat to us in the United States. In fact, it seems that much of his apparatus and support was a bit hodge-podge and individual groups were shifting their alliance elsewhere.
I hope this installment is helpful... I encourage you to download the full report. Even if you don't read it, it might be good resource material in the future-- written proof from our government that the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was based on faulty at best (or fake at worst) intelligence. And this is clear even with portions of the report redacted...