The Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations were based on false claims by the United States federal government alleging that a secretive relationship existed between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003. US president George W. Bush used it as a main reason for invading Iraq in 2003.
The conspiracy theory dates to after the Gulf War in 1991, when Iraqi Intelligence Service officers met al-Qaeda members in 1992. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the conspiracy theory gained worldwide attention. The consensus of intelligence experts, backed up by reports from the 9/11 Commission, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and declassified United States Department of Defense reports, was that these contacts never led to a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Critics of Bush have said that he was intentionally building a case for war with Iraq with no regard for factual evidence.
Background
During the lead-up to the Iraq War, questions were raised about a possible connection between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda and whether the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda had a cooperative relationship.
Although some contacts between agents of Saddam's government and members of al-Qaeda have been alleged, the consensus of experts and analysts is that those contacts never led to a formal relationship. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that there was only one encounter between representatives of the Baathist regime and representatives of al-Qaeda. This meeting took place in Sudan in 1995, and the Iraqi representative (who is in custody and has been cooperating with investigators) said that after the meeting he "received word from his IIS chain-of-command that he should not see bin Laden again." The panel found evidence of only two other instances in which there was any communication between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda members. On the other two occasions, the Committee concluded, Saddam rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qaeda operative. The intelligence community has not found other evidence of meetings between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
On the more specific question of whether Saddam was behind the September 11 attacks, the consensus is that there is no credible evidence of his government's involvement. The US intelligence community (CIA, NSA, and DIA) view, confirmed by the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission Report and the Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence, is that there was no cooperative effort between the two and Saddam did not support the 9/11 attacks; it was considered that the difference in ideology between Saddam and al-Qaeda made cooperation in any terrorist attacks unlikely. The Senate report discussed the possibility of Saddam offering al-Qaeda training and safe haven, but confirmed the CIA's conclusion that there was no evidence of operational cooperation between the two.Even the alleged training and safe haven involved secular Baathists not associated with al-Qaeda. By March 20, 2006, President George W. Bush made clear that his administration did not have evidence to prove that Saddam played a role in the attacks."Bush Falsely Claims He Never Linked Hussein To September 11", Think Progress.
History of claims
After the September 11 attacks
The Bush administration sought to link the Iraqi president to Islamist radicals early in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. President Bush allegedly made the case to Tony Blair as early as September 14, 2001, although Blair urged him not to pursue the claim."," Agence France Presse (30 November 2009)."The Bush Doctrine and the Anglo-American Special Relationship - by Lamont Colucci," "Routledge - Taylor & Francis" (2009).
Dick Cheney's allegations
Vice President Dick Cheney said during a Meet the Press appearance on December 9, 2001, that Iraq was harboring Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Cheney repeated the claim in another appearance on September 14, 2003:We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaida sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaida organization. We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in '93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of '93. And we've learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven."Transcript for Sept. 14 - Meet the Press", NBC News. Cheney said in a January 2004 interview with National Public Radio there was "overwhelming evidence" of a relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda based on purported evidence, including Iraq's alleged harboring of Yasin.
In the 2001 and 2003 Meet the Press interviews, Cheney also reported that Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague five months before the attacks; in the 2003 interview, he said that "we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know." In 2006, Cheney acknowledged that the notion "that the meeting ever took place" had been "pretty well knocked down now."
Intelligence community claims and doubts
In the initial stages of the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency under George Tenet was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghan war. When Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with President Bush that there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq, however, Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the CIA and Tenet. Believing that a state was involved, they questioned whether the CIA were competent enough to produce accurate information as the agency underestimated threats and failed to accurately predict events such as the Iranian Revolution, the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. They instead preferred outside analysis, of which intelligence and analysis was supplied by the Iraqi National Congress headed by Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, as well as unvetted pieces of intelligence. The questionable intelligence acquired by this secret program was then "stovepiped" to the vice president and presented to the public. Cheney's office would sometimes leak the intelligence to reporters, where it would be reported by outlets such as The New York Times. Cheney would subsequently appear on the Sunday political television talk shows to discuss the intelligence, citing the Times to give it credence."Frontline: The Dark Side," PBS, aired June 20, 2006
The prewar CIA testimony was that there was evidence of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade, with Iraq providing al-Qaeda training (combat, bomb-making, and CBRN:chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear), but they had no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any other al-Qaeda strike."Training of al-Qaida by Iraq", Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq, Select Committee on Intelligence, GlobalSecurity.org."C.I.A. Letter to Senate on Baghdad's Intentions ", The New York Times, 10-09-2002. The CIA's report on Iraq's ties to terrorism noted in September 2002 that the CIA did not have "credible intelligence reporting" of operational collaboration between Iraq and al-Qaeda. According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the CIA reported that "al-Qaida, including Bin Ladin personally, and Saddam were leery of close cooperation," but the "mutual antipathy of the two would not prevent tactical, limited cooperation." (p. 338) The current expert consensus is that although members of Saddam's intelligence service may have met with al-Qaeda terrorists over the last decade or so, there was no evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda were linked operationally. It is now known that the main source for the CIA's claim that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making, poisons and gases included the now-recanted claims of captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The CIA has since recalled and reissued its intelligence reporting about al-Libi's recanted claims. The DIA communicated to President Bush in February 2002 its stance that al-Libi "was intentionally misleading his debriefers."
9/11 Commission conclusions
In its report, the 9/11 Commission said that Osama bin Laden sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan and sought to attract them to his Islamic army. Those forces primarily operated in areas not under Saddam's control. To protect his ties with Iraq, Sudanese Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi brokered an agreement with bin Laden to stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Laden seemed to honor this agreement for a time, although he continued to aid Islamic extremists in Kurdistan. During the late 1990s, these extremist groups were defeated by Kurdish forces. In 2001, the extremist groups (with help from Bin Laden) re-formed as Ansar al-Islam. Indications exist that by then, the Iraqi regime tolerated (and may have helped) Ansar al-Islam against their common Kurdish enemy.
The commission concluded that "to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship," however, and did not find proof "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."9/11 panel sees no link between Iraq, al-Qaida MSNBC June 16, 2004.Milbank, Dana. "9/11 Panel's Findings Vault Bush Credibility To Campaign Forefront", The Washington Post, 06-20-2004. This conclusion is consistent with the findings of investigations of specific aspects of the Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda relationship, including those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and National Security Council. The Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence also reviewed the intelligence community's conclusions,Senate Report on Prewar Intelligence of Iraq (broken link) and found them justifiable.The committee also found gaps in the intelligence-gathering methods used (see #2004 Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq), but did not suggest that these gaps altered the conclusions those agencies reached.
Operation Iraqi Freedom documents
The U.S. government released "Operation Iraqi Freedom documents", about which the Pentagon said that it had made "no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy.""Declassified notes offer glimpse into al-Qaida", NBC News, 03-17-2006. Claims have been made that information in some of the documents suggests that Saddam and al-Qaeda may have been willing to work together. 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey looked at some of the documents and "was careful to say that new documents translated last night by ABC News did not prove Saddam Hussein played a role in any way in plotting the attacks of September 11, 2001." However, Kerrey said that one document suggests that "Saddam was a significant enemy of the United States."Lake, Eil. "Saddam, Al Qaeda Did Collaborate, Documents Show ", 03-24-2006.