THE FINAL REPORT from the 9/11 Commission is scheduled to be released this Thursday. It will be a dense thicket of chronology, narrative, analysis, and proposals for reform. But one issue is likely to be prominent in the news coverage. In fact, it already has been. "9/11 Report Is Said to Dismiss Iraq-Qaeda Alliance." That was the headline over a July 12 New York Times report.

We hope the Times is mistaken. It doesn't have a great track record on the issue, insisting (erroneously) that the commission's staff statement last month found "No Qaeda-Iraq Tie." The vague language of the staff statement lent itself to misreporting. Most problematic was its declaration that repeated contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

Almost immediately, the commission's co-chairmen qualified that finding. When the Times and others claimed that the staff statement "sharply contradicted" claims of a connection from the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney, Democratic co-chairman Lee Hamilton strongly objected:

I must say I have trouble understanding the flak over this. The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. What we have said is just what [Republican co-chairman Tom Kean] just said: We don't have any evidence of a cooperative or collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me that the sharp differences that the press has drawn, that the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me. [Emphasis added.]

That qualification--"with regard to the attacks on the United States"--is crucial. The Bush administration has never claimed Iraq was behind the attacks on September 11. In fact, when that question was put to President Bush by reporters from Newsweek six weeks before the Iraq war, his answer was direct: "I cannot make that claim."

What the Bush administration did say--and what so many reporters seem to have trouble understanding--is that Iraq and al Qaeda had a relationship that, by its very existence, posed a potential threat to the United States. (According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report released on July 9, the CIA counterterrorism center concurred: "Any indication of a relationship between these two hostile elements could carry great dangers to the United States.")

Was it a "collaborative relationship"? Former CIA director George Tenet testified on several occasions that intelligence from "sources of varying reliability" indicated that Iraq provided safe haven and training to al Qaeda. If he's right, that's collaboration. But it's not just George Tenet. An internal Iraqi intelligence document recovered in postwar Iraq referred to Iraq-al Qaeda ties as a "relationship." The New York Times first disclosed the existence of that document--authenticated by several U.S. government intelligence units--one week after the 9/11 Commission's staff statement. The document states that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement" and that when bin Laden was expelled from Sudan in 1996, Iraqi intelligence sought "other channels through which to handle the relationship."

Let us be clear: Neither we nor the Bush administration ever suggested that Saddam Hussein directed or had foreknowledge of the 9/11 plot. The CIA assessment that al Qaeda was capable of conducting those attacks without the active assistance of a state sponsor is quite persuasive. Still, there are two Iraq-related issues that deserve further explanation from the 9/11 Commission: hijacker Mohammed Atta's alleged meetings with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, and the al Qaeda-related activities of Iraqi Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.