ON NOVEMBER 14, 60 Minutes aired a segment with Michael Scheuer, who made headlines after resigning from the CIA to pursue his second career as a critic of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Scheuer was the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit (codenamed "Alec") from 1996 to 1999. With the publication this past summer of his "anonymous" book Imperial Hubris, he became a media star, giving countless interviews as "one of the CIA's foremost authorities on Osama bin Laden." Out of government, he appears poised to become a regular pundit. His appearance on 60 Minutes was followed two days later by appearances on Chris Matthews's Hardball on MSNBC and Aaron Brown's NewsNight on CNN.
During his appearance on 60 Minutes (and his follow-up interviews), Scheuer warned that al Qaeda's detonating a weapon of mass destruction on American soil was "pretty close to being inevitable." When asked what type of weapon al Qaeda could detonate, Scheuer responded that it would be "a nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device . . . it's probably a near thing."
Such dire predictions call to mind warnings that both Presidents Clinton and Bush have made about the dangers of WMD in the hands of terrorists. Scheuer says also that within the first year of the "Alec" unit's existence, he learned that bin Laden and al Qaeda "were involved in an extraordinarily sophisticated and professional effort to acquire weapons
of mass destruction. In this case, nuclear material, so by the end of 1996, it was clear that this was an organization unlike any other one we had ever seen."
Did bin Laden receive any outside assistance in his effort to acquire a nuclear capability? Scheuer did not say. Nor did 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft or any of the other interviewers ask.
But Scheuer did consider this question two years ago, and his answer was yes, bin Laden did receive outside help--from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Does Scheuer agree with the case for the war in Iraq more than he is letting on?
Scheuer's 2002 book, Through Our Enemies' Eyes offered startling conclusions regarding Saddam Hussein's willingness to assist al Qaeda's effort to obtain nuclear weapons. "In pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, bin Laden has focused on the FSU [Former Soviet Union] states and has sought and received help from Iraq," wrote Scheuer. In fact, bin Laden's "first moves in this direction were made in cooperation with NIF [Sudan's National Islamic Front] leaders, Iraq's intelligence service, and Iraqi CBRN [chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear] scientists and technicians."
Through Our Enemies' Eyes pointed to evidence indicating a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda beginning in the early 1990s. And "there is information," Scheuer wrote, "showing that in the 1993-1994 period bin Laden began work with Sudan and Iraq to acquire a CBRN capability for al Qaeda."
These efforts were far-reaching, according to Scheuer, who cited open-source reporting and other evidence--mostly from the late 1990s--to support the claim that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on multiple projects. Areas of cooperation included everything from assistance in the development of chemical and biological weapons facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan, to the possible training of al Qaeda operatives at Mujahedeen Khalq training camps in Iraq starting in June 1998 (the "MEK" was an anti-Iranian terrorist group sponsored by Saddam), to the possibility that MEK operatives (under Saddam's direction) provided "technical and military training for the Taliban's forces" as well as "running the Taliban's anti-Iran propaganda."
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