ON SUNDAY, the New York Times and the Washington Post ran stories based on excerpts of a newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document provided by Senator Carl Levin, the number two Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The stories concerned the interrogation of Ibn Shaykh al Libi, a senior al Qaeda official who told U.S. officials that Iraq had trained al Qaeda in chemical and biological weapons. The DIA was skeptical of his story; the CIA less so. Al Libi recanted in January 2004. Levin released the excerpts to demonstrate his assertions that the Bush administration exaggerated prewar intelligence on Iraq and al Qaeda.
According to the Times, Levin made his declassification request of the DIA on October 18, 2005. The excerpts were declassified on October 26, 2005. The entire process, it seems, took eight days.
Why did the DIA work so quickly? I have been trying since late spring to obtain documents on Iraq and al Qaeda from the DIA. The documents are unclassified. My requests--including several Freedom of Information Act filings--have been denied. (I will be detailing these efforts in THE WEEKLY STANDARD later this week.)
In any case, it's good to know that at least on some requests, U.S. intelligence agencies can move with such alacrity. The Bush administration and congressional Republicans should learn from Levin. There are dozens of documents and reports that, if declassified, might provide context to Levin's tendentious claims that there was no relationship at all between Iraq and al Qaeda. Some of them are U.S. analyses of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship; others are documents from the former Iraqi regime. They should all be declassified. Here are ten:
(1) "Abdul Rahman Yasin, a fugitive from the [1993 World Trade Center attack], is of Iraqi descent and in 1993 he fled to Iraq with Iraqi assistance." So reads a passage from page 339 of the Phase I report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. My reporting indicates that Yasin returned to Iraq after mixing the chemicals for the first World Trade Center attack with the active assistance of the second secretary of the Iraqi Embassy in Jordan. According to documents recovered in postwar Iraq, Yasin probably received housing and financial support from the Iraqi regime. Vice President Dick Cheney put it this way on Meet the Press on September 14, 2003: "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." THE WEEKLY STANDARD made numerous requests to the FBI for copies of these documents. Each of these requests was denied. FBI officials refused even to discuss Yasin on background, despite the fact that he is on the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorist" list.
(2) A 1992 Iraqi Intelligence Service [IIS] document listed Osama bin Laden as an IIS asset who had good relations with the Iraqi intelligence section in Syria. A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency told 60 Minutes that the document was likely authentic, but not terribly meaningful, since the relationship with bin Laden was not spelled out on its pages.
(3) On June 25, 2004, the New York Times reported on an Iraqi Intelligence document unearthed in postwar Iraq. A team of Pentagon analysts concluded that the document "appears authentic." The Iraqi Intelligence memo reports that a Sudanese government official met with Uday Hussein and the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 1994 and reported that bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan. As a consequence, according to the Iraqi document, bin Laden was "approached by our side" after "presidential approval" for the liaison was given. The former head of Iraqi Intelligence Directorate 4 met with bin Laden on February 19, 1995. The document further states that bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative." But the absence of a formal relationship hardly precludes cooperation, as the document makes clear.
Bin Laden requested that Iraq's state-run television network broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda; the document indicates that the Iraqis agreed to do this. The al Qaeda leader also proposed "joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. There is no response provided in the documents. When bin Laden leaves Sudan for Afghanistan in May 1996, the Iraqis seek "other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location." The IIS memo directs that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."
