Is Saddam harboring global terrorist cell?
Powell alleges link
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post

Thursday, February 06, 2003 - and Susan Schmidt

Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the U.N. Security Council on
Wednesday with new intelligence alleging that Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein has been harboring the Baghdad cell of a global terrorist
network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Palestinian whom he
described as an "associate" of and "collaborator" with Osama bin Laden
and his al-Qaida organization.

The cell has been "operating freely in the (Iraqi) capital for more
than eight months," coordinating "movement of money and supplies,"
Powell said. He described it as being in "regular contact" with
Zarqawi's network, which Powell said has plotted acts of terrorism not
only in the Middle East but also in France, Britain, Spain, Italy,
Germany and Russia.

Powell also said the network run by Zarqawi, 36, is running a
terrorist training center in northeastern Iraq that specializes in
teaching poisons and explosives. He called the center "a nexus that
combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of
murder."

The Bush administration has repeatedly alleged that Iraq and al-Qaida
are linked, a connection that Iraqi officials have denied and many
experts on international terrorism have questioned. The evidence that
Powell presented of Iraq's links to al-Qaida appeared more substantial
than intelligence officials have previously suggested -- though Powell
did not say Hussein had any direct operational control or sponsorship
of Zarqawi's network or al-Qaida. He did describe Zarqawi's network as
"Iraqi-linked."

One counterterrorism official said Wednesday that officials from
across the intelligence community -- principally the FBI, CIA and
State Department -- recently gathered under the direction of the State
Department's director of policy planning, Richard Haass, and
coordinated all their information. "Up to now they had not fully
shared everything," he said.

"I believe Secretary Powell laid the case out well today, including
the al-Qaida connection," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., a longtime
former member and onetime chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said Wednesday. "I don't think we need to make any more of
a case against Saddam Hussein. We know his goals are similar to bin
Laden's. We know he's harbored a number of people who are high-level
operatives."

Shelby added that he has been given classified briefings on Iraq and
al-Qaida that clearly indicate that "there is some more there. If I
were Powell, I wouldn't give it all away," he said.

Powell traced the history of the relationship between al-Qaida and
Iraq back to the early 1990s, including meetings that were previously
known. "We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have
met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s,"
said Powell.

Although Saddam's secular government was once anathema to bin Laden's
militant Islamic movement, "ambition and hatred are enough to bring
Iraq and al-Qaida together," said Powell, who alleged that Saddam and
bin Laden agreed in the mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan,
that al-Qaida would cease support of activities against Baghdad. "In
1996, a foreign security service tells us that bin Laden met with a
senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met the
director of the Iraqi intelligence service," Powell said.

Powell said that after al-Qaida's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000,
Saddam "became more interested" in al Qaeda. A senior administration
official said that information came from detainees being questioned by
U.S. interrogators. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat
Roberts, R-Kansas, said: "The information shared today demonstrates
the degree of cooperation we are getting from a broad coalition of
countries. Secretary Powell's presentation also demonstrated the
enormous value of our intelligence-gathering capability."

However, Judy Yaphe, a former CIA analyst on Iraq and now a senior
research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies,
questioned the reliability of information provided by detainees. "You
never get a clear smoking gun," she said.

By offering details of the Zarqawi network's terrorist activities in
Europe, Powell sought to directly counter the antiwar sentiment
expressed by several European governments and bolstered by popular
opinion. For example, he said that 116 members of Zarqawi's network
have been arrested in France, Britain, Spain and Italy since last
year.