Laurie Mylroie
Encyclopedia
Laurie Mylroie is a U.S.
author
who has written several controversial and heavily criticized books on the subject of Iraq
and the War on Terror
. Notably, Mylroie contends that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein
sponsored the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
and many subsequent terrorist
attacks. She is one of a few commentators who has consistently held that Iraq was complicit and involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks
and subsequent anthrax postal attacks
. Her writings are viewed as having been influential among neoconservatives during the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq
.
in Political Science
from Harvard University
and was employed in the school's Government Department. She was an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and an Iraq consultant for Bill Clinton
during his 1992 campaign for President.
She was an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
. From 2006 to 2008, she published several articles in The American Spectator
.
In January 2009, the website TPMmuckraker discovered that Mylroie was the author of two 2007 reports about Iraq which were done for the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment
. This means that she had still been employed by the U.S. government after her theories had been widely discredited.
Isikoff and Corn write:
Isikoff and Corn argue that Mylroie "was looking to change the region through back-channel, private diplomacy -- and she aspired to be a behind-the-scenes peacemaker who would broker a deal between Saddam and Israel." To this end, she met with Iraqi officials including Tariq Aziz
. After Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, however, the would-be diplomat "turned against the dictator she had once wanted Washington to help, with the passion of one who felt personally betrayed."
In October 1990, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
gave a speech publicizing Mylroie's trips to Baghdad and Israel, which she later denied. Isikoff and Corn, however, interviewed five of her former associates (including Judith Miller
) who all "confirmed that she had been a secret go-between between Baghdad and Jerusalem."
Mylroie's book states that Abdul Rahman Yasin
, an Iraqi-American who mixed chemicals for the explosive, escaped to Iraq soon after the attacks. Ramzi Ahmad Yousef
, commander of the operation, travelled under an Iraqi passport, although he is not Iraqi. Just a few months before the WTC bombing, Yousef claimed he'd lost his passport and got a new Pakistani passport in the name of Abdul Basit. (Yousef had three passports when he was arrested.) Mylroie examined files related to Basit and his family at the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry and found that various documents are missing, including photos and passport photocopies. She concludes that they tampered with, presumably during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91.
There is a notation in Basit's file, dating from the occupation period. Mylroie argues that this implies the file was of special interest to the Iraqis. The fingerprint cards in Basit's file match those for Yousef. Mylroie contends that the cards were switched by the Iraqis. She concludes that "Abdul Basit and his family were in Kuwait when Iraq invaded in August 1990; that they probably died then; and that Iraqi intelligence then tampered with their files to create an alternative identity for Ramzi Yousef."
Chaim Kaufmann notes that "On several occasions in 2001-02, Wolfowitz pressured CIA and DIA analysts to validate a claim in a book by Laurie Mylroie that Hussein had been behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Both agencies had studied the book long before and considered it meritless."
In March 2008, the Pentagon released its study of some 600,000 documents captured in Iraq after the 2003 invasion (see 2008 Pentagon Report). The study "found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda," but it also found that Saddam's Iraq was supporting Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
(Islamic Group), which was behind the 1993 attacks.
The Pentagon study found that the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Yasin "was a prisoner, and not a guest, in Iraq." Among the documents released was a captured audio file of Saddam Hussein saying that he did not trust Yasin because his testimony was too "organized." Saddam speculated that the 1993 attack had been carried out by Israel or American intelligence, or perhaps a Saudi or Egyptian faction. Mylroie denied that this was proof of Saddam's non-involvement, claiming that "one common purpose of such meetings was to develop cover stories for whatever Iraq sought to conceal."
Mylroie, however, pointed to a British report stating the opposite: "Indeed, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper, latent fingerprints lifted from material Mr. [Basit] Karim left at Swansea bear 'no resemblance' to Yousef's prints. They are two different people."
The Guardian report cited this finding as evidence against Mylroie's theory:
But Mylroie noted: "that conclusion actually supports my argument: Yousef’s inked prints (from JFK immigration) did not match the latent prints on Karim’s project. They are two different people."
David Plotz points out that most of Mylroie's critics question not the claim that these were two different people, but rather her assumption that this proves Iraqi culpability in the attacks:
According to the 9/11 Commission
, Yousef was not a member of al-Qaida and there was no credible evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 bombing.
Laurie Mylroie's former ally Daniel Pipes
, of the Middle East Forum
, called her theory "a tour de force, but it's a tour de force of alchemy. It has a fundamentally wrong premise." According to Andrew C. McCarthy
, who had prosecuted Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman after the 1993 bombing, "Mylroie's theory was loopy... Leaving aside various other implausibilities in her surmise, the government had several sources who knew Basit as Basit both before and after the time he spent in Kuwait."
, a national security advisor to various presidents, described her book in a blurb on its cover as "splendid and wholly convincing." Herbert E. Meyer, former vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council, wrote that "Laurie Mylroie is right; Laurie is always right."
Angelo M. Codevilla, professor of international relations at Boston University and former Senate Staff member dealing with oversight of the intelligence services, described her book Bush vs. the Beltway as "the best available account of the reasoning behind the conduct of the war on terror," albeit too lenient on President Bush.
has referred to Mylroie as a "crackpot" and criticized her belief that "Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself." Bergen also noted that Mylroie's argument depends entirely on
Bergen claims that "an avalanche of evidence" refutes Mylroie's basic assumption.
Daniel Benjamin
, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
, points out that "Mylroie's work has been carefully investigated by the CIA and the FBI.... The most knowledgeable analysts and investigators at the CIA and at the FBI believe that their work conclusively disproves Mylroie's claims.... Nonetheless, she has remained a star in the neoconservative firmament."
Dr. Robert S. Leiken
of the Nixon Center
comments on the lack of evidence in her work: "Laurie has discovered Saddam’s hand in every major attack on US interests since the Persian Gulf War, including U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and even the federal building in Oklahoma City. These allegations have all been definitively refuted by the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other investigatory bodies...."
Michael Isikoff and David Corn noted that "An editor who worked on Saddam Hussein & the Crisis in the Gulf recalled that Mylroie often became obsessed with individual facts and exaggerated their importance: 'She was capable of great insight and of investing the smallest detail with the most disproportionate weight. She was not always capable of making a straightforward, linear argument. Left to her own devices, she would seize on reeds she would think were redwoods."
, who had prosecuted Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman after the 1993 bombing. Mylroie denied that Rahman had ordered the bombing of the World Trade Center and claimed that other elements of the plot had been organized by Sudan. She accused McCarthy of understating "the degree to which the extremists were penetrated by the intelligence agencies of several states."
Replying on National Review Online, McCarthy accused Mylroie of misunderstanding "the difference between intrigue and evidence, between history and prosecution." Calling Rahman "the central figure in the overarching conspiracy," he wrote: "At trial, we proved that Sheikh Abdel Rahman had close ties to Hassan al-Turabi
, leader in the early 1990s of Sudan’s de facto government, the National Islamic Front
." At this point her former ally Daniel Pipes
wrote a blog entry attacking "Laurie Mylroie's Shoddy, Loopy, Zany Theories." Stephen F. Hayes
of the Weekly Standard added: "no one I know took her arguments very seriously."
Mylroie responded to McCarthy, arguing that the case against Rahman was "weak" and "different acts of violence, including the WTC bombing, were somewhat artificially linked" to strengthen the charges against him. She emphasized McCarthy's comment that Rahman was never charged with the "substantive crime" of bombing the World Trade Center. The debate continued in the New York Sun.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
who has written several controversial and heavily criticized books on the subject of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and the War on Terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
. Notably, Mylroie contends that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
sponsored the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
1993 World Trade Center bombing
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, when a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 lb urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to knock the North Tower into the South Tower , bringing...
and many subsequent terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
attacks. She is one of a few commentators who has consistently held that Iraq was complicit and involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
and subsequent anthrax postal attacks
2001 anthrax attacks
The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, also known as Amerithrax from its Federal Bureau of Investigation case name, occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on Tuesday, September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to...
. Her writings are viewed as having been influential among neoconservatives during the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
.
Career
Mylroie earned a doctorateDoctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in Political Science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and was employed in the school's Government Department. She was an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and an Iraq consultant for Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
during his 1992 campaign for President.
She was an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
. From 2006 to 2008, she published several articles in The American Spectator
The American Spectator
The American Spectator is a conservative U.S. monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors...
.
In January 2009, the website TPMmuckraker discovered that Mylroie was the author of two 2007 reports about Iraq which were done for the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment
Office of Net Assessment
The United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment was created in 1973. The Director of Net Assessment is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense on net assessment matters...
. This means that she had still been employed by the U.S. government after her theories had been widely discredited.
Support for Saddam Hussein
In 1988, Laurie Mylroie published an article advocating "The Baghdad Alternative," which involved bolstering U.S. ties to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Ken Silverstein gives this summary:- Iraq’s good fortune, said Mylroie, was due to the wisdom of Saddam, who was implementing an economic "perestroika" and political "glasnost." Iraqi officials interviewed by Mylroie told her that Saddam was "much concerned about democracy... He thinks that is healthy," and she wagered this was "not just idle chatter." From an American perspective, Mylroie concluded, "the more Saddam Hussein exercises control over the Baath Party, including the ideologues, the better."
- ... She proposed that the Bush (Senior) Administration should offer Saddam extensive economic and military aid. “Iraq and the United States,” she wrote, "need each other."
Isikoff and Corn write:
- Mylroie continued to advocate engaging Saddam, even after the Iraqi dictator slaughtered tens of thousands of Kurds in what became known as the Anfal campaign of 1987 and 1988. That horrific attack caused the Reagan Administration to formally condemn Iraq for its use of chemical weapons in September 1988. In May 1989, Mylroie wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel and the United States should not 'poke' Iraq 'with a stick' and should refrain from tossing 'idle threats and harsh words' at Baghdad. She suggested Iraq might become a benign, if not positive, presence in the region.
Isikoff and Corn argue that Mylroie "was looking to change the region through back-channel, private diplomacy -- and she aspired to be a behind-the-scenes peacemaker who would broker a deal between Saddam and Israel." To this end, she met with Iraqi officials including Tariq Aziz
Tariq Aziz
Tariq Aziz and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq and a close advisor of former President Saddam Hussein. Their association began in the 1950s when both were activists for the then-banned Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party...
. After Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, however, the would-be diplomat "turned against the dictator she had once wanted Washington to help, with the passion of one who felt personally betrayed."
In October 1990, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is a former Egyptian politician and military commander. He served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011....
gave a speech publicizing Mylroie's trips to Baghdad and Israel, which she later denied. Isikoff and Corn, however, interviewed five of her former associates (including Judith Miller
Judith Miller (journalist)
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
) who all "confirmed that she had been a secret go-between between Baghdad and Jerusalem."
Iraq connection claims
Mylroie's claims concerning links between Iraq and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were published in her book Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America (2000). "The New York FBI office, however, strongly believed Iraq was behind the 1993 Trade Center attack," she wrote. "The Clinton White House did not want to hear that and FBI Headquarters accommodated." Her book is based on an examination of the trial documents related to the 1993 bombing. "Only Laurie Mylroie appears to have gone through it carefully," said former CIA Director James Woolsey.Mylroie's book states that Abdul Rahman Yasin
Abdul Rahman Yasin
Abdul Rahman Yasin helped make the bombs used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing attack. Yasin is of Iraqi heritage and grew up in Baghdad...
, an Iraqi-American who mixed chemicals for the explosive, escaped to Iraq soon after the attacks. Ramzi Ahmad Yousef
Ramzi Yousef
Ramzi Yousef was one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a co-conspirator in the Bojinka plot. In 1995, he was arrested at a guest house in Islamabad, by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and United States Diplomatic Security Service, then extradited to the...
, commander of the operation, travelled under an Iraqi passport, although he is not Iraqi. Just a few months before the WTC bombing, Yousef claimed he'd lost his passport and got a new Pakistani passport in the name of Abdul Basit. (Yousef had three passports when he was arrested.) Mylroie examined files related to Basit and his family at the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry and found that various documents are missing, including photos and passport photocopies. She concludes that they tampered with, presumably during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91.
There is a notation in Basit's file, dating from the occupation period. Mylroie argues that this implies the file was of special interest to the Iraqis. The fingerprint cards in Basit's file match those for Yousef. Mylroie contends that the cards were switched by the Iraqis. She concludes that "Abdul Basit and his family were in Kuwait when Iraq invaded in August 1990; that they probably died then; and that Iraqi intelligence then tampered with their files to create an alternative identity for Ramzi Yousef."
Chaim Kaufmann notes that "On several occasions in 2001-02, Wolfowitz pressured CIA and DIA analysts to validate a claim in a book by Laurie Mylroie that Hussein had been behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Both agencies had studied the book long before and considered it meritless."
In March 2008, the Pentagon released its study of some 600,000 documents captured in Iraq after the 2003 invasion (see 2008 Pentagon Report). The study "found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda," but it also found that Saddam's Iraq was supporting Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya is an Egyptian Islamist movement, and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union and Egyptian governments...
(Islamic Group), which was behind the 1993 attacks.
The Pentagon study found that the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Yasin "was a prisoner, and not a guest, in Iraq." Among the documents released was a captured audio file of Saddam Hussein saying that he did not trust Yasin because his testimony was too "organized." Saddam speculated that the 1993 attack had been carried out by Israel or American intelligence, or perhaps a Saudi or Egyptian faction. Mylroie denied that this was proof of Saddam's non-involvement, claiming that "one common purpose of such meetings was to develop cover stories for whatever Iraq sought to conceal."
Fingerprint controversy
After September 11, former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey was provided a government jet and FBI staff to investigate Mylroie's claim that Basit and Yousef were different people. Newsweek reported:- The idea behind the mission was to check fingerprints on file in Swansea, Wales, where Basit had once gone to school, and compare them to the fingerprints of the Ramzi Yousef in prison.
- ... Justice Department officials tell Newsweek that the results of the Woolsey mission were exactly what the FBI had predicted: that the fingerprints were in fact identical. After the match was made, FBI officials assumed at the time that it had put the Mylroie theory to rest.
Mylroie, however, pointed to a British report stating the opposite: "Indeed, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper, latent fingerprints lifted from material Mr. [Basit] Karim left at Swansea bear 'no resemblance' to Yousef's prints. They are two different people."
The Guardian report cited this finding as evidence against Mylroie's theory:
- Mr Woolsey returned empty-handed. "The two sets of fingerprints were entirely different," says a source familiar with the investigation.
But Mylroie noted: "that conclusion actually supports my argument: Yousef’s inked prints (from JFK immigration) did not match the latent prints on Karim’s project. They are two different people."
David Plotz points out that most of Mylroie's critics question not the claim that these were two different people, but rather her assumption that this proves Iraqi culpability in the attacks:
According to the 9/11 Commission
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
, Yousef was not a member of al-Qaida and there was no credible evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 bombing.
Laurie Mylroie's former ally Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
, of the Middle East Forum
Middle East Forum
The Middle East Forum is an American conservative think tank founded in 1990 by Daniel Pipes, who also serves as its director. MEF became a 5013 non-profit organization in 1994...
, called her theory "a tour de force, but it's a tour de force of alchemy. It has a fundamentally wrong premise." According to Andrew C. McCarthy
Andrew C. McCarthy
Andrew C. McCarthy III is a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he is most notable for leading the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others. The defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center...
, who had prosecuted Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman after the 1993 bombing, "Mylroie's theory was loopy... Leaving aside various other implausibilities in her surmise, the government had several sources who knew Basit as Basit both before and after the time he spent in Kuwait."
Support
Richard PerleRichard Perle
Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government, a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970’s...
, a national security advisor to various presidents, described her book in a blurb on its cover as "splendid and wholly convincing." Herbert E. Meyer, former vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council, wrote that "Laurie Mylroie is right; Laurie is always right."
Angelo M. Codevilla, professor of international relations at Boston University and former Senate Staff member dealing with oversight of the intelligence services, described her book Bush vs. the Beltway as "the best available account of the reasoning behind the conduct of the war on terror," albeit too lenient on President Bush.
Criticism
Mylroie has been criticized by many terrorism experts. CNN reporter Peter BergenPeter Bergen
Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist, author, and CNN's national security analyst. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time that bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western...
has referred to Mylroie as a "crackpot" and criticized her belief that "Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself." Bergen also noted that Mylroie's argument depends entirely on
- a deduction which she reached following an examination of Basit's passport records and her discovery that Yousef and Basit were four inches different in height. On this wafer-thin foundation she builds her case that Yousef must have therefore been an Iraqi agent given access to Basit's passport following the Iraq occupation. However, U.S. investigators say that 'Yousef' and Basit are in fact one and the same person, and that the man Mylroie describes as an Iraqi agent is in fact a Pakistani with ties to al Qaeda.
Bergen claims that "an avalanche of evidence" refutes Mylroie's basic assumption.
Daniel Benjamin
Daniel Benjamin
Ambassador-at-large Daniel Benjamin is the coordinator for counterterrorism at the United States Department of State appointed by Secretary Clinton.-Life:He was a 1983 Marshall Scholar at New College, Oxford where he studied for BA in PPE....
, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
Center for Strategic and International Studies
The Center for Strategic and International Studies is a bipartisan Washington, D.C., foreign policy think tank. The center was founded in 1962 by Admiral Arleigh Burke and Ambassador David Manker Abshire, originally as part of Georgetown University...
, points out that "Mylroie's work has been carefully investigated by the CIA and the FBI.... The most knowledgeable analysts and investigators at the CIA and at the FBI believe that their work conclusively disproves Mylroie's claims.... Nonetheless, she has remained a star in the neoconservative firmament."
Dr. Robert S. Leiken
Robert S. Leiken
Robert S. Leiken is an American intellectual, political scientist, and historian. He is the Director of the Immigration and National Security Program and the Mexico Program at the Center for the National Interest.-Early life:...
of the Nixon Center
Nixon Center
The Nixon Center was a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank. On March 9, 2011 it was renamed The Center for the National Interest....
comments on the lack of evidence in her work: "Laurie has discovered Saddam’s hand in every major attack on US interests since the Persian Gulf War, including U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and even the federal building in Oklahoma City. These allegations have all been definitively refuted by the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other investigatory bodies...."
Michael Isikoff and David Corn noted that "An editor who worked on Saddam Hussein & the Crisis in the Gulf recalled that Mylroie often became obsessed with individual facts and exaggerated their importance: 'She was capable of great insight and of investing the smallest detail with the most disproportionate weight. She was not always capable of making a straightforward, linear argument. Left to her own devices, she would seize on reeds she would think were redwoods."
Mylroie-McCarthy debate
In 2008, Laurie Mylroie reviewed Willful Blindness by Andrew C. McCarthyAndrew C. McCarthy
Andrew C. McCarthy III is a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he is most notable for leading the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others. The defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center...
, who had prosecuted Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman after the 1993 bombing. Mylroie denied that Rahman had ordered the bombing of the World Trade Center and claimed that other elements of the plot had been organized by Sudan. She accused McCarthy of understating "the degree to which the extremists were penetrated by the intelligence agencies of several states."
Replying on National Review Online, McCarthy accused Mylroie of misunderstanding "the difference between intrigue and evidence, between history and prosecution." Calling Rahman "the central figure in the overarching conspiracy," he wrote: "At trial, we proved that Sheikh Abdel Rahman had close ties to Hassan al-Turabi
Hassan al-Turabi
Dr. Hassan 'Abd Allah al-Turabi , commonly called Hassan al-Turabi , is a religious and Islamist political leader in Sudan, who may have been instrumental in institutionalizing sharia in the northern part of the...
, leader in the early 1990s of Sudan’s de facto government, the National Islamic Front
National Islamic Front
The National Islamic Front is the Islamist political organization founded and led by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi that has influenced the Sudanese government since 1979, and dominated it since 1989...
." At this point her former ally Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
wrote a blog entry attacking "Laurie Mylroie's Shoddy, Loopy, Zany Theories." Stephen F. Hayes
Stephen F. Hayes
Stephen F. Hayes is a columnist for The Weekly Standard, a prominent American conservative magazine. Hayes has been selected as the official biographer for Vice President Richard Cheney....
of the Weekly Standard added: "no one I know took her arguments very seriously."
Mylroie responded to McCarthy, arguing that the case against Rahman was "weak" and "different acts of violence, including the WTC bombing, were somewhat artificially linked" to strengthen the charges against him. She emphasized McCarthy's comment that Rahman was never charged with the "substantive crime" of bombing the World Trade Center. The debate continued in the New York Sun.
Books
- Saddam Hussein & the Crisis in the Gulf (with Judith MillerJudith Miller (journalist)Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
). Random House (1990). ISBN 0-09-989860-8
- Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America. The AEI Press (2000). ISBN 0-8447-4127-2
- Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA & the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror. ReganBooks (2003). ISBN 0-06-058012-7
External links
- Mylroie, Laurie, "LaurieMylroie.com", Laurie Mylroie's homepage
- Entry about "Laurie Mylroie" on SourcewatchSourceWatchSourceWatch is an internet wiki site that is a collaborative project of the liberal Center for Media and Democracy...
- Mylroie, Laurie, Mylroie's statement for the 9/11 Commission (July 2003).
- Mylroie, Laurie, "The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed", FrontPageMagazine.com, May 11, 2004.
- Laurie Mylroie: Is Iraq involved with U.S. terror attacks?
- Bergen, Peter, "Armchair Provocateur. Laurie Mylroie: The Neocons' favorite conspiracy theorist. By Peter Bergen", Washington Monthly (December 2003)
- Mylroie, Laurie, Iraq's role in terrorism, The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
(July 12, 2004) - Mylroie, Laurie, "February 26, 2001 debate at the Cato Institute", Debate with Ambassador Edward Peck, Former Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy in Iraq, Laurie Mylroie, and Ivan Eland of the Cato InstituteCato InstituteThe Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
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