Operation Iraqi Freedom documents
Encyclopedia
Operation Iraqi Freedom documents are some 48,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that were discovered by the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq
. The documents date from the 1980s through the post-Saddam period. The U.S. government, at the urging of members of Congress, made them available online at its Foreign Military Studies Office
website, requesting Arabic translators around the world to help in the translation.
In early November 2006, the entire set of documents was removed. Media reports stated that the website was taken offline because of security concerns regarding the posting of sophisticated diagrams and other information regarding nuclear weapon
design prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The first set of documents were released to an online media outlet called Cybercast News Service
. A second set of documents was released to The Intelligence Summit, an international intelligence conference that resulted in an ABC story on some of the audiotapes of Saddam Hussein talking to his top officials. A spokeswoman for John Negroponte
, the Directorate of National Intelligence, noted that "Intelligence community analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq's weapons programs, nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey Group report."
Congressman Pete Hoekstra
, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described the rationale for the public disclosure of the documents as follows:
John Negroponte at first tried to delay the release of the documents, but softened his opposition to releasing after conversations with Rep. Hoekstra. President Bush directed Negroponte to release the documents and they were slowly being made available until they were taken offline in November 2006 due to security concerns (see below).
The website issued a warning that:
While the government has made an effort to keep known forgeries out of the set of documents posted to the web, a senior intelligence official observed that "the database included 'a fair amount of forgeries,' sold by Iraqi hustlers or concocted by Iraqis opposed to Mr. Hussein." A congressional inquiry covered many of the accuracy concerns on April 6, 2006 and while the multiple reviews aimed at keeping forgeries out do not rise to the level of a guarantee of authenticity, a good faith effort has apparently been made to clean out forgeries.
According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists
, the release of the documents "looks like an effort to discover a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq." The Pentagon cautioned that the government "has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." The Los Angeles Times notes that "the documents do not appear to offer any new evidence of illicit activity by Hussein, or hint at preparations for the insurgency that followed the invasion."
The Republican
-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in a report released in September 2006 that "The Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), which is leading the exploitation effort of documents (DocEx) uncovered in Iraq, told Committee staff that 120 million plus pages of documents that were recovered in Iraq have received an initial review for intelligence information. [...] DIA officials explicitly stated that they did not believe that the initial review process missed any documents of major significance regarding Iraq's links to terrorism. During an interview with Committee staff, the lead DIA analyst who follows the issue of possible connections between the Iraqi government and al-Qa'ida noted that the DIA 'continues to maintain that there was no partnership between the two organizations'".
. The Associated Press quoted Steven Aftergood
of the Federation of American Scientists
government secrecy project saying it's a "radical notion" that "members of the public could contribute to the intelligence analysis process. ... That is a bold innovation." The AP also quoted Glenn Reynolds
, the blogger at Instapundit.com: "The secret of the 21st century is attract a lot of smart people to focus on problems that you think are important." After the documents were taken offline, however, Representative Hoekstra blamed the Administration for following this advice: "Well, you know, we have a process in place. It looks like they screwed up."
John Prados, author of the book, "Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War" said "I would bet that the materials that they chose to post were the ones that were suggestive of a threat." Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive
, a non-governmental research institute, dismissed the documents: "The collection is good material for somebody who wants to do a biography of Saddam Hussein, but in terms of saying one thing or the other about weapons of mass destruction, it's not there."
Former CIA and State Department counterterrorism expert Larry C. Johnson
said, "It's like putting firearms in the hands of children. The problem is that the documents without context aren't going to tell you a lot." Johnson also noted that "it's also an indictment of the intelligence community. They don't have the resources ... they haven't got the time to go through this stuff."
Other experts have suggested that the problem is that bloggers will cherry pick information from the documents to solidify their own perspectives without putting the tidbits they find in an overall historical context. Former CIA terrorism specialist Michael Scheuer
pointed this out in an interview with the New York Times: "There's no quality control. You'll have guys out there with a smattering of Arabic drawing all kinds of crazy conclusions. Rush Limbaugh will cherry-pick from the right, and Al Franken will cherry-pick from the left."
According to history professor Fritz Umbach, the document archive has been seeded "with suggestive jihadist materials" unrelated to the war in Iraq, and cites specific examples. In a Salon.com
article, Umbach claims to have identified "approximately 40 files that are either completely unrelated to Iraq, or that are related only through jihadist elements of the insurgency that began after Saddam's fall." He also notes that the archive website was linked "to an entirely unrelated database of al-Qaida materials," the Harmony database, creating confusion over documents suggestive of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Umbach writes, "Whether intentional or not, the conflation and confusion of materials has been more than sufficient to convince bloggers on the political right that there were, as Bush officials insisted, operational links between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaida."
, the United States Joint Forces Command
commissioned a study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam's regime, referred to as the Iraqi Perspectives Project
. The study authors drew on many of the Iraqi Freedom documents, together with interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders, and summarized the study's key findings in a Foreign Affairs
article, and have also made their full report available.
The study's findings represent the analysis of many of the Iraqi Freedom documents and related interviews. In particular, the project concluded that: (1) Saddam's secretive and authoritarian government, together with his paranoia, rendered the Iraqi army grossly unprepared for conflict with coalition forces; (2) Saddam grossly miscalculated the ability of his contacts with the Russian, French, Chinese and other governments to prevent military action against Iraq, and (3) although Iraq almost certainly did not possess weapons of mass destruction, Saddam's desire to preserve ambiguity on the issue, together with his government's secrecy and previous attempts to deceive UN inspectors made it difficult for Iraq to convince the world that it had disarmed. For more information, see Iraqi Perspectives Project
.
The study also cites documents demonstrating that key evidence presented by Colin Powell
to the United Nations
in February 2003 had been severely misinterpreted by the U.S. government. Audiotapes played by Powell during his presentation, cited by Powell as evidence of Iraqi attempts to circumvent U.N. regulations on WMD, were reexamined in light of the new documents. According to the authors of the study:
, who was specifically concerned about sensitive documents about the pre-1991 Iraqi nuclear program, but the documents were not removed until the New York Times informed the government that it would be publishing an article about the sensitive material. The New York Times called the material a "nuclear primer" because it included about a dozen documents in Arabic that contained "charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs." The fear was that these documents would give Iraq's nuclear secrets to Iran
and thus aid the Iranian WMD program.
Some criticized the Times for publishing the article. But Joseph Cirincione
, director for nonproliferation at the Center for American Progress
, pointed out that the Times had not put the documents online: "The journalists are the heroes. They got the stuff pulled down. This is what we want our journalists to be doing, to exposing these kind of abuses of power. It's Chairman Hoekstra and Chairman Roberts who insisted, against all the evidence, against everything we know, against what David Kay has told us, what the Iraq survey group has told us, there was no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in Iraq. They were desperate to try and prove that case, somehow justify this extremely costly and catastrophic war. It's their zealotry that's caused the harm, not investigative journalism."
The Cryptome.org website has posted some of the removed Iraqi nuclear documents.http://cryptome.org/iraq-nuke-docs.htm
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...
. The documents date from the 1980s through the post-Saddam period. The U.S. government, at the urging of members of Congress, made them available online at its Foreign Military Studies Office
Foreign Military Studies Office
The Foreign Military Studies Office, or FMSO, is a research and analysis center for the United States Army that is part of the United States Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. It manages the Joint Reserve Intelligence Center there.-Mission:...
website, requesting Arabic translators around the world to help in the translation.
In early November 2006, the entire set of documents was removed. Media reports stated that the website was taken offline because of security concerns regarding the posting of sophisticated diagrams and other information regarding nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
design prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Origins
The Ba'athists were said to be "meticulous record-keepers." The documents were found in government offices in Iraq and Afghanistan. A debate ensued inside the government regarding whether these documents should be released to the public. Because the documents were not being made public through the normal channels, certain documents began to leak out through unconventional channels.The first set of documents were released to an online media outlet called Cybercast News Service
Cybercast News Service
The CNSNews.com , formerly called the Conservative News Service, is an American news website owned by the Media Research Center.-Background:...
. A second set of documents was released to The Intelligence Summit, an international intelligence conference that resulted in an ABC story on some of the audiotapes of Saddam Hussein talking to his top officials. A spokeswoman for John Negroponte
John Negroponte
John Dimitri Negroponte is an American diplomat. He is currently a research fellow and lecturer in international affairs at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs...
, the Directorate of National Intelligence, noted that "Intelligence community analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq's weapons programs, nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey Group report."
Congressman Pete Hoekstra
Pete Hoekstra
Peter "Pete" Hoekstra is a former Republican U.S. Representative for who served in the House from 1993 until 2011. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Michigan in 2010 and is expected to run for the United States Senate against Debbie Stabenow in 2012.-Early life and education:Born...
, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described the rationale for the public disclosure of the documents as follows:
- "We're hoping to unleash the power of the Internet, unleash the power of the blogosphere, to get through these documents and give us a better understanding of what was going on in Iraq before the war"
John Negroponte at first tried to delay the release of the documents, but softened his opposition to releasing after conversations with Rep. Hoekstra. President Bush directed Negroponte to release the documents and they were slowly being made available until they were taken offline in November 2006 due to security concerns (see below).
The website issued a warning that:
- the US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available.
While the government has made an effort to keep known forgeries out of the set of documents posted to the web, a senior intelligence official observed that "the database included 'a fair amount of forgeries,' sold by Iraqi hustlers or concocted by Iraqis opposed to Mr. Hussein." A congressional inquiry covered many of the accuracy concerns on April 6, 2006 and while the multiple reviews aimed at keeping forgeries out do not rise to the level of a guarantee of authenticity, a good faith effort has apparently been made to clean out forgeries.
According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists
Federation of American Scientists
The Federation of American Scientists is a nonpartisan, 501 organization intent on using science and scientific analysis to attempt make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1945 by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs...
, the release of the documents "looks like an effort to discover a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq." The Pentagon cautioned that the government "has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." The Los Angeles Times notes that "the documents do not appear to offer any new evidence of illicit activity by Hussein, or hint at preparations for the insurgency that followed the invasion."
The Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in a report released in September 2006 that "The Defense Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
(DIA), which is leading the exploitation effort of documents (DocEx) uncovered in Iraq, told Committee staff that 120 million plus pages of documents that were recovered in Iraq have received an initial review for intelligence information. [...] DIA officials explicitly stated that they did not believe that the initial review process missed any documents of major significance regarding Iraq's links to terrorism. During an interview with Committee staff, the lead DIA analyst who follows the issue of possible connections between the Iraqi government and al-Qa'ida noted that the DIA 'continues to maintain that there was no partnership between the two organizations'".
Analysis of the approach
Releasing the documents over the Internet to gain the help of translators around the world was an idea pushed by Congressman Pete HoekstraPete Hoekstra
Peter "Pete" Hoekstra is a former Republican U.S. Representative for who served in the House from 1993 until 2011. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Michigan in 2010 and is expected to run for the United States Senate against Debbie Stabenow in 2012.-Early life and education:Born...
. The Associated Press quoted Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood is a critic of U.S. government secrecy policy. He directs the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy and is the author of the Federation newsletter Secrecy News. In 1991, Aftergood exposed the highly classifed Timber Wind program, an unacknowledged...
of the Federation of American Scientists
Federation of American Scientists
The Federation of American Scientists is a nonpartisan, 501 organization intent on using science and scientific analysis to attempt make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1945 by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs...
government secrecy project saying it's a "radical notion" that "members of the public could contribute to the intelligence analysis process. ... That is a bold innovation." The AP also quoted Glenn Reynolds
Glenn Reynolds
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, and is best known for his weblog, Instapundit, one of the most widely read American political weblogs...
, the blogger at Instapundit.com: "The secret of the 21st century is attract a lot of smart people to focus on problems that you think are important." After the documents were taken offline, however, Representative Hoekstra blamed the Administration for following this advice: "Well, you know, we have a process in place. It looks like they screwed up."
John Prados, author of the book, "Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War" said "I would bet that the materials that they chose to post were the ones that were suggestive of a threat." Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, a non-governmental research institute, dismissed the documents: "The collection is good material for somebody who wants to do a biography of Saddam Hussein, but in terms of saying one thing or the other about weapons of mass destruction, it's not there."
Former CIA and State Department counterterrorism expert Larry C. Johnson
Larry C. Johnson
Larry C. Johnson is a former analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who moved subsequently in 1989 to the U.S. Department of State, where he served four years as the deputy director for transportation security, antiterrorism assistance training, and special operations in the State...
said, "It's like putting firearms in the hands of children. The problem is that the documents without context aren't going to tell you a lot." Johnson also noted that "it's also an indictment of the intelligence community. They don't have the resources ... they haven't got the time to go through this stuff."
Other experts have suggested that the problem is that bloggers will cherry pick information from the documents to solidify their own perspectives without putting the tidbits they find in an overall historical context. Former CIA terrorism specialist Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer
Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies...
pointed this out in an interview with the New York Times: "There's no quality control. You'll have guys out there with a smattering of Arabic drawing all kinds of crazy conclusions. Rush Limbaugh will cherry-pick from the right, and Al Franken will cherry-pick from the left."
According to history professor Fritz Umbach, the document archive has been seeded "with suggestive jihadist materials" unrelated to the war in Iraq, and cites specific examples. In a Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
article, Umbach claims to have identified "approximately 40 files that are either completely unrelated to Iraq, or that are related only through jihadist elements of the insurgency that began after Saddam's fall." He also notes that the archive website was linked "to an entirely unrelated database of al-Qaida materials," the Harmony database, creating confusion over documents suggestive of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Umbach writes, "Whether intentional or not, the conflation and confusion of materials has been more than sufficient to convince bloggers on the political right that there were, as Bush officials insisted, operational links between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaida."
Iraqi Perspectives Project
After the fall of BaghdadBaghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
, the United States Joint Forces Command
United States Joint Forces Command
United States Joint Forces Command was a former Unified Combatant Command of the United States Armed Forces. USJFCOM was a functional command that provided specific services to the military. The last commander was Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno...
commissioned a study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam's regime, referred to as the Iraqi Perspectives Project
Iraqi Perspectives Project
The Iraqi Perspectives Project is a research effort conducted by United States Joint Forces Command, focusing on Operation Iraqi Freedom.Its first major product was A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam's Senior Leadership, a comprehensive study of the inner workings of the government of...
. The study authors drew on many of the Iraqi Freedom documents, together with interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders, and summarized the study's key findings in a Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
article, and have also made their full report available.
The study's findings represent the analysis of many of the Iraqi Freedom documents and related interviews. In particular, the project concluded that: (1) Saddam's secretive and authoritarian government, together with his paranoia, rendered the Iraqi army grossly unprepared for conflict with coalition forces; (2) Saddam grossly miscalculated the ability of his contacts with the Russian, French, Chinese and other governments to prevent military action against Iraq, and (3) although Iraq almost certainly did not possess weapons of mass destruction, Saddam's desire to preserve ambiguity on the issue, together with his government's secrecy and previous attempts to deceive UN inspectors made it difficult for Iraq to convince the world that it had disarmed. For more information, see Iraqi Perspectives Project
Iraqi Perspectives Project
The Iraqi Perspectives Project is a research effort conducted by United States Joint Forces Command, focusing on Operation Iraqi Freedom.Its first major product was A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam's Senior Leadership, a comprehensive study of the inner workings of the government of...
.
The study also cites documents demonstrating that key evidence presented by Colin Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
in February 2003 had been severely misinterpreted by the U.S. government. Audiotapes played by Powell during his presentation, cited by Powell as evidence of Iraqi attempts to circumvent U.N. regulations on WMD, were reexamined in light of the new documents. According to the authors of the study:
- Ironically, it now appears that some of the actions resulting from Saddam's new policy of cooperation actually helped solidify the coalition's case for war. Over the years, Western intelligence services had obtained many internal Iraqi communications, among them a 1996 memorandum from the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service directing all subordinates to "insure that there is no equipment, materials, research, studies, or books related to manufacturing of the prohibited weapons (chemical, biological, nuclear, and missiles) in your site." And when UN inspectors went to these research and storage locations, they inevitably discovered lingering evidence of WMD-related programs. In 2002, therefore, when the United States intercepted a message between two Iraqi Republican Guard Corps commanders discussing the removal of the words "nerve agents" from "the wireless instructions," or learned of instructions to "search the area surrounding the headquarters camp and [the unit] for any chemical agents, make sure the area is free of chemical containers, and write a report on it," U.S. analysts viewed this information through the prism of a decade of prior deceit. They had no way of knowing that this time the information reflected the regime's attempt to ensure it was in compliance with UN resolutions. What was meant to prevent suspicion thus ended up heightening it.
Website closure
In November 2006, the documents were removed from the Internet by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The U.S. government had already received warnings about the site's content from the International Atomic Energy AgencyInternational Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957...
, who was specifically concerned about sensitive documents about the pre-1991 Iraqi nuclear program, but the documents were not removed until the New York Times informed the government that it would be publishing an article about the sensitive material. The New York Times called the material a "nuclear primer" because it included about a dozen documents in Arabic that contained "charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs." The fear was that these documents would give Iraq's nuclear secrets to Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and thus aid the Iranian WMD program.
Some criticized the Times for publishing the article. But Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008...
, director for nonproliferation at the Center for American Progress
Center for American Progress
The Center for American Progress is a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. Its website states that the organization is "dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action." It has its headquarters in Washington D.C.Its President and Chief...
, pointed out that the Times had not put the documents online: "The journalists are the heroes. They got the stuff pulled down. This is what we want our journalists to be doing, to exposing these kind of abuses of power. It's Chairman Hoekstra and Chairman Roberts who insisted, against all the evidence, against everything we know, against what David Kay has told us, what the Iraq survey group has told us, there was no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in Iraq. They were desperate to try and prove that case, somehow justify this extremely costly and catastrophic war. It's their zealotry that's caused the harm, not investigative journalism."
The Cryptome.org website has posted some of the removed Iraqi nuclear documents.http://cryptome.org/iraq-nuke-docs.htm
About select documents
Several news stories about some of the documents were published after their release.- Document BIAP 2003-000654 was translated by Joseph Shahda and generated an article in the Weekly Standard. The document is a memo from the commander of an Iraqi Air Force base requesting a list of "the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests."
- Document IZSP-2003-00001122, signed by a Ba'ath Party official, indicates that the Iraqis were worried about the Americans smuggling in and planting weapons of mass destruction (specifically, mobile weapons labsMobile weapons laboratoryMobile weapons laboratories are bioreactors and other processing equipment to manufacture and process biological weapons that can be moved from location to location either by train or vehicle.-Iraqi Mobile weapons laboratories:...
) in order to justify the invasion.
- Document ISGZ 2004-019920 is a letter from Iraqi Intelligence in 2002 warning agents to be on the lookout for Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-ZarqawiAbu Musab al-ZarqawiAbu Musab al-Zarqawi ; October 30, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh was a Jordanian militant Islamist who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan...
. The letter warns that Zarqawi and another individual are in Iraq and states that apprehending them is a "top priority." According to the Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
(16 March 2006), "Attached were three responses in which agents said there was no evidence al-Zarqawi or the other man were in Iraq." ABC notes that "The document does not support allegations that Iraq was colluding with al Qaeda."
- A series of "Sheen 27" documents show Saddam's regime was very involved in training fighters in the use of "improvised explosive devices" or IEDs. In a news report by Laurie MylroieLaurie MylroieLaurie 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...
, several documents are discussed that speak of "Arab Fedayeen" (i.e. non-Iraqis) and the use of "of the people" bombs. Mylroie asserts that one of the documents that was posted was then taken down. The authors of the Iraqi Perspectives Project discussed these documents both in the report and in a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives (6 April 2006), indicating that Saddam was training a secular pan-Arab army. They wrote in the Foreign Affairs article about the documents, "In the years preceding the coalition invasion, Iraq's leaders had become enamored of the belief that the spirit of the Fedayeen's 'Arab warriors' would allow them to overcome the Americans' advantages. In the end, however, the Fedayeen fighters proved totally unprepared for the kind of war they were asked to fight, and they died by the thousands." In the House hearing on this matter, defense analyst Lieutenant Colonel Kevin M. Woods noted that Saddam began recruiting foreign fighters into this army in the mid-1990s, and he described them as part of an "Arab liberation movement" that had been "part of Baath political philosophy going back to the beginnings of Saddam's regime."
- Other documents concern election laws in France, including correspondence from Iraqi intelligence "ordering the translation of important parts of a 1997 report about campaign financing laws in France." ABC claims that these documents suggest Saddam's "strong interest in the mechanics and legalities of financial contributions to French politicians."
- One Iraqi document purportedly details a meeting on February 19, 1995 in which a representative of Iraq met with Osama Bin Laden in Sudan, who suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. Just eight months later, al-Qaeda operatives killed five U.S. military advisors in Saudi Arabia. There has been no evidence or suggestion of Iraqi complicity in that attack or linkage to the February meeting. ABC News, who reported on this document, further notes that "The document does not establish that the two parties did in fact enter into an operational relationship." ABC also cautions that "this document is handwritten and has no official seal."
- Another document claims that Russia had a mole inside the U.S. military who gave the Russians information regarding U.S. troop movements, information that was then forwarded to the Iraqi military. The Russians deny the story and some of the information the Russians reportedly passed to the Iraqis was incorrect. According to ABC, "A Pentagon study released today concludes, however, that the information didn't do Saddam Hussein any good because he never acted it on though it proved to be accurate."
- Another document suggests that the Iraqi government planned to respond to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq with "camels of mass destruction" -- camels fitted with suicide bombs that would meet the invading army. In another document, Saddam's son QusayQusay HusseinQusay Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was the second son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He was appointed as his father's heir apparent in 2000.- Family :...
orders captured Kuwaitis to be used as "human shields" against the invaders.
- Document 2RAD-2004-601189-ELC, is given the synopsis: "Abu-ZubaydahAbu ZubaydahAbu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen, sentenced to death in Jordan and currently held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Not neutral: Arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, he has been in US custody for more than eight years, four-and-a-half of them spent incommunicado in solitary confinement...
Statement on the Capability of al-Qaidah to Manufacture and Deliver Nuclear Weapons to the U.S." Abu ZubaydahAbu ZubaydahAbu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen, sentenced to death in Jordan and currently held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Not neutral: Arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, he has been in US custody for more than eight years, four-and-a-half of them spent incommunicado in solitary confinement...
was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and is believed to be the highest ranking member of al-Qaeda to be held. There is no indication that this document links Abu Zubaydah to Iraq in any way. Professor Fritz Umbach notes, "the 'statement' itself is nothing more than an Arabic summary of a 2002 CBS News story on Zubaydah's claims. It has no identifiable link to Iraq, other than the odd fact that it appears on a U.S. government site billed as Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents."
- Many of the documents seem to make clear that Saddam's regime had given up on seeking a WMD capability by the mid-1990s. As AP reported, "Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon." At one 1996 presidential meeting, top weapons program official Amer Mohammed Rashid, describes his conversation with UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus: "We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the details." At another meeting Saddam told his deputies, "We cooperated with the resolutions 100 percent and you all know that, and the 5 percent they claim we have not executed could take them 10 years to (verify). Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD. We have nothing."
External links
- Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center
- U.S. House of Representatives. Committee on International Relations. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Hearing on "The Iraqi Documents: A Glimpse Into the Regime of Saddam Hussein." (April 6, 2006).
- Peter L. Bergen, "Enemy of Our Enemy," New York Times (March 28, 2006).
- Did Russian Ambassador Give Saddam the U.S. War Plan? ABC News, March 23, 2006
- Fritz Umbach, "Bush's bogus document dump," Salon (13 April 2006).