U.S. experts see Saddam as culprit
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SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, September 17, 2001
WASHINGTON Ñ The Bush administration appears to have ruled out Iraq,
but intelligence analysts say President Saddam Hussein is a key culprit as
the sponsor of the suicide attacks in New York and Washington.
The analysts said the intricate details of the plan as well as the of
training of the attackers point to the level of financing and coordination
that is beyond any one group. They said a government must have either
financed or sponsored the attack.
"It is entirely possible Ñ if not likely Ñ that both the Iraqi
government and elements within the Iranian government provided support for
the latest attack," said Michael Rubin of the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy.
R. James Woolsey, former CIA director, said the Iraqi connection must be
investigated. In an article in the New Republic, Woolsey said the architect
of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yusef, could have been an
Iraqi agent who took on an identify of somebody missing from the 1990 Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait.
"Saddam still considered himself at war with the United States in 1993,"
Woolsey said. "And, tragically, he may still today."
Several Israeli analysts agreed. "I don't know of operative contacts
between Iraq and Bin Laden," Tel Aviv University terrorism expert Ariel
Merari said. "But because that they both share a hatred of the United
States, we can't rule this out."
Other analysts said a key concern of the administration is that the
attackers had collaborators working in the U.S. government. This ranges from
agents within airports and airlines to the White House itself.
They said the hijackers appeared to know the whereabouts of Air Force
One, President George Bush's official plane. They said this could indicate
informants in such agencies as the FBI or CIA.
"More to the point, how did they get the code-word information and
transponder know-how that established their mala fides?" William Safire
wrote in the New York Times. "That knowledge of code words and presidential
whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the
terrorists may have a mole in the White House Ñ that, or informants in the
Secret Service, FBI, FAA or CIA. If so, the first thing our war on terror
needs is an Angleton-type counterspy."
So far, the FBI has detained 25 suspects believed connected to the
attacks. Officials said the FBI has a list of 100 people sought for
interrogation.
Over the weekend, a poll by Newsweek magazine reported that 62 percent
of those surveyed oppose a crackdown on Arabs and Arab-Americans. This
includes the imposition of restrictions that resembled those on
Japanese-Americans following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Administration officials said Bin Laden has become the focus of the U.S.
investigation into last week's attacks.
"There is no question he is what we call a prime suspect," Bush said.
"And if he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies,
he will be sorely mistaken."
A senior administration official said it was premature to point to a
culprit in the attacks. But he appeared to rule out any government
sponsorship.
"This is a different enemy," the official said. "It doesn't have a
capital. It doesn't have marching troops."
But in Tel Aviv, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Sunday that
Israel's military assesses that the United States would strike targets both
in Afghanistan and Iraq. For his part, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein called
on Bush to employ wisdom rather than force in any response to last week's
attacks.
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