Finally, The Saddam Documents Are Going To Be Released

[Annie]

Should have been sooner, I do wonder though how long it will take to translate them:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/970xflib.asp

Finally
Though crucial details have yet to be resolved, the Bush administration has decided to release the documents.
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/13/2006 500 PM


The Bush administration has decided to release most of the documents captured in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq. The details of the document release are still being worked out, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Those details are critical. At issue are things like the timeframe for releasing the documents, the mechanism for scrubbing documents for sensitive information, and most important, the criteria for withholding documents from the public. But some of the captured files should be available to the public and journalists within weeks if not days.

President George W. Bush has made clear in recent weeks his displeasure with the delays in getting the information out to the American public. On February 16, one day after ABC News broadcast excerpts of recordings featuring Saddam Hussein and his war cabinet, Bush met with congressional Republicans and several senior national security officials and said three times that the documents should be released. "This stuff ought to be out," he told National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. "Put this stuff out." It seems Bush will soon get his wish.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who has been steadfast in his resolve to see these documents released, said today that "this is a bold decision in favor of openness that will go a long way towards improving our understanding of prewar Iraq . . . By placing these documents online and allowing the public the opportunity to review them, we can cut years off the time it will take to gain knowledge from this potential treasure trove of information."

Hadley and John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), informed House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra on Saturday. The three men all attended the white-tie Gridiron Club dinner, a mainstay of the Washington establishment in which journalists and politicians poke fun at one another and themselves in a series of songs and skits.

For months, Negroponte has fought any large-scale release of captured documents, arguing alternately that the documents were only of historical interest and that they contained too much sensitive, "actionable" intelligence to be released publicly. Late last week, after Hoekstra appeared on "Fox & Friends" to renew his call for the release of the documents, Negroponte began to soften his opposition. The two men spoke Wednesday morning, and the DNI told Hoekstra he was open to releasing some of the documents labeled "no intelligence value" as a way to begin the release process. Hoekstra took the offer as a good first step, but in a letter to Negroponte that same day insisted that documents relevant to the war be included in any release. The House Intelligence chairman spoke with White House officials, including Negroponte and Hadley, throughout the day Thursday and Friday, with the hope of securing a deal that would permit the documents to be made public. He left for the weekend without any assurances.

On Saturday night, according to Hoekstra, Negroponte left the head table to deliver the news. "We're going to do it," the DNI told Hoekstra. Hadley told Hoekstra the same thing in a separate conversation.

"This is very, very helpful," said Hoekstra on Sunday. He said that Negroponte proposed first releasing documents labeled by the intelligence community as "NIVs," those documents thought to have "no intelligence value." Hoekstra says that he made clear that he wants to release all the documents, particularly those concerning weapons of mass destruction, links to terrorism, and Saddam's violence against his own people. And he wants those documents released soon.

"I love John Negroponte most of the time, but he's still a bureaucrat," says Hoekstra. "What's fast to him may not be fast to you and me."

Among the items Hoekstra wants released quickly are 68 Iraqi documents that his office requested last fall and recently obtained. Hoekstra says there is "no silver bullet, no smoking gun" in those documents, but that their contents are nonetheless very interesting.

"Saddam Hussein and his henchmen systematically destroyed much of the good stuff," says Hoekstra. "We want to see what he missed." Indeed, in one memo found in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), the director of Iraqi Intelligence commands recipients to burn their offices. Paul Bremer, in his book My Year in Iraq, describes reading a similar memo. He writes: "Operatives were to engage in sabotage and looting."

Michael Tanji worked for four years on media exploitation for the DIA, rising to division chief. He believes that with proper resources devoted to digital media exploitation, even some of the information the Iraqis intended to destroy can be recovered.

"It is the release of captured digital media, more than paper documents, that will likely provide the most comprehensive view on what was going on in Iraq; the state of any WMD programs as well as the true nature of what was on the mind of Saddam's trusted class," says Tanji.

"Even if an order had come down to delete any sensitive data, only the most security conscious bother to go through the time and trouble of erasing digital data in a fashion that would defeat forensic recovery. With the U.S. Army rapidly approaching, the probability that scientists and officers took the appropriate steps to destroy incriminating data drops precipitously. That U.S. military and intelligence forces were able to obtain so much digital media from Iraqi citizens or the few government facilities that were not looted further supports this theory."

Tanji adds: "Interviews and interrogations of former regime leaders can produce meaningful results, but even under the best circumstances, long after the fact, human memory is fallible. A more accurate depiction of pre-war Iraq was put down on paper and in computer files at the time."

No one can say with any certainty what will come from the document release. Intelligence officials with knowledge of the exploitation process estimate that less than 4 percent of the overall document collection has been fully exploited. It's reasonable to assume that documents in the collection will provide support to both supporters of the war in Iraq and critics. Summaries of the exploited materials, listed in a U.S. government database known as HARMONY, suggest that the new material will at least complicate the overly simplified conventional wisdom that the former Iraqi regime posed no real threat.

 

[Annie]

Why the release is important, for more than 'historical reasons':

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/971dyipm.asp?pg=2

An Army of Analysts
Collective analysis of captured Iraqi documents may produce much more than just answers about pre-war Iraq.
by Michael Tanji
03/14/2006 8:59:00 AM


It is perhaps coincidental, but certainly apropos, that at the start of "Sunshine Week"--an annual promotion of openness and transparency in government--we receive word from Director of National Intelligence Negroponte that documents captured in Iraq will be released to the public for review and analysis. As someone who spent the last several years exploiting captured media for the U.S. government, I am keenly aware of the staggering scope and scale of the current effort. To be frank: Uncle Sam needs all the help he can get.

The significance of what can be uncovered by an external and independent analysis of captured media was recently illustrated by the Combating Terrorism Center at the Military Academy at West Point. The Center's 100-plus page analysis of just 28 declassified Iraqi documents provided some unique insights into the terrorism problem. That's 28 documents out of at least two million.

Recently, the New York Times reported on the publication of a report on the state of Iraq prior to and immediately after the start of Iraqi Freedom. This effort was a fusion of 600 captured documents, interviews, and interrogations of former regime members. It is not known if those interviewed were presented with copies of their own work written at the time Saddam was still in power, though given the state of Iraq immediately after shock and awe it is unlikely. As I have written previously, there is really only one way to re-create the information systems used by the senior leadership in Iraq prior to the war. A more comprehensive analysis of pre-war Iraq would include such an effort because even under the friendliest of circumstances (interviewees were reportedly "wined and dined"), for some there will always be cause to be taciturn.

Both of the aforementioned efforts received a certain amount of intelligence community support, which meant the imposition of a pre-publication review requirement. Releasing documents to the public precludes the imposition of such a restriction, so in the interest of preventing an adversary from aggregating intelligence (piecing together an essentially classified picture by assembling unclassified and seemingly innocuous data points) some form of pre-release review is probably prudent. This may add some time to the starting point of any collective analysis, but it also means that the speed at which analytical findings are released are limited only by the effort put forth by the assembled analysts.

From a traditional intelligence perspective, a group analysis effort is something of a new concept. Intelligence "Community" projects are occasionally called for, but these are more collegial bouts over the odd debatable point--most analysts agree on 80 percent of any given issue area--than thorough and original examination of a given problem by any interested parties. Collective projects like the one analyzing documents on Guantanamo Bay detainees have produced encouraging preliminary results. Whether you call it a blog-swarm, the "wisdom of the crowds," or an "Army of Davids," the general concept is the same: the more determined individuals that are set on a problem, the better the result.

A successful collaborative analysis of Iraqi documents has implications that go beyond just this problem set. Such an endeavor will not go unnoticed by the reform-minded in the intelligence community. In fact, it could very well help accelerate currently nascent efforts at blogging and collective analysis that are creeping along in the intelligence community, which is ostensibly the information-based enterprise. The adoption of such tactics could help overcome problems like group-think (Saddam would never support terrorists, Sunnis and Shiites would never work together) and highlight previously unseen or under-appreciated gaps in our knowledge (WMDs in Iraq are a slam-dunk).

The results of any collective analysis of captured Iraqi documents may not provide proof positive of any particular pre-war assumption, but the knowledge gained in the trying could help ensure that future intelligence efforts against high value and hard targets are not post mortem affairs.

Michael Tanji is a former senior intelligence officer and an associate of the Terrorism Research Center. He opines on intelligence and security issues at blog.groupintel.com.

 

[Stephanie]

Boy oh boy, I can't wait for this.. I wish I had a picture of a CROW on a plate with a few choice Dems sitting in front of it. :clap1:

 

[Annie]

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013438.php

A couple links

March 16, 2006
In Saddam's Archives

As Scott noted below, the government has finally begun making available a few of the many thousands of documents captured from Iraqi intelligence during and after the 2003 war. Only a handful are now available on the Foreign Military Studies Office web site, but already there are revelations that strike me as interesting. One document, CMPC-2003-006430, is accompanied by a bland synopsis: "This file contains document relevant to the Mukhabarat or Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), it explains the structure of the IIS." The document's contents are more interesting than the synopsis sounds [Note update below. The English portion of the document is a description of the Mukhabarat by the Federation of American Scientists. The Arabic portion apparently hasn't been translated. Hopefully, the Arabic cover sheet and notes will reveal whether the Mukhabarat confirmed the FAS description. Arabic speakers--please send us a translation!]:

Directorate 4. Secret Service. The Secret Service Directorate is located inside the headquarters complex of the Mukhabarat. Its activities take place both in Iraq and abroad, with agents of D4 infiltrated into Iraqi Government departments, the Baath Party, associations, unions and organizations, Iraqi embassies and opposition. ... The Directorate includes a number of offices specializing in the collection against a specific country or region, including offices for Southern Asia, Turkey, Iran, America (North and South), Europe, Arab states, Africa and the former Soviet Union. D4 works in co-ordination with D3, D5, D9, D12, D14, D18.

Directorate 8. Technical Affairs. Located in the headquarters complex of the Mukhabarat, the Eight Directorate is responsible for development of materials needed for covert offensive operations. It contains advanced laboratories for testing and production of weapons, poisons, and explosives, as well as facilities for finger printing all Mukhabarat members.

Directorate 9. Secret Operations. The Ninth Directorate is one of the most important directorates in the Mukhabarat. Most of its work is outside Iraq in coordination with other Directorates, focusing on operations of sabotage and assassination.

Office 16. This Office conducts training of agents for clandestine operations abroad. Agents attend a special school near Baghdad which provides language courses and orientation concerning the country to which they will be assigned. The Office also provides training for the operation itself. Special six-week courses in the use of terror techniques are provided at a camp in Radwaniyah.

So Iraqi intelligence conducted "covert offensive operations" involving "poisons" as well as explosives, carried out "sabotage and assassination" outside of Iraq, and trained agents in "the use of terror techniques" abroad. Not bad for a single eight-page document.

UPDATE: Another document hints at a connection between Iraq and the September 11 attacks, but it's hearsay from a Taliban official that may well have been groundless.

MORE: Several readers have written to point out that what I took to be a translation of the original document is actually just a print-out from the web site of the Federation of American Scientists. So the question is, what does the Arabic portion, which apparently hasn't been translated, say? Presumably it comments on the FAS assessment. We'd like to hear from anyone who can translate the Arabic notes.

 

[Annie]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/945usqnx.asp

Who'll Let the Docs Out?
Bush wants to release the Saddam files but his intelligence chief stalls.
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/20/2006, Volume 011, Issue 25


On February 16, President George W. Bush assembled a small group of congressional Republicans for a briefing on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley were there, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad participated via teleconference from Baghdad. As the meeting was beginning, Mike Pence spoke up. The Indiana Republican, a leader of conservatives in the House, was seated next to Bush.

"Yesterday, Mr. President, the war had its best night on the network news since the war ended," Pence said.

"Is this the tapes thing?" Bush asked, referring to two ABC News reports that included excerpts of recordings Saddam Hussein made of meetings with his war cabinet in the years before the U.S. invasion. Bush had not seen the newscasts but had been briefed on them.

Pence framed his response as a question, quoting Abraham Lincoln: "One of your Republican predecessors said, 'Give the people the facts and the Republic will be saved.' There are 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes and millions of pages of other documents that we captured after the war. When will the American public get to see this information?"

Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.

Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren't released sooner. "If I knew then what I know now," Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, "I would have been more supportive of the war."

Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. "This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out." The president would reiterate this point before the meeting adjourned. And as the briefing ended, he approached Pence, poked a finger in the congressman's chest, and thanked him for raising the issue. When Pence began to restate his view that the documents should be released, Bush put his hand up, as if to say, "I hear you. It will be taken care of."

It was not the first time Bush has made clear his desire to see the Iraq documents released. On November 30, 2005, he gave a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy. Four members of Congress attended: Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee; Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee; Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona; and Pence. After his speech, Bush visited with the lawmakers for 10 minutes in a holding room to the side of the stage. Hoekstra asked Bush about the documents and the president said he was pressing to have them released.

Says Pence: "I left both meetings with the unambiguous impression that the president of the United States wants these documents to reach the American people."

Negroponte never got the message. Or he is choosing to ignore it. He has done nothing to expedite the exploitation of the documents. And he continues to block the growing congressional effort, led by Hoekstra, to have the documents released.

For months, Negroponte has argued privately that while the documents may be of historical interest, they are not particularly valuable as intelligence product. A statement by his office in response to the recordings aired by ABC said, "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."

Left unanswered was what the analysts made of the Iraqi official who reported to Saddam that components of the regime's nuclear program had been "transported out of Iraq." Who gave this report to Saddam and when did he give it? How were the materials "transported out of Iraq"? Where did they go? Where are they now? And what, if anything, does this tell us about Saddam's nuclear program? It may be that the intelligence community has answers to these questions. If so, they have not shared them. If not, the tapes are far more than "fascinating from a historical perspective."

Officials involved with DOCEX--as the U.S. government's document exploitation project is known to insiders--tell The Weekly Standard that only some 3 percent of the 2 million captured documents have been fully translated and analyzed. No one familiar with the project argues that exploiting these documents has been a priority of the U.S. intelligence community.

Negroponte's argument rests on the assumption that the history captured in these documents would not be important to those officials--elected and unelected, executive branch and legislative--whose job it is to craft U.S. foreign and national security policy. He's mistaken.

An example: On April 13, 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle published an exhaustive article based on documents reporter Robert Collier unearthed in an Iraqi Intelligence safehouse in Baghdad. The claims were stunning.

The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two--week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the "Special Training Center" in Moscow . . .

Details about the Mukhabarat's Russian spy training emerged from some Iraqi agents' personnel folders, hidden in a back closet in a center for electronic surveillance located in a four-story mansion in the Mesbah district, Baghdad's wealthiest neighborhood. . . .

Three of the five Iraqi agents graduated late last year from a two-week course in "Phototechnical and Optical Means," given by the Special Training Center in Moscow, while two graduated from the center's two-week course in "Acoustic Surveillance Means."

One of the graduating officers, identified in his personnel file as Sami Rakhi Mohammad Jasim al-Mansouri, 46, is described as being connected to "the general management of counterintelligence" in the south of the country. . . .

His certificate, which bears the double-eagle symbol of the Russian Federation and a stylized star symbol that resembles the seal of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, uses a shortened version of al-Mansouri's name.

It says he entered the Moscow-based Special Training Center's "advanced" course in "acoustic surveillance means" on Sept. 2, 2002, and graduated on Sept. 15.

Four days later, the Chronicle reported that the "Moscow-based Special Training Center," was the Russian foreign intelligence service, known as SVR, and the SVR confirmed the training:

A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Boris Labusov, acknowledged that Iraqi secret police agents had been trained by his agency but said the training was for nonmilitary purposes, such as fighting crime and terrorism.

Yet documents discovered in Baghdad by The Chronicle last week suggest that the spying techniques the Iraqi agents learned in Russia may have been used against foreign diplomats and civilians, raising doubt about the accuracy of Labusov's characterization.

Labusov, the press officer for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, confirmed that the certificates discovered by The Chronicle were genuine and that the Iraqis had received the training the documents described.

The Russians declared early in the U.N. process that they preferred inspections to war. Perhaps we now know why. Still, it is notable that at precisely the same time Russian intelligence was training Iraqi operatives, senior Russian government officials were touting their alliance with the United States. Russian foreign minister Boris Malakhov proclaimed that the two countries were "partners in the anti-terror coalition" and Putin spokesman Sergei Prikhodko declared, "Russia and the United States have a common goal regarding the Iraqi issue." (Of course, these men may have been in the dark on what their intelligence service was up to.) On November 8, 2002, six weeks after the Iraqis completed their Russian training, Russia voted in favor of U.N. Resolution 1441, which threatened "serious consequences" for continued Iraqi defiance on its weapons programs.

Maybe this is mere history to Negroponte. But it has practical implications for policymakers assessing Russia's role as go-between in the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Perhaps anticipating the weakness of his "mere history" argument, Negroponte abruptly shifted his position last week. He still opposes releasing the documents, only now he claims that the information in these documents is so valuable that it cannot be made public. Negroponte gave a statement to Fox News responding to Hoekstra's call to release the captured documents. "These documents have provided, and continue to provide, actionable intelligence to ongoing operations. . . . It would be ill-advised to release these materials without careful screening because the material includes sensitive and potentially harmful information."

This new position raises two obvious questions: If the documents have provided actionable intelligence, why has the intelligence community exploited so few of them? And why hasn't Negroponte demanded more money and manpower for the DOCEX program?

Sadly, these obvious questions have an obvious answer. The intelligence community is not interested in releasing documents captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Why this is we can't be sure. But Pete Hoekstra offers one distinct possibility.

"They are State Department people who want to make no waves and don't want to do anything that would upset anyone," he says.

This is not idle speculation. In meetings with Hoekstra, Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies. Who does Negroponte have in mind?

Allies like Russia?

Hoekstra says Negroponte's intransigence is forcing him to get the documents out "the hard way." The House Intelligence chairman has introduced a bill (H.R. 4869) that would require the DNI to begin releasing the captured documents. Although Negroponte continues to argue against releasing the documents in internal discussions, on March 9, he approached Hoekstra with a counterproposal. Negroponte offered to release some documents labeled "No Intelligence Value," and indicated his willingness to review other documents for potential release, subject to a scrub for sensitive material.

And there, of course, is the potential problem. Negroponte could have been releasing this information all along, but chose not to. So, in a way, nothing really changes. Still, for Hoekstra, this is the first sign of any willingness to release the documents.

"I'm encouraged that John is taking another look at it," Hoekstra said last Thursday. "But I want a system that is biased in favor of declassification. I want some assurance that they aren't just picking the stuff that's garbage and releasing that. If we're only declassifying maps of Baghdad, I'm not going to be happy."

He continued: "There may be many documents that relate to Iraqi WMD programs. Those should be released. Same thing with documents that show links to terrorism. They have to release documents on topics of interest to the American people and they have to give me some kind of schedule. What's the time frame? I don't have any idea."

Hoekstra is not going away. "We're going to ride herd on this. This is a step in the right direction, but I am in no way claiming victory. I want these documents out."

So does President Bush. You'd think that would settle it.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

 

[Annie]

This may get more and more interesting:

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/990ieqmb.asp?pg=1

Saddam's Philippines Terror Connection
And other revelations from the Iraqi regime files.
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/27/2006, Volume 011, Issue 26


SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.

The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.

Several months ago, The Weekly Standard received a set of English-language documents from a senior U.S. government official. The official represented this material as U.S. government translations of three captured Iraqi documents. According to this source, the documents had been examined by the U.S. intelligence community and judged "consistent with authentic documents"--the professionals' way of saying that these items cannot definitively be certified but seem to be the real thing.

The Weekly Standard checked its English-language documents with officials serving elsewhere in the federal government to make sure they were consistent with the versions these officials had seen. With what one person characterized as "minor discrepancies," they are. One of the three documents has been posted in the original Arabic on the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A subsequent translation of that document is nearly identical to the English-language text that we were given.

These documents add to the growing body of evidence confirming the Iraqi regime's longtime support for terrorism abroad. The first of them, a series of memos from the spring of 2001, shows that the Iraqi Intelligence Service funded Abu Sayyaf, despite the reservations of some IIS officials. The second, an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on the relationships between the IIS and Saudi opposition groups, records that Osama bin Laden requested Iraqi cooperation on terrorism and propaganda and that in January 1997 the Iraqi regime was eager to continue its relationship with bin Laden. The third, a September 15, 2001, report from an Iraqi Intelligence source in Afghanistan, contains speculation about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and the likely U.S. response to it.

ON JUNE 6, 2001, the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines sent an eight-page fax to Baghdad. Ambassador Salah Samarmad's dispatch to the Secondary Policy Directorate of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry concerned an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping a week earlier that had garnered international attention. Twenty civilians--including three Americans--had been taken from Dos Palmas Resort on Palawan Island in the southern Philippines. There had been fighting between the kidnappers and the Filipino military, Samarmad reported. Several hostages had escaped, and others were released.

"After the release of nine of the hostages, an announcement from the FBI appeared in newspapers announcing their desire to interview the escaped Filipinos in order to make a decision on the status of the three American hostages," the Iraqi ambassador wrote to his superiors in Baghdad. "The embassy stated what was mentioned above. The three American hostages were a missionary husband and wife who had lived in the Philippines for a while, Martin and Gracia Burnham, from Kansas City, and Guillermo Sobrero, from California. They are still in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers from a total of 20 people who were kidnapped from (Dos Palmas) resort on Palawan Island." (Except where noted, parentheses, brackets, and ellipses appear in the documents quoted.)

The report notes that the Iraqis were now trying to be seen as helpful and keep a safe distance from Abu Sayyaf. "We have all cooperated in the field of intelligence information with some of our friends to encourage the tourists and the investors in the Philippines." But Samarmad's report seems to confirm that this is a change. "The kidnappers were formerly (from the previous year) receiving money and purchasing combat weapons. From now on we (IIS) are not giving them this opportunity and are not on speaking terms with them."

Samarmad's dispatch appears to be the final installment in a series of internal Iraqi regime memos from March through June 2001. (The U.S. government translated some of these documents in full and summarized others.) The memos contain a lengthy discussion among Iraqi officials--from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Intelligence Service--about the wisdom of using a Libyan intelligence front as a way to channel Iraqi support for Abu Sayyaf without the risks of dealing directly with the group. (The Libyan regime had intervened in an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping in 2000, securing the release of several hostages by paying several million dollars in ransom. Some observers saw this as an effort by Muammar Qaddafi to improve his image; others saw it as an effort to provide support to Abu Sayyaf by paying the ransom demanded by the group. Both were probably right.)

One Iraqi memo, from the "Republican Presidency, Intelligence Apparatus" to someone identified only as D4/4, makes the case for supporting the work of the Qaddafi Charity Establishment to help Abu Sayyaf. The memo is dated March 18, 2001.


1. There are connections between the Qaddafi Charity Establishment and the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines; meanwhile, this establishment is providing material support to them.
2. This establishment is one of the Libyan Intelligence fronts.
3. The Tripoli post has indicated that there is a possibility to form what connections are available with this establishment as it can offer the premise of providing food supplies to [Ed: word missing] in the scope of the agreement statement.
Please review . . . it appears of intelligence value to proceed into connections with this establishment and its intelligence investments in the Abu Sayyaf group.

The short response, two days later:

Mr. Dept. 3:
Study this idea, the pros and the cons, the relative reactions, and any other remarks regarding this.

That exchange above was fully translated by U.S. government translators. The two pages of correspondence that follow it in the Iraqi files were not, but a summary of those pages informs readers that the Iraqi response "discourages the supporting of connections with the Abu Sayyaf group, as the group works against the Philippine government and relies on several methods for material gain, such as kidnapping foreigners, demanding ransoms, as well as being accused by the Philippine government of terrorist acts and drug smuggling."

These accusations were, of course, well founded. On June 12, 2001, six days after Samarmad's dispatch, authorities found the beheaded body of Guillermo Sobrero near the Abu Sayyaf camp. Martin Burnham was killed a year later during the rescue attempt that freed his wife.

A thorough understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Abu Sayyaf (the name, honoring Afghan jihadi Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, means "Father of the Sword") will not come from an analysis of three months' correspondence between Manila and Baghdad in 2001. While it is certainly significant to read in internal Iraqi documents that the regime was at one time funding Abu Sayyaf, we do not now have a complete picture of that relationship. Why did the Iraqis begin funding Abu Sayyaf, which had long been considered a regional terrorist group concerned mainly with making money? Why did they suspend their support in 2001? And why did the Iraqis resume this relationship and, according to the congressional testimony of one State Department regional specialist, intensify it?

ON MARCH 26, 2003, as war raged in Iraq, the State Department's Matthew Daley testified before Congress. Daley, the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee that he was worried about Abu Sayyaf.

"We're concerned that they have what I would call operational links to Iraqi intelligence services. And they're a danger, they're an enemy of the Philippines, they're an enemy of the United States, and we want very much to help the government in Manila deal with this challenge," Daley told the panel. Responding to a question, Daley elaborated. "There is good reason to believe that a member of the Abu Sayyaf Group who has been involved in terrorist activities was in direct contact with an IIS officer in the Iraqi Embassy in Manila. This individual was subsequently expelled from the Philippines for engaging in activities that were incompatible with his diplomatic status."

This individual was Hisham Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi Embassy in Manila. And Daley was right to be concerned.

Eighteen months before his testimony, a young Filipino man rode his Honda motorcycle up a dusty road to a shanty strip mall just outside Camp Enrile Malagutay in Zamboanga City, Philippines. The camp was host to American troops stationed in the south of the country to train with Filipino soldiers fighting terrorists. The man parked his bike and began to examine its gas tank. Seconds later, the tank exploded, sending nails in all directions and killing the rider almost instantly.

The blast damaged six nearby stores and ripped the front off of a café that doubled as a karaoke bar. The café was popular with American soldiers. And on this day, October 2, 2002, SFC Mark Wayne Jackson was killed there and a fellow soldier was severely wounded. Eyewitnesses almost immediately identified the bomber as an Abu Sayyaf terrorist.

One week before the attack, Abu Sayyaf leaders had promised a campaign of terror directed at the "enemies of Islam"--Westerners and the non-Muslim Filipino majority. And one week after the attack, Abu Sayyaf attempted to strike again, this time with a bomb placed on the playground of the San Roque Elementary School. It did not detonate. Authorities recovered the cell phone that was to have set it off and analyzed incoming and outgoing calls.

As they might have expected, they discovered several calls to and from Abu Sayyaf leaders. But another call got their attention. Seventeen hours after the attack that took the life of SFC Jackson, the cell phone was used to place a call to the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, Hisham Hussein. It was not Hussein's only contact with Abu Sayyaf.

"He was surveilled, and we found out he was in contact with Abu Sayyaf and also pro-Iraqi demonstrators," says a Philippine government source, who continued, "[Philippine intelligence] was able to monitor their cell phone calls. [Abu Sayyaf leaders] called him right after the bombing. They were always talking."

An analysis of Iraqi embassy phone records by Philippine authorities showed that Hussein had been in regular contact with Abu Sayyaf leaders both before and after the attack that killed SFC Jackson. Andrea Domingo, immigration commissioner for the Philippines, said Hussein ran an "established network" of terrorists in the country. Hussein had also met with members of the New People's Army, a Communist opposition group on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, in his office at the embassy. According to a Philippine government official, the Philippine National Police uncovered documents in a New People's Army compound that indicate the Iraqi embassy had provided funding for the group. Hisham Hussein and two other Iraqi embassy employees were ordered out of the Philippines on February 14, 2003.

Interestingly, an Abu Sayyaf leader named Hamsiraji Sali at least twice publicly boasted that his group received funding from Iraq. For instance, on March 2, 2003, he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the Iraqi regime had provided the terrorist group with 1million pesos--about $20,000--each year since 2000.

ANOTHER ITEM from the Iraq-Philippines files is a "security report" prepared by the Iraqi embassy's third secretary, Ahmad Mahmud Ghalib, and sent to Baghdad by Ambassador Samarmad. The report provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Iraqi Intelligence operation in the Philippines. A cover memo from the ambassador, dated April 12, 2001, gives an overview: "The report contain a variety of issues including intelligence issues and how the Philippines, American and Zionist intelligence operate in the Philippines, especially the movements of the American intelligence in their efforts to fight terrorism and recruiting a variety of nationalities, particularly Arabs."

 

[Annie]

.

Ghalib's report is a rambling account of a phone conversation he had with an Iraqi intelligence informer named Muhammad al-Zanki, an Iraqi citizen living in the Philippines, who is referred to throughout the document as Abu Ahmad. The embassy official is looking for information on a third person, an informer named Omar Ghazal, and believes that Abu Ahmad might have some. (To review: Salah Samarmad is the Iraqi ambassador; Ahmad Mahmud Ghalib is the embassy's third secretary, most likely an Iraqi intelligence officer and author of the "security report"; Abu Ahmad is an Iraqi intelligence informer; and Omar Ghazal is another Iraqi intelligence informer.)

As the conversation begins, Abu Ahmad tells his embassy contact that he doesn't know where Omar Ghazal is and would have told the embassy if he did. He then tells the embassy contact that when he called Omar Ghazal's aunt to check on his whereabouts, she used a word in Tagalog--walana--which means "not here." But Abu Ahmad says its connotations are not good. "That word is used when you target one of the personnel who are assigned to complete everything (full mission). Then they announce that he is traveling and so on, and that's what I'm afraid of." The Iraqi embassy contact asks him to elaborate. "I have been exposed to that same phrase before, when I asked about an individual, and later on I found out that he was physically eliminated and no one knows anything about him."

The embassy official assures Abu Ahmad that Iraqi intelligence has also lost track of Ghazal, and became alarmed when he abruptly stopped attending soccer practice at a local college. Abu Ahmad fears the worst. "I'm afraid they might have killed him and I'm very worried about him," he says, according to the report. "The method that those people use is terrible and that's why I refuse to work with them."

The Iraqi embassy official interrupts Abu Ahmad. "Who are they? I would like to know who they are."

"Didn't I tell you before who they are?"

"No."

"The office group," says Abu Ahmad.

"Which office?" asks his Iraqi embassy handler.

"A long time ago the American FBI opened up an office in the Philippines, under American supervision and that there are Philippine Intelligence groups that work there. The goal of the office is to fight international terrorism (in the Philippines of course) and they have employees from various nationalities that speak of peace and international terrorism and how important it is to put an end to terrorism. The office also has other espionage affairs involving Arab citizens to work with them in order to provide them with information on the Arabs who are living in the Philippines and also for other spying purposes."

Abu Ahmad continues: "They also monitor diplomacy, and after I tried to lessen my amount of office work, I became aware that the office group was trying to get in contact with the person who is in charge of temporary work, Malik al-Athir, when he was alone."

Abu Ahmad tells his Iraqi embassy contact, Ghalib, that "the office" was trying to recruit an Arab to monitor Arab citizens in the Philippines. The Iraqi embassy contact suggests that Abu Ahmad volunteer for the job. Abu Ahmad says he had other plans. "I am leaving after I finish selling my house and properties and will move to Peshawar [Pakistan]. There I will be supplied with materials, weapons, explosives, and get married and then move to America. Do you know that there are more than one thousand Iraqi extremists who perform heroism jobs?" The speaker presumably means martyrdom operations.

The Iraqi embassy contact asks Abu Ahmad how he knows that those people are not "Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iranians."

Abu Ahmad replies: "They are bin Laden's people and all of them are extremists and they are heroes. Do you want me to give you their names?"

"Why not? Yes, I want them," says the Iraqi embassy contact.

"I will supply you with the names very soon. I will write some for you because I am in touch with them," says Abu Ahmad.

This report raises more questions than it answers. Who is Omar Ghazal and why did he disappear? What is the "office group" and how is it connected to Americans? What happened to Abu Ahmad? Were his stated plans--moving to Peshawar to obtain weapons and explosives and then moving to the United States--just bluster to impress his Iraqi embassy handler? A way to discontinue his work for the Iraqi regime? Or was he serious? Is he here now?

A SECOND internal Iraqi file obtained by The Weekly Standard concerns relations between Iraqi Intelligence and Saudi opposition groups. The document was apparently compiled at some point after January 1997, judging by the most recent date in the text, and discusses four Saudi opposition groups: the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights, the Reform and Advice Committee (Osama bin Laden), People of al Jazeera Union Organization, and the Saudi Hezbollah.

The New York Times first reported on the existence of this file on June 25, 2004. "American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization." According to the Times, a Pentagon task force "concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting' about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis."

The most provocative aspect of the document is the discussion of efforts to seek cooperation between Iraqi Intelligence and the Saudi opposition group run by bin Laden, known to the Iraqis as the "Reform and Advice Committee." The translation of that section appears below.

We moved towards the committee by doing the following:
A. During the visit of the Sudanese Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi to Iraq and his meeting with Mr. Uday Saddam Hussein, on December 13, 1994, in the presence of the respectable, Mr. Director of the Intelligence Service, he [Dr. al-Sanusi] pointed out that the opposing Osama bin Laden, residing in Sudan, is reserved and afraid to be depicted by his enemies as an agent of Iraq. We prepared to meet him in Sudan (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the results of the meeting in our letter 782 on December 17, 1994).
B. An approval to meet with opposer Osama bin Laden by the Intelligence Services was given by the Honorable Presidency in its letter 138, dated January 11, 1995 (attachment 6). He [bin Laden] was met by the previous general director of M4 in Sudan and in the presence of the Sudanese, Ibrahim al-Sanusi, on February 19, 1995. We discussed with him his organization. He requested the broadcast of the speeches of Sheikh Sulayman al-Uda (who has influence within Saudi Arabia and outside due to being a well known religious and influential personality) and to designate a program for them through the broadcast directed inside Iraq, and to perform joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz. (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the details of the meeting in our letter 370 on March 4, 1995, attachment 7.)
C. The approval was received from the Leader, Mr. President, may God keep him, to designate a program for them through the directed broadcast. We were left to develop the relationship and the cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up. The Sudanese side was informed of the Honorable Presidency's agreement above, through the representative of the Respectable Director of Intelligence Services, our Ambassador in Khartoum.
D. Due to the recent situation of Sudan and being accused of supporting and embracing of terrorism, an agreement with the opposing Saudi Osama bin Laden was reached. The agreement required him to leave Sudan to another area. He left Khartoum in July 1996. The information we have indicates that he is currently in Afghanistan. The relationship with him is ongoing through the Sudanese side. Currently we are working to invigorate this relationship through a new channel in light of his present location.

(It should be noted that the documents given to The Weekly Standard did not include the attachments, letters to and from Saddam Hussein about the status of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. And the last sentence differs slightly from the version provided to the New York Times. In the Weekly Standard document, Iraq is seeking to "invigorate" its relationship with al Qaeda; in the Times translation, Iraq is seeking to "continue" that relationship.)

Another passage of the Iraq-Saudi opposition memo details the relationship between the Iraqi regime and the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), founded by Dr. Muhammad Abdallah al-Massari. Once again, Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi, the senior Sudanese government official, was a key liaison between the two sides. Al-Massari is widely regarded as an ideological mouthpiece for al Qaeda, a designation he does little to dispute. His radio station broadcasts al Qaeda propaganda, and his website features the rantings of prominent jihadists. He has lived in London for more than a decade. The Iraqi Intelligence memo recounts two meetings involving Dr. al-Sanusi and CDLR representatives in 1994 and reports that al-Massari requested assistance from the Iraqi regime for a trip to Iraq.

In 1995, the Iraqis turned to another Saudi to facilitate their relationship with al-Massari. According to the Iraqi memo, Ahmid Khudir al-Zahrani was a diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington who applied for political asylum in the United States. His application was denied, and al-Zahrani contacted the Iraqi embassy in London, seeking asylum in Iraq. His timing was good. Al-Zahrani's request came just as Iraqis were stepping up efforts to establish better relations with the Saudi opposition. According to the Iraqi Intelligence memo:

A complete plan was put in place to bring the aforementioned [al-Zahrani] to Iraq in coordination with the Foreign Ministry and our [intelligence] station in Khartoum [Sudan]. He and his family were issued Iraqi passports with pseudonyms by our embassy in Khartoum. He arrived to Iraq on April 21, 1995, and multiple meetings were held with him to obtain information about the Saudi opposition.

These contacts were not, contrary to the speculation of some Middle East experts, simply an effort to keep tabs on an enemy. The memo continues, summarizing Iraqi Intelligence activities:

We are in the process of following up on the subject, to try and establish a nucleus of Saudi opposition in Iraq, and use our relationship with [al-Massari] to serve our intelligence goals.

The final document provided to The Weekly Standard is a translation of a memo from the "Republican Command, Intelligence Division," dated September 15, 2001. It is addressed to "Mr. M.A.M.5."

Our Afghani source number 11002 (his biographic information in attachment #1) has provided us information that the Afghani consul Ahmed Dahestani (his biographic information attachment #2) has talked in front of him about the following:
1. That Osama bin Laden and the Taliban group in Afghanistan are in communication with Iraq and that previously a group of Taliban and Osama bin Laden have visited Iraq.
2. That America has evidence that the Iraqi government and the group of Osama bin Laden have cooperated to attack targets inside America.
3. In the event that it has been proven that the group of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban planning such operations, it is possible that America will attack Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. That the Afghani consul heard of the relation between Iraq and the group of Osama bin Laden while he was in Iran.
5. In the light of what has been presented, we suggest to write to the committee of information.

This document is speculative in parts, and the information it contains is third-hand at best. Its value depends on the credibility of "source number 11002" and of Ahmed Dahestani and of the sources Dahestani relied on, all of which are unknown.

We are left, then, with three small pieces to add to a large and elaborate puzzle. We will never have a complete picture of the Iraqi regime's support for global terrorism, but the coming release of a flood of captured documents should get us closer.

A new and highly illuminating article in Foreign Affairs draws on hundreds of Iraqi documents to provide a look at the Iraq war from the Iraqi perspective. The picture that emerges is that of an Iraqi regime built on a foundation of paranoia and lies and eager to attack its perceived enemies, internal and external. This paragraph is notable:

The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.​

​

Think about that last sentence.

 

[Annie]

Links at site:

http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2006/03/silence_at_the.php

March 20, 2006: Silence at the Pentagon

The first release by the Pentagon of the myriad Saddam-era documents and media captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom seems to have ground to a halt as abruptly as it started. The last update of the Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center website was on the March 17. This suggests dissension within the government. Who are the likely culprits in this snafu? The CIA, always anxious to protect its interests, and overly-cautious lawyers come to mind, but there are undoubtedly others. Nevertheless, not to release these documents is ultimately self-destructive and actually naive. The Adminstration has already shown itself to be incompetent in the area of public relations and this only underscores that perception. The release of these documents could achieve tremendous things in changing public understanding of the Saddam regime, its ties to terrorism, its interest in WMDs and, ultimately, the public's feelings about the war itself and the salvation of Iraq. At the moment this appears to be being blocked by bureaucrats - the same ones, I wouldn't be surprised, who are likely to be whispering anonymously in the ears of our media. Let's hope the winds shift again toward full disclosure and that the rest of the documents be released for translation. We're ready.

 

[Annie]

what we all suspected. How could the administration have held these documents so long?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,189050,00.html

Pentagon: Russia Gave Saddam War Intel

Friday , March 24, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Russian government had sources inside the American military command as the U.S. mounted the invasion of Iraq, and the Russians passed information to Saddam Hussein on troop movements and plans, according to Iraqi documents released as part of a Pentagon report.

The Russians relayed information to Saddam during the opening days of the 2003 war, including a crucial moment before the assault on Baghdad, according to the documents in the report Friday.

The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing two captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians collected information from sources "inside the American Central Command" and that battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad.

A classified version of the Pentagon report, titled "Iraqi Perspectives Project," is not being made public.

In Moscow, a duty officer with Russia's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report late Friday evening. No one answered the phones at the Defense Ministry.

At Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli declined to comment.

The Pentagon report cited two captured Iraqi documents on the matter of Russian intelligence, and the report also directly asserted that the intelligence link existed.

"Significantly, the regime was also receiving intelligence from the Russians that fed suspicions that the attack out of Kuwait was merely a diversion," the report's authors wrote. They cited as an example a document that was sent to Saddam on March 24, 2003, and captured by the U.S. military after Baghdad fell.

The document said: "The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities are impossible," and that as a result the U.S. military would avoid urban combat.

Central Command's war-fighting headquarters is at an encampment in the desert just outside Doha, Qatar.

 

[Annie]

Here are more details, links aplenty:

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/03/oil-for-food-indicted-russian.html

Oil for Food Indicted Russian Ambassador Gave Iraq US War Plan

On the eve of the Iraq War...

Newly released documents suggest further links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The documents also show that the "on the eve of the Iraq War" the Russian Ambassador to Iraq, tipped Saddam off to US plans of attack:

A Russian ambassador may have leaked U.S. war plans to the Saddam Hussein government on the eve of attack, recently released Iraqi documents say.

It is one of five documents dealing with Saddam, Osama bin Laden and others reported by ABC News. One document says Saddam personally approved substantive talks with bin Laden in 1995 that explored a possible operational relationship.

Two reports from March 2003 and addressed to a Saddam secretary, describe details of the U.S.-led invasion, reportedly disclosed by the Russian ambassador. One covered troop size and armament, the other the invasion route.
​

Page 1 of 3 of a note about American troop dispositions in the Gulf region. CMPC-2003-001950.pdf

The Russian ambassador is identified by name in one of the documents from the Iraqis to the Russian ambassador. Moscow News has this embarrassing news about the ambassador:

Two documents dated March 2003, on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion, and summarized by the ABC News Investigative Unit, described details of the U.S. military plan. The first document is a handwritten account of a meeting with the Russian ambassador Vladimir Teterenko and details his description of the composition, size, location and type of U.S. military forces arrayed in the Gulf and Jordan. The document includes the exact numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, different types of aircraft, missiles, helicopters, aircraft carriers, and other forces and also their exact locations. The ambassador also described the positions of two Special Forces units, ABC reported.

The second document is a typed account, signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Hammam Abdel Khaleq, which states that Teterenko told the Iraqis that the United States was planning to deploy its force into Iraq from Basra in the South and up the Euphrates, and would avoid entering major cities on the way to Baghdad, which is, in fact what happened. The documents also state “Americans are also planning on taking control of the oil fields in Kirkuk.” The information was obtained by the Russians from “sources at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar,” according to the document.

This document also includes an account of an incident in which several Iraqi Army officers (presumably seeking further elaboration of the U.S. war plans) contacted the Russian Embassy in Baghdad and stated that the ambassador was their source. This caused great embarrassment to Teterenko, and the officers were instructed “not to mention the ambassador again in that context.”

Teterenko is mentioned in documents released by the Volker Commission, which investigated the Oil for Food scandal, as receiving allocations of 3 million barrels of oil — worth roughly $1.5 million.​

The Volker report accused the Russian Ambassador last year of recieving bribes from Saddam Hussein in the Oil for Food scandal:

In that time the members of the sub-committee stated that they found the connections between the Russian companies and illegal dealings within the Oil-for-Food program.

The Senate investigators were able to put the hand on the letters signed by Zhirinovsky, where there was a discussion of oil purchase issues, and the documents of Iraqi Oil Ministry, where it said that leader of LDPR and his party are getting vouchers for the sale of the oil. In 1997 Zhirinovsky wrote a letter to Iraqi Ambassador in Russia, where he said that his party is firmly against the UN economic sanctions, and he promised to use all his political influence to persuade the Duma to widen the economical cooperation with Iraq, including the requests of the contracts in the program Oil-for-Food. American Senators think that this zeal brought Zhirinovsky $8.7 million.​

The Pentagon has now released an assessment on the Iraqi-Russian memos. It does seem strange that the AP would include this bit at the end of a story about Russia giving our enemy our military secrets the eve of the Iraq War:

While Saddam disastrously miscalculated, the U.S. military also erred in areas beyond the well-known failure to realize that the Baghdad regime had no weapons of mass destruction, according to the 210-page report.
​

Update: (Friday, 7:00 PM) Irish Pennants has more on how ABC did not properly report the contents of one of the Saddam tapes.
Hat Tip Terry Harris

posted by Gateway Pundit at 3/24/2006 06:22:00 AM

 

[GotZoom]

I think you have single-handedly mortified and embarrassed several members of our board.

Their silence is deafening.

Bravo K!!!!!

 

[Annie]

I think you have single-handedly mortified and embarrassed several members of our board.

Their silence is deafening.

Bravo K!!!!!

Thanks! Important to get this stuff out there. For a bit there, I was afraid they were shutting it down again!

 

[Annie]

It all depends on your pov. At the same time, no denying that these are what was found, now we have the chance to make of them what we will. I must admit, I'm surprised by how few seem interested:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/3752157.html

Political news

March 27, 2006, 9:34PM
U.S. Makes Seized Iraqi Documents Public

By ROBERT TANNER AP National Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

— The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded.

Republican leaders in Congress pushed for the release, which was first proposed by conservative commentators and bloggers hoping to find evidence about the fate of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, or possible links to terror groups.

The Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto. The idea of the government turning over a massive database to volunteers is revolutionary _ and not only to them.

"Let's unleash the power of the Internet on these documents," said House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. "I don't know if there's a smoking gun on WMD or not. But it will give us a better understanding of what was going on in Iraq before the war."

The documents' value is uncertain _ intelligence officials say that they are giving each one a quick review to remove anything sensitive. Skeptics of the war, suspicious of the Bush administration, believe that means the postings are either useless or cherry-picked to bolster arguments for the war.

The documents _ Iraqi memos, training guides, reports, transcripts of conversations, audiotapes and videotapes _ have spurred a flurry of news reports. The Associated Press, for instance, reported on memos from Saddam Hussein in 1987 ordering plans for a chemical attack on Kurds and comments from Hussein and his aides in the 1990s, searching for ways to prove they didn't have weapons.

Hoekstra said it took months of arguing with intelligence officials before he and John Negroponte, the new Director of National Intelligence, agreed to make the documents public. None contain current information about the Iraqi insurgency, and U.S. intelligence officials say they are focusing their limited resources on learning about what's happening on the ground now.

There are up to 55,000 boxes, with possibly millions of pages. The documents are being posted a few at a time _ so far, about 600 _ on a Pentagon Web site, often in Arabic with an English summary.

Regardless of what they reveal, open-government advocates like the decision to make them available.

It's a "radical notion," said Steve Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists government secrecy project, which tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies. That "members of the public could contribute to the intelligence analysis process. ... That is a bold innovation."

Champions of the Internet as a "citizen's media" embraced the step, too.

"The secret of the 21st century is attract a lot of smart people to focus on problems that you think are important," said Glenn Reynolds, the conservative blogger at Instapundit.com and author of "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths."

"It's kind of like a swarm. It's a lot of individual minds looking at it from different angles. The stuff that's most interesting tends to bubble to the top," he said.

A self-described Iraqi blogger translated one of the documents for the American blog pajamasmedia.com _ a Sept. 15, 2001, memo from the Iraqi intelligence service that reported about an Afghan source who had been told that a group from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban had visited Iraq.

Some remain doubtful, suspecting that the administration only releases information that puts President Bush and his arguments for war in a good light. The Iraq Survey Group found no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction after the war, and the Sept. 11 commission reported it found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaida.

"I would bet that the materials that they chose to post were the ones that were suggestive of a threat," said John Prados, author of the book, "Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War."

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."

One of several conservative blogs devoting attention to the release, Powerline.com, set up a separate page to catalog its findings and news reports on what the documents reveal.

"These documents are going to shed a lot of light on a regime that was quite successful in maintaining secrecy," said John Hinderaker, one of three men who run the site. "Before the first Gulf War, Saddam was perilously close to getting nuclear weapons and people didn't know it. The evils of the regime will be reflected."

But he also cautioned the optimistic. "When you're dealing with millions of pages of documents," he said, "it's a big mistake to think you can pull out one page or sentence out of a document and say 'Eureka, this is it.'"

 

[theim]

It all depends on your pov. At the same time, no denying that these are what was found, now we have the chance to make of them what we will. I must admit, I'm surprised by how few seem interested:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/3752157.html

I confess to being one of those not interested. Know why? Because "Saddam had nothing to with al Qaeda" is now Holy Writ to libs, "moderates" and the MSM, just like "Saddam had no WMDs". It's something all correct-thinking people just know. Really, you have to be a product of high school in the last few years to understand this...feeling. Teachers at my school issued these two statements repeatedly as "proven" fact, only brainwashed neocons believe he had terror links, and that's just because they're ignorant and stupid. Besides, just like the ABC tapes, there are careers all over riding on this not being true.

So they won't gain any traction, at all, ever. They'll just be straight-up IGNORED like the various chemical munitions found that somehow don't qualify as WMD.

 

[Annie]

I confess to being one of those not interested. Know why? Because "Saddam had nothing to with al Qaeda" is now Holy Writ to libs, "moderates" and the MSM, just like "Saddam had no WMDs". It's something all correct-thinking people just know. Really, you have to be a product of high school in the last few years to understand this...feeling. Teachers at my school issued these two statements repeatedly as "proven" fact, only brainwashed neocons believe he had terror links, and that's just because they're ignorant and stupid. Besides, just like the ABC tapes, there are careers all over riding on this not being true.

So they won't gain any traction, at all, ever. They'll just be straight-up IGNORED like the various chemical munitions found that somehow don't qualify as WMD.

Well you're children will then pay the price, but doubt you'll care.

 

[CSM]

You can bet there are a multitude of meetings in the MSM right now trying to figure out how to deal with this. I suspect we will first hear the conspiracy theory that the government made this stuff up and that is why the documents weren't released earlier (they didn't exist) and we will end up hearing Kerry say "I was for the war before I was against it."

 

[Just a guy]

... and we will end up hearing Kerry say "I was for the war before I was against it."

Ha ha ha! That's funny!
"I was for the war before I was against it, and as you can see, I was right!"

 

[dilloduck]

I confess to being one of those not interested. Know why? Because "Saddam had nothing to with al Qaeda" is now Holy Writ to libs, "moderates" and the MSM, just like "Saddam had no WMDs". It's something all correct-thinking people just know. Really, you have to be a product of high school in the last few years to understand this...feeling. Teachers at my school issued these two statements repeatedly as "proven" fact, only brainwashed neocons believe he had terror links, and that's just because they're ignorant and stupid. Besides, just like the ABC tapes, there are careers all over riding on this not being true.

So they won't gain any traction, at all, ever. They'll just be straight-up IGNORED like the various chemical munitions found that somehow don't qualify as WMD.

Agreed--facts are of no consequence to WOT opponents. The MSM doesn't feel any compulsion to bring this new information to light and won't. The WOT supporters screaming "I told you so" will fall on deaf ears if it falls on any ears at all.