United Press International: 9/11 panel: New evidence on Iraq-Al-Qaida:
"The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday.
John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC's 'Meet the Press' that documents captured in Iraq 'indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida.'
The Fedayeen were a special unit of volunteers given basic training in irregular warfare. The lieutenant colonel, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, has the same name as an Iraqi thought to have attended a planning meeting for the Sept. 11 attacks in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was also attended by two of the hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hamzi and senior al-Qaida leaders.
Lehman said that commission staff members continued to work on the issue and experts cautioned that the connection might be nothing more than coincidence.
'Shakir is a pretty common name,' said terrorism analyst and author Peter Bergen, 'and even if the two names refer to the same person, there might be a number of other explanations. Perhaps al-Qaida had penetrated Saddam's security apparatus.'
Analysts say the Fedayeen was not an intelligence unit, but an irregular militia recruited from clans loyal to the regime in the capital, in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and in the surrounding Tigris valley area. Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank set up by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, described them to United Press International last year as 'thugs and bumpkins.'
He said the Fedayeen were 'at the low end of the food chain in the security apparatus, doing street level work for the regime.'
Nevertheless, the revelation seems sure to stoke the controversy over the extent of links between al-Qaida and Saddam's regime, links that were cited by the Bush administration as a justification for the invasion of Iraq."
"The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday.
John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC's 'Meet the Press' that documents captured in Iraq 'indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida.'
The Fedayeen were a special unit of volunteers given basic training in irregular warfare. The lieutenant colonel, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, has the same name as an Iraqi thought to have attended a planning meeting for the Sept. 11 attacks in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was also attended by two of the hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hamzi and senior al-Qaida leaders.
Lehman said that commission staff members continued to work on the issue and experts cautioned that the connection might be nothing more than coincidence.
'Shakir is a pretty common name,' said terrorism analyst and author Peter Bergen, 'and even if the two names refer to the same person, there might be a number of other explanations. Perhaps al-Qaida had penetrated Saddam's security apparatus.'
Analysts say the Fedayeen was not an intelligence unit, but an irregular militia recruited from clans loyal to the regime in the capital, in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and in the surrounding Tigris valley area. Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank set up by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, described them to United Press International last year as 'thugs and bumpkins.'
He said the Fedayeen were 'at the low end of the food chain in the security apparatus, doing street level work for the regime.'
Nevertheless, the revelation seems sure to stoke the controversy over the extent of links between al-Qaida and Saddam's regime, links that were cited by the Bush administration as a justification for the invasion of Iraq."
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