The United States commission investigating the September 11 attacks reported on Wednesday it had found no evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated in the plot or had any sort of ”collaborative relationship”, bluntly contradicting persistent White House claims.
The finding was presented in a report by the commission on the hijacking plot, which it said was conceived by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, a Kuwaiti al-Qaeda planner now in US custody. He has reportedly told interrogators that his initial plan involved 10 planes, and included on its target list the CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in California and Washington state.
Mohamed had planned to take part in the hijacking of the 10th plane. He had suggested killing all the adult male passengers, and landing the aircraft at an American airport, where the women and children would be released and a press conference staged to denounce US foreign policy.
The al-Qaeda leadership scrapped the idea of using the 10th plane to make a public statement, and the failure of some of the would-be hijackers to acquire US visas led to further scaling down of the initial blueprint.
The commission’s report confirmed the judgment of US intelligence officials, who have said that since the fall of Baghdad last April no proof has been found of a significant link between the Saddam Hussein regime and Osama bin Laden.
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, revived the allegation at an election campaign appearance on Monday, telling supporters that Saddam ”had long-established ties with al-Qaeda”, and President George Bush came to his defence on Tuesday, citing the suspected presence in Iraq before the war of an al-Qaeda supporter, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
A poll by the University of Maryland in April found that 57% of Americans believed that Iraq helped al-Qaeda before the war, and 20% believed Iraq was linked to the September 11 attacks.
However, the September 11 commission report found that, although there were reports of contacts between Iraqi officials and al-Qaeda while Bin Laden was based in Sudan in the early 90s and later in Afghanistan, ”they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship”.
”Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq,” the report continued. ”We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”
Claims of a link between pre-war Baghdad and al-Qaeda are politically important during an election campaign in which the Bush administration’s justification for invading Iraq is under intense scrutiny, particularly in the absence of weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush has previously conceded there was ”no evidence” of a link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attack, but White House officials, particularly Cheney, have continued to talk of an al-Qaeda connection.
On Tuesday, Bush pointed to the reported presence of Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant, in Iraq prior to the invasion. Since the war, he is believed to have directed attacks on coalition troops, and American officials claimed in February to have intercepted a message he sent to al-Qaeda leaders asking for their help in the insurgency. ”Zarqawi’s the best evidence of a connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda,” Bush said. However, no conclusive evidence has emerged of his links to the prewar Saddam regime.
Wednesday’s commission report suggested that the precise scope of the September 11 plot did not take shape until the last few weeks before the attacks.
It alleged that Bin Laden persistently put pressure on Mohamed to bring the date forward.
At one point, he asked for the attacks to be carried out in mid-2000 — after Ariel Sharon provoked Arab outrage by visiting Islam’s most holy site in Jerusalem, known by Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif — to punish Washington for its support of Israel. Later, he tried to persuade Mohamed to attack earlier in the summer of 2001 when he heard Sharon would be in the White House.
However, Mohamed insisted the hijack teams were not ready.
He had originally wanted as many as seven hijackers on each targeted plane, but nine of the plotters were dropped from the plan over the summer of 2001, either because they were not granted entry to the US, or because they withdrew under family pressure, leaving the final 19 who carried out the hijackings.
The commission also cited the interrogation of another al-Qaeda plotter, Ramzi Binalshibh, who reportedly claimed Bin Laden had wanted the White House on the list of targets.
However, Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker, had argued for targeting the Capitol building as it would be easier to hit.
Only two days before the attacks, the report said, ”the conspirators may still have been uncertain about which Washington target they would strike”.
United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after a passenger assault on the hijackers, is thought to have been bound for Washington to hit either the Capitol or the White House.
According to the report, al-Qaeda is trying to repeat the devastation of the September 11 attacks through the use of nuclear, chemical, radiological or biological weapons.
”The trend toward attacks intended to cause ever higher casualties will continue,” it said. – Guardian Unlimited Â