The central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .
The Gov't charged on the basis of secret evidence--not revealed to the accused or his lawyers--that a Palestinian was involved with a World Trade Center bomber and should be deported as a threat to national security. The judge determined that I qualified as an expert witness, as I have done a great deal of work on the WTC bombing, and I testified that there was no credible evidence that Hany Khaireldin had anything to do with the WTC bombing; knew any of those convicted for it; or represented a threat to national security, as the NYT, Feb 18, reported. Indeed, this case represents just one more, perhaps inevitable, consequence of the Clinton administration's mishandling of terrorism, starting with the two 1993 NYC bombing conspiracies--the Feb 26 WTC bombing and a subsequent plot, actually an FBI undercover operation, to bomb the UN; New York's Federal building; and two tunnels. In dealing with the conspiracies, the Clinton administration separated the national security question of state sponsorship/involvement from the criminal question of the guilt or innocence of the individuals involved. It dealt slyly with the issue of state sponsorship/involvement, while it dealt very publicly with the criminal question, in trials [see "Iraq News," Jan 27]. And that gave rise to the notion that there was a new kind of terrorism, carried out by individuals, or "loose networks." And that has led to a dangerous confusion. Among other things, the Gov't, or some part of it, seems not to have a good understanding of the likely source of terrorist threats. It spent its time and resources pursuing the man whom I assisted, a person without political or religious passions, but with an extremely vindictive ex-wife, while it has left at large, in the US, an Iraqi-American, who actually was associated with the WTC bombers. Moreover, the Iraqi-American has a Ph.D. in microbiology--alarming, if one thinks about a possible Iraqi BW terrorist attack. Also, there are two people with US pilots licenses associated with WTC bombing mastermind, Ramzi Yousef. The most lethal way to carry out a BW terrorist attack would be for an airplane, flying upwind and perpendicular to the wind, to release a BW cloud that would blow over a city. This might be of special concern, given that Baghdad retains its entire BW stockpile, even as it regularly issues angry threats regarding various aspects of the system of post-Gulf war constraints, the latest focusing on the no-fly zones. And if the Clinton administration had dealt properly with the terrorism that occurred on its watch, starting with the WTC bombing, we would understand that the likely sources of such a terrible threat--the BW terrorist threat--are small in number, basically states hostile to the US, and not every Tom, Dick, and Harry with an angry chip on his shoulder. But we believe the latter and are therefore vulnerable. There is no deterrence before an attack, because almost anyone is thought capable of carrying it out, and little prospect of pinning it on the true author afterwards. And there is a lesson. There is neither justice for the individual, nor security for the community, unless authority tells the truth and acts upon it. Unfortunately, a large part of the American public seems not to understand that. I. "JUDGE GIVES HOPE TO MAN HELD FOR DEPORTATION" New York Times, Metro Section February 18, 1999 Judge Gives Hope to Man held for Deportation By Ronald Smothers Newark -- An immigration court judge closed testimony Wednesday in what he called the "unusual and difficult" deportation case of a Palestinian man who has been linked by secret evidence to terrorist organizations and the World Trade Center bombing, and said he would now consider a request that the man be released on bail. The judge, Daniel Meisner, gave new hope to the man, Hany Kiareldeen, 31, who has been detained for nearly a year. Judge Meisner denied three earlier bail motions. An authority on terrorism challenged the secret evidence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in testimony on Tuesday, saying the accusations contradicted the Federal Government's own case against the bombers. Kiareldeen's lawyers, Houeida Saad and Regis Fernandez, said today that Judge Meisner's invitation to seek bail was an encouraging sign that their evidence was beginning to undermine the Immigration and Naturalization Service's case. The authority, Laurie Mylroie, is the co-author of the 1991 best seller "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf" and was an analyst and consultant on the bombing case for ABC and Newsweek. In declassified summaries of still-secret evidence against Kiareldeen, informers say he was a member of an unnamed terrorist organization, Ms. Mylroie said. This contradicts the Government's theory in the World Trade Center case -- that the 1993 bombing was the work of "independent radical terrorists" unconnected with organized groups, she testified. The summaries, prepared for Kiareldeen's lawyers by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also say he met with Nidal A. Ayyad, one of the convicted co-conspirators in the bombing, a week before the bombing. Ms. Mylroie said she had analyzed transcripts from the bombing trials and examined the telephone logs of the co-conspirators, and Kiareldeen's telephone number and name did not appear in any of those logs. Throughout the hearings, Kiareldeen and his lawyers have maintained that his former wife, Amal Mohamed, was the source of the terrorism accusations. Efforts to get Ms. Mohamed on the stand to testify last fall ended abruptly when she acknowledged talking to F.B.I. agents but refused to give details of those talks, saying she feared for her life. Since then, the I.N.S. and the United States Attorney for New Jersey have blocked efforts to compel her testimony. Ms. Mylroie said Kiareldeen did not fit the profile of the near- ascetic terrorist obsessed with Mideastern politics. This contention was echoed by friends of Kiareldeen, who testified on Tuesday that he was like many young American men. "He was not political or religious, and he went to go-go bars and liked to drink and dance," said Mansour Saqfelhait, one of the friends.