Accompanying the IPP report were four volumes of backup materials. In all, the five total volumes contain more than 2,000 pages of documents, translations and other related materials, which are collectively housed in the so-called Harmony Database. The database contains a massive warehouse of materials collected in post-Saddam Iraq. Many of the documents contained in the four backup volumes were not discussed in the first volume of the IPP report, which was the actual study produced by the Institute for Defense Analyses. One of those documents is a provocative letter from the Iraqi embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Dated January 17, 2003, the letter is addressed to Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its subject is listed as “Al-Qa’eda Activities.” Here is the relevant portion of the U.S. government’s translation of the document:
A careful reading of the translated letter raises a number of questions and observations: • What was contained in the “report, furnished by source code number 6841”? The volume of documents produced as part of the study does not contain a copy of the actual report, which was apparently included with the letter. Only a copy of the translated cover letter was included. Does the U.S. government have a copy of the actual report too? Or, is it missing? If the government does have a copy of the full report, what does it say? • Why does source 6841 know so much about al Qaeda’s activities? It is possible that 6841 was an Iraqi spy tasked with monitoring al Qaeda on behalf of the Iraqi regime. But if that is the case, then Iraq had a particularly well-placed mole. Not only did he know that al Qaeda had sent terrorists to three different countries “to target American interests,” but he also knew that one al Qaeda member had been sent to Algeria to “deliver money” to still other al Qaeda operatives. Al Qaeda is a highly compartmentalized organization, just as Saddam’s intelligence services were. Yet, source 6841 seems to know details that only someone with sufficiently senior access inside the al Qaeda organization could know.
• While it is possible source 6841 was merely a spy, it is also possible that he was in fact a liaison between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. During his presentation before the UN on February 5, 2003 (just a few weeks after this letter was written), then Secretary of State Colin Powell said: “From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the Al Qaida organization.” It seems that the Bush administration had some other intelligence on this embassy’s nefarious activities. • Note, again, the level of granular detail source 6841 knows about the Yemeni al Qaeda member “Abu-Mohammed.” Source 6841 knows: the name on his fake passport (“Saydi Ahmed Habiballah”), his mission (to “deliver money” to an al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria), the fact that he was “killed in an armed skirmish” between Algerian authorities and al Qaeda, and that Algerian authorities were able to identify him as an al Qaeda member with Yemen’s help. Again, how does he know all of that? • According to source 6841, “Abu Mohammed” was to deliver money to the Algerian “Salafist group for the calling of Jihad.” This is a known al Qaeda affiliate, commonly referred to as the Algerian GSPC. The GSPC grew out of an al Qaeda cadre called the “GIA,” and according to intelligence collected by the CIA, Saddam was funding that group in the early 1990’s. Moreover, according to documents discovered in Baghdad (and which were not discussed in the IPP study) Saddam’s regime was training GSPC members in Iraq from 1999 to 2002. So, Saddam’s regime had long-standing ties to the al Qaeda’s Algerian affiliate–the same group “Abu Mohammed” was sent to deliver cash to. We are left to wonder who source 6841 was and why he knew so much about al Qaeda’s activities. Was he a spy or a connection between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda?
