For my part, my motivation was strictly humanitarian. I was horrified by the misery of Iraqi families and children. I saw the CIA as providing me with a unique and precious opportunity to contribute to the solution. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
Again and again, Iraq agreed to all U.S. demands.
And very quickly I began to hunt for help-mates among my other diplomatic contacts at the United Nations—with some noteworthy success.
During the Lockerbie negotiations, I had struck up friendly relations with senior ranking diplomats from Malaysia, which served as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, under the leadership of Ambassador Hasmy Agam.122
When back-channel talks got underway with Iraq, I approached Mr. Rani Ismail Hadi Ali, my contact at the Malaysian Embassy, for help. There’s no point in U.S. Intelligence denying it. My relationship with Mr. Rani Ali and Malaysia’s input on Iraq are substantiated by phone taps, letters and email communications. Malaysia’s support for the peace process, and its advice throughout this back channel process, was quite precious.
Malaysia proved an outstanding partner, in fact. Malaysia123 boasts a vibrant Islamic community and vast wealth as one of Asia’s financial capitals, with over 30 major international banks operating in Kuala Lumpur. A major exporter of electronics and telecommunications equipment, Malaysia has a fully diversified economy, with 89% literacy in a population of 24 million. More strikingly, Islam is the official religion of the country, and the government actively promotes relations with other Islamic nations, including those in the Middle East.
In its eagerness to advance its relationship with Washington, Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry offered to assume a formal role of intermediary between Iraq and the United States in any covert talks.
It was a valuable strategic offer that promised to yield results on a full range of Middle East and Islamic issues.
Most graciously of all, Ambassador Hasmy Agam, whose career encompassed thirty years of high profile diplomacy in the Non-Aligned Movement, offered to act as the designated contact between Baghdad and the United States. His participation offered a way to jumpstart talks on all matters of the conflict, since it was understood that Iraq and the United States could not sit down together, despite Baghdad’s oft expressed desire to do so. The outstanding leadership of Ambassador Agam provided a way forward. He assigned Rani Ali, an expert on U.N. sanctions policy who staffed him on the Security Council, to liaison with me for guidance, as talks moved forward.124
Without explanation, Republican leaders took no action on Malaysia’s generous offer— and so squandered a powerful alliance, which could have interceded on a number of difficult Middle Eastern matters.
Though disappointing, in fairness, U.S. intelligence had already voiced a strong determination to retain control of any settlement with Iraq. They weren’t eager for international participation. However, it was also clear that Republican leaders failed to grasp how strategic alliances could be leveraged to strengthen U.S. influence in other parts of the world. The Bush White House was so myopic that it could not understand how partnerships would be reciprocated by advancing U.S. priorities in those regions, and moving other nations’ domestic policies closer to ours.
Diplomacy was too subtle for Republican leaders, even when it was designed to dictate outcomes controlled by the United States, and favorable to our agenda. In a global age, Republican leaders did not understand that proactive management would create strategic foundations that strengthen America. They did not understand why problems should be solved proactively at all.
Now that critical weakness in Republican foreign policy began to show.
For its part, the CIA faced the unhappy prospect of bucking the Bush Administration, while it experienced what appeared to be a steep learning curve.
All of us accepted the challenge. For its part, Malaysia’s commitment on behalf of the international community was truly exemplary. Ambassador Agam was like a teacher, sharing the wealth of his lifetime expertise with the rising generation of Malaysia’s diplomatic staff. It was an exciting embassy to visit, very active and dynamic. In that spirit of cooperation, Malaysia’s Embassy provided a sounding board and vital technical guidance for my preliminary talks on the weapons inspections. Ambassador Agam and Mr. Rani Ali guaranteed that back-channel talks would conform to U.N. standards of compliance once it got through U.S. gates.
For his efforts to rebuild peaceful relations with America and Iraq’s neighbors in the Middle East, Iraq’s Ambassador Dr. Hasan should have won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malaysia’s Ambassador Agam.
Dr Hasan showed true vision of what would be necessary to restore Iraq’s economy and infrastructure after sanctions, while Ambassador Agam and his diplomatic staff stood off-stage, quietly contributing to a successful resolution. I have never known any individuals who deserved a Nobel Peace Prize more than those two.
Ambassador Agam’s prodigious diplomatic talent was fully recognized and rewarded by Malaysia’s appointment to chair the Non-Aligned Movement in 2003.
On account of all those contributing factors, by July 2001, a successful peace with Iraq was within the world’s grasp.
It looked so hopeful. On all matters, Iraq agreed to U.S. conditions again and again, in total contradiction to what Americans were told before the War. All matters large and small were resolved through back-channel dialogue.125 Diplomacy proved a great success.
Revealingly, Iraq’s enthusiasm to resume inspections quickly was only outdone by Washington’s extraordinary reluctance to get started. It began to appear the U.S. was dragging its feet out of awareness that Iraq had nothing left to disclose or destroy,. It looked like leaders on Capitol Hill recognized the wastefulness of the exercise, and were afraid of it. Meanwhile Baghdad hankered to get started. Iraqi officials saw the momentum for change coming from the international community, and pushed forward to greet the new day. They were excited to provide verification that old weapons stocks had been destroyed long ago.
The behavior of Iraqi officials, and especially their eagerness to resolve the impasse, convinced me totally and without qualm that no weapons of mass destruction or illegal production facilities would be discovered inside the country. .
I am convinced the Intelligence Community could read the tea leafs, too. It did not look good for U.S. propaganda on Saddam’s illicit weapons production.
My job was not to criticize, however. It was to secure maximum compliance, and to wrest as many concessions from Baghdad as possible, as part of a comprehensive solution. I kept going.
Over the next 18 months of back channel talks, Iraq’s offer to the United States came to encompass all of the following:126
1. As of October, 2000, Baghdad agreed to resume U.N. weapons inspections. That was 18 months before the world community was told of Baghdad’s acquiescence.
2. As of October, 2000, Iraq promised to include U.S. Oil Companies in all future oil exploration and development concessions. Taking contracts from Russia or European countries would have been controversial, and politically impossible. However, Iraq had ways of cutting U.S. Oil into the mix of existing contracts.
Iraq also promised to invest in major purchases of U.S. oil equipment, which it freely declared to be the best in the world.
3. Baghdad offered to buy 1 million American-made automobiles every year for 10 years to replace its citizens’ outdated fleet of automobiles. Because of purchase restrictions under U.N. sanctions, most automobiles in Iraq predated the mid 1980s. Iraq’s imports of U.S. automobiles would have translated into thousands of high-paying Labor Union jobs in the Rust Belt of the United States— concentrating heavily in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, which otherwise have been crippled by the loss of factory investment. It would have guaranteed a foundation of prosperity for America’s workers.
4. Iraq promised to give the U.S. priority contracts in telecommunications products and services.
5. Iraq agreed to grant priority cont
racts to U.S. health care, hospital equipment and pharmaceuticals, in any post-sanctions period.
6. Iraq promised to give priority to U.S. factory equipment, and allow U.S. Corporations to reenter the Iraqi Market at the level that they enjoyed prior to the 1990 Gulf War. Dual use military equipment and factory production was exempt from this promise. Dr. Fuisz gave critical testimony in the Congressional investigation of U.S. corporations that supplied weapons to Iraq before the first Gulf War. There was no danger he would have tolerated or mistakenly supported dual-use contracts, in addressing opportunities for American corporations in post-sanctions Iraq.
7. Iraq agreed to contribute as a major partner in U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.
Time and again, Baghdad made it crystal clear: Any special preference Washington demanded, the United States could have—anything at all.
Every offering was reported to Andy Card and my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz. We followed the same strategy and reporting process that had worked so successfully during the Lockerbie talks.
There were no surprises at CIA Headquarters. The CIA fully understood my way of thinking— that both sides urgently needed to find new ways to address our problems. And for all the insults I suffered from the Justice Department after my indictment, I was very good at what I did. Throughout the 1990s, everybody was pleased on both sides. The Arabs loved me, and the CIA praised me, too.
Because of Iraq and Libya’s pariah status, other foreign Intelligence Agencies had a legitimate interest in my activities, as well. In fact, I suspect I was a primary source for most of the foreign intelligence networks tracking Iraq and Libya right up to the War—and particularly during the weapons inspections talks and the 9/11 investigation.
By example, British Intelligence would often shadow my dinners or lunches at restaurants in Manhattan, when I dined with senior diplomats on the Security Council, like Malaysia— or diplomats from Iraq or Libya to discuss the progress of back channel talks or anti-terrorism matters.
It had a comical side for sure. Several times an upper-crust British couple would arrive at the restaurant on the heels of my diplomatic host. They would take a table close by. I would watch as a dollar bill (presumably of high denomination) would slide across the table. In a crowded restaurant in New York City, bustling with activity, the British couple would order no food— only tea or coffee and water. They would not be interrupted by waiters for the next two to three hours, while my lunch or dinner conversation proceeded nearby. As my guest and I got up to leave the table, they would call the waiter—presumably to leave another large tip.
With all that surveillance, and scrutiny of my work by Dr. Fuisz and Hoven, could the Justice Department truly have been ignorant of our relationship all those years? Could they have seriously believed I was acting as an “Iraqi Agent?”
It seems impossible to me. I believe their motivation was very different. Because of my high level access to Iraq’s Embassy at the United Nations, I had vast knowledge of opportunities for a comprehensive peace with Baghdad, including promises of economic contracts for U.S. corporations and Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation, that the U.S. and Britain urgently wanted to hide.
Given my passionate activism against war and sanctions, it was a good bet that I would talk.
And I would have a lot to say.
CHAPTER 6:
9/11: A PATTERN OF
COMMAND NEGLIGENCE
With Michael Collins
Shortly after September 11, retired General Wesley Clark spoke with Tim Russert of NBC News about a call he received after the strike. A member of a foreign think tank rang General Clark on his cell phone, urging him to claim 9/11 originated from Iraq at the direction of Saddam Hussein. Now, General Clark isn’t accustomed to taking orders from strangers. But he was curious about this call to his private cell phone. He asked the caller to provide evidence supporting this accusation. The conversation ended quickly, without the evidence. And that was that.
Apparently General Clark gave the motivation for War with Iraq a great deal of thought over the years. At a major speech in Texas in 2006, he said:
“Now why am I going back over ancient history? Because it’s not ancient history, because we went to war in Iraq to cover up the command negligence that led to 9/11. And it was a war we didn’t have to fight. That’s the truth—”
“I’ve been in war. I don’t believe in it. And you don’t do it unless there is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely no alternative.”127
General Clark’s argument that War with Iraq was a diversionary strategy to distract angry Americans from the command failure before 9/11, stands out as unique and provocative among the upper echelons of the military. I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment. Only I take his conclusions one step farther. I believe that when his theory of “command negligence” gets factored in with my team’s advance warnings to the Office of Counter-Terrorism in August 2001, there is finally a “coherent” explanation for 9/11— if allowing an attack on sovereign territory of the United States could be described as a “rational” thought process. (Obviously, it’s not.)
Consider the military lexicon for command responsibility:
Command: (Department of Defense) 1. Command includes the authority and responsibility for effectively using available resources, and for planning the deployment of, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling military forces for the health, welfare, morale, and discipline of assigned personnel.128
Negligence: Failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances.”
How can we assess whether “command negligence” actually occurred?
Three Proofs of Command Negligence
There are three levels of proof to support General Clark’s assertion that 9/11 resulted as a consequence of command negligence, which in the opinion of many Americans, facilitated a pro-war agenda.
The first level of proof examines the Commander in Chief’s use of available military resources to try to thwart the attack on U.S. soil, and whether or not those resources got deployed in an appropriate fashion.
Consider, first of all, that the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) had practiced military responses to attacks on major buildings, including the World Trade Center, in the two year period before September 11.129 In one exercise, fighter craft performed a mock shoot down over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target inside the United States. In another scenario, the target was the Pentagon — That drill stopped after Defense officials declared the attack scenario unrealistic.
The point is that NORAD had trained to confront an attack on U.S. soil exactly like this one. Ironically, the Pentagon organized the military exercises after U.S. intelligence exposed a master plot to hijack commercial jetliners, and use them as aerial weapons to strike the World Trade Center. Sound familiar?
Called “Project Bojinka,” the plot was hatched by Ramzi Yousef, chief mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, as a way to fullfil his dream of toppling the twin towers. Yousef was captured in the Philippines in 1995 and extradited to the United States. Convicted at trial in 1996, he was sentenced to life without parole. His co-conspirator, Sheikh Abdul Rahman, a famous, blind Egyptian Islamic radical, agitated for the violent overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.
Yousef has emerged as a central character in the history of Al Qaeda and 9/11. A tactical mastermind with exceptional gifts for creating chaos and misery, Yousef spoke several languages fluently, and graduated with an electrical engineering degree from Swansea University in Wales. He joined Al Qaeda in 1988 as a bomb maker. Born near the Afghani-Pakistan border, Yousef’s family lived smack in the cultural milieu that produced the radical Muslims recruited, trained and funded by Washington to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.
It was Yousef who devised the tactical model for September 11 from his hide-out in Manila, capital of the Philippines, where he fled after the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing.
The ambitious “Bojinka” project aspired to hijack eleven commercial jets on the same day, which would be used as missiles to strike the White House, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and other national symbols of U.S. global pre-eminence, including the World Trade Center.
Philippine police struck gold when they broke up a meeting of Muslim terrorists in Manila during 1995. They suspected this visiting bomb maker had been involved in several local terrorist attacks, as well.
They arrested Yousef, confiscated his computer, then enlisted the help of a local computer expert to decode the hard drive. That’s how Philipino authorities discovered “Bojinka—” to their credit.
Yousef’s diabolical plot was no secret. The scheme was unveiled at his trial in New York in 1996, at the federal courthouse a few blocks from the World Trade Center.
Vince Cannistraro, former Director of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Division called it “extraordinarily ambitious, very complicated to bring off, and probably unparalleled by other terrorist operations that we know of.”130
For the next few years, “Bojinka” lay dormant.
Then, in the spring of 2001, U.S. Intelligence got wind that terrorists intended to carry out a strike remarkably similar to “Bojinka.” Concern reached such a heightened status that starting in April, 2001 and throughout the summer, I was ordered to tackle my Iraqi sources for any fragments of actionable intelligence, regarding its execution.
At the same time, NORAD was planning war games in Canada and Alaska—thousands of miles from the potential target, already identified as the World Trade Center in New York City. “Operation Northern Vigilance”131 was a major military exercise synchronized to coincide with a Russian military exercise near Alaska. As part of that training, the US Air Force was supposed to simulate the protection of North American air space, as though Russia was attacking the U.S132 (i, ii, iii)
The U.S. Air Command scheduled the War Games in Canada and Alaska to run from September 10 – 14th.
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 14