Al Qaeda not very active in Iraq, probe chief says
Amid a debate over U.S. justifications for war in Iraq, the Sept. 11 panel chairman said al Qaeda appeared to be more connected in Iran and Pakistan than in Iraq.
BY PETE YOST
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission said Sunday that al Qaeda
had much more interaction with Iran and Pakistan than it did with Iraq, underscoring
a controversy over the Bush administration's insistence there was collaboration
between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein.
Thomas Kean made the comment even as he and other commissioners tried to steer clear of the debate over one of the administration's primary justifications for invading Iraq.
''We believe . . . that there were a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq,'' said Kean, a former GOP governor of New Jersey.
''Al Qaeda didn't like to get involved with states, unless they were living there. They got involved with Sudan, they got involved . . . where they lived, but otherwise, no,'' he told ABC's This Week.
Kean said a commission staff document is an interim report and ''we don't see any serious conflicts'' with what the administration is saying.
That report, released last week, said there were contacts between Osama bin Laden's network and the Iraqi government, but they did not appear to have produced a collaborative relationship.
''I find it, frankly, shocking that the exaggerations of the administration before the war relative to that connection continue to this day,'' Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told CNN's Late Edition.
One commissioner, Republican John Lehman, came to the defense of Vice President Dick Cheney, who is the most aggressive promoter of the idea that there were strong Iraqi ties to al Qaeda.
Lehman said new intelligence that ''we are now in the process of getting'' indicates one of Saddam's Fedayeen fighters, a lieutenant colonel, was a prominent al Qaeda member.
Cheney has said he probably has intelligence the commission does not have and ''the vice president was right when he said that,'' Lehman said on NBC's Meet the Press.
Lehman said the press was ''outrageously irresponsible'' to portray the staff report as contradicting what the administration said.
The commission's vice chairman, former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, said the White House and the commission agree on the central point: There is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Along with differences over Hussein's government and al Qaeda, a new question
arose over whether President Bush or Cheney gave the order on Sept. 11 to shoot
down the fourth of the hijacked airliners. Lehman said Bush and Cheney told
the commission that the president gave his approval after a discussion with
Cheney, who was on the scene in the White House command center. Newsweek magazine
reported that commission staff members did not believe Cheney's account that
he called Bush to get his approval for the shoot-down order.