October 25, after the fighting in Afghanistan had already begun--included new
material followed by annexes discussing each targeted terrorist group.The old
draft directive on al Qaeda became, in effect, the first annex.
port, and prevent them from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.The goal
was the "elimination of terrorism as a threat to our way of life."
Hussein's regime might have had a hand in it. Iraq had been an enemy of the
United States for 11 years, and was the only place in the world where the
United States was engaged in ongoing combat operations. As a former pilot,
the President was struck by the apparent sophistication of the operation and
some of the piloting, especially Hanjour's high-speed dive into the Pentagon.
He told us he recalled Iraqi support for Palestinian suicide terrorists as well.
Speculating about other possible states that could be involved, the President
told us he also thought about Iran.
dam did this," Clarke recalls the President telling them."See if he's linked in any
way."
point, asking him about Iraq.
Involvement in the September 11 Attacks." Rice's chief staffer on Afghanistan,
Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evi-
dence linked Iraq to al Qaeda.The memo found no "compelling case" that Iraq
had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign
intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague
meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7)
and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in
Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd
reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq
and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the
secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no
confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconven-
tional weapons.