Cybercast News Service: Claim of Hussein's WMD, Ties to Al Qaeda

On October 4, 2004, Cybercast News Service reported that a "senior government official who is not a political appointee" provided CNS with 42 pages of Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) documents which were then translated from Arabic by two CNS translators. CNS reports that the official told them that the documents answer "whether or not Iraq was a state sponsor of Islamic terrorism against the United States. It also answers whether or not Iraq had an ongoing biological warfare project continuing through the period when the UNSCOM inspections ended."

CNS further claimed three experts reviewed the documents and said they were likely geniune: Laurie Mylroie, author of the book Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War against America; Bruce Tefft, a retired CIA official; and an unnamed former UNSCOM weapons inspector. The named "experts" are both individuals with a history of making ideologically charged and controversial statements in support of the war in Iraq neoconservative agenda. The anonymous individual who supplied the documents is quoted as saying it is "unlikely" that others in the U.S. government "even know this exists." The article does not explain how this is possible if this source is indeed a "senior government official." The timing of the news story, which appeared near the end of the U.S. presidential campaign, suggests that it was written with the intention of shoring up support for Bush, whom the article notes has been hurt politically by the failure of investigators to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

CNS says the documents show that Iraq bought "five kilograms of mustard gas on Aug. 21, 2000 and three vials of [ anthrax ] on Sept. 6, 2000." from what appears on the documents as "Saddam's company," which "Tefft said was probably a reference to Saddam General Establishment, "a complex of factories involved with, amongst other things, precision optics, missile, and artillery fabrication." which were received by IIS. It is worth noting that five kilograms of mustard agent would only fill up to three artillery shells.

A memo in the alleged documents from 1993 includes "Saddam's directive" that "the party should move to hunt the Americans who are on Arabian land, especially in Somalia, by using Arabian elements ..." CNS then connects this to the Mogadishu attack in Somalia nine months later, as the rebels involved were Arab. CNS also mentions in passing the "warlord" of southern Mogadishu's (Mohammed Farah Aidid) alleged connections to Osama Bin Laden and Bin Laden's "network."

CNS additionally provides much more commentary from Tefft regarding the nature of the documents.

Links to Documents

 * 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19
 * 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29&dagger; | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40
 * 41 | 42


 * &dagger;Pages 29 through 40 are reported as being duplicates of pages 2 through 12, but in different handwriting.

Related Reports

 * Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (Senate Intelligence Committee Report).
 * Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD (Duelfer Report), 2004.