Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says: "The Americans confirmed that they had obtained the document from the Iraqi National Congress, as part of a trove that the group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government last year. The Defense Intelligence Agency paid the Iraqi National Congress for documents and other information until recently, when the group and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, fell out of favor in Washington.
Some of the intelligence provided by the group is now wholly discredited, although officials have called some of the documents it helped to obtain useful.
A translation of the new Iraqi document was reviewed by a Pentagon working group in the spring, officials said. It included senior analysts from the military's Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and a joint intelligence task force that specialized in counterterrorism issues, they said.
The task force concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting' about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis.
It is not known whether some on the task force held dissenting opinions about the document's veracity. "
This sounds very suspicious to me, given it's timing, the administrations reaction to the 9/11 commission findings and also the connection with the Iraqi national Congress--which provided much of the bogus intelligence that Bush and Cheney pointed to to justify their invasion of Iraq. And it certainly does not document any involvement in attacks on America, and does nothing to connect Saddam to 9/11, which is what Bush is claiming.
- posted by geoff @ #