June 21, 2004
NEW TO THEM:
9/11 panel: New evidence on Iraq-Al-Qaida (Shaun Waterman, 6/20/2004, UPI)
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday.John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC's "Meet the Press" that documents captured in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida."
The Fedayeen were a special unit of volunteers given basic training in irregular warfare. The lieutenant colonel, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, has the same name as an Iraqi thought to have attended a planning meeting for the Sept. 11 attacks in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was also attended by two of the hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hamzi and senior al-Qaida leaders.
That's what happens when you challenge a president and his vp to put up or shut up, huh? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 21, 2004 7:41 AM
How can he say that this is new information? As you say it's new to HIM, but I've been reading reports of this for weeks now.
Could the commission get any more pathetic?
Posted by: NKR at June 21, 2004 9:35 AMOJ is too modest to note that the 9/11 commission would have been better served by reading BrothersJudd blog than doing whatever the heck it is they've been doing all this time.
Posted by: David Cohen at June 21, 2004 9:36 AM