Corn and Isakoff’s book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, revives Laurie Mylroie, the darling of the American Enterprise Institute during the years when the neoconservatives there were fomenting their Bush Doctrine and the War in Iraq. She was a strong proponent of the Saddam/Terrorist ties and the attack on the C.I.A. One of her book titles from August 2003 says it all, Bush vs. the Beltway : How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror.
But lest she be forgotten, she’s still at it, still making the same claims. She publishes an email newsletter that essentially catalogues articles that still claim these ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, still tout Iraq’s nuclear and biological capabilities. Here’s a recent roster of her Iraq News:
As recently as the last two days:
Al Qaeda’s Hidden Roots
By Laurie Mylroie
American Spectator
September 20, 2006
What They Omitted
By Laurie Mylroie
New York Sun
September 19, 2006
These recent articles are in the set of articles that continue to blame Clinton for 911 [for not listening to her when she was one of his campaign advisors]. The articles themselves are hard to read unless you are in the particular cult that she belongs to. They seem to follow two threads. First, captured documents from Iraq that purport to show that Saddam Hussein was deeply tied to the Terrorists, or at least will show that if they are ever read and declassified. Second, a labyrinth of connections of various Arab families that date from her earlier books, Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein’s War Against America. and her first book with [you guessed it] Judith Miller, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf.
Apparently, her steadfast convictions about Hussein’s ties to Terrorists and the misguidedness of the C.I.A. were infectious, because they translated intact into policy via the boys from A.E.I. that populated Bush’s White House. Like Michael Ledeen, she is something of an "un-named co-conspirator."
from September 14, 2001, Press briefing at A.E.I.This briefing with AEI foreign policy experts will address the recent terrorist attacks in America. Former UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick will moderate. The panel will also include former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former special adviser to the Secretary of State Michael A. Ledeen, Middle East specialist David Wurmser, and Laurie Mylroie, author of Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America (AEI Press, 2000). These participants will provide a comprehensive analysis of recent events, the political and strategic context in which they occurred, as well as policy recommendations for the future.
Here’s what the Wikipedia entry says about that "family connection" she talks about:
Mylroie’s claims concerning links between Iraq and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were published in Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America (2000). "The New York FBI office, however, strongly believed Iraq was behind the 1993 Trade Center attack," she writes. "The Clinton White House did not want to hear that and FBI Headquarters accommodated." Her book is based on an examination of the trial documents related to the 1993 bombing. "Only Laurie Mylroie appears to have gone through it carefully," said former CIA Director James Woolsey. Abboud Yassin, an Iraqi-American who mixed chemicals for the explosive, escaped to Iraq soon afterward. Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, commander of the operation, travelled under an Iraqi passport, although he is not Iraqi. Just a few months before the WTC bombing, Yousef claimed he’d lost his passport and got a new Pakistani passport in the name of Abdul Basit. (Yousef had three passports when he was arrested.) Mylroie examined files related to Basit and his family at the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry and found that various documents are missing, including photos and passport photocopies. She concludes that the files were they were tampered with, persumably during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91. There is a notation in Basit’s file, dating from the occupation period. Mylroie argues that this implies the file was of special interest to the Iraqis. The fingerprint cards in Basit’s file match those for Yousef. Mylroie contends that the cards were switched by the Iraqis. She concludes that, "Abdul Basit and his family were in Kuwait when Iraq invaded in August 1990; that they probably died then; and that Iraqi intelligence then tampered with their files to create an alternative identity for Ramzi Yousef.".
CNN terrorism expert Peter L. Bergen, however, has noted that Mylroie’s argument depends entirely on "a deduction which she reached following an examination of Basit’s passport records and her discovery that Yousef and Basit were four inches different in height. On this wafer-thin foundation she builds her case that Yousef must have therefore been an Iraqi agent given access to Basit’s passport following the Iraq occupation. However, U.S. investigators say that ‘Yousef’ and Basit are in fact one and the same person, and that the man Mylroie describes as an Iraqi agent is in fact a Pakistani with ties to al Qaeda." Bergen claims that "an avalanche of evidence" refutes Mylroie’s basic assumption.
After September 11th, former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey was provided a government jet and FBI staff to investigate Mylroie’s claim that Basit and Yousef were different people. Newsweek reported: "The idea behind the mission was to check fingerprints on file in Swansea, Wales, where Basit had once gone to school, and compare them to the fingerprints of the Ramzi Yousef in prison. … Justice Department officials tell ‘Newsweek that the results of the Woolsey mission were exactly what the FBI had predicted: that the fingerprints were in fact identical. After the match was made, FBI officials assumed at the time that it had put the Mylroie theory to rest."
This is the level of "intelligence" that made Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the A.E.I. boys so "sure" about Iraq – the fantasies of a monomaniacal woman who is on a quest to be right.
see Peter Bergen’s articles:
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