ABC News says Saddam OK'd bin Laden contact

Bloomberg News
Mar. 24, 2006

A pre-war Iraqi document obtained and recently released by the U.S. government says an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in February 1995, ABC News reported.

The document says the meeting was approved by Saddam, ABC said on its Web site. Saddam also agreed to a request at the meeting by bin Laden to broadcast the lectures of a radical Saudi preacher and to carry out ''joint operations against foreign forces'' in Saudi Arabia, ABC said.

The report of the U.S. 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has already concluded that bin Laden met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in late 1994 or early 1995. The document ABC referenced suggests for the first time that the contacts were personally approved by Saddam, ABC said.

The document is handwritten and has no official seal, ABC said. U.S. intelligence officials, who last week released the first batch of Iraqi documents out of more than 2 million seized, have warned that the U.S. can't confirm their authenticity.

A second document, dated Sept. 15, 2001, says that the U.S. has proof the Iraqi government and bin Laden agreed to cooperate to attack targets inside America and that as a result the U.S. might strike Iraq and Afghanistan. ABC said the sourcing of that document was ''questionable.''