{"id":3506,"date":"2007-05-04T20:41:20","date_gmt":"2007-05-05T03:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/04\/and-then-there-was-woolsey%e2%80%a6\/"},"modified":"2007-05-04T21:38:11","modified_gmt":"2007-05-05T04:38:11","slug":"and-then-there-was-woolsey%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/04\/and-then-there-was-woolsey%e2%80%a6\/","title":{"rendered":"And Then There Was Woolsey…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apropos yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s “Tenet v. Perle<\/a>” post, it might be useful to note that James Woolsey, Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s colleague on the Defense Policy Board (DPB) and fellow-board member of any number of neoconservative groups, was virtually ubiquitous on television and in the print media in the week that followed the 9\/11 attacks, suggesting to anyone who would listen that Saddam was not only linked to al Qaeda, but may very well have played a role in the attacks themselves.<\/p>\n

Given close and multiple associations with Perle, Woolsey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remarks in the immediate wake of the 9\/11 attacks make completely implausible Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s statement in his recent and controversial “The Case for War<\/a>” production on PBS that, “I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear statements to the effect that Iraq was responsible for 9\/11.”<\/p>\n

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In any event, here are some examples of Woolsey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wisdom on the subject of Iraq\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible complicity in the 9\/11 attacks over the ensuing couple of day. I suspect he repeated that wisdom in the DPB meetings chaired by Perle a few days later.<\/p>\n

September 11th, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer: “Day of Terror”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“But I think the key thing is what David said earlier about nation states \u00e2\u20ac\u201d because Iraq has a lot of incentives to damage the United States heavily. There was an FBI agent in charge of the early investigation of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Jim Fox, who had the view that there may well have been Iraqi government involvement in that. The Clinton administration, Justice Department, brushed that aside after the time but some of the information that came out at trial that had been under grand jury secrecy during the investigation looks as if there may well have been Iraqi government involvement. And this time this administration, I hope and trust, will not brush aside the idea that there might be state involvement. We may well find that Osama bin Laden or some other terrorist group in the MidEast or elsewhere, probably the MidEast, is behind this. But they may well be a subcontractor or a junior partner. There conceivably could be a state behind this.”<\/em><\/p>\n

September 11th, ABC News Special Report: “America Under Attack”:<\/p>\n

“But there is at least a plausible case that there was Iraqi government involvement in the World Trade Center bombing back in 1993. This all has to do with the identity, the true identity of Ramsey Yousef, who was the mastermind, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in prison out in Colorado now. At his sentencing the judge said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really know who you are.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 And if there was a chance that there was Iraqi government involvement in that, since Yousef was the mastermind of the World Trade Center and of a bombing plot in the Pacific which he was working on when he was caught, to have a lot of American Airlines in the Pacific blown up, what happened today is a sort of amalgam of the earlier two Ramsey Yousef plots. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at least, I think, interesting that that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the case. And\u00e2\u20ac\u201cand if some of the observers, Laurie Mylroie and others, are correct that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a reasonable chance that he was, in fact, involved with the Iraqi government, there could also be a chance the Iraqi government is involved here, even if bin Laden or other terrorist groups are as well.” <\/em><\/p>\n

“But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not impossible that terrorist groups could work together with the government, that\u00e2\u20ac\u201cthe Iraqi government has been quite closely involved with a number of Sunni terrorist groups and\u00e2\u20ac\u201cand on some matters has had contact with bin Laden.”<\/em><\/p>\n

September 12th, NBC News, “Attack on America”:<\/p>\n

“And one thing, again, coming back to Iraq, you need to realize is that a number of these fundamentalist groups and individuals, have increasingly close relationships with Iraq. The Bath Party, Saddam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s party, historically was like the Communist Party, was an anti-religious party. But a decade or so ago, that began to change, and Saddam has gone out of his way to make common cause with some of these fundamentalist terrorist groups, and they with him. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a\u00e2\u20ac\u201cit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very unhappy alliance.<\/em><\/p>\n

“And one final point here, Tom, we may not in this case be dealing solely with autonomous terrorist organizations. There are a number of indications that bin Laden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s group was involved\u00e2\u20ac\u201cthat may well turn out to be true, indeed they may have been the central operators, but that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that there can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be some state sponsorship or guidance or assistance behind them. And one candidate for that, one possible candidate, is the government of Iraq.”<\/em><\/p>\n

September 12th, CNN “America Under Attack<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

“It may be all over these attacks. And I think that might make us a bit suspicious that is something else might be up. Certainly bin Laden may well have been deeply involved and may have been the operational figure and his people in this, but that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that he acted alone.<\/em><\/p>\n

“When I see Bin Laden issuing fatwahs, religious edicts, putting out videotapes, issuing poems, having his subordinates talk about how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re taking part in terrorism against the United States, I begin to think that maybe we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to focus solely on Bin Laden. And there might be something else in train.<\/em><\/p>\n

“My suspicion \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no more than that at this point \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is that there could be some government action involved together with Bin Laden or a major terrorist group. And one strong suspect there I think would be the government of Iraq.<\/em><\/p>\n

“But he (Bush) used a word, ‘harbor,’ which he used last night. A harbor for terrorists might be, say, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. But there may be more involved than harbors here, there may be a government other than a harbor, such as the Iraqi government, that is orchestrating this to some extent, funding it, working closely on it behind bin Laden or some other terrorist group. I very much hope the Bush administration, unlike Clinton administration, will not set aside this possibility and assume that everything is just a terrorist group, even a terrorist group as major as bin Laden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. It really need to look carefully at the possibility there may be state sponsorship here, and I think the most likely, certainly not the only possibility is Iraq.”<\/em><\/p>\n

September 12th, Los Angeles Times<\/em>, “Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold” (op-ed coauthored by Woolsey and Mansoor Ijaz):<\/p>\n

“The planning, coordination and access to information required to carry out the virtually simultaneous attacks in New York and Washington point significantly to the involvement of state sponsorship. The diplomatic cover, intelligence data and financial resources needed to conduct this war against the United States can only be offered by a regime whose track record against U.S. interests is proven, and Iraq comes immediately to mind.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apropos yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s “Tenet v. Perle” post, it might be useful to note that James Woolsey, Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s colleague on the Defense Policy Board (DPB) and fellow-board member of any number of neoconservative groups, was virtually ubiquitous on television and in the print media in the week that followed the 9\/11 attacks, suggesting to anyone who would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}