The “Iraqi Document Dump” has begun and we are already seeing some interesting tidbits emerge from the pile. Pajamas Media has set up a weblog to try and aggregate and collate the material in a meaningful way. The big job now is to try and fit what we are discovering now with existing facts, and endeavor to get an overall view of the situation in Iraq through the 90’s and up until the invasion. I am going to try my hand at a piece of that history here.

Stephen Hayes at the indispensable Weekly Standard has penned an article in the most recent issue entitled “Saddam’s Philippines Terror Connection”. In it he examines several captured documents and explains what they may mean in the larger context:

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq.An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.

-snip-

These documents add to the growing body of evidence confirming the Iraqi regime's longtime support for terrorism abroad. The first of them, a series of memos from the spring of 2001, shows that the Iraqi Intelligence Service funded Abu Sayyaf, despite the reservations of some IIS officials. The second, an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on the relationships between the IIS and Saudi opposition groups, records that Osama bin Laden requested Iraqi cooperation on terrorism and propaganda and that in January 1997 the Iraqi regime was eager to continue its relationship with bin Laden. The third, a September 15, 2001, report from an Iraqi Intelligence source in Afghanistan, contains speculation about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and the likely U.S. response to it.

I am going to focus here on the Philippine connection.

Hayes shows how Iraq was supplying a group called abu Sayyaf, based primarily in Mindanao, with funding and other material support prior to June 6, 2001. Iraq apparently withdrew direct support after that date for an inderminate period of time fearing exposure due to the high profile abu Sayyaf occupied after a spectacular kidnapping at Dos Palmas resort in the southern Phillippines. It seems that the Iraqis were content thereafter to deal with abu Sayyaf via a “false flag” operation involving Lybia:

The memos contain a lengthy discussion among Iraqi officials--from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Intelligence Service--about the wisdom of using a Libyan intelligence front as a way to channel Iraqi support for Abu Sayyaf without the risks of dealing directly with the group. (The Libyan regime had intervened in an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping in 2000, securing the release of several hostages by paying several million dollars in ransom. Some observers saw this as an effort by Muammar Qaddafi to improve his image; others saw it as an effort to provide support to Abu Sayyaf by paying the ransom demanded by the group. Both were probably right.)

-snip-

An analysis of Iraqi embassy phone records by Philippine authorities showed that Hussein had been in regular contact with Abu Sayyaf leaders both before and after the attack that killed SFC Jackson. Andrea Domingo, immigration commissioner for the Philippines, said Hussein ran an "established network" of terrorists in the country. Hussein had also met with members of the New People's Army, a Communist opposition group on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, in his office at the embassy. According to a Philippine government official, the Philippine National Police uncovered documents in a New People's Army compound that indicate the Iraqi embassy had provided funding for the group. Hisham Hussein and two other Iraqi embassy employees were ordered out of the Philippines on February 14, 2003.

Interestingly, an Abu Sayyaf leader named Hamsiraji Sali at least twice publicly boasted that his group received funding from Iraq. For instance, on March 2, 2003, he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the Iraqi regime had provided the terrorist group with 1million pesos--about $20,000--each year since 2000.

Please read all of Hayes article as it goes into considerable detail regarding events in this time period. But my purpose here is to try and “walk back the cat” through the 90’s and see what we might find there.

Abu Sayyaf is a Muslim terrorist group whose purpose is to establish an Islamic state in at least the southern part of, and preferably in the whole of, the Philippines. It’s roots are in the Moro National Liberation Front, but he current entity was formed in 1991 by Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani, aka abu Sayyaf (it is important to understand the meaning and use of the Arabic term ‘abu’: this is a homework assignment). It is an interesting historical note that we have been fighting this guys since at the least 1898 (The Spanish American War), and the nature of their resistance made necessary the invention of the Colt 45 automatic pistol.

In any case, a lieutenant of abu Sayyaf in this endeavour was one Edward Angeles:   

Angeles is a murky figure. Born Ibrahim Yakub and said to be one of the founders of Abu Sayyaf, he surrendered to the Philippine Army in 1995, claiming he had been all the time a deep penetration agent for the government. Angeles was assassinated in 1999 by unknown gunmen.

The extent of Iraqi support for abu Sayyaf during the 90’s is undocumented at this time, but I am going to go way out on a limb here and assert that since such support was obviously well established by 2001, it had been evolving, if not in high gear, for some time prior to that date.

Enter now, stage right, two other “murky” characters: Ramszi Yousef (RY) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). This gets a little complicated here, but suffice it to say that these two (KSM is supposed to be RY’s uncle) were cavorting around the Philippines in ’94 -‘95, hanging around with members of the abu Sayyaf group, and planning ”Oplan Bojinka”:       

The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 and 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill Pope John Paul II on January 15, 1995, and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and other buildings. Operation Bojinka was prevented on January 6 and 7, 1995, but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 attacks.

Ramzi Yousef, we will remember, along with Abdul Rahman Yasin, was the mastermind of the ’93 WTC bombing.  Yasin is not to be confused with Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh”.  We have determined, after the capture of abu Zubaydah, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the defacto brains behind the 9-11 attacks. In fact, the attacks of 9-11 are a partial culmination of “Oplan Bojinka”. Osama bin Laden was the figurehead and “sponsor” of the attacks, not the originator.

So the questions at the moment are: Who the heck are RYand KSM? And why do they hate us so much? Laurie Mylroie thinks that she has the answer.

OK, back to the Philippines. Buckle you seat belt, it’s a bit of a wild ride from here on out.

Someone else was hanging around the southern Phillippines in 1994: Terry Nichols. As both Stephen Jones (McVeigh’s attorney) and reporter Jayna Davis have carefully documented that Nichols visited this region repeatedly:

I have obtained sealed filings by McVeigh's defense team which outline reasons why they believed Terry Nichols received bomb making expertise through Iraqi intelligence based in the Philippines. Nichols, a small time Kansas farmer of modest means, took expensive and unexplained trips to the Philippines, frequently without his Filipino mail order bride.

Phone records reveal Nichols received and made numerous calls to a boarding house in CebuCity, which according to McVeigh's defense lawyers, sheltered students from a local university well known for Islamic militancy. In an attempt to cover their tracks, Nichols and McVeigh used a phone debit card to make a series of cryptic calls to untraceable numbers in the Philippines from public pay phones in Kansas.

The court record reveals the Oklahoma City bomber, Terry Nichols was in Cebu City in December 1994 at the same time as the convicted mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack Ramzi Yousef. Did Ramzi Yousef and Terry Nichols cross paths? According to the sworn statement of the late Edwin Angeles, co-founder of the Filipino Muslim terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, that meeting took place in the early 1990's on the island of Mindanao. Angeles said he was present when Terry Nichols, Ramzi Yousef, and two Middle Eastern co-conspirators met to discuss the acquisition of firearms and bomb making.

On April 19, 1995, Abdul Hakim Murad, a Middle Eastern terrorist who was later convicted with Ramzi Yousef in a foiled plot to blow up twelve U.S. airliners in Manila, corroborated the testimony of Abu Sayyaf leader, Edwin Angeles. Murad told a prison guard at a New York City detention center where he was confined that as a member of the Philippine Liberation Army, he was responsible for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. In addition to his verbal confession, Murad put this startling admission in writing.

Official interrogation reports detailing Murad's 1995 statements to U.S. and Filipino authorities reveal the Islamic terrorist disclosed visionary details of the 1994 plot to hijack commercial airlines and convert them into flying missiles. One of the alleged targets, according to Murad, was CIA headquarters.

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On March 3, 1995, the Task Force chief authored an updated warning that predicted the terrorists now planned to strike at "the heart of the U.S." Twelve cities were placed on the potential target list because of the radical Islamic groups and terrorist networks operating within those cities. Oklahoma City was on the original list.

But more importantly, the Task Force learned that the Middle Eastern terrorists had recruited two "lily whites" to carry out the bombing of an American federal building. "Lily whites" in the lexicon of the intelligence community refer to individuals who have no criminal history and no obvious ties to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. Both Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Gulf War veteran, and Terry Nichols, a former soldier and Kansas farmer, both fit that criterion.

Second homework assignment: READ THE WHOLE THING.

One loose end that I have not dealt with yet: the ties between abu Sayyaf and al Qaeda. For a journey through the muddy waters of international terrorism, Islamic and otherwise, read this article.  Also check out this list.

THIS POST IS SUBJECT TO UPDATE AND REVISION.