More from Tenet

With all the recent buzz about new threats can we believe George Tenet's book? There sure are some tender morsels in there, problem is, one of the tenderest was debunked before the book tour concluded (Perle's comment about Iraq on 9/11). However, since it appears things are perhaps beginning to once again "blink red" maybe we can believe a few things in there, with proper corroboration.

For example, he details a quest bin Laden undertook prior to 9/11 to acquire nukes. A meeting apparently took place between a group of Pakistani nuclear scientists and the evil Emir in his Afghanistan cave freak complex where, according to western intelligence sources, bin Laden claimed he might already have nuclear fuel.

In discussing that possibility Tenet rather amazingly mentioned a character oft-spoken about here (but hardly anywhere else)--one Mubarak al-Duri. Al-Duri is an Iraqi who attended school in Arizona in the late 1980s and fell in with some unsavories at the tail end of the Afghanistan Jihad.

Tenet mentions him alongside a Syrian named Mohammed Bayazid, another US-trained jihadist-sympathizer. Bayazid had suspected ties to the Benevolence International Foundation based near Chicago, whose executive director was charged with perjury in 2002 while the government claimed his charity had long running ties to al Qaeda, including a funding link to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center as well as activities in Bosnia. Bayazid once obtained an Illinois drivers license listing the BIF office as his home address.

Ironically, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, as the newly appointed US Attorney based in Chicago in 2002, was heavily involved in bringing the BIF case. Fitzgerald was also involved in the 1993 WTC and Bojinka cases against Ramzi Yousef. Fitzgerald was also involved in the Libby perjury case. The man really gets around.

Al-Duri's 15 minutes of fame (so far) came from being mentioned by the 9/11 Commission as UBL's "WMD procurement agent" but they spoke of him mainly in the footnotes. Does that mean he's just a footnote?

It seems only a coincidence that al-Duri shares the same sirname as the former head of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council Izzat al-Duri, since a connection has never been made nor inferred by anyone of importance despite Izzat's possible access to WMDs (back when Saddam had them, of course).

Tenet's story does seem to jibe with press accounts. He claims, beginning on page 270, that the FBI interviewed Bayazid and al-Duri in Sudan before 9/11 based on an intelligence report (mentioned in the link above) regarding the former's name floating to the surface in a story about UBL trying to obtain nuclear materials from Sudan. But that's where the strangeness begins.

According to our former DCI the US couldn't get enough evidence to secure an extradition of either of these men at the time. Later, after 9/11 and after receiving the report about UBL's cave meeting with the Pakistani nuclear guests the Feds apparently began shaking the trees looking for sympathizers who spoke good english. They suddenly recalled the two men.

Stunningly, even after 9/11, they still couldn't get an extradition. So they went to plan B and returned to Sudan with the hopes of 'flipping' the men to our side. Here's an independent recount of the event:

Cloonan and several FBI colleagues arrived in Sudan that month to interrogate several longtime Al Qaeda members residing in Khartoum. The interviews were conducted at safe houses arranged by Sudanese intelligence. The Mukhabarat brought the suspects to the FBI. Among those Cloonan questioned were Mohammed Bayazid, a Syrian American whose alleged ties to Bin Laden dated to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan after Moscow's 1979 invasion. Bayazid allegedly sought to obtain uranium for Al Qaeda.

Another person interrogated was Mubarak Douri, an Iraqi who was regarded as part of Bin Laden's business infrastructure. Cloonan said Douri and a second Iraqi laughed when he pressed them about possible Bin Laden ties to Saddam Hussein's regime. "They said Bin Laden hated Saddam," the retired FBI investigator recalled. Bin Laden considered Hussein "a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate," the Iraqis told the former federal agent.

To no avail. Apparently these dangerous villains will be there smiling and waving should we ever decide to save Darfur.

Confused a bit? If so, here's a recap. We have bin Laden desirous of nukes prior to 9/11 and hinting to a delegation of Pakistani scientists he might already have the nuclear fuel on hand to git-r-done. We have a previous report of him possibly acquiring said fuel in Sudan years earlier, at which point a man's name came up--a man who attended college in the US; had the same last name as a reviled member of the Ba'ath Party in Iraq; and who the 9/11 Commission called al Qaeda's WMD procurement agent. Yet the government still didn't have enough to extradite?

By the way, the fact al-Duri says he wasn't tied to Saddam really tells us nothing based on his suspected status. It also does nothing to destroy Saddam's links with terrorists other than AQ. Tenet's book lays out the case that Saddam was aware of Abu Zarqawi's entrance into his country from Afghanistan in 2002, something deemed impossible by a recent New York Times hit piece on the Commander-in-Chief. Thomas Joscelyn offered some insight on that charge today.

But forget any Iraq ties--it's simply astonishing these men never had the pleasure of experiencing CIA Airlines firsthand, if for nothing else to fulfill the media hype about renditions, torture and such. Must be a very good reason.

Or not. As we've been told, Bush is simply making all this stuff up to cover his own world conquering mendacity.

FURTHERMORE 7/15/07

Speaking of the CIA, from today's London Times on Carlos the Jackal:

He eluded the CIA and French intelligence with the help of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, Saddam Hus-sein in Iraq and a network of bases behind the Iron Curtain.

OK, the Iraq mention is obvious. What about the Russian thing? Putey was once KGB, and so forth.