Checking Cheney:

In his Meet the Press interview, Dick Cheney said:

We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.

Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact.

Cheney is referring to Abdul Rahman Yasin.

According to a segment in today's Democracy Now program:

• Yasin is an American citizen, born in Bloomington, Indiana.
• After the Feb. 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000, Yasin was one of the men picked up for questioning by investigators. He was eventually released, however, because of insufficient evidence to charge him at that time.
• When Yasin left the United States he went to Iraq where he lived for a year before being arrested by Iraqi intelligence agents in 1994.
• Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz (in a 60 Minutes interview) said that twice Iraq attempted to hand Yasin to the United States. Once in '94 under Clinton, and again, after the attacks on September 11.
• Aziz said in October of 2001 the Iraqi government sent word to the CIA through an Egyptian government emissary that Yasin was in custody in Iraq and that Baghdad wanted to hand him over. [That offer should be checkable by examining CIA records.] Aziz said that the only condition was that the U.S. sign a receipt saying that Iraq had handed him over. The U.S. rejected the offer saying that the Iraqis were placing too many demands on Washington for the return of Yasin.

posted by Quiddity at 9/16/2003 12:09:00 PM