Laurie Mylroie - Iraq Connection Claims

Iraq Connection Claims

Mylroie's claims concerning links between Iraq and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were published in her book Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America (2000). "The New York FBI office, however, strongly believed Iraq was behind the 1993 Trade Center attack," she wrote. "The Clinton White House did not want to hear that and FBI Headquarters accommodated." Her book is based on an examination of the trial documents related to the 1993 bombing. "Only Laurie Mylroie appears to have gone through it carefully," said former CIA Director James Woolsey.

Mylroie's book states that Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi-American who mixed chemicals for the explosive, escaped to Iraq soon after the attacks. Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, commander of the operation, travelled under an Iraqi passport, although he is not Iraqi. Just a few months before the WTC bombing, Yousef claimed he'd lost his passport and got a new Pakistani passport in the name of Abdul Basit. (Yousef had three passports when he was arrested.) Mylroie examined files related to Basit and his family at the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry and found that various documents are missing, including photos and passport photocopies. She concludes that they tampered with, presumably during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91.

There is a notation in Basit's file, dating from the occupation period. Mylroie argues that this implies the file was of special interest to the Iraqis. The fingerprint cards in Basit's file match those for Yousef. Mylroie contends that the cards were switched by the Iraqis. She concludes that "Abdul Basit and his family were in Kuwait when Iraq invaded in August 1990; that they probably died then; and that Iraqi intelligence then tampered with their files to create an alternative identity for Ramzi Yousef."

Chaim Kaufmann notes that "On several occasions in 2001-02, Wolfowitz pressured CIA and DIA analysts to validate a claim in a book by Laurie Mylroie that Hussein had been behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Both agencies had studied the book long before and considered it meritless."

In March 2008, the Pentagon released its study of some 600,000 documents captured in Iraq after the 2003 invasion (see 2008 Pentagon Report). The study "found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda."

The Pentagon study found that the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Yasin "was a prisoner, and not a guest, in Iraq." Among the documents released was a captured audio file of Saddam Hussein saying that he did not trust Yasin because his testimony was too "organized." Saddam speculated that the 1993 attack had been carried out by Israel or American intelligence, or perhaps a Saudi or Egyptian faction. Mylroie denied that this was proof of Saddam's non-involvement, claiming that "one common purpose of such meetings was to develop cover stories for whatever Iraq sought to conceal."