WHITE HOUSE AND CHENEY ACCUSED OF FAKE LETTER

White House denies fake Iraq-al-Qaeda link letter

Vice President CHENEY'S office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq

ASSOCIATED PRESS
9:16 a.m. August 5, 2008
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080805-0916-whitehouse-iraq.html

WASHINGTON – The White House and the CIA on Tuesday adamantly denied a report that the Bush administration concocted a fake letter purporting to show a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The allegation was raised by Washington-based journalist Ron Suskind in a new book, “The Way of the World,” published Tuesday. The letter supposedly was written by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, director of Iraqi intelligence under Saddam Hussein.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind wrote. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the vice president's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

Suskind said the letter's existence had been reported before, and that it had been treated as if it were genuine.

Denying the report, White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said, “The notion that the White House directed anyone to forge a letter from Habbush to Saddam Hussein is absurd.”
Fratto and former CIA Director George Tenet also rejected Suskind's allegation that the U.S. had credible intelligence, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destruction. It was supposedly British intelligence, based on information from a senior Iraqi official.

Fratto said U.S. and other intelligence agencies believed Saddam harbored such weapons and that Saddam had tried to make his neighbors believe he had them. In the end, no such weapons were found, undercutting Bush's main reason to go to war.

Go back to link to read full report.