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Cheney Led U.S. Push to Link Iraq to Al-Qaeda, Officials say As U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared his February presentation on Iraq to the U.N. Security Council, members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff pushed for the speech to claim a link between Iraq and a hijacker involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Sept. 17). Although the link was disputed by the Czech government and U.S. intelligence agencies, Cheney’s office persisted in including the charge that the hijacker met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague five months prior to the attack, U.S. officials said. Ultimately, Powell did not make the charge in his presentation. Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby attempted to pressure Powell’s speechwriters to include the claim that Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague and other suspected connections between Iraq and terrorism, according to Bush administration officials involved in the speech’s preparation. In late January, Libby outlined the case against Iraq, which included the Atta claim, during a presentation in the White House situation room, according to the Post. “We read (their proposal to include Atta) and some of us said, “Wow! Here we go again,’” said an official who helped draft Powell’s speech. Libby described the information in his presentation as a “Chinese menu” — the broadest range of options that Powell could consider, according to some Bush administration officials. “The papers were designed to assist (Powell’s) preparation by organizing a lot of materials so that he could choose the order and evidence he found most compelling, although some of it, in the end, could not be declassified,” said an administration official. Other officials who attended Libby’s presentation, however, said that the proposed wording was too aggressive and that most of Libby’s information could not be used in a public speech. They also said that most of the Libby’s information was later discredited and discarded after further examination by intelligence analysts. “After one day of hearing screams about who put this together and what are the sources, we essentially threw it out,” on official present at the presentation said (Priest/Kessler, Washington Post, Sept. 29).
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