9-11 Comm: Richard Clarke Cites Iraq-Al Qaeda WMD Tie

Found here on the searchable 9-11 Report. Thanks to Fred Barnes on Brit Hume for the tip:

Though intelligence gave no clear indication of what might be afoot, some intelligence reports mentioned chemical weapons, pointing toward work at a camp in southern Afghanistan called Derunta. On November 4, 1998, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of Bin Ladin, charging him with conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations.The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hezbollah.The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”109 This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was “probably a direct result of the Iraq–Al Qaida agreement.” Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the “exact formula used by Iraq.”110 This language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq had been dropped, however, when a superseding indictment was filed in November 1998.

Remember, Dick Clarke is the man who, as part of the promotional blitz for his book, claimed that it was utterly impossible that Iraq and Al Qaeda could be cooperating, and that anyone who suggested that a tie should even be investigated was either stupid or fanatically ideological or insane.

And yet... Gee willickers. He himself made the same suggestion, two years earlier.