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H. Terrorist Activities Conducted by the IIS

(U) The CIA assessed that "Saddam Is Most Likely to Use the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] in Any Planned Terrorist Attack."

(  ) One of the strongest links identified by the CIA between the Iraqi regime and terrorist activities was the history of IIS involvement in training, planning, and conducting terrorist operations. Beginning before the 1991 Gulf War, intelligence reports and public records documented that Saddam Hussein used IIS operatives to plan and attempt terrorist attacks. The CIA provided 78 reports, from multiple sources, DELETED documenting instances in which the Iraqi regime either trained operatives for attacks or dispatched them to carry out attacks. Each of the reports provided by the CIA was accurately reflected in Iraqi Support for Terrorism and the majority of them were summarized as examples to support the CIA's assessment.

(                )                                                              PARAGRAPH DELETED                                                              This was reflected in Iraqi Support for Terrorism as, ". . .Baghdad in late 1990 was training [more than 1000] Iraqis in camps southeast of Baghdad to conduct terrorist attacks on US and other coalition targets." In reporting that could be considered as corroborating these accounts, an IIS operative was killed when a bomb exploded prematurely in Manila near a U.S. facility. A similar explosive device was discovered in the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Jakarta, and two Iraqi males that had been observed casing the residence were reportedly in Indonesia with the assistance of the Iraqi embassy.                      SENTENCE DELETED                      The CIA described this reporting in Iraqi Support for Terrorism as "DELETEDDELETED terrorist teams-DELETED - to Third World countries where the IIS apparently believed that access to Western targets would be easier." The CIA also described each of the reports regarding the attempts in Manila and Jakarta in detail, DELETED.

(                ) Iraq continued to participate in terrorist attacks throughout the 1990s. In late 1992, a foreign government service reported on DELETED an Iraqi who DELETED assassinated an Iraqi nuclear-chemical engineer DELETED at the behest of Iraqi intelligence. In 1994, another foreign government service reported that DELETED two employees of the Iraqi Embassy who had assassinated an Iraqi dissident DELETED The Iraqi regime continued to target dissidents, and in February 1995 the State Department reported in a London cable on the Iraqi's use of thallium to poison oppositionists. These three items were included as examples of IIS violence against Iraqi opposition leaders and defectors abroad in Iraqi Support for Terrorism:

• The killing of Mu'ayyid al-Janabi, a refugee Iraqi nuclear scientist seeking asylum in Amman, Jordan, in 1992.
• The assassination of prominent Iraqi dissident Shaykh Talib al-Suhayl in Lebanon in April 1994.
• In 1995, Iraqi agents in northern Iraq used the metallic element thallium to poison several dissidents, and opposition sources say at least two were killed.

The CIA also provided five reports on more recent assassinations in which the Iraqi regime was thought to be responsible, but the evidence was not conclusive.

(                ) From 1996 to 2003, the IIS focused its terrorist activities on western interests, particularly against the U.S. and Israel. The CIA summarized nearly 50 intelligence reports as examples, using language directly from the intelligence reports. Ten intelligence reports, DELETED from multiple sources, indicated IIS "casing" operations against Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Prague began in 1998 and continued into early 2003. The CIA assessed, based on the Prague casings and a variety of other reporting that throughout 2002, the IIS was becoming increasingly aggressive in planning attacks against U.S. interests. The CIA provided eight reports to support this assessment. As hostilities between the U.S. and Iraq approached in late 2002, reporting indicated increased Iraqi preparations for attacks in the Middle East and Europe. An Appendix to Iraqi Support for Terrorism included 43 incidents, backed up by 48 intelligence reports, citing suspicious IIS activity that resembled terrorism planning, including reports of casings, DELETED the development of target lists, and the transfer of weapons or materiel that could be used to conduct attacks. For example, two reports suggested the IIS was targeting U.S. facilities in Turkey.                      SENTENCE DELETED                      Separately, a State Department cable from Baku indicated that Iraqis were engaged in similar activities there, trying to rent properties near the U.S. Embassy.

(                ) Each of the previous examples were in both raw intelligence reports, and summarized in Iraqi Support for Terrorism. The CIA's analytic judgments regarding the likelihood of Iraq's use of the IIS to conduct terrorist attacks were also supported by actual IIS activities during OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. DELETED attempted two failed terrorist attacks, one in Bahrain, and one in DELETED. While Iraq experienced mixed results with the IIS conducting terrorist operations, the regime also supported regional terrorist groups.