Q. Iraq's Use of Terrorist Strikes in the Event of War with the United States
(U) The CIA assessed that:
If Saddam Hussein concludes that a US attack to destroy his regime is inevitable and imminent, he is likely to feel less constrained in his use of terrorism. At that point he could turn to his own intelligence services, Palestinian surrogates, or al-Qa'ida to attack US interests.
The most potentially lethal option would be to couple Iraq's biological weapons capacity with an effort by his intelligence services, his Palestinian surrogates, or perhaps al-Qaida to disseminate agents.
Based upon these assessments, the CIA determined the following possible outcomes:
- Saddam could use any or all of three major terrorist54 options to strike the United States
- Saddam is most likely to use the IIS in any planned terrorist attack . . . .
- Saddam could turn to a small number of operatives from his surrogate groups-whether members of established groups or rogue Palestinians-to undertake CBW operations if the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] were to fail or he wanted plausible deniability . . . .
- Saddam might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa'ida-with its worldwide reach, an extensive terrorist infrastructure, and which is already engaged in a life-and-death struggle with America-could meet his requirements for anti-US terrorism.
(U) No specific intelligence reports were provided by the CIA to support these conclusions. Because the CIA had no contemporaneous reporting upon which to base its assessment, analysts relied upon analytical judgment, and the citation the CIA provided was "background & analysis." The CIA provided this explanation for the citation: "[background and analysis] is used as a source description when a specific judgment or analysis is based on a large, varied, and mostly historical body of reporting. It is usually widely known information." A senior CTC collections officer commented during interview that:
- We had one gap that we were struggling with. That was more the broader strategic plans of Saddam Hussein in terms of the use of WMD as a terrorist weapon. We were very concerned about it, but we did not have much reporting . . . . We ended up having to do more reasoned logic in terms of working through the scenarios to make judgments about if he would turn that over to
terrorist groups, when he would turn it over to terrorist groups, and then how they might use it.
( )The CIA included an explanation of the lack of information on Saddam Hussein's intentions in the Scope Note of Iraqi Support for Terrorism:
- Our access to Saddam's intelligence services-the organizers of Baghdad's most recent lethal operations-remains hamperedDELETED.
To reach these judgments, the CIA took into consideration:
1. Saddam Hussein's Past Use of Terrorism
( ) As mentioned earlier in this report, Saddam Hussein had attempted to conduct terrorist attacks during the 1991 Gulf War using his own intelligence operatives and Palestinian surrogates. In the earlier section of this report entitled Terrorist Activities Conducted by the IIS, the Committee staff referred to terrorist attempts in Manila and Jakarta that were conducted by IIS operatives. In the section entitled Support for Regional Terrorist Groups, the Committee staff referred to PLF operatives DELETED in an explosive-filled car who were arrested by a foreign government. Moreover, current intelligence indicated that the IIS continued to case targets for attacks in the event of war. The Deputy Director of the Office of Terrorism Analysis in CTC commented that:
- . . . when we started this we had a backdrop that was pretty solid on saying
Saddam is willing to deal with bad guys and has been doing it for a long time.
And he has an intelligence service that has targeted us in the past. We had some
information about support for Islamist groups connected with the Arab-Israeli
conflict. I think this is significant because I do believe there is a worthwhile
debate to have on the ideology of Saddam, but I would also say, coming at this
from an aggressive terrorist perspective, we did have a baseline to tell us that he
had tried to work on relationship with groups we would identify as Islamist....
2. The Decision-Making Environment in Iraq
( ) The CIA also based its assessment on the decision-making environment in Iraq. The CIA judged that Iraq would likely conduct attacks if Saddam Hussein felt war was imminent, and noted that he would refrain from carrying out attacks until he felt his regime's existence was threatened.
3. Iraq's Weapons Capabilities
( ) The CIA analysts contemplated Iraq's weapons capabilities, and determined whether or not any of them could be employed in terrorist strikes. One delivery system in particular, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) appeared to have potential use in terrorist attacks. In Iraqi Support for Terrorism the CIA noted Iraq's interest in UAVs, and speculated that they could be used by terrorists to conduct attacks using CBW. The Committee reviewed the supporting intelligence reports which indicated Iraq sought to procure and test UAVs, and that the UAVs may have been intended for use in terrorist attacks. There is no specific information indicating how Iraq planned to use UAVs, or whether the regime had considered using them to conduct terrorist attacks. Nevertheless, CIA analysts pointed out that if Saddam Hussein supplied UAVs to al-Qaida or other terrorists, it would greatly enhance the terrorists' capabilities. The UAV issue more comprehensively under the WMD section titled: Delivery Systems: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Missiles.
footnotes
54 The Iraqi Intelligence Service, Palestinian surrogates, or al-Qaida.
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