I have a theory that Bill Safire, in the lead-up to war in Iraq, was simultaneously working for the New York Times op-ed page and for military intelligence.

I also have a theory that Safire’s mission was to promulgate fabricated intelligence into the mainstream media, while attacking anyone in the CIA or the State Department that questioned the legitimacy of that intelligence.

My research on this is incomplete, and this impression is largely an intuitive one that developed over time. I began noticing that outrageous claims about Iraq were being published in certain British news outlets and then ignored by the American media. A few days would pass, and then Safire would use the British articles as sources for his columns. Then FOX News would report on what Safire had written. It appeared to be a disinformation loop.

:::flip:::
Do you remember what it felt like to be living in America back in October of 2001? My mail sorting center was closed because of anthrax contamination. Some of the anthrax letters had been sent from a mailbox I occasionally used. As a precaution, I had to take the mail that arrived at my house and wave it around in the wind before I brought it inside.

It was at this point that Bill Safire began to advance the link between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein. In an October 22nd, 2001 column, ironically named Advance the Story, Safire went to work:

To strengthen Saddam’s position in the Arab world during his 1998 crisis with the U.N., bin Laden established the “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders.” The Muslim-in-name Iraqi dictator reciprocated by promising secure refuge in Iraq for bin Laden and his key lieutenants if they were forced to flee Afghanistan.

Safire was dishonest from the start. Bin Laden did not establish World Islamic Front to strengthen Saddam’s position in the Arab world. In the famous fatwa/press release bin-Laden complained:

…despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Bin-Laden was angered by the United States blockade of Iraq, and the heavy military presence we maintained in Arabia to enforce the blockade and no-fly zones. He said nothing about Saddam, he talked about the Iraqi people who were suffering.

Safire continues:

Bin Laden sent a delegation of his top Al Qaeda terrorists to Baghdad on April 25, 1998, to attend the grand celebration that week of Saddam’s birthday. It was then that Saddam’s bloody-minded son Uday agreed to receive several hundred Al Qaeda recruits for terrorist training in techniques unavailable in Afghanistan.

As far as I know, this has never been verified. Lord knows they have tried to verify it. It makes me wonder what ever became of the “unpublished spying report”:

That Baghdad birthday party, according to an unpublished spying report, celebrated something else: Uday Hussein’s agreement with bin Laden’s men to formally establish a joint force consisting of some of Al Qaeda’s fiercest “Afghan Arab” fighters and the covert combatants in Iraqi intelligence unit 999.

You probably haven’t heard much about Unit 999 in recent years, but it was big news in October of 2001. Please take the time to read this UK Telegraph article that appeared four days after Safire’s column. You’ll see how former CIA director James Woolsey was enlisted by Iraq hawk Paul Wolfowitz to make the case against Saddam, and how he used Safire’s talking points.

More Safire:

This information does not include reports of the most recent contacts between the terrorist group and the terrorist state. However, combine that late-90’s groundwork to what is known of (a) bin Laden’s supply this year of 400 fanatic “Afghan Arabs” to Saddam to attack free Kurds in Iraq’s no-flight zone, and (b) this summer’s observed contacts of Al Qaeda’s suicide-hijacker Mohammed Atta with Iraqi spies under diplomatic cover in Prague. A pattern manifests itself.

Here is Safire’s first mention of Mohammed Atta’s trip to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence operative. Safire would harp on this connection relentlessly, going so far as to repeatedly accuse the CIA of discrediting the story to undermine the march to war.

Does this web of eavesdropped-upon communication provide proof positive of Saddam’s participation in the Sept. 11 attack? No indisputable smoking gun may ever be found, but it is absurd to claim — in the face of what we already know — that Iraq is not an active collaborator with, harborer of, and source of sophisticated training and unconventional weaponry for bin Laden’s world terror network.

Safire claimed it was absurd, but the opposite turned out to be the case. None of Safire’s claims in this article turned out to be true. Nor would the vast majority of his subsequent accusations about Iraq turn out to be true. But already a pattern was established. Safire was bucking the CIA, Woolsey was bucking the CIA, and they were using Wolfowitz’s talking points.

You can read more of Safire’s lies here. Thanks to WanderIndiana for his help. I will be developing this story over time.