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A former US intelligence agent has alleged that the CIA ignored detailed
warnings he passed on in 1998 that a Gulf state was harbouring an al-Qaeda
cell led by two known terrorists.
When FBI agents attempted to
arrest them, the Gulf state's government provided the men with alias
passports, the former agent claims.
The allegation is contained in
a controversial new book on US intelligence operations in the Middle East by Robert Baer, a former case officer
in the CIA's directorate of operations.
The book, See No Evil,
is to be published later this month featuring blacked-out sections which
obscure passages that the CIA's publications review board claimed were
classified.
An excerpt is being published
this weekend by the US magazine Vanity Fair.
After months of acrimonious
negotiation last year with the CIA over passages of the book, Mr Baer added
further detail after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US.
Among fresh details are an
account of how, after he left the CIA in 1997 and became a consultant in Beirut, Mr Baer was advising a prince in a Gulf royal family.
A military associate of the
prince, he said, had last year warned Mr Baer that a "spectacular
terrorist operation" was being planned and would take place shortly.
Mr Baer said he also provided
him a computer record of "hundreds" of secret al-Qaeda operatives
in the Gulf region, many in Saudi
Arabia. Mr Baer said
that in August 2001, at the military officer's request, he offered the list
to the Saudi Arabian government. But an aide to the Saudi defence minister,
Prince Sultan, refused to look at the list or to pass them (the names) on.
On the al-Qaeda cell in the
Gulf state, which is not named in the book, Mr Baer claims the two men who
led the cell, Shawqi Islambuli and Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, escaped arrest
and settled in Prague.
The information Mr Baer gave
to the CIA was not followed up, he said.
In the book, Mr Baer also
claims: That in 1996, Osama bin Laden established a strategic alliance with
Iran to co-ordinate terrorist attacks
against the US. In 1995, the National Security
Council intentionally aborted a military coup against Saddam Hussein,
partly orchestrated by Mr Baer, who at the time was working to help organise
the opposition. In 1991, the CIA intentionally shut down its operations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
Some of Mr Baer's charges,
such as the White House's decision to withdraw support from the Iraqi
opposition, are in the public realm.
But a former CIA analyst who specialised
in the Middle East said on Friday night: "What's
new, and potentially explosive, is the detail - this book will definitely
put focus on the issue of the CIA and State Department's handling of the
Iraqi opposition."
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