Actionable Intelligence: Osama bin Laden linked to Iraq WMDs

On August 20, 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack against a chemical weapons factory in Sudan. The strike was in response to the August 7, 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya which killed more than 200 and wounded more than 5,000 others. The chemical weapons factory in Sudan was funded, in part, by Osama bin Laden who the U.S. believed responsible for the embassy bombings.

During the 9/11 hearings, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen testified that the manager of this al-Qaeda funded chemical weapons plant met in Baghdad with an Iraqi nerve gas expert.

William Cohen was not the only Clinton Administration official to make this link. In August 1998, news outlets were reporting that one of the leaders of Iraq's chemical weapons program, Emad al-Ani, had close ties with Sudanese officials at the factory. It was also reported, at that time, that a number of Iraqi scientists working for al-Ani attended the grand opening of the factory two years earlier.

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News & Politics

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• saddam
• hussein
• wmd