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Israeli Officers to Brief CIA on Terror Cell Trained in Iraq Lawrence Morahan, CNSNews.comA delegation of senior officers of the Israeli Defense Forces is briefing the CIA on a Palestinian terror cell discovered in Israel that had trained at military camps in Iraq, a leading Israeli newspaper reported. A three-member cell from the Arab Liberation Front, a radical group that allegedly planned to carry out an attack on Ben-Gurion International Airport last November, was arrested after trying to return to the West Bank from Iraq, Ha'aretz, a liberal Israeli daily newspaper, reported Monday. The recent cell also appeared to be planning an attack on the airport, the paper said. A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment on the report, but a defense analyst said the Israeli delegation is likely to include officers of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, a terrorism expert who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Israel, said the visit by the Israeli delegation was not routine. "This is strictly focused on intelligence based on the war on terror, and the terrorist organizations that are operating in the Middle East and around Israel and in Israel, and in the West Bank and Gaza. They're all tied together," Vallely said. The Israeli officials probably had information about Salman Pak, a facility south of Baghdad that features, among others, a mock-up Boeing 707 used to train terrorist hijackers, Vallely said. Officials also likely would brief their U.S. counterparts on Saddam Hussein's financial support of Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as his potential to smuggle chemical and biological weapons into Gaza and the West Bank by sea, he said. The munitions could be dumped overboard in submersible pods off the Gaza coast and picked up by terrorists in fishing boats. These include biological agents that could be delivered by certain types of mortars and hand-held grenade launchers, Vallely said. Charles Pena, a senior defense analyst with the Cato Institute, said it was clear that Saddam Hussein has at least tacitly supported a variety of Palestinian terrorist organizations. But whether he had set up training camps for Palestinian terrorists inside Iraq was still unclear, he said. Looking for Evidence To make its case for an attack on Iraq, the Bush administration is looking for evidence to make the claim that Iraq is sponsoring terrorism, Pena said. To the extent that the Bush administration has been trying to link the Iraqi regime with al-Qaeda and terrorism in general, there has been extensive cooperation between the United States and Israel with regard to potential Iraqi ties to Palestinian terrorists, he said. "But having said that, virtually all the bombings have been claimed by Hamas," Pena noted. Unless Hamas is using Iraq as a terrorist training camp, there's not a lot of evidence of direct ties between Hamas and the Iraqis, he said. "In fact, if anything, there's probably more ties between Hamas and Iran," Pena said. In recent weeks, the administration has had to back off from assertions that the Iraqis are tied to terrorism, particularly assertions of ties to al-Qaeda, he added. Saddam Hussein has offered to pay as much as $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, U.S. officials reported. In the past, Iraq has been known to be involved in promoting Palestinian terror, including funneling funds and equipment to Palestinian terror organizations, Ha'aretz reported. Vallely said security agents are continuing to gather good intelligence on al-Qaeda cells throughout the world, and al-Qaeda terrorists are being arrested on a weekly basis - in Singapore, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and in Berlin, Germany. Copyright CNSNews.com
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