LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Al Qaeda: Al-Qaeda
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Notwithstanding four decades of intelligence reporting, IC officials and analysts expressed frustration over the lack of useful intelligence collected on Iraq’s involvement in terrorism, particularly on links to al-Qaeda. A January 2003 IC assessment of Iraqi support for terrorism explained, "Our knowledge of Iraq’s ties to terrorism is evolving and (REDACTED)". Based on information provided to Committee staff, these gaps had three main causes: 1. a late start collecting against the target, 2. the lack of a U.S. presence in Iraq, and 3. reliance on foreign government services, opposition groups and defectors for current intelligence.
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There was independent proof of the involvement of Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and EIJ in the bombings. First, the would-be suicide bomber, al-Owhali, ran away from the bomb truck at the last minute and survived. However, he had no money or passport or plan by which to escape Kenya. Days later, he called a telephone number in Yemen and ... arranged to have money transferred to him in Kenya. That same telephone number in Yemen was contacted by Usama Bin Laden's satellite phone on the same days that al-Owhali was arranging to get money. Moreover, al-Owhali and Odeh both implicated men named "Harun," "Saleh" and "Abdel Rahman," now all fugitives, as organizing the Nairobi bombing.
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Counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna will claim in a 2002 book that “in addition to successfully completing many missions, a significant number of planned bombings and assassinations [by al-Qaeda] have been thwarted. At least three to four dozen operations were detected and disrupted by government security and intelligence agencies or called off by al-Qaeda.” For instance, he cites a 1992 al-Qaeda plot to blow up a plane, which is called off when an operative involved in the plot is arrested. He ... cites attempts to bomb US embassies in Albania, Bosnia, and Uganda, and a 2000 plot to assassinate King Abdullah II of Jordan.
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Some have suggested that an understanding was reached between Iraq and al-Qaeda, namely that al-Qaeda would not act against Saddam in exchange for Iraqi support, primarily in the form of training. No evidence of such an understanding has ever been produced. Some reports claim that Mohamed Atta al-Sayed met with an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague, but intelligence officials have concluded that no such meeting took place. A training camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, was said by a number of defectors to have been used to train international terrorists (assumed to be al-Qaeda members) in hijacking techniques using a real airplane as a prop. The defectors were inconsistent about a number of details. The camp has been examined by U.S. Marines, and intelligence analysts do not believe it was used by al-Qaeda.
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British intelligence discovered documents in western Afghanistan which suggest that al-Qaeda members built a dirty bomb in Afghanistan. British officials ... claim that the Taliban provided medical isotopes to al-Qaeda members to help construct the bomb. US officials cannot substantiate this claim.
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Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is a term to describe the group which is playing an active role in the Iraqi insurgency. The group was led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until his death in 2006; it is now believed to be led by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir[3] (aka Abu Ayyub al-Masri[4]).
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