Latest revision as of 19:44, 1 July 2012
Most claims about bin Laden's "CIA links" date back to 1980's Afghanistan, however there is one that's considerably more recent. And that's the story that he met with a CIA agent while undergoing dialysis treatment at a Dubai hospital, in July 2001.
There isn't a clear indication as to whether this story is true or not, but we do have some issues with it.
First: the account is unsourced. Who is this partner? We don't know. It's a report of what the freelance writer Alexandra Richard says she's been told by this unnamed person. Is her account accurate? Is the unnamed persons account accurate? There's no way to tell.
Second: it was unconfirmed. One or two other newspapers ran it, but they just reproduced what Le Figaro had already said. There was no independent confirmation, at least initially. And actually, an online translation uses the headline "CIA Agent Allegedly Met bin Ladin", which if true sounds a little different.
Author Richard Labeviere later wrote a book, where he said "a Gulf prince who presented himself as an adviser to the Emir of Bahrain" confirmed the meeting, which had been arranged by Prince Turki al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia. This was the plan.
Confirmation? Maybe, but again we don't know the source, so there’s no way to determine its accuracy. But even if entirely true, this doesn't support any relation between the meeting and September 11th.
Third: the hospital denied it.
It could be argued that "they would say that, wouldn't they", and we'd tend to agree. But then why would this "partner of the hospital administration" choose to speak out?
On a similar question of motive, is it really plausible that the CIA's main man in Abu Dhabi would "brag" about meeting bin Ladin? And that those friends would report this to the press? And that the only person in the world to pick up on this was a freelance writer in a French newspaper?
In addition, some people try to say there's significance in Callaway (bin Ladins supposed doctor) refusing to comment rather than issuing a straight denial, but in our view that's exactly what you'd expect. He's an employee caught in a press storm, you'd expect the hospital management to tell him not to comment, they would deal with any future queries.
Fourth, despite it being such a common allegation, there’s actually no real evidence that bin Ladin has been on dialysis at all, and plenty of people (including bin Ladin himself) who suggest it’s unlikely, as Richard Miniter explained in the Washington Times.
Fifth: it’s been claimed that the French Secret Service are linked to this story:
Le Figaro said Bin Laden was being treated at the American Hospital in Dubai for a kidney infection. The hospital denied that such a meeting had taken place, but Le Figaro said its report was based on a number of sources, including French secret service agents and a hospital administrator.
United Press International, October 31, 2001, Wednesday
And there are those who argue we should be wary, as a result. Consider this story.
An American Thinker article follows the same approach:
We must emphasise we have absolutely no idea if this is true, and France really was trying to undermine the US and British Governments. Other stories suggest Italy was involved instead (see here and here), giving them an incentive to blame someone else. Martino also called the idea "lunatic ravings":
Later reports said it was believed that "Adam Maiga Zakariaou, the [Niger consul, and Laura Montini, the ambassador’s assistant, known as La Signora, forged the papers for money].
Still, the suggestion that France wanted to undermine the American and British case for war received some support from Anthony Sampson in the Guardian.
And although Samson doesn’t rule out the possibility of the story being true, he makes it clear that inter-agency game playing might also be behind the account:
And the International Herald Tribune were similarly sceptical:
Copyright 2001 International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune
November 1, 2001 Thursday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 537 words
HEADLINE: Dubai Clinic Denies Report Bin Laden Met With CIA
BYLINE: Joseph Fitchett
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune
DATELINE: PARIS
BODY:
A wave of skepticism and outright denials greeted a French newspaper report Wednesday that Osama bin Laden had been hospitalized in a Dubai clinic for kidney care for 10 days in July and met there with a U.S. intelligence operative -- just weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The report, published as the main story in Le Figaro, a leading conservative newspaper in Paris, suggested that the CIA had maintained direct contacts with Mr. bin Laden ever since the agency first extended covert assistance to him in the 1980s, when he was a Saudi volunteer for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
At the time of the alleged meeting, Mr. bin Laden was being sought in a worldwide manhunt in connection with U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998. The United States was offering a $7 million reward for information leading to his capture.
The newspaper offered no independent confirmation for its story, which was based on a leak from someone "associated with the management team" of the American hospital in Dubai, where Mr. bin Laden allegedly underwent treatment.
"Osama bin Laden has never been here," Bernard Koval, the head of the hospital, said in Dubai.
The story -- of hospitalization and a visit from the local CIA chief -- is "utterly implausible," according to an Arab diplomat in Paris. Never, he said, would Mr. bin Laden have run the risks of prolonged medical treatment in Dubai, a free-wheeling Gulf city-state with an underworld of smugglers and mercenaries easily recruitable to assassinate the man listed as U.S. public enemy No. 1.
"If he had needed treatment, he would have chosen a place where he could count on draconian security like Baghdad or Damascus," the Arab official said.
According to the Figaro story, the head of the CIA post in Dubai "was seen" going into Mr. bin Laden's room. But the 100-bed clinic's boss, Mr. Koval, told reporters in Dubai that "this is too small a hospital for someone to be snuck through the backdoor" -- a phrase apparently applying both to Mr. bin Laden and the local CIA station chief.
Mr. Kovel said that no trace of the terrorist's presence had emerged from discussions with all members of the clinic's staff, including Dr. Terry Callaway, Canadian-born specialist who allegedly treated Mr. bin Laden.
"He's never been a patient here, he's never been treated here," Mr. Kovel said.
Officials in Dubai have not reacted to the report, and the U.S. Embassy in Paris said that it had a policy of never commenting on intelligence matters.
"Disinformation may have been planted on the paper to suggest a continuing covert linkage between the CIA and bin Laden," according to a French intelligence source.
Such collusion -- based on Mr. bin Laden's role in the CIA-backed campaign against the Soviets in the 1980s -- has been a leitmotif of reservations voiced by some people in France about the U.S.-led military offensive in Afghanistan. French leftists often depict Mr. bin Laden as a fundamentalist fanatic manipulated by the CIA with the aim of creating conditions in which the United States can exploit terrorist violence to expand the U.S. military presence in Central Asia.