Talk:Salman Pak facility

Alleged connections to terrorism
The facility was discussed shortly after the September 11 attacks as allegations of Iraq's connections to Al-qaeda began surfacing. The Salman Pak facility was mentioned as a terrorist training camp as early as October 12, 2001 in the Washington Post. The article mentions two Iraq defectors tracked down by the Iraqi National Congress and interviewed by U.S. intelligence agencies in late 2001. One is Sabah Khalifa Khodada, and another was an Iraqi ex-intelligence officer (later identified as Jamal al-Qurairy, former brigadier-general in Iraq's Mukhabarat ) living in Turkey who both claimed to have knowlege that Salman Pak was being used to train foreign extremists in various terrorist methods, including a Boeing 707 used to train in hijacking. Al-Qurairy repeatedly complained of being treated dismissively by U.S. Intelligence, who reportedly showed no interest in pursuing a possible Iraq connection to Al-Qaida.

Details emerged when the New York Times and PBS Frontline did a collaberative interview Sabah Khodada on October 14, 2001. Khodada's story was corroborated by al-Qurairy in Turkey, now using the alias Abu Zeinab. The story was reported by the New York Times and broadcast on PBS on November 8, 2001.

Initially, many prominent officials gave credence to these claims:

Dr. Richard Sperzel, former chief of United Nations biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq, reported to the New York Times that Iraqis always told them of a anti-terrorist training camp at Salman Pak. "But many of us had our own private suspicions," he said. "We had nothing specific as evidence. Yet among ourselves we always referred to it as the terrorist training camp."

Charles Duelfer, former vice chairman of Unscom, was even more blunt in his reaction. Having seen the base and the Boeing 707 in exactly the same was as the defectors describe it, he states the Iraqis always insisted they were using the facility for counter-terrorism training, "Of course we automatically took out the word "counter", I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. Like, derrrrrr! I mean, what, actually, do you expect? Iraq presents a long-term strategic threat. Unfortunately, the US is not very good at recognising long-term strategic threats."

In an inteview with NPR, Duelfer explains further, "There were lots of places in Iraq where training of non-Iraqis, or things, which by our lexicon would be considered terrorism, was taking place. That's why Iraq is on the terrorist list. Having a large aircraft, a 707, in a peninsula, completely visible from the air or from satellite, with no airline runways nearby, that's not there by accident."

Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, denied this to Frontline. "This is a very beautiful area with gardens, with trees," Aldouri said. "It is not possible to do such a program there, because there's no place for planes."

During the PBS interview, Sabah Khodada presents a crude drawing of an overlay of the Salman Pak facility, detailing the location of the Boeing 707 and other terrorist training locations. This map is hosted on PBS Frontline.

Following the PBS interview, a company called Space Imaging searched it's database and discovered they possessed an aerial photograph of the Salman Pak area taken in April of 2000 which demonstrated conclusively that the plane did exist at Salman Pak. Further, comparison's of the two images show an almost indentical match, corroborating that Sabah Khodada has intimate knowledge with the Salmnan Pak facility. . An image of the aerial photograph is hosted on TownHall.

U.S. District Judge Harold Baer Jr concluded from the evidence that Iraq indeed provided material support for Al-Qaida in a lawsuit on behalf of the September 11 victims. Heavily cited in the case was the existence of the Salman Pak photograph that resembles accurately the Iraqi defectors' allegations. Former CIA director James A. Woolsey testified as an expert witness that Salman Pak was used to train foreign terrorists.

During the 2003 invasion, various media outlets reported on the U.S. Marines capture of Salman Pak and the discovery of a non-iraqi Arab training center, as well as the Boeing 707 used for training hijackers. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said, "Some of them come from Sudan, some from Egypt, some from other places. We've killed a number of them, and we've captured a number of them, and that's where some of this information comes from," "The nature of the work being done by some of those people we captured, their inferences about the type of training they received, all these things give us the impression that there is terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak." "It reinforces the likelihood of links between this regime and external terrorist organizations,".

(Chudogg) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chudogg (talk • contribs) 00:47, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Gayle Rivers? Are You Serious?
I don't know who thinks that anything written by "Gayle Rivers" aka Raymond Brooks is a reliable source, but that book was debunked almost as soon as it came out in 1985 https://web.archive.org/web/20201025030727/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-03-27-vw-20256-story.html John Simpson54 (talk) 04:42, 22 September 2022 (UTC)