2/19/1998

“…according to documents [dated February 19, 1998] found in the bombed-out headquarters of Iraqi intelligence [Mukhabarat] in April 2003, a senior official in Saddam’s Mukhabarat circulated a three-page memo that would finalize plans for meetings in Baghdad between a representative of Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence. The pages, each marked ‘Top Secret and Urgent,’ carried three separate dates: February 19, February 23, and February 24, 1998. The discovery, made by Toronto Star reporter Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore from the Telegraph in London and published on April 27, 2003, amounted ‘to the first hard evidence of contact between Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization and the Iraqi regime,’ according to Potter.”

 – Stephen F. Hayes, The Connection, Pages 100-101