“Following the meeting between [Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman] al Zawahiri and senior Iraqi officials on February 3, 1998, and the subsequent sixteen-day visit to Baghdad by a bin Laden confidant in March, a small band of al Qaeda leaders traveled to Iraq in April to celebrate Saddam’s sixty-first birthday [on April 28, 1998]. …the al Qaeda visitors accompanied their hosts, Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s sons, to an extravagant celebration in Tikrit. Postwar intelligence reporting from a variety of sources indicates that Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s younger and more trusted son, became a primary contact with al Qaeda.”
– Stephen F. Hayes, The Connection, Page 121