Source of Iraq-Qaeda link suspected liar - report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A top al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody was identified as a probable liar months before the Bush administration began using his claims as the basis of its contention that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing newly declassified portions of a Defence Intelligence Agency document from February 2002 made available to the Times by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin of the Armed Services Committee, the paper reported it was likely that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was intentionally misleading debriefers about Iraqi support for al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.

"It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," the Times quoted the report as saying. "Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of U.S. intelligence agencies' doubts about Libi's credibility, the Times said. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials cited his input as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training al Qaeda members in explosives and illicit weapons use, the Times said. The officials did not mention Libi by name at the time.

But Bush, in a speech in October 2002, said, "We've learnt that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases."

Levin said the evidence of early doubts about Libi illustrated what he called the administration's misuse of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the Times said.

As an official intelligence report the document would have circulated widely and would have been available to the CIA, the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies, the Times said. But it was unclear whether it was provided to the Senate panel.

A Bush administration official declined to comment to the newspaper on the report on Libi, who was captured in Pakistan late in 2001 and recanted his claims in January of last year. At the time he was the most senior al Qaeda member in U.S. custody, and is likely being held at Guantanamo Bay, the Times said.

Levin also noted a portion of the D.I.A. report that expressed skepticism about the idea of close collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda, an idea never substantiated by U.S. intelligence but which was a pillar of the Bush administration's prewar claims, the Times reported.