Entered into the database on Monday, September 12th, 2005 @ 15:25:50 MST
More details emerge on the phony 1993 Saddam assassination threat against
George H. W. Bush. After WMR's report on senior Bush's close relationship
with Kuwait, a country that supported groups associated with "Al Qaeda"
and the 9-11 attacks on the U.S., more details have been provided by State Department
sources on the alleged 1993 assassination threat by Saddam Hussein against ex-President
Bush. The U.S. ambassador to Kuwait during 1993 was Edward W. (Skip) Gnehm,
an ardent Bush supporter who was appointed by Bush in August 1990. Gnehm presented
his credentials to the Emir in April 1991 after serving as ambassador to the
Kuwaiti government-in-exile in Taif, Saudi Arabia. Gnehm took up his position
in Kuwait shortly after U.S. forces occupied Kuwait after the routing of Saddam's
forces in Operation Desert Storm. President Clinton kept Gnehm on as ambassador
to Kuwait until April 1994. FBI agents sent to Kuwait to investigate the car bomb assassination
threat against Bush believed the entire operation was bogus. They believed the
Kuwaiti government rounded up a few Iraqi whiskey smugglers, planted Iraqi ordnance
left in Kuwait by Iraqi forces as "evidence," and staged the entire
assassination plot in order to ingratiate themselves to Bush and put pressure
on the Clinton administration to retaliate against Iraq. The FBI team
that interrogated the accused Iraqi "assasins" sent their reports
back to FBI headquarters by secure fax rather than official State Department
communications channels because those circuits are routinely monitored by the
CIA and National Security Agency and would have assuredly come to the attention
of Woolsey and Bush's allies at Langley. The faxes consisted of 30 to 50 pages
per night. A Kuwaiti judge later dismissed the assassination charges against
Iraq due to lack of evidence. After the Clinton administration decided to send 23 cruise missiles
into Iraq on June 27, 1993, Gnehm, eager to please Bush and Clinton, called
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Shaikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (the former
Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.) at his home during the wee hours of the morning
to request permission for the U.S. cruise missiles to overfly Kuwaiti airspace
on their way into Iraq. (It was the daughter of Sabah named "Nayirah,"
it will be recalled, who made up a phony story about witnessing Iraqi soldiers
throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators on to the floor before a carefully
contrived October 10, 1990 phony House "hearing" chaired by Democratic
Representative from California Tom Lantos and organized by the Saudi and Kuwaiti
shill public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. Nayirah was Nayirah al Sabah
and she was not in Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation but in Washington, DC).
Gnehm personally dictated the contents of the overflight permission cable to
National Security Adviser Anthony Lake at the White House ("granted diplomatic
overflight clearance for cruise missiles.") Some of the U.S. cruise missiles
hit civilian residential areas in Baghdad, including the home of famous Arab
artist Leyla Attar, who was killed in the attack. Gnehm, a fluent Arabic speaker,
is reported by embassy staff to have been too close for comfort to the Kuwaiti
government. That resulted in conflicts with embassy principals, including the
Regional Security Officer and the US Marine contingent.
