GOVERNMENT / THE ELITE - LOOKING GLASS NEWS
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More details emerge on the phony 1993 Saddam assassination threat against George H. W. Bush.
by Wayne Madsen    The Wayne Madsen Report
Entered into the database on Monday, September 12th, 2005 @ 15:25:50 MST


 

Untitled Document

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.