Terror Watch: Distorted Intelligence?

In fact, the secret German records--compiled during interrogations with a captured Zarqawi associate--suggest that the shadowy Zarqawi headed his own terrorist group, called Al Tawhid, with its own goals and may even have been a jealous rival of Al Qaeda.

The captured associate, Shadi Abdallah, who is now on trial in Germany, told his interrogators last year that Zarqawi's Al Tawid organization was one of several Islamist groups that acted "in opposition" to bin Laden's Al Qaeda. At one point, Abdallah described how Zarqawi even vetoed the idea of splitting charity funds collected in Germany between Al Tawhid and Al Qaeda.

While the internal machinations between Al Tawhid and Al Qaeda may seem obscure, they cut to the heart of one of the most politically sensitive issues in Washington at the moment: whether the Bush White House exaggerated and distorted U.S. intelligence to justify the war on Iraq.

Much of the debate revolves around claims that Saddam had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--stockpiles that so far have not been found. But an equally fierce debate has been taking place behind the scenes about the handling of sketchy, and at times, contradictory evidence relating to Saddam's supposed connections with Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi was at the center of those claims. In a Cincinnati speech delivered Oct. 7, on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing him to wage war on Iraq, President Bush asserted that "Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade." His chief example was that "one very senior Al Qaeda leader" had "received medical treatment in Baghdad"--an obvious reference to Zarqawi, who had his leg amputated there in 2002.

Zarqawi received even more prominence in secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations Security Council. In that address, Powell described Zarqawi as "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants." During his stay in Baghdad, Powell claimed that "nearly two dozen...al Qaeda affiliates" converged on the Iraqi capital and "established a base of operations there."