Category: niger yellowcake

The Paddy Wagon: Then and Now

At just 45 years-old, Patrick Fitzgerald may be only a hatchling of an independent prosecutor, but his deposition skills have been forced to mature rather quickly. This is because they haven't always been used for good; they were formerly used for even better. And once again, African intrigue related to occluded intelligence about Saddam's WMD program was at the heart of the matter.

Weekly Standard reporter Stephen Hayes makes a passing observation in his book The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America that no one can fault as controversial. On page 73, Hayes writes that it was Fitzgerald who was the U.S. attorney tasked with interrogating one Jamal Ahmed al Fadl shortly after the 1998 East African embassy bombings. The subject of the Q&A was bin Laden's ties to the Sudanese regime, which was also being veted for naughty purposes by you-know-who at around the same time. But so who's this al Fadl character?

The keywitness for the U.S. government... a founding member of al Qaeda who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted deputies. Among the duties he listed were running al Qaeda's front companies; arranging assistance for al Qaeda affiliate groups from the Philippines, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere; making sure the Sudanese government repaid its debts to al Qaeda; planning assassination attempts on political opponents of the ruling Sudanese political party, the National Islamic Front; and attempting to obtain uranium for bin Laden.

From that degree of menace to the present one... Someone ought to ask Patrick, when this is all over, which case he found more exhilarating. Or lamentable. --MICHAEL WEISS

The Connection [The Weekly Standard]
The Prosecutor: The Mystery Man [Newsweek]

READ MORE: i. lewis libby , judith miller , karl rove , niger yellowcake , patrick fitzgerald , plamegate

---