Officials: 'No evidence' defector saw bin Laden in Iraq

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A PBS program scheduled to air Thursday features an Iraqi defector saying he saw Osama bin Laden in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in 1998, but U.S. officials said they are skeptical of the report.

If a clear link could be established between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the group that attacked the United States on September 11, it would help the Bush administration justify military action to overthrow the Iraqi regime.

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"We're not dismissing this, but we have no evidence of such a visit" to Iraq, said a knowledgeable U.S. official.

"We have no evidence that is true," said one official, though he added that U.S. intelligence has not ruled out the possibility that bin Laden and other al Qaeda members may have had contacts with Iraqi officials in the past.

The new PBS program "Wide Angle" quotes the Iraqi defector as saying that he saw bin Laden in Iraq on July 9, 1998 -- shortly before al Qaeda blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa.

U.S. officials said an Iraqi intelligence official may have traveled to Afghanistan in the late '90s to meet with bin Laden or other senior al Qaeda leaders -- though the evidence of that meeting is not conclusive. The officials said if there is any connection between Hussein and al Qaeda, the evidence remains weak, and the PBS program "does not add" to it.

Officials have said Iraq ran camps for years providing training in guerrilla and terrorist techniques. The United States has no evidence members of al Qaeda ever attended the camps but can't entirely rule it out, officials said.

U.S. defense officials said that in recent years they have identified about half a dozen training camps inside Iraq used by the country's intelligence and internal terrorist groups largely to preserve Hussein's regime. Those camps do remain under U.S. surveillance.

The PBS program also restates assertions by Czech officials that Mohammed Atta, the apparent ringleader of the September 11 hijackers met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official named Al-Ani. Czech officials have said the meeting took place in April 2001. U.S. officials said there is evidence Atta traveled to the Czech city in 1999 and possibly in 2000 but none he was there in April last year.

However, U.S. intelligence is keeping a close eye on a Kurdish Islamic extremist group known as Ansar al-Islam, which may be sheltering al Qaeda and Taliban members who fled the fighting in Afghanistan. Ansar al-Islam is believed to have Hussein's support as a means of countering Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq. Al Qaeda and Taliban members may have been training and organizing in that area, officials said.

U.S. analysts said it would be surprising if Hussein were to allow al Qaeda to gain a toehold in central Iraq, where his authority remains absolute, and he would be opposed to any group that might gain power against him

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been critical of Hussein, noting that Iraq provides financial support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and the concern that Iraq may be cooperating with terrorist groups on weapons of mass destruction.

-- David Ensor is CNN's national security correspondent, and Barbara Starr is CNN's Pentagon correspondent.