Sleeper Agent

Interesting item coming out of Chicago today:

"Alleged Iraqi 'Sleeper Agent' Arrested"

Latchin was "an Iraqi intelligence spy sent to this country to be a sleeper agent," with directions to "assimilate himself into our culture," Assistant U.S. Attorney James Conway said.

The indictment concerns Latchin's 1998 application for citizenship. Asked to list any organizations to which he belonged, he failed to put down Saddam's Baath Party, according to the indictment.

He also did not list that he had been a member of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the foreign intelligence arm of the Iraqi government, and said three overseas trips he made were vacations when in fact he met with his intelligence handler, according to the indictment.

Well imagine that.

An active Iraqi intelligence agent captured in the U.S.!

An agent who has been here for "about 11 years" which would mean since 1993 -- the year when it seems Hussein, who never stopped waging the first Gulf War until he was deposed, tried to have Bush the Elder assassinated during a visit to Kuwait.

Which was also, perhaps coincidentally, the year when the first WTC attack occurred. And also the same year when Nichols and McVeigh -- and perhaps a third "John Doe", according to initial witness accounts -- bombed the Federal Building in Oklahama City.

Investigative reporter Jayna Davis has matched a name and an identity with the police sketch of this mysterious "John Doe #3", who it seems just happened by a wild coincidence to also also have been an Iraqi ex-soldier who came here looking for odd jobs. And who, after denying her allegations and unsuccessfully suing, quit his post at Boston's Logan Airport(!) and disappeared.

She believes he was an Iraqi intelligence agent.

And now the "existence proof" of such beings has just been confirmed.

We can be sure these agents aren't here for the tourism.

Laurie Mylroie believes the first WTC attack in 1993 was also aided by Iraqi intelligence.

Crazy conspiracy theories? Perhaps. But having looked at the circumstantial evidence, the Wall Street Journal editorial board decided such charges could not be simply dismissed out of hand. We find it reported from NewsMax that in 2002,

Former CIA Director James Woolsey also expresses skepticism that Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, and his accomplice Terry Nichols, sentenced to life in prison and awaiting further trial on murder charges, could have planned and executed this monstrous crime all by themselves.

Woolsey believes the work of persistent investigators, reporter Jayna Davis and Middle East expert Laurie Mylroie, are onto something, as many clues in their separate probes point ominously toward Baghdad.

In a lengthy carefully worded Sept. 5 op-ed piece, Wall Street Journal senior editorial page writer Micah Morrison says while the information to date stops short of "conclusive evidence” the Iraqi dictator was implicated in the attacks on the Trade Center or the federal building in Oklahoma City, "there is quite a bit of smoke curling up from the various routes to Baghdad…”

That the Wall Street Journal is taking a serious look at the "Iraq connection” is significant if for no other reason than the fact that this Dow Jones icon of business journalism is not noted for an addiction to wild conspiracy theories.

"Our position is: Congress should hold hearings on evidence of previous Iraqi connections to terror,” editorialized the Indianapolis Star Sept. 7. "In the Oklahoma City case,” the paper added, "[Jayna] Davis painstakingly reviewed telephone records that indicate Terry Nichols contacted Iraqi intelligence in the Philippines to acquire bomb-making expertise.”

At the very least, this deep-cover agent now in custody was surely up to no good, and Hussein's intent to damage us here is proven. It isn't stated how he was discovered; perhaps Hussein's voluminous files are finally yielding their dark secrets.

And of the other possible terror connections? Another important thread in this developing tapestry has just been added.

Keep an eye on this story.