-21 October 2001, FOCUS SPECIAL: The Terrorism Crisis: OUTBREAK: So who is terrorising America with anthrax?”, by Ed Vulliamy and Ed Helmore in New York, The Observer.
The next day:
Bin Laden sent a delegation of his top Al Qaeda terrorists to Baghdad on April 25, 1998, to attend the grand celebration that week of Saddam’s birthday. It was then that Saddam’s bloody-minded son Uday agreed to receive several hundred Al Qaeda recruits for terrorist training in techniques unavailable in Afghanistan.
That Baghdad birthday party, according to an unpublished spying report, celebrated something else: Uday Hussein’s agreement with bin Laden’s men to formally establish a joint force consisting of some of Al Qaeda’s fiercest “Afghan Arab” fighters and the covert combatants in Iraqi intelligence unit 999.
-22 October 2001, “Advance the Story”, by William Safire, New York Times.