More on Mohamed Haydar Zammar interrogation in Syria and the CIA secret quid pro quo with Syria....from 9/5 NBC News...

The CIA connection to Syria

NBC News exclusive: U.S. officials describe
secret quid pro quo

By Fred Francis
NBC NEWS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — The United States is quietly allowing Syria, which it has declared a state sponsor of terrorism, to illegally import 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude oil a day in exchange for information about al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, U.S. and Syrian officials have told NBC News.

SOURCES SAID THAT earlier this year, U.S. troops were saved from an al-Qaida attack in the Persian Gulf based on information from Syria.

“We supply the United States with any information we have on al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that we consider terrorist,” said Georges Jabbour, a political analyst at Aleppo University in Syria and a past adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“And this does not mean we agree with the United States on what she considers to be terrorism and terrorists,” said Jabbour, who often speaks unofficially for Syria.

U.S. officials characterized the Syrian information as “golden.” “The Syrians have provided significant operational intelligence,” a senior State Department official told NBC News on condition of anonymity. “I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”

In exchange, Washington has chosen to look the other way as Syria illegally imports 200,000 barrels of of cut-rate Iraqi oil every day in defiance of a United Nations-imposed embargo.

U.S. officials said the oil flows through an old, long-unused pipeline from the Kirkuk oil field in the north, which the Energy Department has estimated has more than 10 billion barrels of proven reserves. Syria denies importing the oil, but U.S. officials said it was lying.

Even though Iraq charges Syria only $14 a barrel — half the market price — the arrangement has yielded a $3 billion-a-year bonanza for Iraq, which a senior U.S. official said was used as a slush fund for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“He certainly needs money to support his elite troops and to keep them happy,” said Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington policy institute.

SEPT. 11 RECRUITER HELD

In addition to intelligence information, officials said, Syria has also giving the CIA access to Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who is believed to have recruited some of the 19 men who hijacked four jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania almost a year ago.

Zammar, 41, a German citizen born in Syria, was allegedly the main contact for lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. He was arrested in Morocco earlier this year and deported to Syria, where he was secretly detained, reportedly with the knowledge of the United States.

Because he is in Syrian custody, the arrangement allows interrogators to question him outside the protection of the U.S. Constitution. German officials have accused Syria of torturing Zammar and have demanded that he be treated in accordance with international law.

“I would say that the questioning in Damascus is going to be more brutal and more effective than in Guantanamo or in Washington,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Zammar, who is being questioned at Syrian secret police headquarters, is talking, as are two dozen other al-Qaida members also imprisoned in Syria, U.S. officials said.

hmmm - quid pro Quo with Syria or not ..... it's somehow satisfying to know that these captured al Qaeda aren't being treated with kid gloves......Jen