The Habbush letter, or Habbush memo (Arabic: رسالة حبوش, romanized: risāla Ḥabbūši), is a handwritten message dated July 1, 2001, which appears to show a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq's government. It purports to be a direct communication between the head of Iraqi Intelligence, General Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, outlining mission training which Mohamed Atta, one of the organizers of the September 11 attacks, supposedly received in Iraq. The letter also claims that Hussein accepted a shipment from Niger, an apparent reference to an alleged uranium acquisition attempt that U.S. President George W. Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address.
The authenticity of the letter has been disputed since it was first made public in December 2003. In 2008, journalist Ron Suskind claimed that it was a forgery created by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under the direction of the White House. Two of Suskind's sources denied having knowledge of anyone in their chain of command ordering the forging the letter.[1] John Conyers, Chairman of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary, released a report into the allegations in 2009, in which he concluded that "the Administration figures who ordered and authored the apparent forgery ... remain unidentified".[2]
Conyers; January 13, 2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).