One unnamed U.S. official cited a CIA assessment first supplied to the White House in January 2003 in response to the reports, more than a year after two Iraqi defectors told the FBI that they trained radical Muslims at Salman Pak in hijacking techniques never used before the 9/11 attacks.

"The probability that the training provided at such centers, e.g. Salman Pak, was similar to that al Qaida could offer at its own camps in Afghanistan, combined with the sourcing difficulties, leads us to conclude that we need additional corroboration before we can validate that this low level basic terrorist training for al Qaida occurred in Iraq," the CIA concluded.

Said Knight Ridder: "U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that the base was most probably used to train Iraqi counter-terrorism units in anti-hijacking tactics."

The conclusion that training at Salman Pak was innocuous is not shared by Charles Duelfer, who replaced David Kay as head of the U.S. Iraq Survey Group earlier this year.

In November 2001, Duelfer – then an UNSCOM weapons inspector who had witnessed the Salman Pak drills – said the Iraqi government made the same claim to him, that they were actually counterterrorism exercises.

"Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter'," Duelfer said, dismissing the alibi as an obvious fraud.

"I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. "I mean, what, actually, do you expect?" he added.

But Duelfer's corroboration – along with satellite photos confirming the defectors' contention that the drills took place aboard an actual Boeing 707 fuselage parked nowhere near an airstrip – failed to persuade the CIA and the State Department, which continued to question their credibility.

The State Department, in particular, worked strenuously to block publication of the White House's Salman Pak reports, Knight Ridder said.

One of those reports, dubbed "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," was released as a background paper in conjunction with Bush's Sept. 12, 2002, U.N. address, but was ignored by the press.

The second publication, "Iraq: From Fear to Freedom," was distributed abroad. It cited claims by Iraqi defector Sabah Khodada, who said he trained radical Islamists at Salman Pak to hijack U.S. airliners.

The Bush administration booklet reported:

"Khodada ... confirmed numerous press reports that Salman Pak had an entire Boeing 707 jetliner that was used for training in hijacking techniques - from smuggling weapons on board to methods for overpowering the crew and terrorizing passengers into cowed submission."

Earlier, Khodada had told the London Observer that he believed the 9/11 attacks were carried out by "graduates of Salman Pak."

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Knight Ridder that the White House ordered the State Department to publish the two reports over the objections of some State Department officials.

Editor's note: