"We now know," he writes in his 2004 book, "that the World Trade Center attack in 1993 was an al-Qaida operation." That royal "we," however, does not include master bomber Ramzi Yousef or Osama himself.

Indeed, Osama has denied knowing Yousef before WTC I, and the al-Qaida honcho has never been shy about claiming responsibility where due.

When asked about financing, Yousef would cite only "family and friends." Tellingly, the Justice Department did not indict bin Laden for the crime.

In his much-praised 2006 account of the path to 9/11, "The Looming Tower," Lawrence Wright concedes that no one in the intelligence community really knows who sponsored the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

Wright's concession here carries all the more weight because he is writing for a generally liberal audience that does not want to hear the word "Iraq" any more than he wants to say it.

Wright obliges their shared bias by failing to mention the very name, "Abdul Rahman Yasin." An Iraqi co-conspirator with the chemical burns to prove it, Yasin successfully fled the country after the 1993 bombing and headed back to Baghdad.

Clarke at least mentions Yasin, though he misidentifies him as "Abdul Yasim" and makes the incoherent claim that Yasin was "incarcerated by Saddam Hussein's regime" upon returning to Baghdad.

In reality, an ABC correspondent found Yasin working for the Iraqi government in Baghdad a year after the bombing. The Iraqi regime had provided Yasin a house and monthly stipend. Yasin would live there comfortably for a decade before being rousted by the American military.