Seems late Iraqi insurgent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have been as well connected to the nascent Iraqi government as disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was to the Republican establishment that runs official Washington these days.
News reports say Zarqawi’s cell phone, which was recovered from the destroyed home the terrorist was hiding in, included stored phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials. The claim is attributed to Iraqi lawmaker Waiel Abdul-Latif, a member of ex-prime minister Ayad Allawi’s party.
Zarqawi’s wireless phone directory supposedly had direct dials to ministry employees and members of parliament. If true, it may help explain some of the problems in getting the new Iraqi government on track.
Abdul-Latif called for an investigation into the matter, declaring burning of the candle at both ends would be unproductive for Iraq’s future.
OK, so what’s new?
Should we be surprised this Jordanian-born outlaw had friends in high places? Isn’t it a universal theme of governments everywhere?
Whether Zarqawi-the-terrorist doubled a shadow legislator or government minister is unclear. We’ll leave that to the Web blogs to sort out, while we focus here on the latest conspiracy-in-the-making in which the National Security Agency allegedly sought out AT&T Inc. many months before Sept. 11, 2001, for help on a new domestic eavesdropping program.
Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true, you know. But how will we ever know?
The Bush administration remains largely mum on the subject and all we know from AT&T is Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre’s “we follow the law, senator” line. Perhaps phone-record lawsuits against AT&T will turn up some enlightening information.
About the only thing you can take away from all this is Zarqawi’s post mortem cell-phone experience is a not-so-unique cautionary tale. Cell phones confiscated from criminal suspects have become a boon to law enforcement, providing them with the best leads in town. What a wealth of information in a wireless handset: telephone numbers, dates, times, text messages, location-the works!
For living celebrities who lose wireless devices, it can be devastating embarrassing-Paris Hilton-and a payday for supermarket tabloids.
Truth is, we’ve become a nation of little black-book carriers. All our digital DNA we keep so secret is only a heartbeat away from being splashed worldwide by another technological disrupter called the Internet.
