Institute for National Strategic Studies

AL-QAEDA
COLLECTION

On 1 April, Mr. David Palkki, CRRC Deputy Director, participated in a roundtable at the International Study Association (ISA) on Cambridge University Press’s The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime, 1978-2001, which he co-edited with Dr. Kevin Woods of the Institute for Defense Analyses and Dr. Mark Stout of Johns Hopkins University. Dr. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago chaired the roundtable. Dr. Timothy Naftali, formerly the Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, served as discussant.

On 2 April, Mr. Palkki also presented research on Iraq’s coerced disarmament on a roundtable on “Coercion, Assurances, and Nuclear Disarmament.” Dr. Etel Solingen of the University of California, Irvine, and President Elect of ISA, chaired. Dr. William Potter, Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and the Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, served as discussant. The roundtable also included Dr. Bruce Jentleson of Duke University, Dr. Alexander Montgomery of Reed College, and Dr. David Kang of the University of Southern California.

On 3 April, Dr. Lorry Fenner, CRRC Director, chaired a roundtable on Saddam Hussein’s regime’s links to terrorist organizations with Dr. Timothy Castle of the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence; Dr. Kevin Woods of the Institute for Defense Analyses; Mr. Sterling Jensen of Defense Cooperation Security Agency’s  Near East South Asia (NESA) Center; Mr. William Natter, former Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy and House of Armed Services Committee staffer on terrorism; Mr. Sam Helfont of Princeton University; and Dr. Lawrence Rubin of Georgia Tech University.

The CRRC hosted a brown bag lunch with Dr. Douglas Cox and Dr. Bruce Montgomery to discuss Archives in Wartime, primarily those from Saddam Hussein’s regime.  Dr. Cox is the International Law Librarian and an Associate Professor at the City University of New York School of Law and has written extensively on the legality of captured records.  Dr. Montgomery is the Faculty Director of Archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder and has written on the captured records from Saddam’s Iraq.

On 3 December, Mr. Palkki presented his co-authored paper "Saddam, Israel, and the Bomb: Nuclear Alarmism Justified" at the annual (Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conference.) This article was published in the journal International Security.

On 4 November, Mr. David Palkki, CRRC Deputy Director, presented research on a roundtable at the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa’s (ASMEA) Annual Conference on "The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime, 1978-2001," which he co-edited and which is being published by Cambridge University Press.  Mr. Michael Eisenstadt, Director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, chaired the roundtable; Dr. Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, served as discussant; Mr. Palkki was joined as a presenter on the roundtable by co-editors Dr. Kevin Woods, Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and Dr. Mark Stout, lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

CRRC hosted a book talk on Israeli Colonel (ret) Pesach Malovany’s  "The Performance of the Iraqi Army in Operation Desert Storm."  Mr. Malovany, a retired intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, presented his award-winning book on the military in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq at a CRRC-sponsored book talk and answer audience questions.  Mr. David Palkki, CRRC Deputy Director, chaired the event. Dr. Amatzia Baram, a professor in the Department of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa, served as discussant.  

The Iran-Iraq War: The View from Baghdad. This conference, co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS), was centered on newly available documentary evidence from Iraqi archives stored digitally at the CRRC and published on the WWICS and CRRC websites.

10 Years Later: Insights on al-Qaeda's Past & Future through Captured Records.  This conference, co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Advanced Governmental Studies, examined what we knew about al-Qaeda before 9/11, and what we have learned over the past 10 years. It also examined how captured records and other primary sources can contribute to our understanding of future challenges from al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Dr. Lorry Fenner, CRRC Director, participated in the panel, “How can DoD better support and utilize social science research?”s at the annual Minerva Initiative Conference at the University of California Washington Center in support of OSD Policy. Specifically, she discussed data and resource sharing in the defense community. CRRC staff also assisted in outreach for the conference.

Dr. Fenner presented an address at the 9-11 conference “September 11th ….Ten Years Later: How has it changed the Heartland?” hosted by Bismarck State College, North Dakota, on her experiences as a staff member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. She will conduct outreach for the CRRC.

CRRC employees conducted outreach at a CRRC information booth in the convention hall of the American Political Science Association’s Annual Conference.

Mr. Palkki presented research findings on Saddam’s Iraq at the University of Kansas and the Dole Institute of Politics as a Dole Archive Visiting Fellow.

CRRC employees conducted outreach at a CRRC information booth in the convention hall of the annual Association of College and Research Libraries conference. 

Dr. Fenner chaired a roundtable on “Saddam’s Iraq: We now Know?,” at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association.  Roundtable participants addressed how well earlier assessments of Saddam and Iraq hold up in light of CRRC records and other new sources. Roundtable members included Amatzia Baram, Kevin Woods, Judith Yaphe, and Denise Natali.

Mr. Palkki presented a paper on “Coercive Disarmament: Lessons from Iraq,” at the annual conference of the International Studies Association. CRRC employees staffed a CRRC information booth in the convention hall of the annual International Studies Association conference.

The CRRC hosted an open discussion  of the book, "The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein's Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War," with author Kevin M. Woods, research staff member at the Institute of Defense Analyses, with expert commentary by Steven R. Ward, CIA visiting professor at the US Naval Academy, and Thomas A. Keaney, executive director of the Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies/Johns Hopkins University.

Mr. Palkki presented “The US Nuclear Deterrent and Saddam’s Non-use of WMD during the Gulf War: New Insights from Captured Iraqi Records,” at an Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation/Carnegie Corporation panel on the “U.S. Nuclear Posture: Credibility, Deterrence and Disarmament.”  The panel was open to the public and took place from 2:00-4:30pm at the University of California’s Washington Center (UCDC).  

In conjunction with the Scowcroft Institute’s 20th Anniversary Commemoration of the Beginning of Military Operations to Liberate Kuwait, the CRRC released relevant transcripts of meetings between Saddam and his inner circle to conference participants and subsequently posted them to the CRRC webpage.

Dr. Fenner moderated a panel on “Professional Disagreement on Policy: Introspection and Reflection on Basic Tenets and the Way Ahead.” NDU’s Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership sponsored this conference on Military Professionalism.