Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were alleged by some U.S. Government officials to have established a highly secretive relationship between 1992 and 2003, specifically through a series of meetings reportedly involving the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). In the lead up to the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush alleged that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and militant group al-Qaeda might conspire to launch terrorist attacks on the United States, basing the administration's rationale for war, in part, on this allegation . The consensus of intelligence experts has been that these contacts never led to an operational relationship, and that consensus is backed up by reports from the independent 9/11 Commission, declassified Defense Department reports as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose 2006 report of Phase II of its investigation into prewar intelligence reports concluded that there was no evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Critics of the Bush Administration have said Bush was intentionally building a case for war with Iraq without regard to factual evidence. On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, "We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period."
