The White House and the CIA have adamantly denied a report that the Bush administration concocted a letter purporting to show a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida as a justification for the Iraq war.
The allegation was raised by Washington-based journalist Ron Suskind in a new book, The Way of the World, which was published yesterday. The letter supposedly was written by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, director of Iraqi intelligence 
"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind wrote. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al-Qaida, something the vice president's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."
Suskind said the letter's existence had been reported before, and that it had been treated as if it were genuine.