Al-Qaeda In asserting a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the Bush administration focused special attention on alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom Secretary of State Powell called a "collaborator of Osama bin Laden". Soon after the start of the war, however, evidence of such ties was discredited by multiple US intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department's Inspector General's Office. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harboring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi". More broadly, the CIA's Kerr Group summarized in 2004 that despite "a 'purposely aggressive approach' in conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links... [the US] Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed". Despite these findings, US Vice President Dick Cheney continued to assert that a link existed between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which drew criticism from members of the intelligence community and leading Democrats. As of the invasion, the State Department listed 45 countries, including the United States, where al-Qaeda was active. Iraq was not one of them. The eventual lack of evidence linking the Saddam Hussein government and al-Qaeda led many war critics to allege that the Bush administration purposely fabricated such links to strengthen the case for the invasion. These claims were supported by the July 2005 release of the so-called Downing Street memo, in which Richard Dearlove (then head of British foreign intelligence service MI6) wrote that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed [by the US] around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power. In addition, in his April 2007 report Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble found that the Defense Department's Office of Special Plansrun by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldpurposely manipulated evidence to strengthen the case for war. The Inspector General's report also highlighted the role of members of the Iraqi National Congress, a group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, in providing false intelligence about connections with al-Qaeda to build support for a US invasion. Other terrorist organizations In making its case for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration also referenced Saddam Hussein's relationships with terrorist organizations other than al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein provided financial assistance to the families of Palestinians