A document obtained by Americans in Iraq indicates the Iraqi intelligence agents contacted bin Laden "when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family."
According to the New York Times:

American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan.

The document states that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered. There is no further indication of collaboration.

This new piece of info comes when the controversy rages unabated about the 911 Commssion's conclusion that it could not find any ""collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda," with Bush administration officials countering that there was lots of evidence of ties. The Times goes on:

The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks ago, before the commission's report was released. Since obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several military, intelligence and United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government considered it authentic.

The Americans confirmed that they had obtained the document from the Iraqi National Congress, as part of a trove that the group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government last year. The Defense Intelligence Agency paid the Iraqi National Congress for documents and other information until recently, when the group and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, fell out of favor in Washington.

Some of the intelligence provided by the group is now wholly discredited, although officials have called some of the documents it helped to obtain useful.

A translation of the new Iraqi document was reviewed by a Pentagon working group in the spring, officials said. It included senior analysts from the military's Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and a joint intelligence task force that specialized in counterterrorism issues, they said.

The task force concluded that the document "appeared authentic," and that it "corroborates and expands on previous reporting" about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis.

This document is sure to provide fuel for more debate...as you can already see on the internet:
--Glenn Reynolds:"Somebody Tell Al Gore," he writes, noting the the commission "seems to have somehow overlooked it."
--Just One Minute:"The Times has been working the story of this document for several weeks, which makes their infamous early headline ("Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie") even more puzzling."
--Betsy Newmark notes that if you read the whole story the Times "still can't get their story straight."
--James Joyner notes that this is new evidence of "what we've known for years" about the Iraqis and bin Laden in the Sudan, and that the Clinton administration had used it as a rationale to call for regime change.
--Robert Tagorda feels that the document's "origin is bound to raise a few eyebrows," noting "its connection to the INC is likely to prompt skepticism from the administration's criticswhether it would have emerged earlier (it's been circulating since April) if Chalabi had stayed in Washington's good graces."
--The Rant:"To hold this up as evidence of “active cooperation” is the kind of distortion of the facts that one would expect out of Michael Moore in some cheap shot against the president. Al-Qaeda as a group was not even in existence at the time according to the article, and bin Laden was only one of several groups that were courted by Hussein. In any event it's pretty thin gruel to trot out as evidence of “active cooperation”.