Dick Cheney, appearing at the National Press Club on Monday, said that the US intelligence trying to link Saddam with al-Qaeda on September 11 attacks proved to be baseless.

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded, according to CNN.

Yet, the hawkish former leader insisted that Saddam was a terrorism sponsor and strongly defended Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

Saddam was "somebody who provided sanctuary and safe harbor and resources to terrorists. ... [It] is, without question, a fact."

"There was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. It's not something I made up. ... We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a sponsor -- a state sponsor -- of terror. It's not my judgment. That was the judgment of our [intelligence community] and State Department," he said.

US-led international forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to oust Saddam regime that Washington had claimed was equipped with Weapons of Mass Destruction.

But the US-led coalition body in Iraq, tasked with finding the country's alleged WMDs could find no such weapons.