Posted on 08/12/2005 12:01:49 PM PDT by wm_tate
We've heard the excuse for not including the Able Danger information in the 9/11 Commission Report before. It's basically the same excuse the commission staff used to discount reports that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official.
You can't depend on the government to investigate itself. Too many of the investigators have something to hide.
The news on this is ever so slowly getting out. I haven't heard the calls go out for another investigation come from any 'mainstream' voices...But ping me as soon as we do. This promises to get interesting.
Thanks for posting this. I have to conclude that it was probably Atta in Prague meeting with al-Ani, the Iraqi security agent. It's known that Atta made two quick trips to Prague in May 2000, and there's no evidence that puts him anywhere else on the April, 2001 date.
You might want to check out this article:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2091354/
Thanks for the link! There is still something amazing about how this has been reported. Unlike what the MSM says, the 9/11 Commission Report concedes that they could not rule out such a meeting even using their questionable logic. And even if this meeting with Atta didn't happen, there was obviously a link between Iraqi intelligence in Prague and the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell. There is obviously a concerted effort to de-link Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
I believe many people on the anti-Bush side have their heads planted in the sand. They have their hands over their ears. If Atta had connections with an Iraqi agent involving money shortly before 9/11, then their whole anti-Bush crusade goes out the window. We know through Steven Hayes efforts about Hussein's many ties to Al-Qaeda. Since he supplied many other terrorists and terrorist groups with money and safe harbor, why wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that he supplied A-Q terrorists with money? It wouldn't be unreasonable, and that's why all the ant-war "experts" are hoping and praying that the meeting between Atta and Al-ani never happened. And now it looks like they didn't pray hard enough.
Spanish intelligence found evidence that Algerians Khaled Madani and Moussa Laouar provided false passports to Mohamed Atta and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
"there was obviously a link between Iraqi intelligence in Prague and the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell."
You're right about that. Atta doesn't have to be involved directly for there to have been a link.
With the exception of a few Republicans, Congress has shielded the Clintons from day one of their administration. They will continue to lie for him, ignore his treason and cover up any mistakes made in his eight years of the presidency. Would to God we were a two party nation, but we are not and haven't been for a long time.
So Atta could have been travelling with a false passport, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
Spanish police last February arrested Algerians Khaled Madani, 33, and Moussa Laour, 36, on suspicion of furnishing phony passports to, among others, al Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohamed Atta. According to a February 29 Associated Press dispatch, Binalshibh revealed Madani's identity to interrogators at the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Additional records further illuminate Iraqi complicity in the September 11 massacre. As a May 27 Wall Street Journal editorial reported, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir's name appears on three different rosters of the late Uday Hussein's prestigious paramilitary group, the Saddam Fedayeen. A government source told the Journal that the papers identify Shakir as a lieutenant colonel in the Saddam Fedayeen.
Shakir worked as a VIP airport greeter and facilitator for Malaysian Airlines at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, a position reputedly arranged by intelligence officers at Iraq's Malaysian embassy. On January 5, 2000, Shakir allegedly welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them through immigration and on to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel. That's where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes (he is also author of the new book The Connection), Shakir vanished.
On January 15, al Midhar and al Hamzi quietly flew from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Nearly eight months later, they very loudly smashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
Saddam Fedayeen Lieutenant Colonel Shakir resurfaced on September 17, 2001, in Qatari handcuffs. His pockets and apartment yielded, among other things, phone numbers for the contacts and safe houses of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Shakir also possessed information on "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 conspiracy to explode 12 passenger jets simultaneously over the Pacific. Shakir passed from Qatari to Jordanian custody before being released after three months of Iraqi pressure. He reportedly returned to Saddam Hussein's Baghdad.
Papers pulled from the Mukhabarat's Baghdad headquarters indicate that Saddam Hussein's intelligence operatives have known Mohamed Atta's former boss for years.
Ramzi bin al Shibh functioned as the money man for the 9/11 conspiracy, sending the hijackers money from Europe. I'll bet he's had some interesting stories to tell.
Ramzi bin al Shibh was the money man for the 9/11 conspirators, wiring money from Europe. I'll bet he's had some interesting stories to tell.
All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias" to "meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague." Clearly, it was not beyond the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers to use aliases.
And any one of the highjackers could have had his cell phone while he was in Prague.
And Snell.
There is also the case of Abu Zubayr, an officer in Saddam's secret police who was also the ringleader of an al Qaeda cell in Morocco. He attended the September 5, 2001 meeting in Spain with other al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, the 9/11 financial chief. Abu Zubayr was apprehended in May, 2002, while putting together a plot to mount suicide attacks on U.S. ships passing through the straits of Gibraltar. He has allegedly since stated that Iraq trained and supplied chemical weapons to al Qaeda.And the real interesting part...The most intriguing potential link is reflected in documents found by Toronto Star reporter Mitch Potter in Baghdad in April, 2003. The documents detail direct links between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime dating back at least to 1998, and mention Osama bin Laden by name. The find supports an October 2001 report by William Safire that noted, among other things, a 1998 meeting in Baghdad between al Qaeda #2 Ayman al Zawahiri and Saddam's vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan. Other reports have alleged bin Laden himself traveled to Iraq around that time, or at least planned to. Former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, now in custody, allegedly met with bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.
The report did however show Atta going to Madrid for a week in January 2001That is 4 months before the Prague meeting and that must have been when he got the fake passports from the Algerians that the Spanish authorities arrested.
One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.
It is possible that the Ahmed Hikmat Shakir listed on the Fedayeen rosters is a different man from the Iraqi of the same name with the proven al Qaeda connections. His identity awaits confirmation by al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody or perhaps by other captured documents. But our sources tell us there is no questioning the authenticity of the three Fedayeen rosters. The chain of control is impeccable. The documents were captured by the U.S. military and have been in U.S. hands ever since. As others have reported, at the time of the summit Shakir was working at the Kuala Lumpur airport, having obtained the job through an Iraqi intelligence agent at the Iraqi embassy. The four-day al Qaeda meeting was attended by Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi, who were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Also on hand were Ramzi bin al Shibh, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant and mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Shakir left Malaysia on January 13, four days after the summit concluded.
That's not the only connection between Shakir and al Qaeda. The Iraqi next turned up in Qatar, where he was arrested on September 17, 2001, six days after the attacks in the U.S. A search of his pockets and apartment uncovered such information as the phone numbers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers' safe houses and contacts. Also found was information pertaining to a 1995 al Qaeda plot to blow up a dozen commercial airliners over the Pacific.
After a brief detention, our friends the Qataris inexplicably released Shakir, and on October 21 he flew to Amman, Jordan. The Jordanians promptly arrested him, but under pressure from the Iraqis (and Amnesty International, which questioned his detention) and with the acquiescence of the CIA, they let him go after three months. He was last seen heading home to Baghdad.
I'm so glad you posted that article about Shakir; I'd lost mine.
Rep. Curt Weldon said today on Fox News that there are 15 unexamined boxes of documents(!), and now 11 witnesses(!!), (NOT just 1), who are willing to testify under oath.
He also is calling for 9/11 Staffers to be questioned under oath re: their evident negligence, &/or close-mindedness, &/or cover-up behavior, and/or stonewalling.
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