Posted on 06/16/2004 7:20:03 PM PDT by Shermy
WASHINGTON, June 16 - A report of a clandestine meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer first surfaced shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. And even though serious doubt was cast on the report, it was repeatedly cited by some Bush administration officials and others as evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
But on Wednesday, the Sept. 11 commission said its investigation had found that the meeting never took place.
In its report on the Sept. 11 plot, the commission staff disclosed for the first time F.B.I. evidence that strongly suggested that Mr. Atta was in the United States at the time of the supposed Prague meeting.
The report cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance camera in Virginia showing Mr. Atta withdrawing money on April 4, 2001, a few days before the supposed Prague meeting on April 9, and records showing his cell phone was used on April 6, 9, 10 and 11 in Florida.
The supposed meeting in Prague by Mr. Atta, who flew one of the hijacked jets on Sept. 11, was a centerpiece of early efforts by the Bush administration and its conservative allies to link Iraq with the attacks as the administration sought to justify a war to topple Saddam Hussein.
The Sept. 11 commission report also forcefully dismissed the broader notion that there was a terrorist alliance between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
The report said there might have been contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
In effect, the commission report endorsed the views of officials at the C.I.A. and F.B.I., who have long been dismissive of a supposed Prague meeting and of the administration's broader assertions concerning an Iraq-Qaeda alliance.
The panel's findings effectively rebuke the Pentagon's civilian leadership, which set up a small intelligence unit after the Sept. 11 attacks to hunt for links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This team briefed senior policy makers at the Pentagon and the White House, saying that the C.I.A. had ignored evidence of such connections.
The C.I.A.'s evidence of contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraqi dates to the early 1990's, when Mr. bin Laden was living in Sudan. The debate within the government was over their meaning.
The C.I.A. concluded that the contacts never translated into joint operational activity on terrorist plots; the Pentagon believed the C.I.A. was understating the likelihood of a deeper relationship.
The staff report cited evidence that Mr. bin Laden explored the possibility of cooperation with Iraq in the early and mid-1990's, despite a deep antipathy for Saddam Hussein's secular regime.
The report said Sudanese officials, who at the time had close ties with Iraq, tried to persuade Mr. bin Laden to end his support for anti-Hussein Islamic militants operating in the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq, and sought to arrange contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.
A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly visited Sudan three times and met Mr. bin Laden there in 1994. Mr. bin Laden reportedly requested space in Iraq to establish terrorist training camps as well as assistance in acquiring weapons, "but Iraq apparently never responded," the commission report stated.
The staff report added that two senior Qaeda operatives, previously identified as Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, "adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq."
Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Czech officials said they had received reports that Mr. Atta had met in April 2001 with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer stationed in Prague.
But the C.I.A. and F.B.I., and some top Czech officials, quickly began to cast doubt on the story, and Czech security officials were never able to corroborate the initial report, which was based on a single source. That source made the report after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Mr. Atta's photograph was published worldwide, and after it had already been reported that Czech border records showed Mr. Atta had visited Prague a year earlier, in 2000.
The evidence concerning Mr. Atta's whereabouts in Virginia and Florida in early April 2001, at the time of the purported Prague meeting, severely weakens the case for it.
The staff report's findings on the Prague meeting were also based in part on reporting from unidentified detainees in United States custody. One is Mr. Ani, who was captured and taken into American custody after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Under questioning, he has denied that the meeting ever happened, American officials have said.
No Evidence of Meeting With Iraqi
By James Risen
Jayson Blair is gone, but his spirit remains.
http://edwardjayepstein.com/2002question/prague.htm
Question:
What is the status of the meeting in Prague between September 11th hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi embassy intelligence officer, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani?
Answer:
The basic information has not changed: Czech counter intelligence determined that an Iraqi official under its surveillance met Atta in April 2001. The interpretation of it, however, has undergone a number of vacillations. Here is the chronology:
1. October 13, 2001. Based on an apparent leak from the Czech foreign ministry in Prague, Czech newspapers reported that Czech foreign minister Jan Kavan had briefed Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington about a trip Atta had taken to the Czech Republic in April. Kavan said that Czech intelligence had observed Mohamed Atta meeting in Prague with Iraqi Counsel Al-Ani. Since Ani worked as a case officer for Iraqi intelligence, the liaison implied a connection between the hijackers and Iraq.
After the leaked story was confirmed by the State Department, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers published the story about the liaison.
2. On October 20th, John Tagliabue wrote in the New York Times that Czech officials had denied such a meeting had ever taken place.
3. On October 26th, Stanislav Gross, the Minister of Interior of the Czech Republic, called a press conference to clarify what was known about the meeting. Gross was in a position to do so because the Czech counterintelligence service, the BIS, reported to him, not to Parliament or the President. He explained that Atta had been in the Czech Republic at least twice: on June 2, 2000 and in early April 2001. During his brief June visit, Gross said Atta was not observed by Czech intelligence, but in April, "We can confirm now that during his trip to the Czech Republic, he did have a contact with an officer of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani."
Since Gross had full access to the records of the BIS, which uses both electronic surveillance and visual surveillance, his confirmation sent shock waves around the world.
4. In Baghdad, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz denied that the meeting had taken place. In case he was proven wrong, however, he said: "Even if such an incident had taken place, it doesn't mean anything. Any diplomat in any mission might meet people in a restaurant here or there and talk to them, which is meaningless. If that person turned out to be something else, that doesn't mean he had a connection with what that person did later."
5. On October 27th, the New York Times published an extraordinary refutation of its October 20th story, co-written by Patrick E. Tyler and John Tagliabue . This piece asserted that, contrary to the prior denial, sources confirmed that the meeting had in fact taken place.
The Times story provided a number of new details, such as a Czech member of parliament, who had been briefed by the Czech intelligence services on this issue, said he “believed the meeting with Atta may have been captured by airport surveillance cameras.” This would imply that the meeting took place at the Prague airport. It also reported that on Friday April 20th, Hynek Kmonicek, the deputy foreign minister of the Czech Republic, had al-Ani expelled from the Czech Republic for activities incompatible with his diplomatic status.
Kmonicek, who was quoted in the Times story, explained Al-Ani’s expulsion was connected to his meeting with Atta. "It's not a common thing for an Iraqi diplomat to meet a student from a neighboring country.” Atta had been a student in Hamburg. If al-Ani’s expulsion proceeded from his meeting with Atta, then clearly Czech intelligence had identified Atta some four months before the September 11th attack.
The New York Times did not, however, rely solely on Czech sources to publish such a corrective story. Tyler and Tagliabue also confirmed the story with US ‘law enforcement officials’ and the White House. By that time, the FBI had pieced together Atta’s movements from INS files, car rental records, vehicles, airlines reservations data and other documents. These files showed Atta’s entries into the US when he used his passport, when he rented and returned vehicles, and some flights he had booked.
The story stated “Federal law-enforcement officials said the Prague meeting fits into Atta's itinerary this way: On April 4 he was in Virginia Beach. He flew to the Czech Republic on April 8 and met with the Iraqi intelligence officer, who was identified as Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. By April 11, Atta was back in Florida renting a car.”
The New York Times also said “A senior Bush administration official Friday night indicated the Czech decision to go public with the information about the meeting took Washington by surprise. “As for the meeting itself, the official said, "We are not sure we know exactly the full meaning of this, but we have known about it for some time." So presumably the President had known that one of the September 11 hijackers was observed by the Czech intelligence contacting an Iraqi official in Prague in April 2001.
6. In November, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman added another element to the story. He said that when Czech intelligence determined Atta had contacted Al-Ani, it raised the “hypothesis” that the purpose of the meeting might be to discuss an attack on the Prague the headquarters for U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This hypothesis was based on information provided by Jabir Salim in December 1998. Salim, like Al-Ani, had been the Iraq Consul in Prague, and had defected. When debriefed by western intelligence services, he revealed that Iraq had been planning a car bombing of Radio Free Europe. So when al-Ani took Salim’s place at the Iraq Embassy, Czech intelligence assumed that he might be continuing that mission, which accounted for the surveillance on al-Ani.
Although the hypothesis about the Radio Free Europe target proved wrong on September 11th, it raised another potentially embarrassing intelligence concern: Did the Czechs pass on information about the al-Ani encounter, and the reasons for his expulsion, to other intelligence services prior to September 11th?
Heightened security at Radio Free Europe and the Al-Ani expulsion that April were highly visible moves. Since Radio Free Europe, was a prime US target in the Czech Republic, the Czechs had reason to explain the security precautions to US intelligence. After all, the US they had capabilities for surveillance unavailable to the Czech intelligence. Since al-Ani’s predecessor, Salim, was being handled by the British intelligence service, the Czechs also had reason to brief the British on al-Ani expulsion, if only to get Salim’s views.
7. In December, 2001, Czech newspapers reported that President Havel saying “it was only 70 percent certain” that the identification of Atta was accurate. Havel, who was not privy to BIS reporting, subsequently explained the “70 percent” figure was his personal assessment based on his past experience.
8. On December 17th, Gross, in response to these questions, re-confirmed the meeting. The AP reported: “Interior Minister Stanislav Gross, responding to the report, said he stood by his original statement that Atta and Al-Ani met at least once in Prague and said it was based on a reputable account from BIS, the Czech counterintelligence agency.”
9. On May 1st, 2002, the status of the case changed radically when first Newsweek and then the Washington Post declared the meeting a fictoid. Walter Pincus in the Washington Post (based on a story a few days earlier by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek) stated “There is no evidence that the alleged leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, met in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, a finding that eliminates a once-suggested link between the terrorist attacks and the government of President Saddam Hussein, according to a senior administration official.”
Without giving a further source, Pincus explained that false reports that such a meeting had taken place were based not on BIS surveillance but a claim by “a Middle East informant” after September 11th that “he had seen the hijacker five months earlier meeting with al-Ani.” Pincus thus dates the identification as Atta to after the September 11th attack (which is inconsistent with the deputy foreign minister’s assertion that he had ordered al-Ani expelled in April 2001 because of his inappropriate contact with Atta.)
According to the anonymous “senior administration official,” Pincus writes “the Czechs said they were no longer certain that Atta was the person who met al-Ani.”
The same “senior administration official” was also quoted as saying that FBI and CIA analysts concluded that "there was no evidence Atta left or returned to the U.S." at the time he was supposed to be in Prague. (Neither the FBI, the New York Times nor anyone else had claimed that there was evidence Atta had used his own passport to travel to the Czech Republic in April 2001. The assumption was that, if Atta was in Prague in April, he traveled there under a false identity.)
Neither Pincus nor Isikoff identified the deep-throated “senior administration official,” nor specified which “Czechs,” according to this anonymous source, doubted the identification of Atta.
10. Czech intelligence responds. In, fact there never was a retraction, or even modification, from the relevant officials in and supervising the Czech intelligence service. On December 17th, 2001 Gabriela Bartikova, the spokeswomen for the Minister of the Interior, had said "Minister Gross had the information from BIS, and BIS guarantees the information, So we stick by that information." On May 3rd, 2002 referring to the Washington Post-Newsweek allegation, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross stated "I believe the counterintelligence services more than journalists. I draw on the Security Information Service [BIS] information and I see no reason why I should not believe it." He further explained that he had consulted with BIS chief Jiri Ruzek on May 2nd in order to find out whether the Czech intelligence service had any new information that would cast doubt on the meeting. "The answer was that they did not. Therefore, I consider the matter closed,” Gross concluded.
In other words, to date, Czech intelligence, the only agency anywhere that claimed to monitor the meeting, stood by its guarantee that the atta-al-Ani had taken place.
What changed in this ping-pong journalism therefore was not any new revelations— or retractions— but the introduction of an anonymous “senior administration source” with an unknown agenda, whose claim that “the Czechs” doubted the meeting took place, has now been directly denied by the relevant officials.
Cheney's got a tough battle on his hand. The spinners are after him. The game's afoot.
It's interesting to see the uses of this "9/11 commission" report. I have no idea if they seen everything. But they certainly spin. And arguably being used to cover up a bunch of loose ends.
Lots of headlines are spinning alibis for the Saudis. Such as:
--9/11 hijackers, princes 'not linked'
--9/11 Panel Finds No Saudi Gov't Funding
With her on that Commission it's probably the case that the evidence, however weak, coming from each agency was evaluated separately and independently, and never allowed to "contaminate" the other.
Like I said, with that woman on the Commission there's really nothing coming out that anyone can or should trust.
Gee, the truth is found full in their report by simple process of taking the negative of it.
This looks like a defense lawyer's angle - trying to get the guy off (rather than trying to find the facts).
I'd be willing to bet that Atta could have made the trip from Virginia to Prague in 5 days or less.
He could have loaned his phone out while he was gone, as well.
I wonder if the commission thought of that.
The way it was told, it made a good story about a decent guy that didn't want to embarass his own people too much.
Problem was, it was absolutely false.
I think the person who created that disinformation made a blunder by grabbing too far. Not subtle enough - Havel denied it immediately.
Which raises an issue, what interests were so interested in keeping the sanctions regime on Iraq they would risk making up such falsehoods?
"In its report on the Sept. 11 plot, the commission staff disclosed for the first time F.B.I. evidence that strongly suggested that Mr. Atta was in the United States at the time of the supposed Prague meeting." A Spanish Judge also has evidence that Atta was in two place simultaneously, but it is known for certain that he was in one particular place the Spanish were staked out on, while the other location was likely an imposter creating cover or using the ID's for terrorist purposes. Risen is getting wet but the NYT is a DNC propaganda tool anyway so what would we expect from its 'journalists'? Seditious B******!
Beats *coughFRANCERUSSIAGERMANYUNcough* me.
The protect-against-lawsuit actions we've seen are making me crazy, but I understand the rationale.
Seems like the only thing the 9-11 commission *could* find, is the generic Aug. 6 PDB.
Other things staring them in the face, they were able to valiantly ignore.
Yes. They are arguing like a lawyer, not a fair judge.
If fair, they would say what the Czech evidence was. They don't. Maybe he was there, maybe not.
Certainly this reporter, James Risen, is damaged goods, not worthy of telling us. But it's the NYTimes, so it's "true."
FYI just heard an ABC hourly radio report saying the commission said there was no connection between Iraq and AQ, which is not what the report said. Then the next sentence said this contradicts what Cheney said in the past.
Knowing the Bush admin, they won't fight and think it will all fix itself in the end. However, if they come out with AQ/Iraq connections later, it will be treated as lies.
They're already losing, it's very pathetic. said there was no connection between
For one, any individual or organization with a stake in Oil For Food.
For another, any individual or organization which had a stake in Iraq's not being involved in 9/11.
FWIW,Prague to Munich (1.5 hours), Munich to Washington/Dulles (8 hours), a couple hours layover, minus six hours time change: Atta could have been in Parague and Virginis the same day (4/9) without loaning his cellphone to someone else.
And we're supposed to believe either one? I don't think so!
Well, they do have the Czech evidence, which they obviously don't want to talk about. So they are not showing "both sides."
IN fact, a ruckus should be made asking, why, if they tell us about the cell pone calls and lack of INS proof (funny in itself), aren't we just as entitled to the Czech intel? Wouldn't that be impartial?
From what I understand, something like this happened. An "arab student" living in Prague was on the Czech payroll to keep an eye on the local Arab community. He saw a man meet with Al Ani or another Iraqi diplomat on April 9. He didn't recognize him. After 9/11 he saw Atta's face on tv, and told his minders that was the guy. (Atta is distinctive looking)
Three days after 9/11 the Czechs told the Americans. Does one think that the Czechs could have made up a story to frame Iraq in three days like that? Maybe, maybe not. Interestingly, the date chosen "just happens" to fit a gap in the Atta timeline.
Maybe the student was wrong. Anyway, isn't his words "evidence?" Aren't we entitled to know it?
Well as I think we both know, the W Post and NYT have no interest in presenting an unbalanced account.
They want to bring the current president down any way they can, and will "report" in such a fashion as to do so.
There is simply no other way to analzye the supposed top American newspaper's inability to follow the dictates of journalism 101 on a consistent basis.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.