Posted on 06/16/2004 7:20:03 PM PDT by Shermy
Who is worried? IOW, Who is putting the stories out? Not Iraqis. Probably Americans.
The Al Ani controversy is a sleight-of-hand intended to distract our attention from something else. As I asked before, Who else did Atta meet with in the Czech Respublic?
Hijazi is not the point. It's Americans who are hyping the Al Ani controversy, not Iraqis. Why would an American seek to distract attention from Hijazi? No reason.
With whom did Atta meet in the Czech R. that an American would want to distract public attention from?
"...What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility?...3. Despite the prejudgment announced yesterday by Kean and Democratic partisan Richard Ben-Veniste dismissing Mohammed Atta's reported meeting in Prague with an Iraqi spymaster, fairly spell out all the evidence that led to George Tenet's "not proven or disproven" testimony. (Start with www.edwardjayepstein.com.) ..."
Safire is right to focus on Tenet, not Cheney. Ie Tenet says much the same, doesn't have the political baggage. Why did the 9/11 Commission make a conclusion even the ead of the CIA could not?
Safire notice's that maybe the Tenet quote can be found only at EJE's site, which was my search result too. --
"..SEN. LEVIN: Was the intelligence Committee's assessment -- what is the Intelligence Committee's assessment of whether or not 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Ahmed al-Ani, an alleged Iraq intelligence officer in Iraq in April of 2001. What is your assessment?
MR. TENET: Sir, I know you have a paper up here that outlines all that for you. It's a classified paper. My recollection is we can't prove that one way or another."
A Revised View of an Infamous Day By PETER EDIDIN
"...Mohammed Atta did not meet with Iraqi intelligence. One widely cited piece of evidence for an Iraq- Qaeda connection was a report from Czech intelligence officials that Mr. Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, met in Prague in April 2001 with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer. One report said, "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred,'' citing phone records and other evidence that Mr. Atta was in Florida at the time. ..."
the only evidence I see is the phone calls, nothing "other."
I'd like to know---
Did the commission check if the cell phone was used in places we are sure Atta wasn't, like during his other Euro trips?
Did the commission check, if possible, for evidence that someone other than Atta used the cell phone at any time?
Ping. You guys too.
"...citing phone records and other evidence....."
I also just loved that one. Keep saying they have "other" evidence often enough and hope it sticks.
What we really need is to see a record of Atta's calls for the whole of March, April and May - preferably even longer. Then we need to compare the telephone numbers called during the period April 4 - April 14 and see if there is a pattern.
By the way, what numbers in Florida WERE CALLED on these dates? Can the persons who owned these numbers remember a call?
Also, we need to see Atta's credit card transactions for March, April and May. And see if there is a sudden period of non-usage from April 4 - April 14.
I wonder if the cell phone records and credit card records can be obtained through FOIA?
The "other evidence" is the April 4 photo, and April 11.
For this to be evidence one would have to live in the mindset of the era of the propellor airplane and steam liner.
And I think that's why they specifically don't detail the "other" evidence. Because intuitively they know that if they detailed this other evidence, which would only take one sentence, their readers would not be convinced. Keeping it vague, they might be convinced.
Which could be true, and a semantic trick to seem like contrary evidence. EJE reported a while ago the meeting was "on the outskirts" of Prague.
Oh, BTW, shouldn't the 9/11 commission want to see this new evidence about Al Ani being out of town?
If we go on the assumption of good faith and take the reports they're putting out to the general public at face value, they've apparently come to the conclusion that the meeting never took place, case closed. Given that this so-called "new evidence" serves to bolster this conclusion one would think that they would be eager to seize on it.
However, there is a new book out by journalist Stephen Hayes in which he claims that both Tenet and Condoleeza Rice privately believe that the meeting did in fact take place. In light of all the controversy surrounding this topic, this is a rather incredible assertion, and if I were a member of this "Commission", I'd be very interested in talking with Stephen Hayes to find out more about this, although as a journalist it's highly unlikely that he would divulge any of his sources, even under a subpoena.
Personally, I get the distinct impression that they have no real interest in pursuing the matter further at all and would just like it to go away.
The problem - the ones that want to bury it are incompetent. They shouldn't have made a judgment about it in the 9/11 Commission, just like they shouldn't have gone so far to make up a false statement attributed to a named person - Vaclav Havel.
Just calls more attention to the issue.
With whom did Atta meet in the Czech R. that an American would want to distract public attention from?
A saudi. or pakistani.
This fellow, Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney, is asking the same questions I would like to see answered:
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp
What is the staff's reason for rejecting the eyewitness identification? Is the "Hamburg student" entry bogus? Since the staff is purporting to provide a comprehensive explanation of the 9/11 plot — the origins of which it traces back to 1999 — what is their explanation for what Atta was doing in Prague in 2000? Why, when the staff went into minute detail about the travels of other hijackers (even when it conceded it did not know the relevance of those trips), was Atta's trip to Prague not worthy of even a passing mention? Why was it so important for Atta to be in Prague on May 30, 2000 that he couldn't delay for one day, until May 31, when his visa would have been ready? Why was it so important for him to be in Prague on May 30 that he opted to go despite the fact that, without a visa, he could not leave the airport terminal? How did he happen to find the spot in the terminal where surveillance cameras would not capture him for nearly six hours? Why did he go back again on June 2? Was he meeting with al-Ani? If so, why would it be important for him to see al-Ani right before entering the United States in June 2000? And jumping ahead to 2001, if Atta wasn't using cash to travel anonymously, what did he do with the $8000 he suddenly withdrew before disappearing on April 4? If his cell phone was used in Florida between April 4 and April 11, what follow-up investigation has been done about that by the 9/11 Commission? By the FBI? By anybody? Whom was the cell phone used to call? Do any of those people remember speaking to Atta at that time? Perhaps someone would remember speaking with the ringleader of the most infamous attack in the history of the United States if he had called to chat, no?
That's a great catch.
don't know much about the author. I'll keep an eye for him in the future.
Did the commission check if the cell phone was used in places we are sure Atta wasn't, like during his other Euro trips?
Did the commission check, if possible, for evidence that someone other than Atta used the cell phone at any time?
You are asking question that have nothing to do with the mission of the 9/11 commission -- which is solely political, not investigative, and totally unconcerned with the facts of the matter.
Aside from Gorelick, I can't imagine that any commission member took their task seriously.
The GOP hacks like Kean, Lehman and Thompson should be ashamed of themselves.
Let's stipulate, for the sake of the argument, that there really was such a meeting. What would that tell us? Very little. It wouldn't tell us that Iraq was complicit in 9/11. It wouldn't tell us anything about the anthrax mailings. In fact, it wouldn't tell us much of anything.
There are many possible rationales for the meeting: Maybe Iraq and al-Qaeda were simply keeping tabs on one another. Maybe al-Qaeda was feeling out Iraq for possible support, but the idea went nowhere. Maybe Iraq was feeling out al-Qaeda to find out what was in the works, after hearing rumors. Maybe Atta just wanted to focus a bit of attention on Iraq to get some of the heat off al-Qaeda, so Atta scheduled a meeting with al-Ani. Who knows?
It's no surprise that meetings occur. I'm sure there are meetings between spooks of all flavors, on a regular basis. I bet there are meetings between Americans, Russians, Iraqis, al-Qaeda members, Israelis, Chinese, Pakistanis, .... Everybody. People talk to each other. That's how they get information.
So why is the possible meeting between Atta and al-Ani being stressed as of great importance (both by the people who say there was a meeting and by the people who say there was no such meeting)?
That makes more sense than the Hijazi theory. Distracting from one Iraqi to another Iraqi still leaves the focus on Iraq. What would the point be?
The mystery distractee would have to be someone with close ties to the U.S., since it's Americans who are doing the distracting.
The entire purpose of the argument and of the studied ambiguity is to pull our attention away from what else Atta might have done in Europe, and who else he might have met while visiting the Continent.
I think if Atta did indeed meet with Al-Ani it immediately provides total justification for the war on Iraq. If Iraq even had one toe in the 9/11 conspiracy they needed to be taken out. The circunsatnces surrounding the meeting are enough to justify that. Just after the purported April 8/9 2001 meeting a second large sum of money was wired to Atta's US bank account. The first large sum, coincidentally, was wired just after his previous trip to Prague im May/June 2000.
As far as the anthrax is concerned, the evidence tells us that it was made in a bioweapons lab using an advancement of Soviet binder technology. It was either made in Russia, the US or Iraq in a sanctioned, government sponsored program by one of these nations. Whichever nation made it provides its own unique set of ramifications and consequences - all of them bad.
If you're like me, and you believe that the Iraqi government knew beforehand about the 9/11 plan and the anthrax attacks and may even have been involved with assisting the perps, then I think it's pretty important to try to connect the dots and tie the loose ends together.
In all likelihood, we'll probably never find out the full truth behind this whole story though, especially regarding the anthrax attacks in particular.
Well, I think the war on Iraq was justified by the need to pre-emptively remove any hostile regime whose behavior indicates that it may be building WMD. (I wish the Bush administration would convey this argument more effectively, since it's a strong one.)
The little bit of circumstantial and vague evidence surrounding al-Ani actually weakens the case, at least politically; it would make the U.S. government look like it really needed that bit of evidence, but since the evidence is not on a firm footing, they would appear to be grasping at straws to find a justification for the war.
If Iraq even had one toe in the 9/11 conspiracy they needed to be taken out.
But the evidence isn't even one toe. Anyway, this policy has dangerous consequences. If carried out as you suggest, the precedent would tell a terrorist that they could get us to attack any country they wanted us to, by first scheduling a meeting with some consular official who is known as an undercover spook, and then setting off some bombs. For that matter, should we go to war with the USDA because Atta met with Johnelle Bryant?
As far as the anthrax is concerned, the evidence tells us that it was made in a bioweapons lab using an advancement of Soviet binder technology. It was either made in Russia, the US or Iraq in a sanctioned, government sponsored program by one of these nations. Whichever nation made it provides its own unique set of ramifications and consequences - all of them bad.
A very interesting point. What do you think we should do if it was made in Russia or in the U.S.? What do you view as the "ramifications and consequences" of those two possibilities?
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