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.
Which raises an interesting thing...from the Slate article
The issue re-emerged three days after the 9/11 attack when the CIA intelligence liaison was told by the BIS that the Hamburg "student" who had met with al-Ani on April 8 had been tentatively identified as the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Since al-Ani was an officer of Saddam Hussein's intelligence (and diplomatic) service, this identification raised the possibility that Saddam might have had a hand in the 9/11 attack. It could also be potentially embarrassing, as Kavan pointed out, "if American intelligence had failed before 9/11 to adequately appreciate the significance of the April meeting."http://slate.msn.com/id/2091354
Kavan seems to indicate that the Americans were told about about a meeting before 9/11...maybe like via a memo, like that Moussaoui memo that was ignored.
Hard to tell, many have axes to grind.
I agree this is seems like spin and there will be more coming soon but I am sick to death of being uncertain what if anything is real...
Atta's butty (the slightly built male Atta had living with him and doing who knows what to service Atta) is known to have used Atta's credit card and cell phone on occasion when Atta was 'not in the country'. Sadly, the American sheeple so easily swallowing the lies and dissembling of DNC agents like the NYT will lap this up like dogs and vomit.
If George Bush Sr. could fly from a NY Hotel to Paris, negotiate the nonrelease of American hostages, and return to NY unseen, all in one day, then surely Atta could get from a bank in Fla. to Prague in 5 days. The fact that his telephone was used in Fla. proves nothing.
Yeah, that cell phone thing really gets me. The perps of 9/11 would never be so clever as to cover their tracks, travel abroad using an alias, or have someone make calls on their personal phone to mislead authorities. But they did manage to mislead those who are always eager to be mislead.
And then there's this: 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."
Wow. Am I ever impressed. And of course,
...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.
Well, that's 'conclusive', I guess. Both Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence deny any link between them. Stupid Czech officials, stupid US officials. They should believe AQ and Saddam's henchmen, not their own eyes and ears.
I believe that European cell phones use different frequencies, thus a traveler would have no use for a US cell phone over there.
Not as long as the CIA is more interested in destroying Rumsfeld and Bush than they are in destroying terrorists. Rumsfeld stepped on their spit-polished bureaucratic toes by not trusting their shoddy intel, and by God, they will make him pay, with the aid of their buddies at the NYT and the alphabet networks.
"...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. ""In effect"...that's editorializing. But its the NYTimes, it will become the common knowledge
Here's one for you from Epstein's site (I can't find it elsewhere)
Tenet summed up the true status of the case in his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb 24, 2004:That's a fair statement by Tenet. But this doesn't comport with Risen's "officials." So, who are Risen's officials? I'll take Tenet on the record.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.
Dissimulation - Taqija Islam's attitude towards lying and honoring agreements with non-Muslims. This conclusion is taken from "The 4th Conference of Islamic Research" at Al Azar University in Cairo, 1970. The teachings at Al Azar University is normative for all Sunni Muslims. For Shiites it is Qum in Iran. Taqija The expression taquija means to dissimulate and is used when serving the propagation of Islam or benefitting a Muslim compared to 'infidels'. Lying to 'infidels' is officially acknowledged and is religiously motivated. Lying is okay In essence taqija means that a Muslim is allowed to hide his or her intentions in a difficult situation. For instance in regard to Koran interpretations, the more mellow verses are emphasized towards people with no thorough knowledge of the matter, and threatening, harsh verses are hidden. Muhammed did it Taqija was practised by the Prophet, Mohammed, himself; in negotiations where he fooled his opponents. For that very reason Muslims often enter into agreements intending to break them when they have assumed control of the situation. Denial Active Muslims in the West deny the use of taqija. This emphatic denial of using taqija towards us and the authorities is part of the method used in taqija. Often it leads to confusion on behalf of us and negotiating authorities e.g. the Ministry of the Interior. Common claim A common example of taqija is the claim that Islam does not do missionary work in the West. At the same time Arab states spend four to five billions of Kroners to missionary work in Europe per year. In Germany 1000 of mosques have been built over the last 15 years. Fraud is legitimate Fraud and lies are religiously permitted means in Islam. A negotiated settlement or an agreement with a Muslim is never final.
"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..."
Funny how Walter always pops up in these stories.
If the Commission knows so much about what Atta was doing--why was he in Prague in 2000? Why did he return there on a bus after being refused entry because of visa problems? The Times doesn't bother to ask the question.
Name the "top Czech officials". I never saw any expressly say it didn't occur.
"couldn't corroborate" Lawyer language again. Same, we couldn't "corroborate" that Atta and not one of his pals used the cell phone. The Czech intel. is held to a different standard.
As for the Czech border statement, Risen implies this planted the seed in the student's mind. Maybe it did, I'm open minded about it. Anyway, I'd like to know on what date this info was broadcast.
They really are full of themselves, aren't they. The "first time", indeed.
Did September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta meet an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague five months before he slammed a Boeing 767 into One World Trade Center? Fresh evidence suggests the attack on America may have featured Baathist fingerprints.
Pointing to Prague Edward Jay Epstein, best-selling author of 12 books on politics and history, has followed "the Prague Connection" since its outlines emerged in autumn 2001. His findings on this topic appear at edwardjayepstein.com.
Epstein and other Prague-Connection proponents believe Mohamed Atta met on April 8, 2001 with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, Consul and Second Secretary at Iraq's Czech embassy between March 1999 and April 22, 2001. Al-Ani, a suspected intelligence officer, allegedly handled several agents, possibly including Atta.
According to his May 26, 2000 Czech visa application — submitted in Bonn, Germany — Atta called himself a "Hamburg student." He had studied urban planning for seven years at Hamburg-Harburg Technical University and launched an Islamic club there in 1999.
Atta apparently had pressing business in Prague. With his visa application pending until May 31, Atta nonetheless flew to Prague International Airport on May 30 and remained in its transit lounge for about six hours before flying back to Germany. Czech officials suspect he may have met someone there. Two days later, on June 2, he returned to Prague by bus on Czech visa number BONN200005260024. He stayed there for some 20 hours, and then flew to Newark, New Jersey, on June 3.
During the summer of 2000 — as the Los Angeles Times detailed on January 20, 2002 — at least $99,455 flowed from financial institutions in the United Arab Emirates into a Florida SunTrust account Atta shared with his roommate and fellow hijacker, Marwan Al-Shehhi. That August, they began flight lessons at Venice, Florida's Huffman Aviation.
On April 4, 2001, the FBI says, Atta departed Virginia Beach's Diplomat Inn with Al-Shehhi and cashed a SunTrust check for $8,000. No American eyewitness saw Atta again until April 11.
Atta next was observed April 8 by an informant of BIS, the Czech Secret Service, who reported that Al-Ani met an Arabic-speaking man in a discreetly located restaurant on Prague's outskirts. Atta is believed to have returned to America the following day.
While skeptics dismiss this encounter, Czech intelligence found Al-Ani's appointment calendar in Iraq's Prague embassy, presumably after Saddam Hussein's defeat. Al-Ani's diary lists an April 8, 2001, meeting with "Hamburg student." Maybe, in a massive coincidence, Al-Ani dined with a young scholar and traversed the nuances of Nietzsche. Or perhaps Al-Ani saw Mohamed Atta and discussed more practical matters.
For his part, Al-Ani was jettisoned from Prague on April 22, 2001 for allegedly plotting to blow up Radio Free Europe's headquarters there, also home to Radio Free Iraq. (Al-Ani's predecessor, Jabir Salim, defected to England in December 1998. He said Baghdad gave him $150,000 to arrange the car bombing of RFE, but he could recruit no one to complete the mission.) American forces arrested Al-Ani last July 2 in Iraq. Not surprisingly, he denies meeting Atta.
As is well known, on June 18, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet told the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 that his agency could not "establish that Atta left the US or entered Europe in April 2001." But Tenet also admitted: "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias."
~snip~
Thanks for the ping. I recognized this information as not the "news" that it is presented as.
See my post at #33.
So I have the 11 PM news on in the background in the other room.
They just said something to the effect of;
--
The commission released evidence that Atta was captured on video at an ATM on the 4th, province that he could not have met with an agent of the Iraqi government *on that same day* as some have claimed.
--
Of course the meeting is alleged to have occured on the 9th, not the 4th, but why let such facts get in the way of reading DNC talking points???
Unbelievable.
province = proving
Cheney claims ties between Saddam, al Qaeda
So, bad timing, or did he know the report was coming out and he's setting them up???
I was about to say the same thing so I'll just bump your observation.
In the first report, we get five pages of Al Qaeda history, including the statement that AQ approached Iraq, but Iraq wasn't interested. Then we're told:
"Whether Bin Ladin and his organization had roles in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the thwarted Manila plot to blow up a dozen U.S. commercial aircraft in 1995 remains a matter of substantial uncertainty."
Let's remember - 9/11 is nothing but these two plots combined. 9/11 is WTC1993+Bojinka, brought to fruition. This is a report, from the Commission named after that attack, on the nature of the enemy. And they can't even say whether Al Qaeda was involved in 9/11's immediate forerunners! Instead, they have this to say on page 6:
"What is clear is that these plots were major benchmarks in the evolving Islamist threat to the United States and foreshadowed later attacks that were indisputably carried out by al Qaeda under bin Ladin's direction."
See how this works. You talk about Al Qaeda for five pages. You say Iraq is not connected to Al Qaeda. Then you note in passing that Al Qaeda might not even have carried out 9/11 versions 1 and 2. But those attacks were "benchmarks" which "foreshadowed" version 3, which *was* carried about by Al Qaeda.
Now given that there's one person involved in all three attacks - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who took over Al Qaeda's military committee and brought off 9/11 - one might suppose that there was actually continuity of command-and-control between 1, 2 and 3. And that whatever KSM stood for was the real enemy. So let's turn to that second staff report, and see what it says:
"The idea for the September 11 attacks appears to have originated with a veteran jihadist named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). A Kuwaiti from the Baluchistan region of Pakistan, KSM grew up in a religious family and claims to have joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 16. After attending college in the United States, he went to Afghanistan to participate in the anti-Soviet jihad. Following the war, he helped run a non-governmental organization in Pakistan assisting the Afghan mujahidin."
Now isn't that odd? The trail leads, not to Saudi Arabia, but to Kuwait. Indeed, here is Richard Clarke, speaking in October 2003 (see end of document):
"Several al Qida operatives have allegedly been associated with the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Suliman abu Ghaith, Wadih el Hage and Ramsi Yousef. On January 9, 2003, the Treasury Department designated the Kuwaiti Lajnat al-Dawa as a terrorist entity. Lajnat al-Dawa reportedly spawned out of and is controlled by the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood."
In fact, Lajnat al-Dawa was controlled by KSM's brother Zahid (Zahid Sheikh Mohammed, Zahid al-Sheikh). Zahid is still obscure, but you can find scraps of information about him. He shows up briefly in Yosri Fouda's "Masterminds of Terror", Peter Bergen's "Holy War Inc.", and Jason Burke's "Al Qaeda". He is variously described as running a huge charity for Afghan refugees in Peshawar in the 1980s, or as overseeing Kuwait's support for the mujahideen.
In any case, the trail appears to end here, with the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood. They supplied the masterminds behind the first two attempted mega-attacks which were 9/11's precursors. It's curious that this fact is for all purposes publicly unknown. It's also curious that Laurie Mylroie, who has otherwise led the way in calling for people to focus on the clan of Kuwaiti Baluch at the center of these plots, doesn't mention it. I have brought up the issue of Zahid with her, and she just says, do we really know anything about the background of these people. Well, surely it's not that hard to go to Kuwait and find out if anyone knows about Zahid al-Sheikh. I await the journalistic scramble to file hard-hitting reports from Kuwait City, trying to get to the bottom of this. (Perhaps we could have a Newsweek cover story?)
Walter Pincus, James Risen and Michael Isikoff are on the usuals.
Not saying they're doing anything wrong, but they certainly are the conduits.
Risen does spin a lot. Actually, rereading this one, I think most people who acutally read it will be stumped by his argument the travel was near impossible.
Reasonable arguments can be made that Atta did or didn't go to Prague then. But there are so many unreasonable arguements against, they raise suspicion.
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