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.
BMP for later.
Tuesday at a press conference (a short one with President Karzai) a reporter says he sees Cheney standing "over there" and then asks President Bush to "qualify" Cheney's statements and state what proof, if any, there is between Iraq and Al Qaeda. President Bush promptly and forcefully states "Zarqawi", pauses, then expounds a bit.
No hemming, no hawing, no "qualifying" Cheney's statement.
Nothing that comes from the mainstream media or the 9/11 commission can be trusted. Neither has any credibility.
Damn shame. But there it is. A hundred years from now, the historians will have a better idea of what really happened than we ever will. Which makes we wonder if, indeed, it has been thus. Don't we probably have a clearer picture of the origins of WW I now than any one person had at the time?
At this point, Shermy's Compendium of Conundrums is a more reliable source of investigative journalism than the mainstream media.
Or, do they say 'twas ever thus'?
The report cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance camera in Virginia showing Mr. Atta withdrawing money on April 4, 2001,
From the article I posted from the June 3 NRO:
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.
My goodness. Notice the difference in detail between a ho-hum "withdrawal" during a trip to the bank, as the New York Times puts it, or as the NRO informs, with his roommate and fellow terrorist to cash a "SunTrust check for $8,000".
Where did the $8000 come from and what was it for? Travel to Prague, by chance?
There were many Oswalds - maybe there were many Atta's?
I never take my cellphone to Europe. It doesn't work there and one less thing to bother with. I can see where Atta would have left it for his terrorist pals in Florida to use while he was in Prague.
The 9/11 Commission and the New York Times will purposely ignore that there were more alledged meetings besides the April 9th meeting, four in total, and that all FBI intelligence corroborates them.
The only meeting that gets any media time is the April 9th meeting because its "debunked" because the FBI has contradictory intelligence on his location 5 days before the meeting took place. Everytime I argue with a liberal they think the FBI debunked the Atta/Prague meeting when in fact they provided intelligence that confirmed 3 of the meetings that the Czech Officials alledged.
Thanks for the info and your excellent analysis!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe U.S. officials have been mute about this and that the original media reports cited "unnamed intelligence agents". It's amusing how the media can always get that "unnamed" source to get the story they want, and after sitting on it for awhile, just report it as "American officials" thereby adding legitamacy to a totally non-legitamate report.
Did anyone else see hardball tonight? Didn't Hamilton and Kean say there were many connections between al qaeda and Iraq? Yet every headline I have seen so far says, "no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda." What a surprise.
In any event, the syntax was a wee bit tortured, wasn't it?
I saw it and you are correct. They said there is no proof between Iraq and 9/11.
Chris Matthews was in a snit over the song "Do You Remember" because he thinks it unfairly revs people up to be pro Iraqi War when Iraq "didn't have anything to do with 9/11". The fool doesn't realize we aren't fighting a war of revenge, but to clean out those who pose a danger to us, and Saddam most certainly did (though Chris would deny even that).
You are correct.
Guess who was the first to report Al-Ani's denial??
Actually, Risen adds this:
American officials caution that Mr. Ani may have been lying to American interrogators, but the only other person reported to have attended the meeting was Mr. Atta, who died in the crash of his hijacked plane into the World Trade Center.Well, obviously he could be lying, but Risen doesn't offer this same caution in the new article.
It cannot be proven that Bill Clinton was at the hotel on the day Juanita Broaddrick was raped. He has refused to release his offical timeline during that period. Just as someone else could have used Atta's cellphone, someone could have been using Clinton's penis.
Strike one. They just lost an 'alibi'.
They might have shared the phone all the time.
By the way, who were the calls made to? There are records. Can't we know?
Slings and Arrows: Jayson Blair is gone, but his spirit remains.
Dishonesty, yes, but combined with a healthy dose of stupidity. I guess the NYT reporter is not familiar with the concept of air travel, and that it is entirely possible for Atta to be in Virginia on April 4 and then miraculously materialize in Prague on April 9. Also, I guess it never occured to this budding genius that his cell phone could very well have been used in Virginia while he was somewhere else, IF SOMEONE ELSE USED IT!
Now, its bad enough when a reporter for a widely-circulated newspaper accepts this claptrap unquestioningly, but when the government commission empaneled to study 9/11 and make recomendations to improve our national intelligence and security efforts to repeat a future attack issues this tripe with a straight face, it makes me very thankful that we have people with a laser focus on what is important running the Executive Branch.
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