Posted on 06/16/2004 7:20:03 PM PDT by Shermy
SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : (ATTA RETURNS BALANCE OF KSM'S MONEY TO UAE) Atta dutifully sent back [to KSM in the UAE] the remaining balance [of the money KSM had given him for flight lessons] just seven days before he flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Atta addressed the parcel to 'Almohtaram' (the respected one). Investigators now believe Al Qaeda's money man was none other than Khalid [Shaikh Mohammed], who escaped from Dubai just before September 11. - "WAS BIN LADEN'S CAPTURED NO 3 PLOTTING TO BRING TERROR TO BRITAIN?" by JANE CORBIN, DAILY MAIL (London) , March 3, 2003
Loftus and Batchelor just said the time line is a "joke" and timeline people on the net were "tearing apart" the FBI timesline, and the FBI just created it to fit what it believed.
It was unclear, seemed to say the Commission didn't mention Atta's trip in May at all.
Well, I don't know if it's a joke, but the story claiming that the Sept. 11 attack was originally intended to take place in May or June is, I believe, false. The Sept. 11, 2001, date was picked at least a year in advance. (For the evidence, see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/685662/posts?page=58#58, post #58 specifically, not the whole thread.)
Al-Ani is a red-herring.
Yes, Atta was in Praha. However, we have been subtly directed to focus on one question: Did Atta meet with al-Ani, or didn't he? Since that is the issue that we are being told to focus on and that people are taking sides on, it must be the wrong question.
The right question is: Who other than al-Ani did Atta meet with in Praha?
Notice that those Sharon and Cole stories are specifically hedged "according to KSM".
Osama barely gave a damn about Israel - he saw the big picture. And it sounds like typical after-the-fact politicization for western propaganda.
On the other hand, why not? Osama could have said "can we move it up?" Ksm-"no" Osama "OK"
IOW, no big deal, except the prominence gives it meaning.
Or maybe Al Ani is a red herring, Atta met with someone else. Search "Hijazi". Remember the story of the Iraqi "ambassador" to Turkey???
NEW YORK, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The ringleader of the 19 hijackers from the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Mohamed Atta, met twice with Iraq intelligence operatives in Prague, in June 2000 and then again last April, Newsweek reports in the current issue. The second meeting was with Farouk Hijazi, Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, who was called back to Baghdad before Sept. 11. One intelligence source called the two meetings interesting, but still far from proof of Iraqi involvement in the plot, Newsweek reports.
Exactly. Why is the idea that it was originally scheduled for Spring being promoted right now?
Perhaps it's intended to mesh somehow with the "Atta in Europe" stories, which are in the same timeframe.
Or perhaps it's just intended in a self-serving way to help get our intelligence officials off the hook. After all, if the date had been set in stone for at least a year, they could be expected to have found out about it. But if everything was fluid, changing at the last minute, maybe our people don't look as incompetent?
Maybe this article should be reposted given the current discussion>
I think it was Mylorie talking about WTC 1993 who mentioned an interesting fact - she said Iraqi terrorists were instructed to say they planned to bomb jews or jewish targets instead of real objectives. Something to do with covering up, etc.
I've seen other articles mentioning this, like the Argentina bombings of Jews was Iran's plausible-denibility way to Blackmail Argentina into living up to its agreement to sell nuke technology to Iran.
Then there was that Turksih synagoge bombing...followed up by what I think were the real target - the British bank behind the Baku-Ceyhan line. Already some banks had dropped out. But the bombing didn't work.
The Jewsih target probably helps the jihadis think they are doing something worthy of heaven, rather than serving Iranian oil pricing strategy.
Its a possibility that it is merely a mundane truth treated as special. Have you not had a plan which you might have discussed "can we do it earlier?"
BTW, what about the story they planned to crash planes into that 2001 meeting in Genoa? What happened to that?
Another interesting omission, probably pushing your argument up.
The U.S. doesn't want to be portrayed as using harsh techniques but still not able to get any information. The government wants to be able to say (or to imply) that the techniques may be harsh, but at least they're working.
Interesting point. Was that a real plot, or was that disinfo put out by al-Qaeda to confuse anybody who might be onto the real 9/11 plot?
And maybe this is more of the same. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others are talking, but are they telling us the truth? Is it perhaps more likely that they're spinning the same kind of tales that they used as disinfo in the months preceding 9/11?
Of course there's probably all sorts of additional information that editing left out, or which did't catch the eye of the commission, or didn't appeal so much to their own presumptions.
But I don't think it would be very effective to divert attention from one Iraqi to another. If the idea is right, I think the other person Atta met with would not have been an Iraqi.
Good point. Maybe the stories about the delay have it backwards. Instead of having been planned for May or June and then delayed until September, perhaps it was planned for Sept. 11 all along and then there was some discussion as to whether they might actually do it earlier.
This sentence jostled Shermy's Way Back machine.
1. The photograph being published worldwide isn't a positive or negative. IIRC, the photograph was what allowed the Arab student informant to identify the person he had seen - he did not know before who Atta was. But the Slate article says the spotter was a "BIS watcher". If that's an Arab student or Czech on the pay roll, I can't tell. When Risen says "single source", who is he talking about?
Then there's this from the Slate article:
...The [Czech] BIS handled the surveillance through its own full-time teams and its network of part-time "watchers" at hotels, restaurants, and other likely locations. Then, on April 8, 2001, a BIS watcher saw al-Ani meeting in a restaurant outside Prague with an Arab man in his 20s. This set off alarm bells because a BIS informant in the Arab community had provided information indicating that the person with whom al-Ani was meeting was a visiting "student" from Hamburg—and one who was potentially dangerous.
Those pics of al-ani carrying a camera, allegedly casing the radio station, and walking with a young arab who is not atta might be a whole different story - ie, not part of the restaurant story.
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."
If Jan Kavan's memory about the "three days" is solid, I think this blows up the theory Risen has. There was no media mention of Atta's Prague connection before 9/18. That day, or the nineteenth, was the first time the Czech press mentioned any - and limited to the 2000 Prague airport visit. Slate article mentions this for Sept. 18:
Kavan, in the newly created position of coordinator for intelligence, was in the center of the ensuing "crisis," as he termed it. He gave the FBI full access to the Czech side of the investigation. Two Czech-speaking FBI agents were allowed not only to sit in on the high-level task force evaluating the intelligence but to examine source material. If Atta was at the meeting, he could not have used his own passport to enter the Czech Republic, so the BIS assumed he had used a false identity and began checking through visa records for suspicious visitors in April, examining grainy videotapes from cameras at airports, bus stations, and game arcades. As the investigation was still in an early stage, the FBI had been asked to keep the identification of Atta secret, but within a week, the Prague connection was leaked to the press—from Washington. On Sept. 18, 2001, the Associated Press reported, "A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has received information from a foreign intelligence service that Mohamed Atta, a hijacker aboard one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center, met earlier this year in Europe with an Iraqi intelligence agent." CBS then reported that Atta had been seen with al-Ani.
Can't say what happened, but the informant was not influenced by the public mention of Czech visits.
Czech News Agency
First mention in the Czech press I can find.
September 19, 2001
ROSS DECLINES TO DISCLOSE INFORMATION ON TERRORIST ATTA
PRAGUE, Sept 19 (CTK) - Interior Minister Stanislav Gross declined to disclose to CTK today whether and what information Czech security service had about terrorist Mohammad Atta, who crashed a plane into one of the World Trade Centre twin skyscrapers in New York last week.
The daily Lidove noviny wrote today that Atta had travelled from German to the United States via the Czech Republic last year.
Gross said however that he would consider it premature to disclose any concrete information in connection with last Tuesday's terrorist attacks on U.S.A.
"We are cooperating with a number of our foreign colleagues to clear up the movements of a number of people who could be connected with the terrorist attack," Gross said.
Lidove noviny wrote that after Atta gained a visa to the U.S.A in Berlin last May bought an air ticket for the Ceske Aerolinie Czech airlines operator from Prague to New Jersey. It is however not clear why Atta chose Prague,t he daily wrote.
__________________________________________
Czech News Agency
September 20, 2001
ATTA SPENT ONE DAY IN CZECH REPUBLIC IN SUMMER 2000 - GROSS
PRAGUE, Sept 20 (CTK) - Mohammad Atta, one of the terrorists who attacked New York's World Trade Center with hijacked aircraft last week, made a one-day stop over in the Czech Republic in the summer of 2000, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross told reporters today.
He was reacting to the media information that Atta, before taking part in theterrorist attack, had arrived in the USA from the Czech Republic.
"By no means can we confirm Mohammad Atta's presence in the Czech Republic within days or weeks before the terrorist attack in the USA," Gross said.
Atta's contacts in the Czech Republic are still being examined, he said. He added that Atta had probably only used the Czech Republic as a transit country.
"We monitored this person's movement deep in the past. The only positive information we uncovered was June 2000," said Czech Police President Jiri Kolar.
He said Atta had spent less than 24 hours in the Czech Republic. He left the country on a plane. "For the time being, we don't know where he left , whether for New Jersey, as we are checking another destination which has not been definitively excluded yet," Kolar said.
Atta, born in Egypt, piloted the hijacked Boeing 767, with 92 people aboard, which crashed into the World Trade Center's northern tower on September 11 morning, according to FBI's information. Another four terrorists, whose names are known as well, boarded the plane together with Atta, said FBI.
Gross said the police and the Interior Ministry were monitoring the movement of all persons who could theoretically have any connection with the U.S disaster.
"There is no other name I could provide to you, no person whose participation in the terrorist action in the USA would have been proved," Gross told journalists, referring to an inquiry into whether there were any links between the attackers and the Czech Republic.
Gross said that Czech security services maintained contact with the relevant foreign bodies.
"We pass on them all information which could help them, including information which would date back before 1989," Gross said.
Czech News Agency
October 26, 2001
PROFILE OF SUICIDE TERRORIST ATTA
PRAGUE, Oct 26 (CTK) - Speculations about Iraq's involvement in the suicide terror in the USA in September were confirmed today.
As recently as a week ago Iraqi Deputy Premier Tariq Aziz denied information about the meeting between Muhammad Atta, one of the attackers, and an Iraqi diplomat in the Czech Republic in the Arab paper ash-Shark al-Awsat.
However, Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said today that Atta had met Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer who was expelled from the Czech Republic for activities "conflicting with diplomatic conduct", in Prague in April.
It is certain that this was not the first visit by Atta, who is suspected of a suicide attack on the WTO on 11 September, to the Czech Republic.
Gross said that he had been here on July, 2 2000, too, when he had come by bus from Germany and the next day he left Prague for the USA. His another visit to the Czech Republic, which allegedly took place in May 2000, had not been confirmed.
The first speculation about Atta's possible stay in the Czech Republic surfaced in the daily Lidove noviny just eight days after the attack against the USA.
On 20 September Gross confirmed Atta's one-day stay in the Czech Republic in June 2000. In early October the information appeared about his alleged several meetings with the Iraqi agent in June 2000 and his second visit to the Czech Republic this year.
Atta's second visit to the Czech Republic this year was only confirmed by the police on Monday and his contact with the Iraqi diplomat only today.
On October 19 Tariq Aziz denied the information about Atta's meeting the diplomat.
Aziz said that no such meetings had taken place, adding that this was just a lie.
He said that he and Samir Ani had discussed the issue and that he had asked him whether he had met the person called Muhammad Atta.
Last week the British paper Observer wrote that at the second meeting in the spring Atta had met former head of the Iraqi foreign intelligence Faruq Hijazi. It is known that Hijazi used to meet Osama bin Laden.
Referring to former U.N. inspector Richard Butler The Guardian wrote last week that it was possible that Atta had obtained from the Iraqi agent in Prague spores of anthrax.
The Czech financial paper Hospodarske noviny has written that Atta could have done business in the Czech Republic. An Egyptian from Cairo named Mohamed Sayed Ahmed established two firms in Prague (one of them is allegedly called Electric Construction Company). The cover-name Mohamed Sayed was used by the suicide pilot Atta, also an Egyptian from Cairo. ...
Article at #99 is first time a report about an April 2001 meeting came from a Czech official. This article earlier announced the upcoming report:
Czech News Agency
October 19, 2001
POLICE TO DISCLOSE DETAILS ON ATTA'S STAY NEXT WEEK
PRAGUE, Oct 19 (CTK) - The police will disclose further details on the stay of Muhammad Atta, a suicide terrorist involved in September 11 attacks on the U.S., in the Czech Republic, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross and Police Chief Jiri Kolar told journalists today.
Gross reiterated that he could confirm Atta's one-day visit to the Czech Republic in summer last year.
"This does not mean that he could not pay a visit to this country another time," he added.
Kolar said that Atta had tried to enter the Czech Republic shortly before his last year's visit. However, he did not get to the country as he lacked the necessary entry visa.
Kolar said on BBC radio on Thursday that according to the information obtained by the police, Atta might have spent one or two days in the Czech Republic in the past under a false name.
Some media said earlier this month that Atta had twice met an Iraqi intelligence service agent in Prague - in June last year and April this year.
However, Iraqi Vice-Premier Tariq Aziz denied the information today.
"No such meetings took place. These are lies," Aziz says in an article published in today's issue of the pan-Arabian newspaper Ash-Shark al Avsat which appears in London.
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