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http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2004/070804tenetresponse.pdf

More Atta-Prague stuff at this link. Note the CIA believe the only reason Atta went through Prague in 2000 was the hope that a non-EU country would be less likely to keep meticulous travel records.

Of course this was the trip where he took the plane to Prague without a Czech visa intitially and then flew back to Hamburg. He then got the visa and took the bus to Prague this time. Then he disappeared for 24 hours and got the plane to the US.

Surely the CIA version can be checked? If he really wanted to avoid meticulous travel records, why did he fly to Prague in the first place? Did he already have a flight ticket to the US by that time? Notice the CIA response conveniently does not discuss the fact that he made this initial flight to Prague.

Also, Tenet claims any April 2001 meeting with Al-Anni would have been too risky. Let's do a thought experiment here - why would Atta meet Al-Anni in person? What if something was transferred to Atta that couldn't be sent any other way - where a private courier was essential? Say this something had originally been sent to Prague in a diplomatic bag from Baghdad.

Where on earth does Tenet get the idea Atta went through prague because of record keeping? How does he know that?

1. Why would Atta care if the Czechs had less meticulous recordkeeping than EU countries? He was going and coming from an EU country anyway, Germany, and it recorded him. What's the point - he couldn't hide his destination.

When I first read that Tenet satement it sounded plausible, but examined it closer.

2. And what about the many other trips Atta didn't care about hiding his routes.

3. Oh, and Al Ani denied the meeting. Some evidence.

Let's do a thought experiment here - why would Atta meet Al-Anni in person? What if something was transferred to Atta that couldn't be sent any other way - where a private courier was essential? Say this something had originally been sent to Prague in a diplomatic bag from Baghdad.

Well, there was one early report that al-Ani transferred a vacuum bottle or Thermos bottle to Atta. As I recall, this was mentioned in a Frontline interview as having been reported in a newspaper article, but I never saw the newspaper article that was referred to.

I have my doubts about this story, however. How could anybody tell from a distance what was being transferred? And if that level of detail were known, there wouldn't be all these lingering doubts about the meeting in the first place.

So that report sounds like disinformation, disinformation that was pulled from distribution right away because there were too many holes in the story. It's one of the things that gives me pause about the whole Atta-al Ani story, that maybe the whole thing is disinformation.