Atta’s Alleged Trip to Prague (from 9/11 Commission Report)

Re the rentals

Here's what I found in Aftonbladet (Swedish tabloid) published 15 Oct 2001 - last parapgraph (transl fr Swedish):

Aftonbladet - Swedish tabloid reports on 15 Oct 2001 on the relationship between the 9/11 hijackers and the anthrax cases

Last paragraph: One of the (2) appartments which is situated at The Delray Racquet Club is central to the federal investigation regarding the terrorist attacks. Many of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta among them, have been connected to the appartment either becuase they were known to have visited or had personal ties to the people living there.

It has been clearly shown that this was a meetingplace for the terrorists, the authorities have told The Miami Herald. Now we will have to investigate if the anthrax attacks were planned there.

Were the Democrats still stonewalling the approval of Ashcroft on April 11, 2001?

6 Full Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

Too bad Jim Garrison isn't still alive - he'd have this all figured out by now, e.g., Dick Cheney met with Mohammed Atta in a DC suburb in May, 2001, at a site provided by Halliburton. (sarcasm)

LOL!

However, look around the web and sources. Try to find any information that Atta rented a place on April 11, and where.

I'm not saying it proves anything about Prague, but the absence in theis part of the timeline is curious, and, indeed, might be omitted to cover up some other matter - like who Atta was renting from.

His moves from May thereafter are well documented - at least publicly.

Haven't found anything so far, except that Atta and Shehhi shared appartment from 1998 onwards in Hamburg. But that's "old" knowledge.

"The Commission's report does not say when the source for this first reported the information to the Czech intelligence service. If it was before the 9/11 attacks, that lends considerable credibility to the report. If it was after, that doesn't necessarily discredit the source, but his or her memory could have been influenced by news reports."

Maybe it's "Eliska?"

"Eliska T. interview (May 20, 2004)."

Then there's this statement:

"Shortly after 9/11, the source reported having seen Atta meet with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, an Iraqi diplomat, at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague on April 9, 2001, at 11:00 A.M."

This comport's with EJE's reporting. Thereby, the disinformation that a witness was influenced by reports of prior Atta's trips to Prague is untrue - that information hadn't been publicized yet. The story that the witness figured out who the person was by the then-published pics of Atta would seem to be true.

Naturally the witness could be confused by faces and trauma, though Atta is distinctive looking.

Thanks for the ping.

Check this link:

http://www.sptimes.com/News/091501/Worldandnation/14_hijackers_spent_ti.shtml

No dates or addresses but it is stated categorically that Atta and Shehhi shared appartment.

Lists addresses for most of the other hijackers.

$8K is just under the Fed's limit of $10K for reporting cash transactions. Such amounts are normally considered suspicious.

Thanks for the ping Shermy. Lots of detail there.

From Isikoff/ Hosenball, Newsweek, 12/19/03:

“FBI records show Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi checking out of the Diplomat Inn in Virginia Beach, Va., and writing a check for cash for $8,000 for a SunTrust account in that city on April 4, 2001. For the rest of that week, Atta's cell phone was used to make repeated calls to Florida. On April 11, Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Fla. While acknowledging that a few days are unaccounted for, the FBI has found no evidence that Atta departed the country overseas during this period, an official said.”

From the 9/11 Commission report, 7/22/04:

“The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo),and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he and Shehhi leased an apartment. On April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta’s cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida. We cannot confirm that he placed those calls.”

Shouldn’t they at least have given Newsweek credit?

That is the only report of the FBI timeline before. Curiously, EJE reports at his site "there is no lease or other record"

It appears to be the same Coral Springs complex Atta used for his Drivers' license in May.

Here is what EJE says about 11 April:

According to Newsweek he rented an appartment in Coral Springs April 11(although there is no lease or other record.)

http://edwardjayepstein.com/MissingAtta.htm

Finally the final part of an article by Andrew C McCarthy re the Prague connection and his criticism of the Staff report.

I'll have to leave now but I think this thread has pulled together some nice data and thoughts (mainly you and Southack). Maybe a ping to Rush or some other radio show could be useful.

Cheers,

ScaniaBoy

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Prague Problem

One thing the staff evidently thought it was laying to rest was the other niggling matter of whether 9/11 major domo Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague in April 2001. The staff's conclusion is that the meeting is a fiction. To say its reasoning is less than satisfying would be a gross understatement. Here's the pertinent conclusion, also found in Statement Number 16:

We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9 [2001]. Based on the evidence available Ñ including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting Ñ we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI's investigation places him in Virginia as of April 4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain under his true name and back under his true name.

This is ground, again, that I've recently covered. To rehearse: Czech intelligence has alleged that Atta was seen in Prague on April 8 or 9, 2001. Atta had withdrawn $8,000 cash from a bank in Virginia on April 4 and was not eyeballed again by a witness until one week later, on April 11. The new detail added by the staff is that Atta's cell phone was used in Florida on three days (April 6, 9 and 10) during that time frame. Does this tend to show he was in Florida rather than Prague? It could, but not very convincingly. Telling us Atta's cell phone was used is not the same as telling us Atta used the cell phone.

Atta almost certainly would not have been able to use the cell phone overseas, so it would have been foolish to tote it along to the Czech Republic Ñ especially if he was traveling clandestinely (as the large cash withdrawal suggests). He would have left it behind. Atta, moreover, had a roommate (and fellow hijacker), Marwan al-Shehhi. It is certainly possible that Shehhi Ñ whom the staff places in Florida during April 2001 Ñ could have used Atta's cell phone during that time.

Is it possible that Atta was in Florida rather than Prague? Of course it is. But the known evidence militates strongly against that conclusion: an eyewitness puts Atta in Prague, meeting with al-Ani; we know Atta was a "Hamburg student" and represented himself as such in a visa application; it has been reported that the Czechs have al-Ani's appointment calendar and it says he was scheduled to meet on the critical day with a "Hamburg student"; and we know for certain that Atta was in Prague under very suspicious circumstances twice in a matter of days (May 30 and June 2, 2000) during a time the Czechs and Western intelligence services feared that Saddam, through al-Ani, might be reviving a plot to use Islamic extremists to bomb Radio Free Europe (a plot the State Department acknowledged in its annual global terror report notwithstanding that the commission staff apparently did not think the incident merited mention).

I am perfectly prepared to accept the staff's conclusion about Atta not being in Prague Ñ if the commission provides a convincing, thoughtful explanation, which is going to have to get a whole lot better than a cell-phone record.

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 Ñ the origins of which it traces back to 1999 Ñ 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?

Are these questions important to answer? You be the judge. According to the 9/11 Commission staff report, bin Laden originally pressed the operational supervisor of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), "that the attacks occur as early as mid-2000," even though bin Laden "recognized that Atta and the other pilots had only just arrived in the United States to begin their flight training[.]" Well I'll be darned: mid-2000 is exactly when Atta made his two frenetic trips to Prague immediately before heading to the United States to begin that flight training.

The commission staff next says, "[i]n 2001, Bin Laden apparently pressured KSM twice more for an earlier date. According to KSM, Bin Laden first requested a date of May 12, 2001," and then proposed a date in June or July. Well, what do you know: all those dates are only weeks after Atta may have had some reason to drop everything and secretly run to Prague for a meeting with al-Ani.

Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

Ñ Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is an NRO contributor.

http://www.local10.com/news/956395/detail.html

Pic of the Coral Springs apartment, perhaps.

Damn it you both beat me to it

;D

I'm too slow with the HTML formatting.

It appears to be the same Coral Springs complex Atta used for his Drivers' license in May.

He gave the address when he was stopped for speeding in Fort Lauderdale on April 26, 2001. According to the 9/15/01 Sun-Sentinel, he either didn't have or didn't show a driver's license at the time, but gave his address as 10001 Atlantic Blvd. in Coral Springs, Apt. 22.

Thanks for the tip. Now I see that it's "Tara Gardens" - a "condominium" complex.

I've been searching through the bits and pieces I've saved, and here's a (perhaps contradictory) tidbit from a 9/20/01 Sun-Sentinel article (a humint piece called "Suspects Appeared to be so Normal"):

"Lori Gross lived upstairs from Atta and al-Shehhi at Tara Gardens Condominiums in Coral Springs, where they moved from Hollywood in June. She didn't know them, but she wonders....The blinds of that vacant first floor apartment are open..."

Atta gave his address as Apt. 22 -- on the first floor? Doesn't sound right. Perhaps he lived at a different address in Coral Springs before that?

Earlier the author (Rekha Basu) quotes the new owner of "the weathered beige house with green trim on Hollywood's Jackson Street, where Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi had lived" (in Apt. 3A)

No dates given for Hollywood, though.

This could be sloppy reporting, of course.

I saw one timeline that he lived at this place in mid-may to mid-june.

Being a condo, I'd like to know who "owns" it. He could have stayed there more than once. But the April episode is not well explained anywhere...

Parts of this are a breath of fresh air. (The way it is written is far more sober and objective than the downright irresponsible "staff report".) However, a few surprises.

Shortly after 9/11, the source reported having seen Atta meet with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, an Iraqi diplomat, at the Iraqi Embassy

HUH??

That had never been my understanding. The story had always been that the meeting occurred elsewhere.

On April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta’s cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida. We cannot confirm that he placed those calls.

Right. Such a refreshing change to read it phrased this way.

But there are no U.S. records indicating that Atta departed the country during this period.

Uh ok, but couldn't he just have used...

He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias

Right THANK YOU. Thank you very... uh wait, what's this:

The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports.

Um, ok, another contradiction. Hasn't Epstein reported that "Subsequently, Spanish intelligence found evidence that Algerians Khaled Madani and Moussa Laouar provided false passports to Mohamed Atta and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh."? Is the wiggle room here in the phrase "the FBI and CIA"? So "the FBI and CIA" has found no such evidence, but there is other evidence? Do we have to get into another "16 words"/"British intelligence" style discussion here? We're not allowed to know or speak of information that doesn't come from U.S.A.? Curious.

Czech officials have reviewed their flight and border records as well for any indication that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001, including records of anyone crossing the border who even looked Arab.

Good to know. Although, if he came by bus from Germany as on a prior visit, and as one might expect a "Hamburg student" to do, would one expect there to be "records"?

They have also reviewed pictures from the area near the Iraqi embassy and have not discovered photos of anyone who looked like Atta.

Which they wouldn't if the meeting instead occurred away from the embassy. It seems we need this cleared up.

No evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001.

Sigh. I hate it when people say this. Except for the eyewitness testimony placing him there! It should read "no other evidence has been found..."

Ani, the Iraqi officer alleged to have met with Atta, was about 70 miles away from Prague on April 8-9 and did not return until the afternoon of the ninth, while the source was firm that the sighting occurred at 11:00 A.M.

70 miles. I commute almost that far. Hour and a half drive. Isn't there a "you're both right" solution staring us in the face? Ani was 70 miles away, drove back to Prague (the city) in the morning, met with Atta on "the outskirts of Prague" pace Epstein, and then returned to the actual Iraqi embassy in Prague in the afternoon?

Of course, this presupposes clearing up of this little matter of where the meeting actually took place. (By the way, we have fairly good reason to believe some meeting took place, we just don't know who, although whoever it was, got Ani kicked out of Czechoslovakia...)

Ani - now in custody -has denied ever meeting or having any contact with Atta. [...] KSM and Binalshibh both deny that an Atta-Ani meeting occurred.

Surprising and shocking revelations, these.

There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation.

This is an unsubstantiated editorial interjection. The writer of this thing doesn't know that there was "no reason" for such a meeting. Reaching a bit too far here. One of the low-lights of this passage.

By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training, and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States.

Yes, but did they have the anthrax yet... and what kind... OOPSY sorry I know nobody's supposed to mention anthrax (darn there's that word again) it's a verboten subject Just forget the anthrax attacks ever happened.

The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting.

Hmm.

Overall I'd say that the worst blow to the Epstein crowd, and to myself, comes from the fact that the location of the meeting seems to have magically shifted from "the outskirts of Prague" to the embassy itself. I find it odd that a Czech intelligence agent somehow observed a meeting which occurred inside the Iraqi embassy; of course, that agent could simply have been one of the guards, staff, etc. But clearly this location issue is now the locus of the discrepancy, and I expect that Epstein, Hayes, etc. will have to weigh in with their thoughts in the next few days.