TIMELINE (Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta)

Saturday, August 13

Captain Ed on Able Danger and another angle the 9/11 Commission may have missed.

Maybe the most prolific blogger on the conservative side, Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters joined Peter and Carol a short while ago. Here's what he had to report:

CPL: Captain Ed, we just started talking in the last segment about this whole idea of Mohammed Atta, and the ties...potential ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda that have perhaps been downplayed or ignored, and we were hoping...we know you have a very substantial posting, you could kind of walk us through this in a way that all of us, even a Dartmouth grad like Peter can understand.

PR: Yeah, even something that some Harvard lawyer like Carol could understand. Listen. You've got new stuff on your website. We want to have you talk about that, but first, can you tell us...the commission decided to leave out any suggestion that Mohammed Atta might have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, right?

EM: That's correct. Though they didn't exactly leave it out. They actually provided a rebuttal to that.

PR: Not only did they...okay. So they decided it was simply incorrect. Now does what we have learned about the Able Danger intelligence unit change the possibility, increase the probability that he did indeed meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent? Or doesn't it affect that question at all?

EM: Well, we don't know, because we don't know what Al Felzenberg was saying, in terms of what it was that didn't match up with the timeline.

CPL: The 9/11 spokesman, right?

EM: The 9/11 Commission spokesman. All he said is that the information they got from Able Danger didn't match what they already quote knew about Mohammed Atta's movements prior to 9/11.

PR: So the commission got this information from the Able Danger intelligence unit, looked at it, and said uh, that doesn't fit with what we've already decided, so we'll leave it out. Is that roughly what they're saying?

EM: That's roughly what they're saying, but what we don't know specifically is what part of the timeline they are talking about. But the only part of the Atta timeline that I know is in dispute is the April 9th visit to Prague, or that's what Czech intelligence continues to insist to this day, took place in Prague, was when Mohammed Atta supposedly traveled there and met with the attache to the Iraqi Embassy in Prague, and a known Iraqi IIS agent.

CPL: Right, and I think Condoleezza Rice also has said privately that she continues to believe the Czech intelligence.

EM: Well, and...I mean, the Czech intelligence is...they're saying that it's more than a 70% chance, more than a 50% confidence factor. I don't know how they determine...

PR: They've let it be known, in other words, that they are not persuaded by the commission report rebuttal?

EM: No, and if you take a look at the commission report rebuttal, it's pretty thin. They're saying that the reason why they believe this is for one, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shib told them that Atta didn't go there. Those are two of the 9/11 planners who they've captured since 9/11. And earlier in the same chapter of that, they specifically discount things that both KSM and bin Al-Shib has told them. And so, they seem to rely on this, at times, when it's convenient for them to do so, and not at other times.

PR: Right.

EM: The other reason, the other main reasons were the fact that somebody used Atta's cell phone on April 6th, April 9th, I think April 10th, because they have the phone records for his cell phone, and they don't have any record of him traveling in or out of the country using his own passport, which you would normally do. That's...those are the reasons. That's the reasons why the 9/11 Commission was convinced that Atta did not go to Prague.

PR: To call that thin is to be your usual charitable self, Ed.

EM: You know, it's very thin. It's not Adkins diet thin. It's thinner than that.

PR: Now listen. You've got new stuff up on your website, regarding the possibility of a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Now briefly, for laymen, for, you know, these Harvard lawyers, can you crunch that down and explain what you've got up?

EM: Yes. Now this is also...this is a pretty obscure report that somebody pointed to me to today. And this is a report that was made in March of 2001, so about six months before the attacks, by an Arabic language newspaper in Paris called Al Watan Al Arabi.

PR: Ed, you are a one man Able Danger unit.

CPL: Open source...working with the open source intelligence.

PR: Yeah. By the way, if I ask a question where you'd have to kill me if you answered, let me know, will you please?

EM: No, I don't have to kill anybody for this, but we'll keep you in touch. But what this Paris based, Arabic language newspaper reported at the time, and again this is...the report came out in March of 2001...March 16th, 2001, of their edition, was that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrest came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service, and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at U.S. interests around the world, through a network of alliances with extremist, fundamentalist parties.

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CPL: We are hoping you will continue sort of where we left off, walking us through these contacts in Hamberg and elsewhere, that might suggest a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda of some sort.

EM: Okay, good. So what happened is that sometime in either February or early March, the Germans got tipped...

CPL: Now March of...

PR: ...of 2001.

EM: Of 2001. This is six months before the attacks, got tipped to the existence of an Iraqi network of spies, that were working with radical Islamists in Germany...and according to this report. And they were able to capture two of the agents, the CIA and the FBI went out there to interrogate them. That was what Al Watan Al Arabi reported on March 16th, 2001. This did get picked up by the world press, and again you have to remember that, you know, we knew about Al Qaeda. You know, it was in the news, but it wasn't...we weren't in the War on Terror. At least we didn't know we were in the War on Terror.

PR: Right.

EM: So I took a search through the news services today, NEXUS. I couldn't find anything to either support of refute this. I did see a couple of other bloggers had already had this, but it just really...it hadn't hit anywhere, because everybody had sort of accepted the wisdom of the 9/11 Commission, that there were no operational ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda on the 9/11 attack.

PR: So there are three points here. One is that the Germans picked up some Iraqi spies whom they had good reason to believe were dealing with Islamist extremists.

EM: Right.

PR: Second, this was reported publicly, in what would be to most Americans, an obscure newspaper. But you'd hope that our intelligence services would be reading these Arabic newspapers published in France.

EM: Right.

PR: And then the third point is that for reason yet unknown, the 9/11 Commission simply ignored this.

EM: Well...

PR: Is that right?

EM: Let's be careful about that.

PR: No, no. If I'm making a mistake, correct me please.

EM: They don't address it in their report. Was it brought to them? We don't know. You know...first off, this is a report in an Arabic language newspaper. It's sort of a report against interests, because you know, the Arabic people in France probably didn't...

PR: ...didn't like hearing it.

EM: ...hearing about Iraqi spies being tied to Islamic extremists. So it's a little interesting that that's where the report came out. It would be sort of like the Times breaking the news that the 9/11 Commission...the New York Times breaking the news that the 9/11 Commission lied about Able Danger, which is exactly what happened.

CPL: Right.

PR: What questions do you feel the urge to ask? And to whom do you want to direct? And do CIA and FBI have spokesmen who might be likely to confirm that this took place? Or not?

EM: Well, yes. I think we need to find out from the CIA and the FBI if this actually took place.

PR: And then we need to find out from the commission if they even knew about it.

EM: Right. If it did, did they give that information to the commission. If the commission did have that information, why isn't it in the 9/11 report? Because it would tend to underscore a connection between Saddam Hussein and the Islamist extremist cells that were operating...the Al Qaeda cells that were operating in Germany at the time, which were focused on the 9/11 attacks that were coming up. Mohammed Atta came from the Hamberg cell in Germany.

CPL: Right.

EM: That was where he and the three other pilots came from. And that was where he was going back to for support. He traveled back and forth between Europe, and on a few occasions, to...for logistical purposes. And the report is full of that.

CPL: Right.

EM: So that's the one thing. But here's another interesting part of this, and this is how it related to Prague, and I haven't posted about this. I'm in the middle of writing this post. But assuming this is true, and again, this is an assumption, assuming this is true, one of the reasons why the 9/11 Commission rejected the idea that Atta went to Prague was because, first off, they had the cell phone records, and second, that he traveled under his own name when he traveled.

CPL: Right.

EM: But if the cells were disrupted...if the Germans had discovered the Iraqi network, and their connection to the Islamist cells, it's reasonable to conclude that the cell operations there were disrupted. In order for him, then, to get logistical support, he has to go some place else to get relinked back to the network. Where does he go? He goes to Prague. And does he go there, traveling under his own name? If I was Mohammed Atta, I would find another way to get there, because I would want to make sure that my cover didn't get blown by having me show up at the Iraqi Embassy.

End of interview.

In Washington, the FBI moved to quiet the Prague connection by telling journalists that it had car rentals and records that put Atta in Virginia Beach, Va., and Florida close to, if not during, the period when he was supposed to be in Prague. The New York Times , citing information provided by "federal law enforcement officials," reported that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001, and by April 11, "Atta was back in Florida, renting a car." Newsweek reported that, "the FBI pointed out Atta was traveling at the time [in early April 2001] between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va.," adding, "The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts." And intelligence expert James Bamford, after quoting FBI Director Robert Mueller as saying that the FBI "ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on," reported in USA Today , "The records revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time he supposedly met the Iraqi in Prague."

All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other recordsin the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias" to "meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague." Clearly, it was not beyond the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers to use aliases.

But just because Atta could have been in Prague did not mean that he met al-Ani there on April 8, 2001. Eyewitness identification can often be mistaken. It was known, however, that Atta had business in Prague prior to the 9/11 attack. Kmonicek, the deputy foreign minister, had found a paper trail of passport records showing that Atta had applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic on May 26, 2000 in Bonn, Germany. Atta must have had business there, since he could have transited through the Czech Republic on Czech Air without a visa.

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