Iraqi Official Met With Hijacker

International Herald Tribune ^ | 10/7/01

[Mr.Clark]

Hijacker Reportedly Met Iraqi Official Peter Finn Washington Post Service Saturday, October 6, 2001 BERLIN One of the key hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague just before flying to the United States in June 2000, sources in the Czech government said.

. Media reports in Prague identified the Iraqi as Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir Ani, former consul and second secretary at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague. He was expelled from the Czech Republic last April for what its Foreign Ministry described at the time as activities "incompatible with his diplomatic status." In the world of diplomacy, that is often a euphemism for espionage.

. A second hijacker also visited Prague, according to Czech sources, but his identity, and the identity of anyone he might have met with, could not be determined Friday. Czech officials are investigating whether Mr. Atta made another, earlier trip to Prague, the officials said.

. The U.S. investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks has focused on the Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, but some Western intelligence officials have said that the possibility of Iraqi responsibility should get close scrutiny as well. Mr. Atta's meeting with the Iraqi official is one of the few pieces of evidence to surface publicly that points in that direction; Iraq denies any involvement in the attacks.

. Western intelligence agencies have long believed that Prague was a hub for Iraqi intelligence in Europe and Mr. Ani was regarded as a key figure in those operations, sources said.

. Iraqi diplomats are under constant surveillance in the Czech Republic, especially after an alleged plot to bomb the Radio Free Europe building in Prague from which the U.S. supported station broadcasts to Iraq and Iran.

. Early in the investigation after the events of Sept. 11, intelligence reports surfaced that Mr. Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence operative somewhere in Europe in 2001. When word that Mr. Atta had visited the Czech Republic surfaced, Czech officials initially said Mr. Atta simply connected to a flight to Newark, New Jersey, at the Prague airport after traveling from Germany in June 2000.

. But it now appears that Mr. Atta had a specific purpose in going to Prague.

. He obtained an American visa in Berlin on May 18, 2000, but instead of traveling directly to the United States he went to Bonn, where he obtained a visa for the Czech Republic, a source said. He then hired a car and drove to Prague spending a day in the republic before flying to Newark, the source said.

. Czech intelligence services do not know what Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani talked about, and officials stressed that the meeting was not evidence therefore of Iraqi complicity in the attacks, Czech media said.

. The Bush administration has said there is no intelligence linking Saddam Hussein's government to the Sept. 11 attacks. Asked if Iraq was involved, Vice President Cheney answered with a flat "no" in a television interview after the attacks.

. The Czech foreign minister, Jan Kavan, briefed Secretary of State Colin Powell on Mr. Atta's meeting in Prague when the two conferred this week in Washington, sources in the Czech capital said.

. A number of U.S. commentators, including the former CIA chief, James Woolsey, have argued that the sophistication of the attacks required state sponsorship beyond the logistical capabilities of Osama bin Laden's Qaida network, and they said the possibility of Iraqi involvement deserves much greater scrutiny.

. "Intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks - whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others - were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein," Mr. Woolsey wrote in the New Republic magazine before the latest details of Mr. Atta's trip to Prague emerged.

. Any proof of Iraqi involvement, and a consequent U.S. military response, could sunder the administration's alliance-building in the Arab world, where many counties would find it more difficult to support an assault on Iraq than one on the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, some analysts have argued.

. Iraq has strenuously denied reports that its intelligence services had contact with Mr. Atta or that the country had any involvement in the attacks.

. "We have no relation whatsoever with groups that are being accused by the U.S.," said Iraq's foreign affairs minister, Naji Sabri.

. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said that Iraq had no links whatsoever with Afghanistan's Taliban regime or Mr. bin Laden.

. Given the historic animosity between the different branches of Islam subscribed to by the fundamentalist Saudi, Mr. bin Laden, and secular Iraq, some Western observers of the Islamic world regarded such an alliance as highly unlikely.

. Nonetheless, Washington continues to examine any evidence of an Iraqi link. U.S. intelligence officials have claimed that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met Mr. bin Laden in Kandahar, a region in southeastern Afghanistan where Mr. bin Laden is known to have training camps, in December 1998, according to news reports.

. Also, the U.S. indictment of Mr. bin Laden's associates in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania alleged that Mr. bin Laden's Qaida network and Iraq had reached an understanding to cooperate on certain issues.

[Mr.Clark]

The puppetmasters revealed?

[Mr.Clark]

Bump