Posted on 10/18/2001 1:09:10 PM PDT by duck soup
Atta's Prague meetings not evidence of Iraqi involvement - 12.10.
WASHINGTON, Oct 12 (CTK) - Muhammad Atta, one of the terrorists suspected of having attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, met twice an agent of the Iraqi secret service in Prague, but the meetings are not evidence of Iraq's involvement in the attacks, Reuters news agency writes today.
An unnamed U.S. source has told Reuters that Atta had met the agent in Prague in June 2000 and April 2001. However, the source said that Atta's meeting with the Iraqi spy was not evidence that Iraq had taken part in the terrorist attacks a month ago. There is no reason to hint that this was connected with the attacks, the source said.
Intelligence experts said that there was nothing unusual in the fact that people like Atta, who was probably connected with extremist groups, met an Iraqi intelligence agent, Reuters said.
Some Czech dailies carried the news about Atta's meeting in Prague last week. The U.S. news agency AP wrote on Thursday, referring to a senior Czech official, that Atta had met several times former Iraqi diplomat in Prague Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Ani.
According to the source, Atta was not paid much attention by the Czech services which focused on Ani due to his "inadequate" interest in the Radio Free Europe station, stationed in Prague. pv/mr
Reuters is full of it.
On the bright side, at least Reuters is calling Atta a terrorist.
Yeah!
Rooters says it was innocent and that's good enough for me!
Not even a hint?
I believe there is at least a hint of a connection or nobody would be reporting it.
The other, less generous possibility is that the Clinton administration was engaged here in its trademark behavior of focusing first and foremost on spin, expectation-adjustment, and short-term public relations, and deriving policy therefrom. If you assume that all terrorism flows from loose networks and not state action, then you will usually be able to find at least someone who was involved in a terrorist attack to convict. You can then claim success, get some good press and avoid confronting a state. The alternative approach--a thorough search for any state actor--presents two PR risks, neither attractive. If you find no state actor, there might be the appearance of an investigative failure. If, on the other hand, you find that a state was involved, you might then risk confrontation, even conflict, and possibly body bags on the evening news.
This may help account for the spate of recent stories in the press that seem to suggest that Iraqi government ties to terrorism are not being checked out, and that reports of such ties surprise senior government officials. It has been widely reported that the hijacker (some say the lead hijacker) Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague just before he came to the U.S. One report suggests that he met with senior Iraqi intelligence official Hijazi. And, as noted, another report puts Hijazi in the Taliban capital in 1998. Such reports are invariably followed by background statements from senior government officials to the effect that, "We don't know what they talked about so it doesn't prove anything."
Then on Oct. 1, William Safire wrote in the New York Times that al Qaeda's Abu Abdul Rahman, "financed by bin Laden and armed by Saddam," ambushed and killed 36 Kurds in Halabja in Northern Iraq. The Kurds retaliated, took 19 terrorists prisoner, and got valuable information from them about the terrorist-Iraqi connection. "Our top NSC officials," Mr. Safire wryly notes, "were unaware of this engagement until they read it in The Times."
Then on Oct. 12, Jim Hoagland wrote in the Washington Post that an Iraqi ex-intelligence officer has told the Iraqi National Congress of specific sightings of Islamic extremists training for hijacking a Boeing 707 in a suburb of Baghdad, Salman Pak, a year ago, but that he "was treated dismissively by CIA officers in Ankara this week. They reportedly showed no interest in pursuing a possible Iraq connection to Sept. 11." (I checked yesterday and essentially the same situation still obtains.)
We get a few of them here. Of course, we also get folks who downplay the obvious by dismissing it as "conspiracy theory" as well.
Intelligence agents meet with nefarious people for all kinds of reasons.
Yeah, usually folks on the ground in the country where they are stationed. Not someone flying from Newark to Prague.
Atta might have been selling Iraq information, for instance. Just because they meet does not mean they are plotting or working together.
That is the convoluted answer - that Atta would spend a considerable sum to fly for a single day to Prague to meet with an Iraqi agent just to give him some information. Ever hear of Fed-Ex?
The simplest solution, the Occam's razor answer, is that the Iraqi agent was running Atta.
I have a request then, suppose you bring him in and let him answer some questions.
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