Posted on 04/28/2002 8:50:34 AM PDT by Brian Mosely
Sunday April 28, 11:47 am Eastern Time
NEW YORK, April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Czechoslovakian government officials have quietly acknowledged that they may have been mistaken about a supposed meeting at the Iraqi Embassy last April in Prague between suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent, Newsweek reports in the current issue. U.S. intelligence officials now believe that Atta, the hijackers' ringleader, wasn't even in Prague at the time the Czechs claimed. "We looked at this real hard because, obviously, if it were true, it would be huge," one senior U.S. law-enforcement official tells Newsweek. "But nothing has matched up."
Still, Pentagon analysts are still aggressively hunting for evidence that might tie Atta or any of the other hijackers to Saddam Hussein's agents, reports Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff in the May 6 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 29).
The story of the meeting came from the Czech Intelligence Agency, the BIS, when agents looked at surveillance photographs taken from the Radio Free Europe building in Prague. RFE started round-the-clock video surveillance in 1998, after it began broadcasting anti-Saddam programs into Iraq. The security measure was taken because Tom Dine, RFE director, says U.S. officials warned him that "the Iraqis were plotting to blow us up."
The cameras caught a heavyset Middle Eastern man hanging around the RFE building taking pictures and he was sometimes accompanied by a thinner, taller man. The Czechs identified the heavier man as Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat widely believed to be a spy. The thinner man was never identified. In late April 2001, al-Ani was again caught casing the building and was expelled from the country. After Sept. 11, a Czech intelligence source inside Prague's Middle Eastern community saw Atta's picture in the media and reported that he had seen the same person meeting al-Ani at the Iraqi Embassy five months earlier, Isikoff reports.
On closer scrutiny, the evidence became less convincing. Although Atta had indeed flown from Prague to the U.S. in June 2000, the Czechs had placed the alleged meeting in April 2001. The FBI could find no visa or airline records showing he had left or re-entered the United States that month. "Neither we nor the Czechs nor anybody else has any information he was coming or going [to Prague] at that time," says one U.S. official.
(Read Newsweek's news releases at
http://www.Newsweek.MSNBC.com. Click "Pressroom.")
What government? What year is this from? It is obvious that the Newsweek writer is very knowlegeable, careful, and accurate.
Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tarik Aziz, told the Los Angeles Times last week, "This meeting did not take place. It is a lie. We checked with him: 'Did you ever meeting somebody called Atta?'"Asked if Atta might have been using a different name, Aziz told the L.A. Times, "Even if such an incident had taken place, it doesn't mean anything. Any diplomat in any mission might meet people in a restaurant here or there and talk to them, which is meaningless. If that person turned out to be something else, that doesn't mean he had a connection with what that person did later."
Czechs confirm suspected hijacker met Iraqi
Suspected terrorist hijacker Mohammed Atta contacted an Iraqi agent to discuss a terror attack on the Radio Free Europe building in the Czech capital, Prague, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman told CNN.
Czech PM: Atta considered Prague attack
Atta may have attempted to enter the Czech Republic in May 2000, a government source said, but was turned away at the Prague airport because he did not have a visa. According to a source in the Czech government, Atta then obtained a visa at the Czech consulate in Bonn and took a bus to the Czech Republic, entering on June 2, 2000. He flew to Newark, N.J., the next day to begin his U.S. preparations for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
There is no evidence, Gross said, that Atta met with any Iraqis during that June visit to Prague.
But "we can confirm now that during his next trip to the Czech Republic, he did have a contact with an officer of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani," said Gross, referring to this year's meeting with Al-Ani.
Czechs Confirm Key Hijacker's 'Contact' With Iraqi Agent in Prague
Gross said Atta - believed to have piloted one of the commercial jets that smashed into the World Trade Center - first entered the Czech Republic by bus from Germany on June 2, 2000, and flew to the United States from Prague the next day.
"We can confirm now that, during his next trip to the Czech Republic, he did have a contact with an officer of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani," Gross said.
Hijacker's trail leads through the Czech Republic
raq on Thursday refuted allegations of Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross that an Iraqi diplomat had once met with Mohammed Atta, a leading suspect of the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
"Stanislav Gross knows well what he spoke to the press had absolutely nothing to do with the reality and it contradicted with his previous statements, including the statement to the French daily Le Monde on October 9, in which he said he could not confirm the meeting between Mohammed Atta and the Iraqi diplomat in Prague," an Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
In a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency, the spokesman accused the Czech minister of serving Israel by trying to instigate the West to launch a war against the Arabs and Muslims.
Iraq Refutes Czech Statement on Diplomat's Contact With Terror Suspect
As more and more evidence of Iraqi complicity in the terror attacks in the US comes to light, officials in the Bush administration remain polarized into two camps. The first, headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, has categorically rejected suggestions that Iraq may have played a role in the September 11 attacks. Powell and others have declined to name Iraq as a suspected sponsor of the attacks, ostensibly because sufficient evidence of its involvement has not come to light. In fact, it appears that fear of disrupting the Bush administration's anti-terrorism coalition is the primary concern at the State Department.
Mounting Evidence of Iraqi Link to Terror Attacks
Soviet propagandists used to touch up photographs to remove the face of a Kremlin official who had fallen from favor, making him a "nonperson."
The same disinformation technique is now being used to wipe out the fact of a meeting in Prague in April, 2001 — five months before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. — between Mohamed Atta, the leading Qaeda hijacker, and Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi consul in Prague, who was Saddam Hussein's intelligence case officer there.
The question is, did Czech intelligence see Atta or not? It seems that they did. Undoubtedly al-Ani met with somebody. Does Czech intelligence have photographs that would show the likeness of this person, to see if it was Atta or not? (How Atta might have traveled to Prague and back may be unknown, but that is secondary.)
According to various articles, Czech intelligence officers saw Atta and al-Ani embrace at Ruzyne Airport, then go to the headquarters of Radio Free Europe. This was said to have occurred in early April, just weeks before al-Ani's 4/22/2001 expulsion from Czechoslovakia.
There are also reports that Atta met repeatedly with another Iraqi intelligence agent, Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, in Rome, Hamburg, and Prague. The Rome meeting was said to be shortly before al-Mamouri's July, 2001, disappearance. The meeting would have taken place in June or July, 2001, most likely July. This was probably a side trip Atta took while on a well-documented trip in July from the U.S. to Spain via Switzerland. (Atta is said to have met with known terrorists at the Catalan resort town Salou, in northeastern Spain, and he also tried to visit a prisoner at nearby Tarragona prison near the end of that trip.)
On closer scrutiny, the evidence became less convincing.
What evidence? All of it?
Although Atta had indeed flown from Prague to the U.S. in June 2000, the Czechs had placed the alleged meeting in April 2001.
So he DID fly to Prague. Why? And this meeting. Diud the Czechs only allege one meeting? If they were mistaken about the April 2001 incident outside of the Radio studio - so what? Does that explain away other meetings? That seems to be the push of this article. The article poses that Atta flew to Prague in June 2000, but since the "Czechs placed the alleged meeting in April 2001". The push here is that someone's lying, there was only one "meeting" possible. Yet the Czechs reported "three or four" meetings. (See my article below)
The FBI could find no visa or airline records showing he had left or re-entered the United States that month.
This is so laughable. So what? You think the records would be accurate or good? Our INS? And what about the month before? And the month after? And just what records do we have about Atta travelling around - did he do it a lot? Why? Who was he meeting with?
"Neither we nor the Czechs nor anybody else has any information he was coming or going [to Prague] at that time," says one U.S. official.
Was he there? So what if nor "information." who is the "official" - reporters make up lots of stuff, or report what others report, considering them as "sources."
Czech Republic: Probe Examines Atta Meetings In Prague (10/17/01)
What brought Mohammed Atta -- allegedly among the hijackers in September's World Trade Center attacks -- to Prague last year? [year 2000] Security officials in the Czech Republic and the U.S. want to know. They are now in the process of tracking Atta's steps through the Czech capital. Some say his contacts with Iraqi officials there could point to an Iraqi role in the attacks or in the growing number of anthrax cases reported in the U.S.Prague, 17 October 2001 (RFE/RL) -- Western and Czech media reports are citing unnamed Czech security officials as saying terrorist Mohammed Atta met "three or four times" in Prague with an agent of Iraqi intelligence who was then a consul based in the Czech capital, Prague.
An investigation into Atta's time in Prague is still in its early stages and not much can be said with certainty. But his key rendezvous with the Iraqi agent may have come in June 2000 at Prague's Ruzyne airport, where Atta had a stopover before boarding a trans-Atlantic flight to Newark, New Jersey.
What Atta and Ahmed Samir al-Ahani discussed will never be divulged -- at least not by Atta. He died on 11 September after allegedly hijacking and piloting one of the planes that crashed into New York's World Trade Center. Al-Ahani is no longer in Prague. Czech officials in April expelled him for allegedly engaging in activities "incompatible with his status as a diplomat."
Czech police appear to be concentrating on two possible ties between Atta and the Czech Republic. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said recently that police are investigating the possibility Atta may have had business interests in Prague while studying in Germany in the 1990s. The other is the meeting or meetings that Atta had with Al-Ahani and possibly another Iraqi official, Farouk Hijazi, the former director of Saddam Hussein's external secret services. According to the British newspaper "The Observer," Czech police are probing whether Atta may have met Hijazi in Prague sometime last spring. [sounds like the April 2001 issue]
A meeting between Atta and Hijazi could provide a further link between those who actually carried out the plane hijackings on 11 September and Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the attacks. Hijazi is known to have met bin Laden.
Another British newspaper, "The Independent," quotes Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief, as saying Saddam was so "impressed" by the 1998 terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in Eastern Africa that he sent Hijazi to meet bin Laden, who was largely believed to be behind those attacks as well. The paper reports the CIA believed Hijazi offered bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorist network permanent refuge in Iraq. Bin Laden allegedly turned down the offer.
In the case of Atta, "The Observer" says his Baghdad connection may have offered him a passport and logistical support linked with the September attacks.
But did Iraq offer more?
Western news reports -- including a two-part series airing this week on German public television -- say Egyptian authorities have arrested two suspected members of Al-Qaeda who say their organization obtained vials of anthrax in the Czech Republic.
That report could not be independently confirmed.
Czech Interior Minister Gross says neither Atta nor agents of Al-Qaeda purchased anthrax from Iraqi agents during meetings in Prague. He told reporters on 16 October, "The unequivocal answer to that [question] is 'no way'." [just a little vial?]
Prague, which serves as a major transit point between Eastern and Western Europe, has already been the site of a risky attempt to ship dangerous materials into the West. In December 1994, police in Prague arrested three men carrying 2.7 kilograms of highly enriched uranium allegedly originating in the former Soviet Union. The CIA says it was the largest recorded seizure of such material.
Richard Butler, who headed UNSCOM, the UN's weapons-inspection program in Iraq, says he doesn't have any special information on Prague, but he finds the reports of a possible anthrax transfer "credible" based on what he knows of Iraq's weapons programs.
"All I've really said about Iraq, given the meetings between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague and what has been reported about that meeting, as the police say, [is that] I think this is a fruitful line of inquiry. And the thing that also backs it up is [that] we all know Iraq had its own anthrax."
Iraq denies it is supplying anthrax, as Foreign Minister Naji Sabri recently stressed to reporters in Baghdad in not-so-diplomatic terms.
Reporter: "Is there no way that Iraq could have been the source of the anthrax?
Sabri: "Bullshit, that is my response."
Michael Moody, of the non-profit Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington, says there should be no rush to pass judgment on Iraq's role in the 11 September events or the current anthrax scare: "I'm not suggesting this couldn't have happened. I am just suggesting certainly that the Bush administration will need very convincing evidence to present to other members of the [international] coalition [against terrorism] if Iraq is involved [in order to] provide a rationale for collective action or, if necessary, individual action by the United States. That evidence, I think, is going to have to be very definitive."
No U.S. official has publicly accused Iraq of supplying the anthrax.
Yesterday, Tom Ridge, who heads a newly created U.S. Homeland Security office, says it is too early to draw any links between Iraq and the mail parcels in the U.S. found to contain traces of anthrax. Dozens of people in the U.S. are being treated for exposure to anthrax, and one man has died after opening a letter containing spores of the bacteria.
Former UNSCOM head Butler says Iraq is a legitimate target of any investigation, given its ability to produce biological weapons -- including anthrax.
"[Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister] Tariq Aziz, for example, said a couple of weeks ago that Iraq has absolutely no biological and chemical weapons -- absolutely none. Now that's simply not true. It's not true. In fact, it is not accepted by the international community. When I finished at UNSCOM, we reported that there were remaining weapons. The Security Council, which was very hostile to UNSCOM at the time [and] led by Russian concerns, conducted [its] own independent inquiry, and three years ago the Security Council decided -- as Iraq got rid of UNSCOM -- that nevertheless it was the case that Iraq continued to have weapons of mass destruction and something they had to account for, including in the biological and chemical area."
Al-Qaeda does have a track record of trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction....
The story could have been all mixed up from the beginning. What I find suspicious is that the Czechs came out with it right away, an argument, IMO, in favor of the substantial "truth" of the matter - rather than having time to make up a story. Saying, in retrospect, that one meeting did not occur is not a good argument that no meetings occured. If the "Czechs" are backing away from the stories (certainly not proved in this story), such doesn't prove their stories were false, but that they may be covering up some involvement of officials, etc. who were negligent or complicit. Note the allegation here that Anthrax was picked up in Prague - from Iraqis? Czechs? Corrupt Russian officials?
Interesting information campaign, nonetheless.
--Mithchell, Okie01 - antrhax info for you here.
September 27
Czechs to boost security at U.S. radio in Prague
PRAGUE, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Czech security forces will deploy armoured cars at the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) building in Prague following the devastating attacks in the United States, interior ministry officials said on Thursday. The radio station, which is based in the former Czech parliament building, broadcasts news programmes in a number of languages, including Arabic, to audiences from Albania to Iraq and Tajikistan. ... "We must not underestimate the risk of a potential terrorist attack on the Radio Free Europe building in Prague," Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said on Czech state radio. ... The spokesman refused to say if the decision was based on any specific threat.
Early on the Czechs feared an attack on RFE. Might have nothing to do with Atta, though - but the revealing of Atta and the 9/11 events heightened review of information previously gained.
October 4, 2001 Atta meets Iraqi intelligence service agent in Prague - press
Mohammad Atta, one of the terrorists who attacked New York with a hijacked aicraft on September 11, met at least one agent of the Iraqi intelligence service either at Prague airport or in its neighbourhood in June 2001 [sic -- Global News Wire notes: "read in first para, fourth line...in June 2000...instead of...in June 2001"], the daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes today. This information was confirmed by a high representative of the Czech intelligence service and by a government representative who is close to the investigation of the attack, the daily says. [Interesting typo about the years--is this source the origin of confusion about the meetings today?]The possible meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent had been speculated about earlier. However, Iraq dismissed all the speculations.
Atta arrived in Prague from Germany where he studied at the Technical University in Hamburg. He spent only one day in the Czech Republic and left on a regular Czech Airlines (CSA) flight to New Jersey, the paper says.
"There is no doubt that Atta met an Iraqi agent. It might have been then or earlier on a different occasion," the daily quotes the government representative as saying.
He added that there had been information about the activities of the Iraqi intelligence service in Prague both before the attack and after it.
This statement is one of the strongest hints of the connection between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks against the USA, the paper says....
October 12
Atta met Iraqi intelligence in Prague-U.S. source
WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers of the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center, met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in June 2000 and April 2001, a U.S. source said on Thursday.But the source cautioned, as have U.S. officials privately since the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, that Atta's meeting with an Iraqi intelligence official was not evidence that Iraq was connected to the attacks.
"There is no reason to indicate that it is related to the Sept. 11 attack," the source told Reuters. [The "source." Of course, since this is "Reuters", especial care must be taken reading it.]
Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross last month said Atta had made a one-day stop in the Czech Republic in the summer of 2000 while in transit. Atta had lived in neighboring Germany while studying city planning at Hamburg's Technical University.
A U.S. source had told Reuters last month that Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence official in Europe earlier this year. Intelligence analysts have said it would not be unusual for someone with Atta's alleged connections to extremist groups to meet with an Iraqi intelligence official.
October 12 (Czech media source, but dateline in "Washington")
Atta's Prague meetings not evidence of Iraqi involvement
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
October 17
Czech Republic: Probe Examines Atta Meetings In Prague
October 19
Police Acknowledge Atta May Have Made Multiple Trips to Prague
October 26
Czechs confirm Atta met with Prague-based Iraqi diplomat
Government officials confirmed Friday that suspected suicide hijacker Mohamed Atta traveled twice to the Czech Republic and met with an Iraqi intelligence agent at least once.Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said the meeting between Atta and Iraqi diplomat Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani took place several weeks before Al-Ani's expulsion from Prague on April 22, 2001 for conduct incompatible with his diplomatic status. [Presumably before "April 2001"]
Gross did not give a precise date or venue of the meeting and declined to answer questions on those topics.
Intelligence sources and government officials revealed Atta's contacts with Al-Ani' on condition of anonymity several weeks ago, but Gross was the first to state on record that such a meeting took place.
Gross said Atta - suspected of being on one of the airliners that smashed into the World Trade Center Sept. 11 - first entered the Czech Republic by bus from Germany on June 2, 2000 and flew to the United States from Prague the next day.
"We can confirm now that during his next trip to the Czech Republic he did have a contact with an officer of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani," Gross said, again without any details.
Gross said "a certain person" also tried to enter the Czech Republic without a valid visa in May 2000, but there was no hard evidence this person was in fact Atta.
Asked about Atta's suspected business ties in the Czech Republic, Gross said he could not confirm or deny such activities.
This is evidence that he was traveling under a false identity at that time. Of course there are no airline or visa records.
Does anyone else here think somebody has the goods on Isikoff?
Atta, in short, never did anything for pleasure. So his two trips to Prague in May/June 2000 just before he entered the US for the first time are very significant. As any transatlantic flier can tell you, it is far cheaper to fly from Germany than it is from Prague. And yet Atta goes out of his way to fly to Prague first. And then, when they won't let him in, he returns to Germany, obtains the proper visa, and takes a bus to Prague just to ensure that he gets there. Whatever it was, it was extremely important to Atta. And Prague is not known for any significant Al-Qaeda presence. It is known for its Iraqi diplomatic presence.
..one senior U.S. law-enforcement official tells Newsweek
What, do you doubt the word of these unnamed senior law-enforcement and intelligence officials!!??
Next, you'll even be doubting the FBI!
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