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.")
"Czechoslovakian government officials have quietly acknowledged that...."
"U.S. intelligence officials now believe that...."
"... one senior U.S. law-enforcement official tells Newsweek."
I agree.
I haven't trusted Isikoff for years--his function seems to be damage control, often with misdirection. When Clinton was dismantling our security and committing his treason, what did Isikoff focus on? He provided the direction for "it's all about sex".
The reports of the meetings were true IMO.
It's possible they are backpeddling now to maintain the confusion about if and when Iraq will be hit.
It seems like the US govt is still making great efforts to keep the "domestic source of anthrax" red herring story alive.
The question is why.
Instructions or guidance could have been sent by email or telephone or courier.
His trip to Prague was a risk: he may have been denied re-entry into the USA.
Why was it so absolutely important to Atta that he get to Prague IN PERSON?
The only logical answer I can see is to pick something up, something small that he could carry back to the US, something that was too valuable to be entrusted to a courier.
A small disguised flask of anthrax spores is my guess.
(As an aside, and sign of the times, the day Atta re-entered the US on his expired student visa, Tenet was at CIA HQ celebrating "Gay Employee Appreciation Day", I kid you not.)
Bingo. He's a tame stooge.
We are ready to nuke 'em. Anytime.
There is no reason to hurry to attack Iraq. One well-placed bullet in Saddam's cranium would be more effective than full-scale assault.
Is "quietly" a Richard Clarke word, I wonder. A word search thru his testimony and the text of his book might prove fruitful.
"Quietly" is an Inside The Beltway kinda word, as is "discreetly" -- which Risen also uses. Though I would wager "discreetly" would be favored by State Dept types, while "quietly" might be more to the taste of intelligence bureaucrats.
What would Foster think...???
"He recognizes the Urdu language in the stilted syntax ..."
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