Free Republic

Seated next to Donald Rumsfeld last Tuesday as he drank coffee at the Pentagon with reporters in the Godfrey Sperling group, I asked the secretary of defense to confirm or deny whether suicide hijacker Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi secret service operative in Prague and then returned to the United States to die in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ''I don't know whether he did or didn't,'' Rumsfeld replied. In those eight words, the defense chief confirmed published reports that there is no evidence placing the presumed leader of the terrorist attacks in the Czech capital--with or without Iraqi spymaster...

[For education and discussion only; not for commercial use.] October 21, 2002 Prague Discounts an Iraqi MeetingBy JAMES RISEN RAGUE, Oct. 20 — The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, has quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports that Mohamed Atta, the leader in the Sept. 11 attacks, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague just months before the attacks on New York and Washington, according to Czech officials. Mr. Havel discreetly called Washington to tell senior Bush administration officials that an initial report from the Czech domestic intelligence agency that...