[casi] Update on 'Atta in Prague'

[info@DELETETHISuncoverIraq.com]

Fellow Listers,

There are reports that the White House will use "Atta in Praque" as part of its
attack-Iraq justification [1], and it may be helpful to update what's known of
the case .  (As background, 'Atta in Prague' refers to reports that 9/11
hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001.)

Little information has surfaced since previous posts [2], but SLATE has
published a useful review that's included below [3].  In addition to the
information in SLATE, two points should be stressed:

>> By almost all accounts, there is no video or photographic surveilance
evidence of Atta's visit.  Claims are instead based on a single eyewitness
account.  After the 9/11 attacks, a Czech informant made the identification of
Atta based on recollections of a meeting he observed some five months previous.

Fred Barnes [4] of the neocon Weekly Standard recently claimed "Czech officials
say they have a photograph of the meeting".  However, I'd wager Barnes is
overstating his own recollection of an early Safire column that had the Iraqi
agent under photographic surveilance.

>> As SLATE notes, statements of Czech intelligence officials have been
contradictory.  However, the Czech officials cited as supporting the Atta-Iraqi
meeting are merely -- to my reading -- confirming that a Czech informant made
such a claim.

But the existence of the report is a given, and not at issue.  The crux is the
meeting itself, and (given the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, especially
5-months post) whether there's any corraborating evidence that Atta was even in
Prague at the time.  So far, there's no evidence.

In mid-July The Prague Post [5] reported "The chief of the Czech foreign
intelligence has cast doubt on government reports that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed
Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague before last year's terrorist attacks in
the United States.  It was the first time a ranking Czech intelligence figure
had publicly challenged official accounts regarding whether the meeting took
place."

Regards,
Drew Hamre
Golden Valley, MN USA

===
[1] See "U.S. Returns to Theory of Iraq Link to Sept. 11 -- Washington is
overriding FBI, CIA doubts on meeting in Prague, official says.", Los Angeles
Times, August 2, 2002, URL:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq2aug02.story)

===
[2] http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00593.html

===
[3] http://slate.msn.com/?id=2070410

Did Mohamed Atta Meet an Iraqi Spy in Prague?
By Kate Taylor
Posted Tuesday, September 3, 2002, at 2:24 PM PT

In a recent column, the New York Times' William Safire tallied the evidence
connecting Saddam Hussein to the terrorists who plotted the Sept. 11 attacks. He
claimed that in April 2001, terrorist leader Mohamed Atta met one of Saddam's
top spies in Prague. But other publications, including the Times' own news
pages, have questioned whether the meeting really happened. What's the evidence
for and against?

Here's how the Atta-in-Prague story has developed, and dissipated, since last
fall:

Fall
In the beginning, even the Czech government couldn't make up its mind. Within
weeks of the attacks, sources in that nation's government said they had evidence
that Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir
al-Ani. An initial statement placed the meeting in June 2000, but all subsequent
statements from the Czechs put the meeting in April 2001. A few weeks later, the
New York Times quoted Czech officials appearing to take the story back, saying
that the reports weren't credible, and that some of the people claiming to have
seen Atta with al-Ani were small businessmen trying to accuse their competitors
of doing business with terrorists. Then, in a reversal, the Czech government
surprised Washington, first by confirming that Atta had contact with al-Ani, and
then by asserting that the two men met, not to discuss plans for Sept. 11, but
to plot a bombing of the Radio Free Europe building in Prague. In mid-November,
Safire in his column called the Atta/al-Ani meeting an "undisputed fact."

Winter
The story lost ground and then regained it. In December, the news pages of the
Times said the mass of confusions made the alleged Prague meeting more "an
object lesson in the limits of intelligence" than a casus belli against Iraq.
The paper theorized that it might have been a case of mistaken identity: Atta
strongly resembled a used-car dealer whom al-Ani often met with; al-Ani himself
was, according to American officials, only a minor functionary with the same
name as a more important Iraqi intelligence agent.

On the Times Op-Ed page, Bush adviser Richard Perle insisted that the evidence
of the meeting (which he didn't describe) was "convincing." In February, the
news pages of the Times reversed themselves and reported that American officials
had concluded that the meeting did take place. In March, Washington Post
columnist David Ignatius wrote that the evidence for the meeting was slim to
none and that even the Czechs themselves were backing away. Safire fired back,
referring to "gullible commentators" being fed lines by European officials who
opposed military action against Iraq.

Spring
An April 28 Newsweek report sought to kill the story for good. According to the
story, the Czechs had, months earlier, quietly acknowledged that they "may have
been mistaken about the whole thing." After a lengthy search, the FBI had found
no evidence that Atta was even in Prague in April 2001. Following the Newsweek
report, the Times reversed itself a second time, citing a senior administration
official who said the FBI and CIA had both firmly concluded that no such meeting
had occurred.

A week later on the Times Op-Ed page, Safire remained undeterred, referring to
"skillful manipulation [of journalists] by anonymous sources whose policy agenda
is never revealed to readers" (though Safire didn't reveal his sources, either).
Safire also drew on new confirmations from Czech officials, although in fact the
messages were mixed: The Czech interior minister and the envoy to the United
Nations stuck with their story that the meeting took place, but the chief of
foreign intelligence voiced strong doubts.

Summer
Though the latest wave of news stories says the meeting never happened, the Bush
administration reportedly isn't ready to abandon the story. The Los Angeles
Times reported in early August that the administration had decided to back the
story over the doubts of the FBI and CIA. But an intelligence official told the
LAT that there was no new evidence of a meeting between Atta and al-Ani, and the
CIA had not been asked to re-evaluate the case. On Aug. 22, Newsweek said that
the only evidence remains the "uncorroborated claim" of a Czech informant who
says he saw the two men together on April 9, 2001. But, who needs evidence?
According to Newsweek, when an FBI agent recently told Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz that the meeting was "unlikely," Wolfowitz grilled him until he
agreed it was technically possible, since the FBI can't cite Atta's whereabouts
on April 9.

===
[4]
http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/001/539dozfr.asp
Mohamed Atta Was Here
. . . And met with Saddam Hussein's man in Prague.
by Fred Barnes
08/12/2002, Volume 007, Issue 46


===
[5] http://www.praguepost.com/P02/2002/20717/print_template.php
Intelligence chief casts doubt on Atta meeting

Bublan, head of Czech foreign intelligence, says pre-Sept. 11 meeting with Iraqi
agent al-Ani unproved and implausible

By Kate Swoger
STAFF WRITER


The chief of the Czech foreign intelligence has cast doubt on government reports
that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague before
last year's terrorist attacks in the United States.

It was the first time a ranking Czech intelligence figure had publicly
challenged official accounts regarding whether the meeting took place.

Frantisek Bublan, director general of the Office of Foreign Relations and
Information (UZSI), the nation's foreign intelligence wing, told The Prague Post
he doubted whether Atta would have met Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a
second consul at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague, so close to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Atta, an Egyptian, is believed to have piloted one of the hijacked commercial
airliners used to destroy New York City's World Trade Center twin towers.

Some officials have suggested, without proof, that he may have received
logistical support from the Iraqi agent.

"If Mohamed Atta was here [in Prague], he was just passing though," said Bublan.
"If there were any meetings [between Atta and al-Ani]... they have not been
verified or proven."

That is not what government officials have said so far. They have stated
repeatedly that Atta and al-Ani met at least once in Prague, suggesting the
encounter occurred in early April 2001. Al-Ani, suspected of plotting an attack
on the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on behalf
of Iraqi intelligence, was expelled from the Czech Republic April 22, 2001 --
soon after the alleged meeting -- for abusing his diplomatic status, a charge
usually associated with spying or terrorism.

Bublan said that promoting a so-called "Prague connection" between Atta and
al-Ani might have been a ploy by U.S. policymakers seeking justifications for a
new military action against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

U.S. military officials are considering such action.

"But the question must be asked whether Atta, who was supposed to be getting
ready for [Sept. 11], would risk meeting with an Iraqi diplomat in Prague. It
would be even more risky if that diplomat was suspected of being an agent," said
Bublan.

Interior Minister Stanislav Gross, in an Oct. 26, 2001 press conference,
confirmed at least one meeting between the two men, but refused to reveal
further details. The existence of an encounter has been debated since then.

In May, American media quoted senior U.S. government sources as insisting the
meeting never happened, attributing its creation to overzealous Czech officials.

These disclaimers led Prague's envoy to the UN, Hynek Kmonicek, to reiterate in
June that an encounter had taken place.

Bublan said solid evidence existed proving that Atta had entered and left
Prague. "Once he arrived by bus and continued by plane, the next time he arrived
by plane and left by plane," he said.

"It may be more important that he lived in Germany and no one picked up on what
was going on," Bublan said, rejecting the idea that the reputation of Czech
intelligence had lost prestige over its handling of the Atta case.

"[Atta] also traveled to Spain and Switzerland. He moved freely."

The Washington Post, citing U.S. intelligence reports, said July 14 that Atta
had met with fellow plotters in Tarragona, Spain, a Mediterranean resort, on
July 9, 2001, only two months before the attacks. Prague was not mentioned.

Bublan is a veteran intelligence officer. He worked with the Security
Information Service (BIS), the Czech domestic intelligence arm, for seven years
before taking over the country's foreign intelligence network in February 2001.
The BIS is handling the Atta case.

He said the unpredictable nature of terrorist activities makes tracking past
behavior only relatively important.

"We can use information on past events, but we have to allow space for the fact
that [terrorists] will come up with something new," he said.

Terrorist organizations are less orderly than the way they are publicly
portrayed by their members, Bublan said. He said Osama bin Laden and his
al-Qaida organization, credited with masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks, are
little more than loose trademarks for worldwide groups that act independently.

"We've abandoned the idea that there is a center of terrorism somewhere," Bublan
said.

His said his agents use a variety of techniques -- he disclosed none -- to track
terrorist activities, but must adjust to unexpected opportunities.

"It's difficult to reveal [terrorists'] intentions before they act," Bublan
said. "We have to do what we can and rely on 'intelligence luck.'"

If Prague was ever marked for a terrorist attack, he said the target would
probably be a symbol of U.S. power, such as the Prague 1 headquarters of RFE/RL.
Security around the building has been reinforced since Sept. 11, with local
traffic cordoned off. The government is negotiating to have the broadcaster move
from the city center.

Another obvious target would be the NATO summit, set for Nov. 21 and 22 at the
city's Prague 6 Congress Center.

"But, so far, I stress that there is no indication that there will be any such
real danger," he said.

Bublan, a former Catholic priest and dissident who signed the landmark Charter
77 rights manifesto, entered the BIS in 1991, after spending years under
surveillance by its communist-era predecessor. He began his agency career
tracking fringe religious groups.

Still, he was chilled by the Sept. 11 events and the realization that its
organizers might be preparing other attacks.

"These are people who think they are the owners of the truth and are willing to
do anything to achieve that truth," Bublan said.

"If you tell them that they are wrong, you take away the one thing that they
have in life."

It will take another generation to eliminate that way of thinking, he said. And
it will involve a lengthy, unpredictable struggle.

He regrets that he and his colleagues will inevitably be unable to anticipate
and prevent future terrorist acts.

"You can't take on absolute, total responsibility," he said. "And it's very
difficult to live with that."


-- Krystof Hilsky contributed to this report

Kate Swoger's e-mail address is kswoger@praguepost.com
(July 15, 2002)

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