Posted on 04/23/2004 8:46:16 AM PDT by TrebleRebel
Question:
Three years have passed since the putative meeting in Prague between hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraq Consul al-Ani. What has the CIA, FBI, Czech intelligence (BIS) and other intelligence services established about the activities of the alleged participants at this meeting?
Answer:
1) Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani served as consul at Iraq's embassy in Prague between March 1999 and April 21, 2001 and he was activity involved in agent-handling during this period. 2) Mohammed Atta applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic on May 26, 2000 in Bonn, Germany According to Czech visa records, Atta identified himself as being a "Hamburg student." Since a visa was not necessary to catch a Czech plane to the US, Czech intelligence concluded he had business in the Czech Republic. 3) Just prior to leaving for the U.S., Atta made 2 trips to the Czech Republic in 2000. The first was on May 30, where he went without a visa to the transit lounge of Prague International Airport; the second was by bus to Prague on June 2 with visa BONN200005260024. 4) On April 4, 2001, Atta checked out of the Diplomat Inn in Virginia Beach and cashed a check for $8,000 from a SunTrust account, according to the FBI. Atta was not seen again in America by any witness before April 11, 2001. 5) Al-Ani scheduled a meeting on April 8,2001 with a "Hamburg student" according to an appointment calendar subsequently turned up by Czech intelligence in a surreptitious search of the Iraq Embassy (presumably after the defeat of Iraq in April 2003.) 6) Al-Ani was observed meeting a young Arab-speaking man on the outskirts of Prague on April 8th by a watcher for Czech counterintelligence.
7) After seeing Atta’s picture on September 11th, the watcher identified the Arab-speaking man as Mohammed Atta. 8 ) Al-Ani was expelled from Prague less than 2 weeks after that meeting. 9 ) After 9-11, Al-Ani denied that he met Atta , as did the Baghdad government. Al-Ani repeated that denial after he was detained by U.S. forces in July 2003. 10 ) The CIA determined, according to George Tenet testimony before a Joint Committee of Congress (June 18, 2002): “Atta allegedly traveled outside the US in early April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, we are still working to confirm or deny this allegation. It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias since we have been unable to establish that Atta left the US or entered Europe in April 2001 under his true name or any known aliases.” 11) Subsequently, Spanish intelligence found evidence that Algerians Khaled Madani and Moussa Laouar provided false passports to Mohamed Atta and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
What kind of calendar? Al-Ani's? Or some general calendar? Maybe to document his leaving the embassy he had give a generic statement. Don't know.
Seems totalitarians like to document things...But then the Czechs might have created it to enhance their story.
For me the telling incident was the blatant disinformation about Vaclav Havel. That put the story beyond a mere conflict between honest disagreements.
Even getting into the buildings of corporations typically requires giving your name, signing in, and often showing some ID.
And it seems awfully convenient that the phrase is apparently an exact match for Atta's self-description on his visa application.
Depends on the purpose of the "appointment calendar". Maybe "Hamburg student" is the "name." Or maybe there was a name...was their more info in the doucment? Who wrote it? Was it for Al-Ani? Etc., etc.
Even getting into the buildings of corporations typically requires giving your name, signing in, and often showing some ID.
By the little information given I cannot tell if it was an in-house meeting, or recording a meeting elsewhere. Anyway, certain people need not follow procedures...
And it seems awfully convenient that the phrase is apparently an exact match for Atta's self-description on his visa application.
Maybe. but why not? Note that "student" has a religious significance, eg "Talib". I'd like to see the original language reports.
Totally! For a meeting between a spymaster and a terrorist leader? Heck yes! It's just to serve as a nudge for the spymaster's memory, it's shorthand code as a precaution. If it had named Atta, it would be much LESS convincing.
Well, I wasn't thinking that Atta's name would appear, but that the entry would have included a fake name. That would have been less suspicious that an entry with no name.
Of course, maybe there was a fake name. We really don't know.
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