The biggest B.S. in the Newsweek piece is trying to frame this as "Chalabi" information.
I've followed the story closely. The information came from the Czechs, with Czech officials...using their own names...saying it probably occured.
The fact that the "Chalabi" ruse is being thrown out means the disinformation forces are playing on constructed liberal-left bugaboos to dissuade further examination from the fact.
It's not just the doubt, it's the lie. Bad, or almost as bad as NYTimes' James Risen creating or relaying the blatant lie that Vaclav Havel "quietly" or otherwise told Bush the meeting did not take place.
Troubling indeed. Is the Newsweek piece written by Isikoff? He's the usual sucker for this disinformation.
...Powell also faults the neocons in the Bush administration who swallowed Chalabi's phony stories and pushed them into speeches by the president and vice president. With his clever sense for bureaucratic gamesmanship, Chalabi fed the neocons' hunger for raw intelligence. If the CIA and other spy services weren't going to come up with the goods on Saddam, then Chalabi would. He found a receptive audience in the office of the vice president and at the Pentagon. I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the veep's chief of staff, and Wolfowitz were eagerly looking for links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. With his media friends, Chalabi hyped a story, often cited by the neocons, about a secret meeting in Prague between Muhammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, and a high-level Iraqi intelligence officer. (After months of investigation, the CIA and FBI determined that the meeting had never taken place.)
First we have the "neocon" cabal nonsense, which is gaining traction by the way in an environment when the DNC is defining Iraq as something that occured only in Bush's mind since 2000, and Bush's PR incompetents have no interest in challenging - they seem satisfied with the new "it's the war on terrorism" pat line.
Second, we now get the "neocon" and Chalabi story lines melded into the czech-atta story, which indicates there is a faction very concerned about investigation into this matter, and believes the disinformation is best connected to lefty rather than righty talking points. Careers on the line? CYA for goofups? Foreign intel penetration?
Very interesting. Will Cheney step up to bat?
Is there even a single article connecting Chalabi to the al-Ani story that is dated before the current spate of anti-Chalabi info/disinfo? I recall nothing, and a brief search shows nothing.
Now, it wouldn't surprise me if Chalabi had pushed the al-Ani story, since it fits well into his world view, but in fact I don't know of any example of him explicitly promoting the story.