Posted on 07/17/2002 2:26:07 PM PDT by Plummz
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."
It looked "like a Thermos bottle". No way of knowing whether it contained "VIALS"...
"...But Kmonicek, a government official with top security clearance, was adamant that al-Ani and Atta met in April 2001, as Czech officials have stated repeatedly.
"At the time [of the meeting] I was in Prague," he said. "It's not like they [the Czech government] sent me a cable saying, 'Say this because you are our ambassador.' It's not like that. I was the person who had to [expel] al-Ani." ..."
Like those Iraqi war plans stories?
Without Saddam Hussein around, AlQeada would have access to just about everything it needed. To top it off the West would probably cheer their having overthrown him.
No doubt AlQeada has cells in Iraq. They are not necessarily friends of the present government.
We are talking about the SAME Saddam Hussein who pays $25,000 to the families of Pali homocide bombers, has family ties to the Saudi Royal family, and is, IIRC the uncle of the current King of Jordan, are we not?
Here's another thought for you - it's possible that Atta and Osama Bin Laden thought Saddam Hussein would be blamed for the attack, and that we would remove Hussein from power. He could then move in later in a coup.
There have certainly been any number of people in FreeRepublic ready to blame Hussein for everything without clear evidence. Do we know who these people are and who they work for?
Could it have been friends of Osama Bin laden?
Yeah...where is it then?
Hussein is DEFINITELY not related to the Jordanian Royal Family AT ALL and I'd frankly be surprised if he's got any ties to any of the (enormous) Saudi Royal Family. Got a cite for that?
Hussein (and Atta, for that matter, which has caused infinite confusion as well) are about like "Smith" and "Jones" in Arabic.
Heck, the 9/11 operation could have been funded individually by a few of the wealthier FReepers, based on cost, much less Bin Ladem; there would be no reason for Al Queda to get any help from Iraq at all.
Simply WANTING Al Queda to be connected to Iraq doesn't make it true. And there are still plenty of good reasons to attack Iraq even if they had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.
We'll see it the day we start bombing Iraq, I imagine.
He made the claims of relationship, not me. (lest you misunderstand, I have the utmost respect for King Abdullah of Jordan, and admire his courage in attempting to modernize Arab thinking)
Usama trying to get us to attack a worthless sandbox which has no infrastructure and hardly any oil?? Us just blindly falling for it?? Man, if THAT ain't a veiled slam against two Presidents Bush, I don't know what is. I suppose next you'll tell me that US sanctions are to blame for the deaths of millions of Iraqi children.
Correct. This undercuts Newsweak's attempt to discredit the story, which was based on the suggestion that the FBI had no record of Atta making the 2001 trip to Prague under his own name. I remember that the very first time I saw this story reported, back in October I think, it was already being spun to divert the reader from drawing the obvious conclusion. The argument was much the same then as in this story -- why would Atta risk meeting an Iraqi spy in public? Well, one might as well ask why Atta would risk asking the USDA for a loan to buy cropdusters and take out their seats to replace them with chemical tanks, and why would he ask the loan officer about security at the WTC and Washington, DC monuments. Or one might ask why an uninvolved Saddam Hussein would have his media sing OBL's praises after the 9/11 attack, thereby painting a target on his own, perfectly innocent, forehead.
There are a variety of forces at work here seeking to muddy the waters. Of course, leftists in the government and media are solidly opposed to implicating Iraq in 9/11 for obvious reasons. The same is true of the arabists in the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, and presumably their European counterparts.
But there is another factor here, one which exactly parallels the FBI's tacit encouragement of Useful Idiot Barbara Hatch Rosenberg in the anthrax misdirection. Our leaders cannot point the finger at Iraq definitively for 9/11, because Iraq built in a very effective back-end threat to deter them from doing just that, namely the anthrax. If either the anthrax or the Atta meeting were unequivocally tied to Saddam, Bush would be in the position of admitting that Saddam had scored a massive military bow against the US, one to which we cannot presently respond without risking the loss of millions of lives and the total economic loss of our major cities. So, until such time as Bush feels the risk-benefit ratio is acceptable, it is in the administration's interest to let both the Atta story and the anthrax story bubble away with no definitive answers emerging in public.
Bush knows the answer to both these questions, and has done since last year. The significance of these stories is far too important for him not to know. The only way to make sense of all this is to look at the wider context and think through the logical implications of the different possibe scenarios. That's what the administration did last September. Everything we see them doing now is the consequence of the analysis undertaken back then, including the pubicly agnostic stance on Iraq-9/11 connections and the source of the anthrax letters. We are at war. Transparancy isn't the overriding objective. Winning is.
I should have specified "claims" in that statement of mine...I apologize. By now you've seen enough of my posts to know I don't slip like that often. Darn. That doesn't make it right, I know.
The part about killing his own people and paying Pali homocide bombers should need no citation....
I agree there are plenty of good reasons to attack Iraq without an al Qaeda link, but sincerely doubt our government just made the Atta/Prague link up off the top of it's head while the country was reeling from 9-11....just so we could attack Saddam.
The guy isn't THAT important. Diplomatic pressure from the entire coalition would do more than going into another war when we are done with the first...because I don't believe the president sat there on 9-11 and coldly thought "Hey, I can USE the horrible deaths of thousands of Americans JUST TO GET THE NUTCASE IN THAT NOWHERE COUNTRY OVER THERE!!" I cannot and will not believe that.
The FBI denies terrorism as a motive in the LAX shooting. The Finns deny terrorism in their car bombing. There's a third recent example, but I forget it. Why the epidemic of denial?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.