Posted on 10/22/2002 9:30:18 AM PDT by logician2u
[For education and discussion only; not for commercial use.]
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 Mr. Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, in Prague in April 2001 could not be substantiated.
Czech officials did not say precisely when Mr. Havel told the White House to disregard the reports of the meeting, but extensive interviews with leading Czech figures make clear that he did so quietly some time earlier this year in an effort to avoid publicly embarrassing other prominent officials in his government, who had given credibility to the reports through their public and private statements in the months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The statements by those officials, including the Czech prime minister, had helped turn the reports of a meeting between an important Al Qaeda operative and an Iraqi spy into an international issue.
When the reports of a meeting between Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani came to attention in October 2001, they appeared to provide the most direct connection yet uncovered between the Sept. 11 attacks and the government of Saddam Hussein, and they set off a debate in Washington that continues today over whether a possible war with Iraq should be considered an extension of the global war on Al Qaeda and terrorism.
For months, American intelligence and law enforcement officials have cast doubt on the reports of the Prague meeting, which proved to be based on the statements of a single informant, and last week the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, told Congress that his agency could find no evidence to confirm that the meeting took place.
The White House has generally been cautious about using the reports of the Prague meeting to help make the case for war with Iraq. Yet the Prague meeting has remained a live issue with other proponents of military action against Iraq, both in and out of the government.
The disclosure of Mr. Havel's decision to inform the Bush administration that it should ignore the reports of a meeting comes after a year of confused and often contradictory statements from other Czech officials about the incident.
Interior Minister Stanislav Gross first gave public credence to the reports when he held a news conference in October 2001 to announce that Mr. Atta had come to Prague in April to meet with Mr. Ani, an intelligence officer who was working under diplomatic cover in the Iraqi Embassy.
More significantly, Czech officials say that Milos Zeman, then the Czech Republic's prime minister, privately informed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell about the intelligence reports, while Mr. Zeman was holding meetings in Washington in November, thus placing the credibility of the Czech government even more squarely behind the reports.
Mr. Zeman's statements, along with an assertion that Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani had met to plot an attack on the offices of Radio Free Europe in Prague, made it difficult for officials there and in Washington to easily brush aside the reports of the meeting. American counterterrorism specialists at the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. subsequently came under intense pressure to thoroughly investigate the matter.
But Czech officials who have investigated the case now say that Mr. Zeman and Mr. Gross spoke without adequately vetting the information or waiting for the Czech internal security service to substantiate the initial reports.
Officials say they also spoke without adequately consulting Mr. Havel, who was effectively excluded as others went to the press and the Bush administration. In the Czech political system, the president is the head of state, but the prime minister manages most day-to-day government affairs and is not necessarily from the same party as the president.
Mr. Havel, the playwright and former dissident who led Czechoslovakia out of Communism in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, moved carefully behind the scenes in the months after the reports of the Prague meeting came to light to try to determine what really happened, officials said. He asked trusted advisers to investigate, and they quietly went through back channels to talk with Czech intelligence officers to get to the bottom of the story. The intelligence officers told them there was no evidence of a meeting.
It was also clear they were irked that Czech political leaders had spoken out despite the caveats that had been placed on the initial report of the meeting. "I'm sure that the report was written carefully, in guarded language," a Czech leader who has reviewed the matter said.
The intelligence report of the Czech domestic intelligence agency on a possible meeting between Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani had come from a single informant in the local Arab community, and the information was treated skeptically by Czech intelligence experts because it had been provided only after the Sept. 11 attacks, after Mohamed Atta's picture had been broadcast on television and published in newspapers around the world, and even after the Czech press reported that records showed that Mr. Atta had traveled to Prague.
Officials of the intelligence service were said to be furious that Mr. Zeman had taken the information straight to the top of the American government, before they had a chance to investigate further.
After Mr. Havel's advisers reported back to him, the president told the Bush administration that reports of an Atta-Ani meeting could not be substantiated. "I think he tried to do it politely because he didn't want to embarrass anyone," a Czech leader familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Zeman declined to comment about his role in the case. Mr. Gross could not be reached, but in May he told a Czech newspaper that he stood by his initial statements about the meeting.
Today, other Czech officials say they have no evidence that Mr. Atta was even in the country in April 2001. In fact, American records indicate he was in Virginia Beach, Va., in early April. "The interior minister claims they did meet, but the intelligence people have told me that they didn't, that the meeting didn't happen," a senior official said.
The Czechs say border police records show that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who was then living in Hamburg, Germany, did come to Prague in June 2000, after obtaining a visa late in May. Shortly after arriving in Prague on that occasion then, Mr. Atta flew to Newark. Now, some Czech and German officials say that their best explanation of why Mr. Atta came to Prague was to get a cheap airfare to the United States.
Czech officials also say they have no hard evidence that Mr. Ani was involved in terrorist activities, although the government did order his ouster in late April 2001. Those officials say that while the Iraqi was photographed outside the Radio Free Europe building, there is scant evidence that Radio Free Europe had been chosen as a target.
Czech officials say the very small Iraqi Embassy here has usually had only one intelligence officer. Iraqi intelligence has used a larger office in Vienna as a regional base for Central Europe, and Prague appears to be little more than a satellite office.
Over the years, Czech security officials also say they have never seen any other evidence that Iraqi intelligence officers stationed in Prague were involved in terrorist activities. Instead, Czech officials say Iraqi intelligence officers here typically spends their time tracking the small community of Iraqi opposition figures, sometimes pressing them to return home. The Iraqis may also have been involved in illegal arms deals, seeking weapons and spare parts for the Iraqi military in violation of international sanctions.
In none of the speeches President Bush delivered in support of his "use of force to effect regime change in Iraq" resolution did he implicate Iraq in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. His emphasis was on Iraq's violation of UN Security Council resolutions and concerns that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain nuclear weapons.
This story would have been more timely had it been released a month or two ago. Better late than never, I suppose.
Once again, this dis-the-meeting-story appears, albeit in a different form. But once again, as usual, the story comes from nothing but unnamed sources. This is the most creatively worded version of this tale I've seen yet, placing the name of the Czech president Havel right up front as if it is a fact that he said this. But as we can see, "unnamed Czech sources" are the only sources for these alleged communications by Havel to Bush.
Mr. Havel discreetly called Washington to tell (unnamed) senior Bush administration officials that an initial report from the Czech domestic intelligence agency that Mr. Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, in Prague in April 2001 could not be substantiated.
According to unnamed sources, that is. No named sources have said anything about this call, so we do not even know if such a call occured, much less its content. Which 'Senior Bush administration officials?' Just what is a 'senior official' as opposed to a 'junior oficial?' How many 'senior officials' are there? Atta is said to have had up to four meetings in Prague, and we do know he traveled there more than once from records like visas and receipts. April's is the only one which seems to get everyone's panties in a wad.
(Unnamed) Czech officials did not say precisely when Mr. Havel told the White House to disregard the reports of the meeting, but extensive interviews with (unnamed) leading Czech figures make clear that he did so quietly some time earlier this year in an effort to avoid publicly embarrassing other (unnamed but I know to whom this refers) prominent officials in his government, who had given credibility to the reports through their public and private statements in the months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The author is full of crap. Unnamed sources cannot be said to make anything clear, because there is no way to determine if these unnamed sources are who the journalist claims they are, if the journalist really knows to whom he is speaking or is being led astray, and the words of unnamed sources cannot be doublechecked because of course, no one can call them up and ask them is they really said such things.
The statements by those officials, including the Czech prime minister, (and the Czech ambassador- at least two named officials saying the meeting took place to this NY Times "journalist's" ZERO named sources who allege that it did not) had helped turn the reports of a meeting between an important Al Qaeda operative and an Iraqi spy into an international issue.
When the reports of a meeting between Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani came to attention in October 2001, they appeared to provide the most direct connection yet uncovered between the Sept. 11 attacks and the government of Saddam Hussein, and they set off a debate in Washington that continues today over whether a possible war with Iraq should be considered an extension of the global war on Al Qaeda and terrorism.
Well, since then we have had two al Qaeda personnel turn up in Iraq- one a high-ranking fellow injured in Afghanistan and the other who had attended the Malaysian meeting with the hijackers and Moussaoui... and this one is still being harbored in Iraq. The injured one has gone on to Syria and may be planning to do work for Hussein through Syria and Lebanon since he has connections to palestinian groups.
For months, (unnamed) American intelligence and law enforcement officials have cast doubt on the reports of the Prague meeting, which proved to be based on the statements of a single informant, (and receipts, an alleged video, etc) and last week the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, told Congress that his agency could find no evidence to confirm that the meeting took place.
Not exactly true... I haven't seen any quote from Tenet where he says there is "no evidence" to confirm the meeting took place. I believe the term may have been 'no direct evidence' and it wasn't neccessarily in relation to this meeting. Looks to me like 'someone' didn't include everything Tenet said, but is instead selectively pulling words out of context.
Here's what Tenet said in March 2002 :
In March 2002, CIA Director George Tenet told a Senate committee that it would be a mistake to dismiss Hussein as a possible sponsor of the (anthrax) attacks. Tenet said that although Hussein and Osama bin Laden had clear religious and ideological differences, they shared "mutual antipathy" to the United States and Saudi Arabia. "Tactical cooperation between them is possible," he said. - "White House Backs Report of Link Between Iraq, September 11 Suspect" , Kansas City Star
This is what Tenet said on October 2, 2002, in the declassified protion of text taken from dialogue in a CLOSED Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. Mind you- we are only getting dialogue that was declassified, which is a small portion of what was actually released, and an even smaller protion of everything that had been said in the hearing :
"Although we think the chances of Saddam initiating a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack at this moment are low -- in part because it would constitute an admission that he possesses WMD -- there is no question that the likelihood of Saddam using WMD against the United States or our allies in the region for blackmail, deterrence, or otherwise grows as his arsenal continues to build," Tenet said.
"Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression," the CIA said. (from the same hearing)
"Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al Qaeda, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military actions," the letter said. (from the same hearing)
Tenet, in a statement, said there was "no inconsistency" between the CIA's view of Saddam's growing threat and the view expressed in the president's speech.
The White House has generally been cautious about using the reports of the Prague meeting to help make the case for war with Iraq.
They weren't too cautious...
Yet the Prague meeting has remained a live issue with other proponents of military action against Iraq, both in and out of the government.
Actually, no it isn't. This meeting is only interesting in light of the anthrax case. There is no need to be concerned about the Prague meeting for action against Iraq- there are ample reasons for action agaisnt Iraq since Iraq is deeply involved with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups who have attacked the US, and since Iraq's already exhibited a willingness to try to assassinate US presidents and as we know, it has supported terrorist groups like Abu Nidal and Lebanese groups which have killed Americans. We're not the ones who need to be talked into going after Iraq... but the antiwar crowd is absolutely desperate to find any excuse- even false ones- to prevent it. And of those who are most 'antiwar' - like Carter, Bonior and McDermott- it is no coincidence they are the ones taking Arab money specifically from pro-terrorist and pro-Hussein groups and individuals.
That 'journalists' go through such extremes as in this article- clearly trying to deceive and persuade rather than to report is telling. And the author goes on with the deceit below, trying to fake you into thinking that Mr. Havel is actually quoted here instead of the reality- that an UNNAMED SOURCE, and only an unnamed source... ALLEGES Havel said thess things.
The disclosure (from an unnamed source) of Mr. Havel's (alleged) decision to inform the Bush administration that it should ignore the reports of a meeting comes after a year of confused and often contradictory statements from other Czech officials about the incident.
So far the NAMED Czech officials have been very consistent.
Interior Minister Stanislav Gross first gave public credence to the reports when he held a news conference in October 2001 to announce that Mr. Atta had come to Prague in April to meet with Mr. Ani, an intelligence officer who was working under diplomatic cover in the Iraqi Embassy.
And Ani was expelled from Czechoslavakia shortly after, too. Why was that?
More significantly, Czech officials say that Milos Zeman, then the Czech Republic's prime minister, privately informed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell about the intelligence reports, while Mr. Zeman was holding meetings in Washington in November, thus placing the credibility of the Czech government even more squarely behind the reports.
Milos has also been quoted saying this in person, as I recall, and not merely through unnamed Czech officials.
Mr. Zeman's statements, along with an assertion that Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani had met to plot an attack on the offices of Radio Free Europe in Prague, made it difficult for officials there and in Washington to easily brush aside the reports of the meeting.
Ani WAS expelled, that's a fact. Atta HAD indeed been to Pragu more than once- and in one case he was refused entry due to a visa problem and returned to Germany to straighten it out before returning to Prague yet another time where he was then admitted. Ani also is said to have met other hijackers in the UAE, not once, but more than once. We now know that other al Qaeda members, Zawahiri and another who is linked to the hijackers, have indeed used and are using Iraq as a safe haven too.
American counterterrorism specialists at the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. subsequently came under intense pressure to thoroughly investigate the matter.
And no doubt they did so and are still doing so, but no doubt much of their research has yet to see the light of day.
But (unnamed) Czech officials who have investigated the case now say that Mr. Zeman and Mr. Gross spoke without adequately vetting the information or waiting for the Czech internal security service to substantiate the initial reports.
Nonsense- since when do such high officials get raw unvetted data? Raw data is low-level insider stuff. People in the intel communitry extract it, filter it and prepare it for presentation to public officials, not the other way around. The high officials get prepared summaries of reports, not raw data.
(Unnamed) Officials say they also spoke without adequately consulting Mr. Havel, who was (allegedly) effectively excluded as others (the Czech ambassador, etc) went to the press and the Bush administration. In the Czech political system, the president is the head of state, but the prime minister manages most day-to-day government affairs and is not necessarily from the same party as the president.
blah, blah, blah...
Mr. Havel, the playwright and former dissident who led Czechoslovakia out of Communism in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, moved carefully behind the scenes in the months after the reports of the Prague meeting came to light to try to determine what really happened, (unnamed) officials said. He asked trusted advisers to investigate, and they quietly went through back channels to talk with Czech intelligence officers to get to the bottom of the story. The (unnamed) intelligence officers (allegedly, according to the journalists' unnamed source of unknown rank and status) told them there was no evidence of a meeting.
It was also clear (once again, it cannot be 'clear' if the source is in the 'fog,' IOW, unnamed) they were (allegedly) irked that Czech political leaders had spoken out despite (allegedly) the caveats that had been (may or may not have been, since this is ALL speculation based on unnamed sources) placed on the initial report of the meeting. "I'm sure that the report was written carefully, in guarded language," a (unnamed) Czech leader who has (allegedly) reviewed the matter said.
The intelligence report of the Czech domestic intelligence agency on a possible meeting between Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani had come from a single informant in the local Arab community,
(according to who? An unnamed source of even more dubious character, leaking purported intelligence data to a NY Times reporter?) and the information was (allegedly) treated skeptically by Czech intelligence experts because it had (according to the reporter's unnamed source) been provided only after the Sept. 11 attacks, after Mohamed Atta's picture had been broadcast on television and published in newspapers around the world, and even after the Czech press reported that records showed that Mr. Atta had traveled to Prague.
Or maybe it had been provided earlier- we have only unnamed sources to go by- no named Czech official has been quoted here as saying any of this, and the journalist has been so obviously deceptive here in trying to persuade rather than in trying to merely report- that I'm not going to buy any kool-aid from his stand.
(Unnamed)Officials of the intelligence service were said (by the unnamed reporter's source) to be furious that Mr. Zeman had (allegedly)taken the information straight to the top of the American government, before they had a chance to investigate further.
Sure, those high ranking officials always get that raw data before anyone looks at it... those common agents and their handlers always go over the heads of their chiefs and hierarchy and straight to the Prime Minister and ambassador...(/sarcasm)
(According to unnamed sources...) After Mr. Havel's advisers (allegedly) reported back to him, the president (allegedly) told the Bush administration that reports of an Atta-Ani meeting could not be substantiated. "I think he tried to do it politely because he didn't want to embarrass anyone," a (unknown, unnamed) Czech leader (allegedly) familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Zeman declined to comment about his role in the case. Mr. Gross could not be reached, but in May he told a Czech newspaper that he stood by his initial statements about the meeting.
In other words, the reporter still has no confrimation of his own theory or proof his source could be telling him the truth. I'm not even sure I believe the reporter even bothered to call anyone since so far, he seems to be writing fiction and selling it as fact.
Today, other (unnamed) Czech officials (allegedly) say they have no evidence that Mr. Atta was even in the country in April 2001. In fact, American records indicate he was in Virginia Beach, Va., in early April.
And sources say he traveled from Virginia Beach to Europe and to Prague. My sources seem every bit as reliable as your sources, Mr. Reporter. Sources went on to say there were rental car records and receipts...
"The interior minister claims they did meet, but the intelligence people have told me that they didn't, that the meeting didn't happen," a (unnamed, unknown and unverifiable) senior official (allegedly) said.
The Czechs say border police records show that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who was then living in Hamburg, Germany, did come to Prague in June 2000, after obtaining a visa late in May. Shortly after arriving in Prague on that occasion then, Mr. Atta flew to Newark. Now, some Czech and German officials say that their best explanation of why Mr. Atta came to Prague was to get a cheap airfare to the United States.
Which makes absolutely no sense in light of the fact that on one trip to Prague, he was refused entry because of a visa problem and returned to Germany, fixed the visa problem, and then flew back to Prague. That gets expensive.
JUNE 2000 : (ATTA, GERMANY to CZECHOSLAVAKIA, back to GMNY, back to CZ, then to US) Mohammed Atta flies to Prague from Hamburg, only to be refused entry because he had failed to obtain a visa. Three days after being refused entry into Czechoslavakia, Atta returned to Prague equipped with the correct paperwork for a visit of barely 24 hours. He then flew from the Czech Republic to the US, where he began to train as pilot. (He flew back to NJ from Prague on June 3. It is not known if his original ticket had been one where Prague was a mere stopover with a same-day flight out or if it was also to be a flight out on June 3, giving him more time in Prague.) Czechs said he met al Ani on both occasions, in June 2000 and in April 2001. (He was in Madrid in January 2001.)
(unnamed)Czech officials also say they have no hard evidence that Mr. Ani was involved in terrorist activities, although the government did order his ouster in late April 2001. Those officials say that while the Iraqi was photographed outside the Radio Free Europe building, there is scant evidence that Radio Free Europe had been chosen as a target.
So they expelled a diplomat for nothing, according to unnamed sources? By the way, just what was the Iraqi actually doing while outside the building that generated enough interest to photograph him? Presumable he wasn't just walking past it but had been doing something else, perhaps meeting with someone or doing a little photographing himself? Pacing out distances, perhaps? He must have been doing something...
(Unnamed) Czech officials say the very small Iraqi Embassy here has usually had only one intelligence officer. Iraqi intelligence has used a larger office in Vienna as a regional base for Central Europe, and Prague appears to be little more than a satellite office.
That's not what I've heard from other sources... Czechoslavakia has always been a good center of espionage activities ...and Iraq never has just one intelligence officer.
Over the years, (unnamed, unknown and unverifiable) Czech security officials also say they have never seen any other evidence that Iraqi intelligence officers stationed in Prague were involved in terrorist activities.
I think the source for this article is an Iraqi, not a Czech, LOL. I'm sure the Germans thought the same thing... funny how we haven't been updated on that little fiasco at the Iraqi embassy in Germany while we get instead curiously timed rehashed articles trying to diss the Atta-Ani meeting every time Hussein gets nervous about an impending US action... curious how that works out, isn't it?
Instead, (unknown, unnamed and unverifiable) Czech officials say Iraqi intelligence officers here typically spends their time tracking the small community of Iraqi opposition figures, sometimes pressing them to return home.
Spends? That's a strange error for the normally well-edited NY Times... the word should should be 'spend.' Iraqi agents do not merely try to 'persuade' Iraqi opposition figures to return home- Iraq is more than willing to assasinate them wherever they can be found. Iraq murdered one of its own nuclear scientists while he was in Jordan when Hussein got word that the guy had gotten a job offer from Libya. Iraq did likelwise with defectors who had made it to the US- in which case they did talk the defectors into returning home where they were executed. Whoever fed this reporter this line of sugar-coated BS is an Iraqi sympathizer trying to soft-pedal the regime and the extent of its activities.
The Iraqis may also have been involved in illegal arms deals, seeking weapons and spare parts for the Iraqi military in violation of international sanctions.
This is true... Iraq has obtained centrifuge parts, technical assistance, precision switches, Brazilian uranium, assorted items using ALL of its contacts and respources.
I believe this is the article Havel denied.
(snip)
Yet the attempts to refute the link were feverish. The best known example is the strange case of the meetings in Prague between Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 plot's alleged leader, and Khalil Al-Ani, a Mukhabarat sabotage expert.
For at least the third time, The New York Times tried at the end of October to rebut the claim that the Prague meetings ever happened, reporting that the Czech President Vaclav Havel had phoned the White House to tell Bush that it was fiction.
Barely had the paper hit the streets before Havel's spokesman stated publicly that the story was a "fabrication".
Not only had Havel not phoned Bush, the Czechs remained convinced that Atta did meet Al-Ani. They had been tracking him continuously because his predecessor had been caught red-handed - in a plot to detonate a terrorist bomb.
As I reveal in Vanity Fair, earlier this year the Pentagon established a special intelligence unit to re-examine evidence of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. After initially fighting the proposal, the CIA agreed to supply this unit with copies of its own reports going back 10 years. I have spoken to three senior officials who have seen its conclusions, which are striking.
"In the Cold War," says one of them, "often you'd draw firm conclusions and make policy on the basis of just four or five reports. Here there are almost 100 separate examples of Iraq-al Qaeda co-operation going back to 1992."
All these reports, says the official, were given the CIA's highest credibility rating - defined as information from a source which had proven reliable in the past.
At least one concerns Bin Laden personally, who is said to have spent weeks with a top Mukhabarat officer in Afghanistan in 1998.
- Source : "Saddam and al Qaeda the link we've all missed; The conventional belief is that the Iraqi dictator and Bin Laden are still foes. Recent intelligence reports tell a different story," by David Rose, The Evening Standard (London) Pg. 11 , December 9, 2002
******
See also this, from a November 2001 article in the NY Post:
The CIA has evidence that two more hijackers, besides terror leader Mohamed Atta, met with Iraqi intelligence officials earlier this year - bolstering arguments for a Baghdad role in the attacks, it was reported yesterday. The two other skyjackers were Atta's friends and co-conspirators, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah, who were believed to have been at the controls of two of the pirated jets on Sept. 11. The Observer newspaper of London reported yesterday that senior U.S. intelligence sources said they have "credible information" al-Shehhi and Jarrah met with an Iraqi agent last spring. The secret meetings took place in the UAE, the paper reported. - New York Post, "2 (3) More September 11 Hijackers Tied To Iraq" November 12, 2001, by WILLIAM NEUMAN http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/587611/posts
By the way, a month before Atta's meeting in Czechoslavakia, this happened:
MARCH 1, 2001 : (GERMANY ORDERS IRAQI SPIES TO BE HELD) Berlin - Two Iraqi nationals have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of spying. Officials said both had been brought before a federal judge who ordered them to be held on "urgent" suspicion of spying in a number of German towns. "They are suspected of carrying out missions for an Iraqi intelligence service in a number of German towns since the beginning of 2001," a spokesman for the prosecutors said on Thursday. He would not comment on German television reports that the Iraqis had been detained in the south west town of Heidelberg, where the U.S. Army in Europe has its headquarters. The army's Fifth Corps, made up of armoured and infantry divisions, is also stationed in the town. - "Germany holds Iraqi spy suspects," CNN, Reuters contributed to this report.
And this :
MARCH 2001 : (IRAQ WRITES TO THE UN CLAIMING IT WANTS TO REBUILD A FACTORY TO PRODUCE 'FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE VACCINE') Iraq writes to the UN giving notice of its plans to asking to reopen the Daura factory, which had been shut down by UNSCOM in 1996 after it was found to make biological weapons. Iraq said it needed to reopen Daura to produce vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease. - Iraq - Scotsman says Saddam has weapons to wipe out world's population, nuclear bomb within 3 years "The Scotsman dossier - SPECIAL REPORT ON IRAQ" by Fraser Nelson, Westminster Editor
It may be wholly unrelated but this does make me wonder just what sort of stories this Kuwaiti journalist had been writing- or her editor had been editing- and if they were perhaps not favorable to Iraq:
MARCH 20, 2001 : (ISLAMIC TERRORISTS MURDER FEMALE KUWAITI JOURNALIST & HER EDITOR) Islamic militants shot and killed one of the first Kuwaiti woman journalists and the editor and owner of the magazine Al Majales in her car on March 20, 2001 - "A Short History of World War IIIA Lesson of the Future.," by Sal Rosken, The Partial Observer , 2 March 2003
The month after Atta's visit to Czechoslavakia this happened:
MAY 2001 : (IRAQ, OVER US PROTESTS, TAKES OVER UN CROP-DUSTING HELICOPTERS) Iraq takes over several crop-dusting helicopters from the UN, against US protest that they may be used for a biological weapons attack.- Iraq - Scotsman says Saddam has weapons to wipe out world's population, nuclear bomb within 3 years "The Scotsman dossier - SPECIAL REPORT ON IRAQ" by Fraser Nelson, Westminster Editor
MAY 10, 2001: (CUBA, SYRIA, LIBYA, IRAN, VENEZUELA)"Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees. The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up." Fidel Castro, during his tour of Iran, Syria and Libya. Agence France Press, May 10, 2001" * Castro undertook a round of visits to Syria, Libya and Iran. Speaking at Tehran University, he insisted that "people must be informed and awakened; they must not allow themselves to be pillaged by the West.” During that same trip, the Iranian Press Service quoted Castro as saying, "Iran and Cuba reached the conclusion that together they can tear down the United States." * Castro, in an apocalyptic speech, told his Muslim audience in Iran: "America is weak. I have studied its weaknesses from very close by. I tell you, the imperialist king will finally fall." - Agence France-Presse *
And here's Safire's article:
- "Protecting Saddam," By WILLIAM SAFIRE, NY Times, March 18, 2002
WASHINGTON — Soviet propagandists used to touch up photographs to remove the face of a Kremlin official who had fallen from favor, making him a "nonperson." The same disinformation technique is now being used to wipe out the fact of a meeting in Prague in April, 2001 — five months before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. — between Mohamed Atta, the leading Qaeda hijacker, and Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi consul in Prague, who was Saddam Hussein's intelligence case officer there.
On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister (like his boss, a former K.G.B. disinformation specialist) said of this widely reported Iraqi-Qaeda connection: "That is wrong information."
That denial of an observed connection between bin Laden's suicide bomber and Saddam's spymaster was preceded by a David Ignatius column in The Washington Post last week deriding such reports by me and by James Woolsey, former C.I.A. chief, in The Wall Street Journal. Pooh-poohing the notion of a meeting that "supposedly took place," Ignatius asserted "there is no solid evidence" of such a link. On the contrary, he opined, "hard intelligence to support the Baghdad- bin Laden connection is somewhere between `slim' and `none.' "
My colleague in columny, a respected commentator with a fine writing style, bases his conclusion on recent interviews with "senior European officials." (He also wears another hat as executive editor of The International Herald Tribune and I am buttering him up in the hope he will not kill my column therein.)
These unidentified Europeans tell him that "the C.I.A. now shares their skepticism about the Atta-al Ani connection. . . . Even the Czechs . . . have gradually backed away."
Let us now depart from the line that Ivanov and "senior European officials" and supposedly backing-away Czechs are peddling to gullible commentators. (Couldn't help it; you can cut that line in the Trib.)
On solid evidence: The Czech intelligence agency, B.I.S., had the Iraqi embassy spy in Prague under constant visual and wiretap surveillance, especially after a threat to the Radio Free Europe headquarters there. Three months ago, after the absolve-Saddam campaign began to cast doubt on the report of the Atta-al Ani meeting at the Prague airport, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross issued a statement that "B.I.S. guarantees the information, so we stick by that information." No backing away; on the contrary, strong reaffirmation.
On corroboration of the evidence that Atta flew 7,000 miles, from Virginia Beach to Prague and back to Florida (his third trip to Prague in a year): The F.B.I. has car-rental and other records that Atta left for Prague on April 8, 2001, and returned on April 11. The B.I.S. report of the meeting that Saddam's case officer had with the suicide hijacker fell precisely within those dates.
Czech intelligence, in identifying al-Ani's contact as Atta, had no knowledge of the F.B.I.'s evidence that independently corroborates Atta's brief presence in Prague. On C.I.A. assessment of the evidence: James Risen reported in The New York Times last month that while not enough evidence ties Saddam specifically to Sept. 11, "senior American intelligence officials have concluded that the meeting between Mr. Atta and the Iraqi officer, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, did take place." Congressional intelligence committees could confirm that with one secure phone call.
Now let's walk back the cat, as the spooks say. What's behind the campaign to cast doubt on the meeting? It cannot be only posterior-covering by junior C.I.A. analysts and N.S.A. "Big Ear" monitors who should have known of a meeting about what was then believed to be the terrorist threat to Americans at R.F.E. in Prague.
The smooth Russian diplomat, "European officials" and Arab potentates seeking to erase the evidence have one purpose: to throw dust in our eyes about Saddam's clandestine support of international terrorism. They don't want the U.S. to have any reason to liberate the Iraqi people. They see great profit in doing oil business with Saddam and collecting tens of billions in debts. The name of their game is delay — to demand evidence of nuclear development while unfettered inspections are forbidden, and to dismiss as a non-meeting the hard evidence of a terrorist connection. Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists race to build the weapons that would blackmail into impotence any power daring to unseat Saddam.
Also, in June of 1991 two journalists were sentenced to prison in Kuwait for their relationship to a newspaper which had collaborated with Iraq during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, according to cpj.org.
MARCH 20, 2001 : (ISLAMIC TERRORISTS MURDER FEMALE KUWAITI JOURNALIST and EDITOR) Islamic militants shot and killed one of the first Kuwaiti woman journalists and the editor and owner of the magazine Al Majales in her car on March 20, 2001 - "A Short History of World War IIIA Lesson of the Future.," by Sal Rosken, The Partial Observer , 2 March 2003
Iraqi Agent Denies He Met 9/11 Hijacker in Prague Before Attacks on the U.S.
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