In his column in today's Weekly Standard, the Captain voices the questions raised by revelation of the Able Danger data mining project. Was Iraq connected to terrorism in general and al Qaeda in particular? Did Mohammed Atta meet with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague in April 2001?
WHICH BRINGS US to the hotly debated reports of Atta's alleged visit to Prague on April 9, 2001. Czech intelligence had kept a close eye on Iraqi envoy Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani ever since an Iraq defector told British intelligence in 1998 about a plot to blow up the Radio Free Europe station in Prague in retaliation for its broadcasts into Iraq. The Czechs eventually stripped al-Ani of his diplomatic credentials and sent him back to Saddam Hussein.
However, after 9/11, Czech intelligence privately told the United States that it had evidence that al-Ani met with Mohammed Atta on April 9, 2001. Later, the Czechs went public with the information--and to this day, the Czechs insistently stand behind this intelligence. Part of the reason for this insistence is not just a belief in their source, but also a corroborating entry in al-Ani's datebook, which the Czechs apparently discovered during a surreptitious search of the Iraqi embassy after Saddam's fall in April 2003. The datebook contained an entry for an April 2001 meeting with a "Hamburg student," the same description used by Atta himself when applying for his visa.
His questions invariably lead us back to the 9/11 Commission.
However, the 9/11 Commission disregarded the Czech intelligence and declared that Atta had never gone to Prague in April 2001. How did the Commission reach this conclusion? Their report details the factors that went into this rejection on pages 228-9:
* Atta's cell phone was used in the U.S. on April 6, 9, 10, and 11
* No U.S. records of Atta traveling under his own name
* No pictures of anyone who looked like Atta in the Czech Republic on those dates
* Testimony from two al Qaeda sources . . . Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh
WE HAVE BEEN TOLD REPEATEDLY that the 9/11 Commission Report debunks the Prague trip, but the report says only that it "cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001. He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias, but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling (as he did in January and would in July when he took his next overseas trip). The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports."
The Commission's source for this? Ramzi Binalshibh.
Why did the Commission put so much emphasis on the testimony of two terrorists while dismissing the testimony of two senior American officers in determining the timeline for Mohammed Atta and the Hamburg cell?
I sure would like to see Jamie Gorelick on a witness stand somewhere.
Comments