Weapons of Mass Deception
True Lies
By SHELDON RAMPTON and JOHN STAUBER
Iraq and Al Qaeda [excerpt]
e.g. "Mohammed Atta met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad prior to September 11," Perle said. "We have proof of that, and we are sure he wasn't just there for a holiday." (Since then, nothing whatsoever has been heard about the alleged "proof.")
"Mohammed Atta met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad prior to September 11," Perle said. "We have proof of that, and we are sure he wasn't just there for a holiday." (Since then, nothing whatsoever has been heard about the alleged "proof.")
The idea of an alliance between Al Qaeda and Iraq was unlikely, since Osama bin Laden's hatred for the "infidel" regime of Saddam Hussein was long-standing and well-known before September 11. Much of the public speculation about a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq was based on an alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials that supposedly took place in Prague, Czech Republic between the dates of April 8 and 11, 2001.
Reports of this meeting first came from Czech officials in October 2001, during the period of intense speculation that followed the terrorist attacks. According to Czech Republic's interior minister, Atta had met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a second consul at the Iraqi Embassy. According to Czech intelligence, however, the factual basis for the story was thin from the beginning. Its sole source was a single Arab émigré, who came forward with the information only after 9/11, when photographs of Atta appeared in the local press. As the New York Times reported in December 2001, the story may have been simply a case of mistaken identity, since al-Ani "had a business selling cars and met frequently with a used car dealer from Germany who bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Atta."
The story was thoroughly investigated by the FBI in the United States. "We ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on," FBI Director Robert Mueller said in an April 2002 speech in San Francisco. The records revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach, Virginia in early April, during the time he supposedly met al-Ani in Prague.
After conducting his own separate investigations, Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel laid the story to rest. The Times reported in 2002 that Havel "has quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports that Mohammed Atta, the leader in the Sept. 11 attacks, met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague." Havel did this quietly "to avoid embarrassing" the other Czech officials who had previously given credibility to the story. "Today, other Czech officials say they have no evidence that Mr. Atta was even in the country in April 2001," the Times reported.
Despite the lack of any credible evidence that the Atta-Iraq meeting ever occurred, Bush administration officials continued to promote the rumor, playing a delicate game of not-quite-lying insinuations. In February 2002, for example, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Robert Collier interviewed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a leading advocate of war with Iraq. "Have you seen any convincing evidence to link Iraq to Al Qaeda or its international network?" Collier asked.
"A lot of this stuff is classified and I really can't get into discussing it," Wolfowitz said, adding, "We also know that there are things that haven't been explained ... like the meeting of Mohammed Atta with Iraqi officials in Prague. It just comes back to the fact that-"
"Which now is alleged, right?" Collier said. "There is some doubt to that?"
"Now this gets you into classified areas again," Wolfowitz replied. "I think the point which I do think is fundamental, is that, the premise of your question seems to be, we wait for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I think the premise of a policy has to be we can't afford to wait for proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
Wolfowitz's performance typifies the administration's handling of the Atta-in-Prague story. Using vague references to "classified" information, he avoided specifics, while dismissing requests for actual proof as the bureaucratic concern of overly legalistic pencil-pushers. The pattern continued throughout a variety of subsequent pronouncements:
* In May 2002, William Safire, the conservative New York Times columnist and Iraq war hawk, cited an unnamed "senior Bush administration official" who told him, "You cannot say the Czech report about a meeting in 2001 between Atta and the Iraqi is discredited or disproven in any way. The Czechs stand by it and we're still in the process of pursuing it and sorting out the timing and venue."
* In July 2002, Donald Rumsfeld told a news conference that Iraq had "a relationship" with Al Qaeda but declined to be more specific. The following month, the Los Angeles Times reported an interview with yet another unnamed "senior Bush administration official" who said evidence of an Atta meeting in Prague "holds up," adding, "We're going to talk more about this case."
* In September 2002, defense department advisor Richard Perle was quoted in an Italian business publication, saying that Atta met personally with Saddam Hussein himself. "Mohammed Atta met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad prior to September 11," Perle said. "We have proof of that, and we are sure he wasn't just there for a holiday." (Since then, nothing whatsoever has been heard about the alleged "proof.")
* On September 8, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed on Meet the Press. "There has been reporting," he said, "that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We've seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohammed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center."
* "We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy," Bush himself said in an October 7, 2002 speech to the nation. In the same speech, he also mentioned "one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." However, he did not mention that the terrorist in question, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was no longer in Iraq and that there was no hard evidence Hussein's government knew he was there or had contact with him. At an election campaign rally a week later, Bush said that Saddam was, "a man who, in my judgment, would like to use Al Qaeda as a forward army."
The Atta-in-Prague story acquired solidity in the minds of the public through sheer repetition. Each new whisper from a Bush team insider yielded a fresh harvest of newspaper editorials, I-told-you-so's and speculation on the Internet. Simply by mentioning Iraq and Al Qaeda together in the same sentence, over and over, the message got through. Where there is smoke, people were led to believe, there must be fire. But actually, there was only smoke. >> |
