I found you've been lying about the Prague Post, Cliff (and I'm not surprised):
UN envoy confirms terrorist meeting
Kmonicek says Al-Ani, Atta spoke in Prague
By Frank Griffiths
FOR THE POST
The Czech envoy to the UN has confirmed that an Iraqi agent met with suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, in the latest rebuke to widespread U.S. media reports dismissing the Prague encounter as a fabrication.
"The meeting took place," Hynek Kmonicek, a former deputy foreign minister, told The Prague Post flatly in a New York City interview.
Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross announced last fall that Atta and Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a second consul at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague, had conversed at least once, in April 2001. Gross would not rule out other encounters.
The controversial meeting became known as "the Prague connection" and was mentioned frequently as a possible pretext for renewed hostilities between the United States and Iraq.
Al-Ani was expelled from the Czech Republic April 22, 2001 -- less than a month after the conversation -- for "engaging in activities beyond his diplomatic duties," a phrase usually reserved for allegations of spying or terrorist-related activities.
Kmonicek, the Czech Republic's UN envoy since October, is the most senior government official to openly confirm the encounter since unnamed U.S. intelligence officials began challenging it in anonymous comments reported last month by Newsweek magazine, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Kmonicek, considered a Middle East expert, once directed the Middle East department of the Foreign Ministry.
In the interview, Kmonicek said he ordered al-Ani's expulsion after failing to receive answers from the Iraqi chief of mission regarding al-Ani's role in Prague.
"He didn't know [what al-Ani was up to]," Kmonicek said. "He just didn't know."
Kmonicek refused to label al-Ani a spy, however.
Last fall, international media widely reported that Atta, a 33-year-old Egyptian who allegedly piloted one of the hijacked Sept. 11 jetliners, and al-Ani had spoken in Prague -- though the subject of their meetings was never positively revealed.
The rendezvous between the al-Qaida operative and the Iraqi intelligence agent was confirmed by Prime Minister Milos Zeman, who told CNN in October that the two men were scheming to destroy the headquarters of U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Zeman later backtracked, saying he was describing only one possible scenario.
In recent weeks, unnamed U.S. law enforcement and intelligence sources have been quoted as saying the Czechs may have made up the encounter or at the very least confused the dates.
Although Atta flew from Prague to the United States in June 2000, the sources said that the Czech intelligence apparatus, the Security Information Service (BIS), had failed to convince them Atta and al-Ani ever came face to face.
The Newsweek report hinted that the Czech government might actually have retracted the allegation and apologized to the United States for making the error.
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."
Last October, in an interview with The Times of London, Kmonicek raised alarm bells about the possible significance of the meeting. "It is not a common thing for an Iraqi diplomat to meet a student from a neighboring country," he said. He made similar remarks to Newsweek, which apparently did not seek him out when it reported the recent U.S. rebuttals.
Atta was an architecture student and draftsman in Hamburg, Germany, during the 1990s. He is believed to have visited Prague at least twice in 2000 and 2001.
One senior Czech official familiar with details of the Atta/al-Ani matter and who requested anonymity speculated that the media reports dismissing the meeting were the result of a "guided leak."
This source said officials determined to influence President George W. Bush away from entering into renewed conflict with Iraq could have provided such a leak.
The Prague meeting has been mentioned as a possible smoking gun directly linking Baghdad with the Sept. 11 attacks, though Bush said as recently as May 28 that the U.S. had no immediate plans to strike at Iraq.
Kmonicek said the Czech government collected detailed evidence of the al-Ani/Atta meeting, but declined to elaborate on the nature of the evidence.
At the same time, Kmonicek dismissed recent news agency reports that al-Qaida and members of Afghanistan's deposed Taliban regime had regrouped in Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic.
"The Interior Ministry opened an investigation and found nothing," he said.
Kmonicek was unhappy at recent characterizations of the Czech Republic as a terrorist hub.
"If I wanted to set up an Arab spy network, I would go to Queens," he said, referring to a borough of New York City with a sizable Middle Eastern population.
Prague, he said, has a small-town feel where "everybody knows everybody" and Arabs don't blend in the way they might in Queens.
praguepost.com
Question:
The New York Times reported in its Week in Review section (p.3) on March 2, 2002:
"Czech intelligence officials said for more than a year that they had credible evidence of a meeting in Prague between one Sept. 11 hijacker and an Iraqi agent. The Czech government later said the information was false."
Is it factually true or a journalistic invention, that the government of the Czech Republic later, or ever, said "the information was false?"
Answer:
No, it is a journalistic invention, exclusive to the New York Times.
The prelude to this invention came in an earlier New York Times erroneous scoop, one that the Times had failed to correct after it had been impeached by its sole authority. On October 21, 2001 the Times had reported on its front page that "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." Within hours of its publication, President Havel denied that he had ever spoken to President Bush about the meeting. His spokesman, Ladislav Spacek, termed the New York Times "a fabrication," adding "Nothing like this has occurred."
Although Havel had declared its scoop a "fabrication", the Times used it again as the basis of an editorial on October 23, entitled "The Illusory Prague Connection." So it remained in its clip file.
Unlike Havel, who had not been directly involved in the expulsion of Iraq Consul Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani from Prague on April 22, 2001, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman, Foreign Minister Jan Kavan, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross, BIS Intelligence chief Jiri Ruzek and UN Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek were involved in this unprecedented expulsion. These officials have all stated that the Czech intelligence service (BIS) had reported a meeting in Prague between hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraq Consul al-Ani in April 2001 and none of these men have since stated that the intelligence about the meeting was "false."
The last statement to date was made on October 26th, 2002 by Ambassador Kmonicek, who who was deputy Foreign Minister at the time and served the expulsion notice on al-Ani. He flatly told the Prague Post that "the meeting took place" and that "the Czech government collected detailed evidence of the al-Ani/Atta meeting." If anything, the government had confirmed the intelligence.
To be sure, because the Czech government claims to have collected detailed evidence of the meeting, does not mean that it necessarily took place. By its very nature, intelligence reports may be inaccurate, flawed or disinformation. Even if it is accurate that a 9-11 hijacker met with an Iraqi official in April 2001, the subject of their meeting is unknown. They might have discussed something else or, if it was the attack, al-Ani might have refused to help Atta. All that is known is that Kmonicek expelled al-Ani after that April incident on the basis of Czech intelligence reports collected by the BIS and which have not been made public.
But that qualification hardly gives the New York Times license to falsely report as a fact that "The Czech government later said the information was false."
edwardjayepstein.com
Iraq's Link To Mohammed Atta
By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid | August 30, 2002
. . . the FBI has been examining Mohammed Atta's links to Iraq with "renewed vigor" recently.
In a surprising turnabout, White House officials are saying that the ringleader of the September 11th hijackings, Mohammed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in April 2001. For months, U.S. intelligence officials have denied that the meeting took place. This raises intriguing questions about the relationship of the elite media, especially the Washington Post, to their sources in the U.S. intelligence community. The Prague meeting was first reported by New York Times columnist William Safire last May.
The story had been aired in Europe by the Times of London and others, but the U.S. media had ignored it. The meeting was considered significant because it pointed to a possible link between the murderous nine/eleven attacks and Saddam Hussein. Safire noted that last October the FBI had told the Times that Atta had flown to Prague on April 8 last year.
For several years, some Washington insiders, like former CIA director James Woolsey, have argued that Iraq was behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and other terrorists attacks on Americans. The CIA, FBI and others have generally ignored Woolsey, preferring to blame a new breed of terrorists – so-called "nontraditional" ones – for all the death and destruction.
Safire reported in his column that Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, a long-time favorite of CIA director George Tenet, had taken the lead in shooting down the Atta-Iraq link. Pincus wrote in March that "hard intelligence to support the Baghdad-bin Laden connection is somewhere between 'slim' and 'none.'" Newsweek, which is owned by the Post, took up that line, calling the story "very flimsy" and an "embarrassing mistake."
But Prague officials reconfirmed the story this past June. They said they had expelled the Iraqi agent in question in April of last year for engaging in spying and suspected terrorist activities. After U.S. intelligence officials tried to discredit the story, the Prague Post reported that the Czech envoy to the UN confirmed that the meeting had taken place. Czech officials were offended when Newsweek implied that they had retracted the earlier report. Newsweek hadn't bothered to confirm its story with them.
Recently the Los Angles Times quoted a senior Bush administration official as saying that the White House thinks the initial reports were accurate. It doesn't identify the source, but in the past "senior administration official" has usually meant the President's National Security Advisor, in this case Condoleeza Rice. The L.A. Times also reported that the FBI has been examining Mohammed Atta's links to Iraq with "renewed vigor" recently. The Czechs think that the Washington officials who tried to discredit the story were trying to dissuade President Bush from blaming Iraq for the nine/eleven tragedy. If that link can be made, it will strengthen the case for taking military action to overthrow Saddam, at least according to congressional resolutions passed after nine/eleven. So who got the story right? It appears to us to be the Prague Post, not the Washington Post.
www.aim.org/media_monitor/A642_0_2_0_C/ |
