Iraqi Agent Denies He Met 9/11 Hijacker in Prague Before Attacks on the U.

[private_ryan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/europe/13INQU.html
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Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations.

American officials caution that Mr. Ani may have been lying to American interrogators, but the only other person reported to have attended the meeting was Mr. Atta, who died in the crash of his hijacked plane into the World Trade Center.

Reports that an Iraqi spy had met with Mr. Atta in Prague first circulated soon after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, but they have been in dispute ever since.

Czech government officials initially confirmed the reports, even as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they could not corroborate them. Conservatives both inside and out of the Bush administration, arguing for war with Iraq, pointed to the reports as evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that planned the Sept. 11 attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/europe/13INQU.html

[Sliverofhope]

1. I know

Let's torture him. That will get the truth out, or kill him. And either way, it works, doesn't it?

[Cha]

2. amateurs grasping at straws.

they are desperate to give this tradgedy in Iraq a legitimate face.

[NNN0LHI]

3. So the FBI and the CIA could not find one smidgen of evidence that...

...Atta went to Prague. Not a plane ticket, nothing from INS, no hotel receipts, no nothing. But yet this Iraqi may be lying? Yea, sure boys.

Don

[PurityOfEssence]

4. Stick a microphone in Bill Safire's face and let's have a comment

Over and over and over and over and it's still the same: there's no connection. The fact that they keep trying to force the issue shows that there's nothing there. This is the best of it and it's a bonafide dry-gulcher of newspeak proportions.

It has to be crammed down the throats of the American people: this was a manufactured war of aggression for nothing more than a personal family grudge, massive mineral wealth, a warning to the world, the shoring up of Israel and DOMESTIC POLITICAL ADVANTAGE. The timing is a dead giveaway: the war resolution was forced through right before an election, when the deliberately sustained fear of the people was still warm enough, and the war was fought early enough to hopefully simmer down before the next election.

No big news here, but the rest of the country has to hear it repeatedly. This was war as a form of thievery and for political advantage.