The story that the ‘intelligence community’ doesn’t want you to hear.

[RedEarth]

Atta in Prague
The story that the ‘intelligence community’ doesn’t want you to hear.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

... Uncensored portions of the Senate report say that by January 2003, the CIA had issued two assessments questioning whether the Prague meeting occurred. In these assessments, the agency said that neither it nor the FBI were able to confirm the meeting happened.

A former senior intelligence official who was in active service at the time confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the White House on multiple occasions had proposed inserting the Atta-in-Prague anecdote in speeches by both the president and Vice President Dick Cheney. The official said that the CIA usually objected to the White House proposals. Although Bush never mentioned the Atta anecdote, Cheney referred to it on several occasions—most recently in a TV appearance last weekend on NBC’s “Meet the Press” during which he conceded that the claim that Atta had a pre-9/11 meeting with an Iraqi spook had never been confirmed.

After the Czech intelligence report first surfaced, it became a holy grail for Bush administration hard-liners seeking evidence to justify a possible U.S. war in Iraq. Cheney and his aides in particular badgered intelligence officials for evidence confirming the Prague meeting and for other proof connecting Saddam to 9/11 and Al Qaeda, according to several former intelligence officials. <...>

Democrats also publicly report that an internal CIA watchdog known as the “politicization ombudsman” had looked into complaints that the administration was pressuring intelligence analysts to come up with intelligence connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda. According to the Democrats, the ombudsman told committee investigators that he felt the “hammering” that intelligence analysts got from administration policymakers on Iraq intelligence was, in the Democrats’ language, “harder than he had previously witnessed in his 32-year career” at the CIA. The Democrats also report that former CIA chief George Tenet told the committee that analysts had felt pressured by policymakers and that “The issue where there was intense focus and questioning where the analysts felt pressure was Iraq and Al Qaeda.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14824384/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/

[Captain Hilts]

1. Why wouldn't the "intelligence community" want us to hear this? They were.

right. The White House was wrong and is wrong.

Besides, the WH got most of their intelligence from the Office of Special Plans, i.e. Doug Feith, etc.

[maine_raptor]

2. Which is why Reid is pressing for a "full release" of the report

See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2133304

That individual, the internal CIA watchdog known as the “politicization ombudsman” needs to testify before a Dem controlled Senate Intelligence Committee in open session.

[Parisle]

6. This Has Already Happened Once,...

----- Former CIA agents Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern and Vince Cannistraro had such a panel session with the democrats a couple of years ago. Among the things they noted was that the OSP was staffed by a bunch of little ideological twerps who thought they could "push around" long-time agency personnel,... that these twerps actively cherrypicked the intel they wanted for their boss,... and that Cheney made numerous and unprecedented visits to the agency in order to "lean" on them to slant their reports in a pro-war manner. These three guys did the right thing, eh? But Tenet may have some problems if all his actions were revealed,...

[leftchick]

3. This is Laurie Mylroie's war....

this horseshit is what passed as intelligence to cheney....

:puke:

The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed
By Laurie Mylroie
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 11, 2004



Important new information has come from Edward Jay Epstein about Mohammed Atta’s contacts with Iraqi intelligence. The Czechs have long maintained that Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers in the United States, met with Ahmed al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence official, posted to the Iraqi embassy in Prague. As Epstein now reports, Czech authorities have discovered that al-Ani’s appointment calendar shows a scheduled meeting on April 8, 2001 with a "Hamburg student."


That is exactly what the Czechs had been saying since shortly after 9/11: Atta, a long-time student at Germany’s Hamburg-Harburg Technical University, met with al-Ani on April 8, 2001. Indeed, when Atta earlier applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic, he identified himself as a “Hamburg student.” The discovery of the notation in al-Ani’s appointment calendar about a meeting with a “Hamburg student” provides critical corroboration of the Czech claim.



Epstein also explains how Atta could have traveled to Prague at that time without the Czechs having a record of such a trip. Spanish intelligence has found evidence that two Algerians provided Atta a false passport.


http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13323

[maine_raptor]

4. Edward Jay Epstein ??????

The same guy that wrote "Inquest"????

Right, like I'm going to believe that guy!

Along with Spector, one of the biggest "pushers" of the SBT in the JFK Assassination.

[H2O Man]

5. Right.

Laurie Mylroie is someone we should be looking to use as a campaign poster to expose the administration as the fools they are.

Atta made the trip with his brother. Yikes!

[leveymg]

7. So, who do you think was feeding Laurie and the neocons this BS?

Here's a very intreresting listserve (remember those?) from Sept. 24, 2001. It discusses the "discovery" of the Saddam-Osama connection a week earlier. Look who gets prominently cited as supporting that theory:

http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/intelforum/2001-September/005542.html

Ex-Mossad Chief, Iraq was Behind the Attacks

Herald Sun Sunday
(Melbourne)
Saddam link to attacks
By DENNIS EISENBERG in Jerusalem
23sep01

INTELLIGENCE experts have suggested the prime mover behind the attacks
was Saddam Hussein.

The former head of Israel's Mossad secret service, Rafi Eitan, and a
former CIA director, R. James Woolsey, said there are clear indications
that the Iraqi president played a leading role in the attacks on the
World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. "I have no doubt whatsoever that
the mastermind of this atrocity is none other than the Iraqi dictator,"
said Mr Eitan, a security adviser to three Israeli governments and
mastermind of the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in May
1960.

This week's revelation that Mohamed Atta, 33, an Egyptian suspected of
hijacking the first plane to strike the World Trade Centre, met an Iraqi
intelligence official in Europe earlier this year, adds weight to the
theory. Officials have also suggested bin Laden was in contact with
Iraqi agents from his base in Afghanistan in the days before the
attacks.

Mr. Eitan said bin Laden may have been a partner, or merely a pawn, in a
plot by Baghdad to strike back following its Gulf War defeat and to show
the world it is still capable of action despite 10 years' of crippling
UN sanctions. "It is no secret that Saddam Hussein has been using the
vast resources of his own intelligence forces to avenge his defeat," Mr.
Eitan said.

His view is shared by American academic and Iraqi affairs expert Laurie
Mylroie. "Bin Laden is said to be the man behind the attack, but even if
he did have a hand in it, his role was clearly a very minor one," Ms.
Mylroie said.

Uri Dan, an adviser to Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, said: "Saddam
Hussein, with great cunning, feels that nobody has any proof that he was
directly involved in the New York bombing attack. "He has been careful
to make sure that no finger can be pointed directly at him. "He is quite
happy to see somebody else being held responsible."

Though Mr. Woolsey, CIA director from 1993 to '95, believes bin Laden
played a role in the atrocities, he told The New Republic magazine:
"Intelligence and law enforcement officials would do well to at least
consider another possibility: that the attacks -- whether perpetrated by
bin Laden and his associates or by others -- were sponsored, supported
and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein."

And he cited an investigation by Ms. Mylroie into the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Centre to support his claim.Ý Writing in her book, "A
Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America," Ms.
Mylroie suggests that the attack was carried out by an Iraqi agent. The
FBI had blamed Pakistani Abdul Basit, 27, who had used the alias Ramzi
Yousef, but Ms. Mylroie has challenged this theory. She insists the man
hiding behind the alias Yousef did plan the attack, but that man was not
Basit. The Pakistani had been living in Kuwait in 1990 and, it is
claimed, was killed, along with his family, when Iraq invaded. An Iraqi
agent then assumed Basit's identity, and files relating to him in Kuwait
were doctored.

Ms. Mylroie's theory has been supported by James Fox, the man who led
the FBI's investigation into the 1993 bombing until he was taken off the
case a year later. "If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right,
then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Centre last time, which
makes it much more plausible that Iraq has done so again," Mr. Woolsey
told The New Republic. "As yet, there is no evidence of explicit state
sponsorship of the September 11 attacks, but absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence." Mr. Woolsey said material handled by Basit while
in England in 1988 and seized by British security services, would have
been examined for fingerprints. If the prints matched those of Yousef,
the Iraqi connection would be disproved and the accepted theory, that a
lone Pakistani planned the operation, would stand. But if they did not
match, it would support the argument that the forces of Saddam Hussein
killed Basit, stole his identity and an agent of Baghdad hid behind the
ghost of a dead man while bringing terror to New York. The results of
the fingerprint tests have never been revealed and the CIA has refused
to comment on Mr. Woolsey's claims. If the claims can be proved there
are plenty of people in Washington who would support a Baghdad blitz. A
White House insider this week said: "The focus ought to be on bin Laden
and the Afghan network first." But he stressed: "Iraq's day will come."

I hope this helps , if l dont know something or l am unsure l will say so

Jeremy Compton
jeremycompton@h...



Intelligence Forum (http://www.intelforum.org) is sponsored by Intelligence
and National Security, a Frank Cass journal (http://www.frankcass.com/jnls/ins.htm)

[leftchick]

8. pure fiction wrapped up in neocon newspaper

what is shocking, well maybe a long time ago not so much anymore, is the fact that ALL of these people are tied together through The PNAC/AEI/AIPAC! This isn't any fucking rocket science here for any so called journalist to connect the dots.