September 11 report alludes to Iraq-al Qaeda meeting

The 850-page congressional report on September 11 intelligence failures says that a key terrorist organizer may have met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the months before the attack.

Mohamed Atta, one of the pilots of the two hijacked jets that hit the World Trade Center, “may have traveled” to Prague to meet an Iraqi intelligence officer, the report said, quoting CIA Director George Tenet.

Whether Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani met in the Czech capital remains one of the mysteries of the September 11 plot.

A senior U.S. official said yesterday that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies differ on whether the meeting occurred.

The reported meeting has been cited by some officials as a link between the al Qaeda terrorist network and Iraqi intelligence.

Intelligence officials who are part of the Pentagon’s Iraq Survey Group are searching Iraq for any information that could establish connections between al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence service, including information about any meeting between Atta and al-Ani.

“We haven’t ruled out the possibility of [the meeting] happening,” a senior U.S. official said yesterday. “But we have no evidence to demonstrate conclusively that it did.”

The Czech government notified the State Department in October 2001 that its domestic security service, known by the acronym BIS, had monitored a meeting in Prague between Atta and al-Ani in April 2001 — five months before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The Czechs said they had obtained the information from an informant who identified Atta from a photograph.

A Czech Embassy spokesman was unavailable yesterday. A Czech diplomat said he had no new information on the case.

In the congressional report, the joint inquiry said Atta traveled to the Czech Republic in June 2000 on his way back to the United States after a meeting with al Qaeda conspirators in Germany.

Later, the report states that CIA’s Mr. Tenet told the committee: “Atta may also have traveled outside of the U.S. in early April 2001 to meet an Iraqi intelligence officer, although we are still working to corroborate this.”

According to the report, “Atta may have traveled under an unknown alias: the CIA has been unable to establish that he left the United States or entered Europe in April under his true name or any known alias.”

The U.S. official said yesterday that the FBI is more skeptical than the CIA that the meeting took place.

Story Continues →