Did September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta meet an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague five months before he slammed a Boeing 767 into One World Trade Center? Fresh evidence suggests the attack on America may have featured Baathist fingerprints.
Dr. Edward Jay Epstein, Ph.D., best-selling author of 12 books on politics and history, has followed "the Prague Connection" since its outlines emerged in autumn 2001. His findings on this topic appear at edwardjayepstein.com.
Epstein and other Prague-Connection proponents believe Mohamed Atta met on April 8, 2001 with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, Consul and Second Secretary at Iraqs Czech embassy between March 1999 and April 22, 2001. Al-Ani, a suspected intelligence officer, allegedly handled several agents, possibly including Atta.
According to his May 26, 2000 Czech visa applicationsubmitted in Bonn, GermanyAtta called himself a "Hamburg student." He had studied urban planning for seven years at Hamburg-Harburg Technical University and launched an Islamic club there in 1999.
Atta apparently had pressing business in Prague. With his visa application pending until May 31, Atta nonetheless flew to Prague International Airport on May 30 and remained in its transit lounge for about six hours before flying back to Germany. Czech officials suspect he may have met someone there. Two days later, on June 2, he returned to Prague by bus on Czech visa number BONN200005260024. He stayed there for some 20 hours, and then flew to Newark, New Jersey on June 3.
During the summer of 2000as the Los Angeles Times detailed on January 20, 2002at least $99,455 flowed from financial institutions in the United Arab Emirates into a Florida SunTrust account Atta shared with his roommate and fellow hijacker, Marwan Al-Shehhi. That August, they began flight lessons at Venice, Floridas Huffman Aviation.
On April 4, 2001, the FBI says, Atta departed Virginia Beachs Diplomat Inn with Al-Shehhi and cashed a SunTrust check for $8,000. No American eyewitness saw Atta again until April 11.
Atta next was observed April 8 by an informant of BIS, the Czech Secret Service, who reported that Al-Ani met an Arabic-speaking man in a discreetly located restaurant on Pragues outskirts. Atta is believed to have returned to America the following day.
While skeptics dismiss this encounter, Czech intelligence found Al-Anis appointment calendar in Iraqs Prague Embassy, presumably after Saddam Husseins defeat. Al-Anis diary lists an April 8, 2001 meeting with "Hamburg student." Maybe, in a massive coincidence, Al-Ani dined with a young scholar and traversed the nuances of Nietzsche. Or perhaps Al-Ani saw Mohamed Atta and discussed more practical matters.
For his part, Al-Ani was jettisoned from Prague on April 22, 2001 for allegedly plotting to blow up Radio Free Europes headquarters there, also home to Radio Free Iraq. (Al-Anis predecessor, Jabir Salim, defected to England in December 1998. He said Baghdad gave him $150,000 to arrange the car bombing of RFE, but he could recruit no one to complete the mission.) American forces arrested Al-Ani last July 2 in Iraq. Not surprisingly, he denies meeting Atta.
As is well known, on June 18, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet told the congressional Joint Inquiry on 9-11 that his agency could not "establish that Atta left the U.S. or entered Europe in April 2001." But Tenet also admitted: "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias."
Spanish police last February arrested Algerians Khaled Madani, 33, and Moussa Laour, 36, on suspicion of furnishing phony passports to, among others, al-Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohamed Atta. According to a February 29 Associated Press dispatch, Binalshibh revealed Madanis identity to interrogators at the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Czech authorities have defended their story despite the American medias valiant efforts to discredit it.
On October 21, 2002, the New York Times 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 just months before the attacks on New York and Washington, according to Czech officials."
Havel quickly spurned the Times creative writing. Within hours, his spokesman, Ladislav Spacek, dubbed the Times story "a fabrication." He added, "Nothing like this has occurred."
That same day, Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross reasserted his governments finding, complete with unique spellings of the names of two key characters:
"In this moment we can confirm that during the next stay of Mr. Muhammad Atta in the Czech Republic, there was the contact with the official of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Al Ani, Ahmed Khalin Ibrahim Samir, who was on the 22nd April 2001 expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities which were not compatible with the diplomatic status."
Two days later, Americas so-called "Paper of Record" retreated. On October 23, 2002 it quoted Spacek, Havels spokesman. "The president did not call the White House about this. The president never spoke about Atta, not with Bush, not with anyone else."
Hynek Kmonicek booted Al-Ani from Prague. He was then the Czech Republics deputy foreign minister, and today is its United Nations ambassador. As Kmonicek tersely insisted in the Prague Post in June
2002: "The meeting took place."
Epstein also disputes news accounts that Atta was in Virginia when he was supposed to be in Prague. The New York Times, quoting "federal law enforcement officials," said Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001 and "was back in Florida, renting a car" by April 11. According to Newsweek, "The bureau [FBI] had his rental car and hotel receipts."
"There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta," Epstein responds, "since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his fathers home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April)."
Without a drivers license, Atta could not have been "back in Florida, renting a car," as the Times claims. Anyone who has rented an automobile knows the first words out of every car rental agents mouth: "Drivers license and credit card."
So how did Atta get around the Sunshine State?
As Steve Bousquet and Alisa Ulferts explained in the September 16, 2001 edition of Floridas St. Petersburg Times, Al-Shehhi already had a Florida license issued in 1997. Al-Shehhi could have chauffeured Atta.
Also, Atta drove by himself. As the St. Petersburg Times points out, "on April 26 [2001] at 11 p.m., Atta was stopped in Broward County by a deputy for an unknown traffic stop. Atta gave a Coral Springs address, but he didnt have a driver's license."
Atta ignored a notice to appear in court the next May 28, prompting a judge to issue a criminal arrest warrant when he failed to show. Nonetheless, Atta quickly got his papers in order. According to Germanys Der Spiegel, Atta received Florida drivers license No. A 300540-68-321-0 on May 2, 2001.
Why do U.S. spooks seem so cool to the Prague Connection? Embracing it could pinpoint a great, big, unconnected dot. As then-Czech foreign minister and intelligence coordinator Jan Kavan told Epstein, it could be embarrassing "if American intelligence had failed before 9-11 to adequately appreciate the significance of the April meeting."
"I think that the indication that Al-Anis digest included a reference to a Hamburg student at exactly the time Czech intelligence says the meeting took place greatly strengthens the original reports of those meetings which, to the best of my knowledge, have never been disavowed by Czech intelligence, despite reports to the contrary." So says Richard Perle, an American Enterprise Institute national security strategist and co-author with David Frum of An End to Evil. Perle described the Prague Connection at a May 19 Hudson Institute dinner at Manhattans Harvard Club.
Additional records further illuminate Iraqi complicity in the September 11 massacre. As a May 27 Wall Street Journal editorial reported, Ahmed Hikmat Shakirs name appears on three different rosters of the late Uday Husseins prestigious paramilitary group, the Saddam Fedayeen. A government source told the Journal that the papers identify Shakir as a lieutenant colonel in the Saddam Fedayeen.
Shakir worked as a VIP airport greeter and facilitator for Malaysian Airlines at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, a position reputedly arranged by intelligence officers at Iraqs Malaysian embassy. On January 5, 2000, Shakir allegedly welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them through immigration and on to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel. Thats where these September 11 hijackers met with 9-11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to the Weekly Standards Stephen Hayes, Shakir vanished.
On January 15, al Midhar and al Hamzi quietly flew from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Nearly eight months later, they very loudly smashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
Saddam Fedayeen Lieutenant Colonel Shakir resurfaced on September 17, 2001 in Qatari handcuffs. His pockets and apartment yielded, among other things, phone numbers for the contacts and safe houses of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Shakir also possessed information on "Operation Bojinka," al-Qaedas 1995 conspiracy to explode 12 passenger jets simultaneously over the Pacific. Shakir passed from Qatari to Jordanian custody before being released after three months of Iraqi pressure. He reportedly returned to Saddam Husseins Baghdad.
Papers pulled from the Mukhabarats Baghdad headquarters indicate that Saddam Husseins intelligence operatives have known Mohamed Attas former boss for years.
"The following is a summary of the main activities and opportunities of the working party, following the orders issued by Excellency on 4/1/1992" (January 4, 1992). So reads a March 28, 1992 letter from "Republic Presidency" to "Mr. M.A.A.S." designated "Top Secret" by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The 12-page, Arabic-language documenttranslated into English and shared by a U.S. Senate staff memberdescribes Baathist espionage from Tunisia to Kuwait.
Under "Saudi front/M4," the letter says, "Contacted and continued relations with (4) of our old sources which still live in Saudi Arabia, and they are d- Saudi Osama Bin Ladin/ he is well known Saudi businessmen [sic] founder of Saudi opposition in Afghanistan, had connection with Syrian division." Bin Laden, in fact, left Saudi Arabia for the Sudan in April 1991, but this need not have precluded "continued relations" between Baghdad and bin Laden.
Absent surveillance footage of Saddam Hussein driving Mohamed Atta to Portland, Maines airport en route to American Airlines Flight 11, war critics and Bush bashers refuse to believe that Iraqs deposed dictator might have been involved in 9-11. Still, Baathist files keep offering clues that the carnage of September 11 might not have caught Saddam Hussein totally by surprise.
Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Hudson Institute.