Bogus-Atta Story led to Arrestment of Iraqi Diplomat

posted by ewing2001 on Tuesday July 08, @02:42PM

PNAC-Perle's favourite hoax gets new legs

Photo: Richard Perle aka "Prince of Darkness", who first pushed the Iraq-Atta Story in October 2001

MSNBC -July 8

"...The U.S. military has taken into custody an Iraqi intelligence official who is reported to have met the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers just months before the 2001 attacks, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

The military took Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani into custody last week, the official said.

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Some Czech officials have said al-Ani met Mohammed Atta, suspected leader of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in Prague in April 2001.
The CIA and FBI were unable to confirm that the meeting took place..."

The Atta-Prague story was already debunked as false, weeks after Sep11th, and confirmed by both Czech Government and Intelligence (BIS), who observed this diplomat.

The story was first leaked on October 27th, 2001, by Richard Perle to Daily Telegraph, where he is on the board. Daily Telegraph belongs to Hollinger Inc. of Lord Conrad Black, with Perle and Kissinger as one of their directors.

The story was also pushed by Richard Perle's friend Laurie Mylroie (recently invited to the 3rd round of the 911 commision), who is publisher of Iraq News and an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

In 2001, Mylroie published "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America" and co-wrote "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf" with Judith Miller (NY Times).

As Praguepost reported in July 2002, "U.S. investigators say Atta -- a student and draftsman in Hamburg, Germany, during the 1990s -- was actually in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Florida in April 2001, when he is alleged to have met al-Ani in Prague.

"We looked at this real hard because obviously, if it were true, it would be huge," one U.S. law enforcement official told the magazine. "But nothing has matched up."

According to The New York Times, a senior official in President George W. Bush's administration appeared to close the matter, saying that FBI and CIA analysts had firmly concluded that no meeting ever occurred..."

UPI, October 20, 2002 (Mirror): "...Other influential figures in Washington, including former CIA Director James Woolsey and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle pursued their own inquiries using their own sources, and have now also been told by high-ranking Czech sources that they no longer stand by the initial report. Perle, in Prague this weekend for a meeting of the Trilateral Commission, was told in person Sunday that the BIS now doubts that any such meeting between Atta and al-Ani in fact took place..."

More here:

UQ/NY Times Mirror (October 20, 2001)

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