A report of a clandestine meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer first surfaced shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. And even though serious doubt was cast on the report, it was repeatedly cited by some Bush administration officials and others as evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
But on Wednesday, the Sept. 11 commission said its investigation had found that the meeting never took place.
In its report on the Sept. 11 plot, the commission staff for the first time disclosed FBI evidence that strongly suggested that Atta was in the US at the time of the supposed Prague meeting.
The report cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance camera in Virginia showing Atta withdrawing money on April 4, 2001, a few days before the supposed Prague meeting on April 9, and records showing his cell phone was used on April 6, 9, 10 and 11 in Florida.
The supposed meeting in Prague by Atta, who flew one of the hijacked jets on Sept. 11, was a centerpiece of early efforts by the Bush administration and its conservative allies to link Iraq with the attacks as the administration sought to justify a war to topple Saddam Hussein.
The Sept. 11 commission report also forcefully dismissed the broader notion that there was a terrorist alliance between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The report said there might have been contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
In effect, the commission report endorsed the views of officials at the CIA and FBI, who have long dismissed a supposed Prague meeting and the administration's broader assertions concerning an alliance between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The panel's findings effectively rebuke the Pentagon's civilian leadership, which set up a small intelligence unit after the Sept. 11 attacks to hunt for links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. This team briefed senior policy makers at the Pentagon and the White House, saying that the CIA had ignored evidence of such connections.
The CIA's evidence of contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq dates to the early 1990s, when bin Laden was living in Sudan. The debate within the government was over their meaning.
The CIA concluded that the contacts never translated into joint operational activity on terrorist plots; the Pentagon believed the CIA was understating the likelihood of a deeper relationship.
The staff report cited evidence that bin Laden explored the possibility of cooperation with Iraq in the early and mid-1990s, despite a deep antipathy for Saddam Hussein's secular regime.
The report said Sudanese officials, who at the time had close ties with Iraq, tried to persuade bin Laden to end his support for anti-Saddam Islamic militants operating in the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq, and sought to arrange contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.
A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly visited Sudan three times and met bin Laden there in 1994. Bin Laden reportedly requested space in Iraq to establish terrorist training camps as well as assistance in acquiring weapons, "but Iraq apparently never responded," the commission report stated.
The staff report added that two senior al-Qaeda operatives, previously identified as Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, "adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq."
Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Czech officials said they had received reports that Atta had met in April 2001 with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer stationed in Prague.
But the CIA and FBI, and some top Czech officials, quickly began to cast doubt on the story, and Czech security officials were never able to corroborate the initial report, which was based on a single source.
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