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| Declassified documents undercut Atta in Prague claim |
| 2005-04-17 |
| A TOP Democratic senator has released formerly classified documents that he says undercut top US officials' pre-Iraq war claims of a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. "These documents are additional compelling evidence that the intelligence community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary," Senator Carl Levin said today. The declassified documents undermine the Bush administration's claims regarding Iraq's involvement in training al-Qaeda operatives and the likelihood of a meeting between September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001, Senator Levin said in a statement. In October 2002, Mr Bush said: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." But a June 2002 CIA report, titled Iraq and al-Qa'ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, said "the level and extent of this is assistance is not clear". The report said that there were "many critical gaps" in the knowledge of Iraq-al-Qaeda links due to "limited reporting" and the "questionable reliability of many of our sources", according to excerpts cited by Senator Levin. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs said much of the information on Iraqi training and support for al-Qaeda was "second-hand" or from sources of "varying reliability". And a January 2003 CIA report indicates some of the reports of training were based on "hearsay" while others were "simple declarative accusations of Iraqi-al-Qaeda complicity with no substantiating detail or other information that might help us corroborate them". In December 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney said Atta's meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague was "pretty well confirmed". But, according to Senator Levin, a June 2002 CIA report says: "Reporting is contradictory on hijacker Mohammed Atta's alleged trip to Prague and meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer, and we have not verified his travels." And a January 2003 CIA report says "the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this possibility". Senator Levin requested the documents' declassification in April 2004 as part of his minority inquiry within the Senate Armed Services Committee into Iraq intelligence failures. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #4 So, whom would I trust? Czech Intel/Iterior officials or...MSM/CIA/Donk spinmasters? I go with Czechs. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-04-17 7:57:50 PM |
| #3 Eh? Levin's off-message. The Democrat talking point is that we went into Iraq to deal with WMD (that weren't there). But, yeah, until the Czechs say they were wrong, I don't believe anything that a Democrat selectively leaks from the CIA. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-04-17 12:06:08 PM |
| #2 Unless the Czech officials reverse their position that Atta met twice with Iraqi agents, that's all the 'cooperation' I need evidence for. This reads as pure ankle-biting / editorializing. Well, to the extent they can be differentiated. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-04-17 11:22:47 AM |
| #1 I'm dissapointed in The Telegraph. According to the report the documents present no new evidence and hence all previous evidence of Atta's trip to Prague stands uncontested. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-04-17 9:02:19 AM |