Last week the Bush Administration – or forces within it – deliberately debunked the Czech intelligence report that lead-hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague just months before the 9-11 attacks.
Within hours of the September 11 attacks, the Czechs had told the US government that they had followed the Iraqi agent because he was suspected of planning an attack on the broadcast headquarters of Radio Free Europe in Prague. During this surveillance the Czechs had seen the agent, Al-Anari, meeting at a café at the Prague airport with Mohammed Atta who then immediately boarded a flight for the United States.
For some inexplicable reason the Bush Administration was never happy with this report. Off the record to members of the media they scoffed at it and downplayed it, often disparaging the source.
Last week the Administration tried to kill the Atta-Iraq link once and for all. They simultaneously leaked a story to the WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES and NEWSWEEK specifically denying that the Prague meeting ever happened. They even trotted out the new FBI Director to disclaim any evidence that such a meeting ever took place. Director Robert Mueller claims they “exhaustively combed through airport records, car rental receipts and found no evidence that Atta was in Prague on the day in question.”
They also now have the Czech Prime Minister – the very man who originally reported it to us – saying his government no longer stands by this report. (Wonder what pressure and threats to ‘change’ his story he has experienced from the CIA since he reported the meeting to us?)
Why is the Bush Administration so hell-bent to disprove an Iraqi connection to 9-11?
Especially when the Administration so desperately wants to remove Saddam’s regime from power?
Why not just let the Atta – Al-Anari meeting stand as one further piece of evidence that Saddam has got to go?
Why expend so much energy to prove that such a meeting did NOT occur?
Some conjecture:
1) As a longtime ‘victim’ (in the POW/MIA issue) of USG ‘debunking’ I no longer believe ANYTHING our government says, finds, denies or proclaims. There is ALWAYS an ulterior motive – and the truth is the last consideration.
2) The CIA is somewhere behind this latest example of USG debunking. They have a motive – and we do not yet know what it is.
3) The media is, as usual, the unwitting dupe of the US Government. And this very same media rarely asks a cynical question because they’ll lose their ‘access’ and ‘contacts.’
4) There may very well be forces inside our government who want to protect Iraq and prevent a war with Saddam. Those forces have from the first few minutes after 9-11 began purposely directed the investigations and attention solely to Osama bin Laden – and away from Iraq.
5) There is strong evidence – never debunked by anyone – that Iraq was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. And also much evidence that Saddam and Osama have worked together in other attacks on American interests. For the same inexplicable reason, the US Government never seems to want to explore that link. For example, the mysterious trip by Iraq’s top nephrologist last May to Afghanistan reportedly to treat Osama for his chronic kidney problems.
Conclusion: something is “going on” that we do not yet – and may never – know.
But it smells fishy – as things emanating from the CIA often do.
How do we, the American people, find the real truth? We need an honest and independent assessment of the intelligence – given under oath – and in public. Therefore, we need a joint House-Senate Committee hearing – on national TV – with witnesses ranging from the Czech Prime Minister to the various FBI agents who have been muzzled so far and threatened not to talk about ‘warning’s they reported before 9-11.
We need all of this to determine who is telling the truth.
And this Joint Committee can not have any CIA or Executive Branch personnel as staffers, thus rigging the inquiry.
Let us make this – once and for all – a clean investigation so we can all have faith in what we learn.