Originally Posted by BeAChooser
One: The Czech intelligence service said back in 2003 that it was "70% certain" Mohammed Atta (leader of the 9/11 terrorists) met with an Iraqi Intelligence agent named al-Ani in Prague just a few months before 9/11. See
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20...3909-9839r.htm . Nothing has been published since to indicate they've changed their mind. Ani, by the way, was in charge of special projects.
This is all false. Ahmad Samir al-Ani was the Iraqi consul in Prague, a diplomat not some sort of shadowy head of "special projects". Mohamed Atta was not even in Prague on the day the alleged meeting occurred - he was last in Prague a year earlier while en route to the USA.
The confusion stems from a Pakistani businessman with the same name (though spelled differently) who was in Prague a few days before Atta, and was detained for visa problems.
Let's start with the claim that Atta wasn't in Prague on the day in question in 2001. How do you know this? I'm sure you'll claim he was in the US on that day, but you can't prove it. There are no hotel records, no receipts of any kind signed by him, and no sightings of him in the US for the entire week around the date of the alleged meeting. None whatsoever. All we know is that he withdrew $8000 in cash from a US bank right before he disappeared off the radar. Right before an informant said he was seen in Europe meeting al-Ani ... a trip which $8000 would be enough to cover.
Next you're going to tell me ... but, but, his cell phone was used here in the US during the period in question. So what? If he went to Europe he had no reason to take that cell phone along since it wouldn't have worked in Europe anyway. We know that the hijackers seemed to share everything ... bank accounts, apartments, cars, ... so why not cell phones?
Next you're going to tell me that there is no record of him using his passport to enter Europe. Again, so what? We know for a fact that he had access to false identities at that time. This was revealed by Spanish authorities during their investigations of 9/11. They found that both Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh (Atta's al Qaeda Hamburg-cell associate) had acquired false passports from Algerians in Spain. The only thing we know is that Atta didn't travel under his own name. But nothing precludes his having used a false identity to travel. And we also know that the passports acquired in Spain were not the only false papers the hijackers, including Atta, acquired.
The fact of the matter is that you don't know where Atta was during the time a Czech informant said he saw a man matching Atta's description meet al-Ani. The fact is you can't even tell us why Atta needed $8000 in cash. You actually know very little.
Now let's consider your claim that al-Ani was just an innocent diplomat. Who the Czech government wrongly threw out of their country (for being involved in nefarious activities ... specifically plotting to blow up Radio Free Europe building)? Let's look at the evidence for that since that should shed some light on whether al-Ani was the innocent fellow you want us to believe.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007584
November 22, 2005
... snip ...
... I met earlier this month in Prague with Jiri Ruzek, chief at the time of the Czech counterintelligence service, BIS. Mr. Ruzek is in a position to know what happened. He personally oversaw the investigation of Iraq's alleged covert activities that began, with full American collaboration, nearly two years before Mr. Bush became president and resulted, some five months before the 9/11 attack, in the expulsion of Ahmad al-Ani, the Iraqi intelligence officer alleged to have met with Atta. I also spoke with ex-Foreign Minister Jan Kavan, who headed the intelligence committee to whom Mr. Ruzek reported, and to Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek, who, as deputy foreign minister at the time, handled the al-Ani expulsion for the foreign ministry. ... snip ...
The proximate cause for BIS interest in al-Ani was a sensational revelation of Jabir Salim, the Iraqi consul who defected in Prague in December 1998. Mr. Salim said in his debriefings that the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, had given him $150,000 and tasked him with carrying out a covert action against an American target in the Czech Republic: Using a freelance terrorist, he was to blow up the headquarters of Radio Free Europe in Wenceslas Square, in the heart of Prague.
... snip ...
Ahmad al-Ani was Jabir Salim's replacement at the embassy. Soon after he arrived in March 1999, he was picked up by U.S. countersurveillance cameras. The interest in him intensified after the BIS learned from its penetration of the embassy that he was attempting to acquire explosives and contact foreign-based Arabs. Then, on April 9, 2001, the BIS's source in the embassy reported that al-Ani had gotten into a car with an unknown foreign Arab. After the car managed to elude BIS surveillance, concern mounted that he was in the process of recruiting his bomber, and, since the BIS could not find the mystery Arab, Mr. Ruzek decided to act pre-emptively. He recommended to Foreign Minister Kavan that al-Ani be immediately expelled from the Czech Republic. He was given 48 hours to get out of Prague on April 19--and he returned to Baghdad.
On Sept. 11, Mohamed Atta's picture was shown on Czech television, and the next day the BIS's source in the Iraqi Embassy dropped a bombshell. He told his BIS case officer that he recognized Atta as the Arab who got in the car with al-Ani on April 9 (BAC - note that Atta's whereabouts between April 5th and April 11th are unknown). Mr. Ruzek immediately relayed the secret information to Washington through the CIA liaison. The FBI sent an interrogation team to Prague, which, after questioning and testing the source, concluded that there was a 70% likelihood that he was not intentionally lying and sincerely believed that he saw Atta with al-Ani.
... snip ...
Less than a week after Mr. Ruzek shared the BIS's confidential information with American intelligence, it was leaked. The Associated Press reported, "A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has received information from a foreign intelligence service that Mohamed Atta, a hijacker aboard one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center, met earlier this year in Europe with an Iraqi intelligence agent." CBS named al-Ani as the person meeting with Atta in Prague.
Mr. Ruzek was furious. He considered what he had passed on to the FBI to be unevaluated raw intelligence, and its disclosure not only risked compromising the BIS's penetration in the Iraqi Embassy but also greatly reduced the chances of confirming the intelligence in the first place.
... snip ...
Mr. Ruzek decided that if this was an American game, he did not want to be a part of it. So he threw the ball back in the CIA's court, taking the position that if al-Ani did meet Atta for a nefarious purpose, it would have been not on his own initiative but as a representative of the Mukhabarat. The answer was not in Prague but in Iraq's intelligence files; and the CIA and FBI would have to use their own intelligence capabilities to obtain further information about al-Ani's assignment. That more or less concluded the Czech role in the investigation.
So the previous Iraqi consul, Jabir Salim, turned out to be involved in something nefarious ... something, in your words, "shadowy". Something involving blowing up US installations (i.e., terrorism). And then al-Ani, your *innocent* *diplomat*, is (according to the Czech government) discovered to be trying to acquire explosives. And then gets into a car with an unknown arab ... that is later identified by the witness to have looked like al-Ani. And you simply dismiss this over some supposed confusion with a Pakistani businessman in a separate incident?
http://slate.msn.com/id/2091354#ContinueArticle
The BIS handled the surveillance through its own full-time teams and its network of part-time "watchers" at hotels, restaurants, and other likely locations. Then, on April 8, 2001, a BIS watcher saw al-Ani meeting in a restaurant outside Prague with an Arab man in his 20s. This set off alarm bells because a BIS informant in the Arab community had provided information indicating that the person with whom al-Ani was meeting was a visiting "student" from Hamburg—and one who was potentially dangerous.
So tell us, gumboot ... if you still think al-Ani was just an innocent diplomat, can you explain why he was trying to obtain explosives ... and videotaped loitering around and photographing the Radio Free Europe building in 1999 (as reported by Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the NY Times)? Do you really believe he was just sightseeing and wanted explosives for ... celebration? Or are you just trying to spin this away?
Tell us, why he met an arab "student" according to the informant ... "student" is the way the Czech source described the man long before it was alleged to be Atta? When asked by the Czech Foreign Ministry to explain this meeting (right before his expulsion), why didn't al-Ani tell them all the details ... if it was just an innocent meeting with a student? Why were Czech authorities so concerned that even after they expelled him, they placed 4 armored personnel carriers in front of the Radio Free Europe headquarters, along with concrete barriers? Something must have really spooked them ... besides the Pakistani businessman you allege trying to get into the country in a completely separate incident.
And of course you have no evidence that this Pakistani businessman met with al-Ani on the day in question or looked at all like Atta? It seems to me such evidence is the only way you can logically dismiss the informant's statement that the man who got in the car with al-Ani looked like Atta. Hmmmmmm?
And I still say its curious that al-Ani's day calendar listed a meeting on the day in question with a "Hamburg Student". And curious that Atta's travel documents listed his occupation as "Hamburg Student". And that an informant said al-Ani's meeting was with a "student". You don't find this a curious coincidence? One too many?
And isn't it odd that the FBI told journalists that it had car rental records and hotel receipts that put Atta in Virginia Beach at the time. Because that turns out to be a complete lie. They have no such records. In fact, Atta did not even have a license to drive a car in the US at the time so how would he have rented one? It sure looks like the FBI was trying to cover up something. A least a true skeptic might conclude that.
The meeting is now widely regarded to have never occurred.
I really don't care what's "widely regarded" or by whom. Because lots of things are "widely regarded" and absolutely false. I'm more interested in hearing your answers to the questions I posed above. You do have answers ... don't you? You can start by telling us why the FBI lied about the car rental and hotel receipts. And how the alleged Pakistani businessman has anything to do with who the informant said he saw meet al-Ani.
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Two: al-Ani's day calendar, which the Czech's seized after the Iraq invasion, listed a meeting with a "Hamburg student" on the very day the meeting between Atta and al-Ani was alleged (by an eye witness) to have occurred. What a coincidence that al-Ani listed "Hamburg Student" as his occupation on his travel documents.
Source?
A journalist who actually spoke with Czech authorities on numerous occasions while covering this story, Edward Jay Epstein.
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/PragueApril2004.htm
Al-Ani scheduled a meeting in April (BAC - April 8th, to be precise) with a "Hamburg student" according to an appointment calendar subsequently turned up by Czech intelligence in a surreptitious search of the Iraq Embassy (presumably after the defeat of Iraq in April 2003.)
Now that's a very curious coincidence, when you consider all the other facts linking Atta to Hamburg.
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406010821.asp
As is by now well known, Atta led al Qaeda's Hamburg cell in Germany, and he was for a time enrolled as a student at Hamburg-Harburg Technical University.
Don't you think?
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Three: we know that Atta had visited Prague and met al-Ani several times in 2000 ... traveling as a "hamburg student". Both a few days after an earlier visit and a few days after the last alleged visit in 2001, Atta's bank account in the US received a very large deposit.
We know nothing of the sort. What we know is that Atta was in Prague only once, on June 2, 2000. He bussed into Prague from Germany, and left on June 3 for Newark, USA.
Well it's alleged that a Pakistani businessman with the same name as Atta flew into Prague from Saudi Arabia via Germany in May 2000 and was forced to return to Germany because he lacked a valid Czech visa. But do we know anything about this supposed Pakistani businessman besides his name? What was his business, for instance? I happen to think it's a little too coincidental that Atta applies "
in Bonn for a visa to travel to the Czech Republic" on May 26, 2000 and just four days later a man with the same name flies into Prague International Airport from Germany. Can you provide ANY details about this mystery Pakistani man? Any at all? I haven't heard any ... and it seems odd that you wouldn't be able to do that if indeed such a Pakistani actually did exist and enter the Czech Republic from Germany at the time claimed. Perhaps this is just another attempt, like the FBI's attempt with the bogus car and hotel receipt claims, to make this all go away? Or perhaps that Pakistani businessman was merely one of Atta's personas? There are all kinds of possibilities that do not rule out Atta meeting with al-Ani.
And by the way, you claim that in June, Atta was merely using Prague as a stopover on the way to the US? He was there for 36 hours. Don't you find it odd that the authorities can't say were he stayed ... where he slept while there? He didn't check into any hotel ... at least not under the Atta identity. He didn't rent any cars. Again, it looks like he had something to do and didn't want anyone to learn what that was. NOTHING rules out his having met with al-Ani.
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Four: Atta and several other hijackers just happen to reside within a few miles of the American Media building where the first case of 9/11 anthrax showed up. What are the odds of that?
Except the initial batch of five letters were posted from New Jersey, not Florida, and while one went to Florida, another four went to New York. Oh yeah. And they were posted a week after Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi (who lived in Coral Springs, Florida for a time) died...
First of all, why do you assume that the men who hijacked the planes were the only ones in America at the time or the only al-Qaeda involved in the plot? Isn't it likely that there were others supporting the plot, who could have mailed letters after 9/11? That's what the government seemed to think since they had a nation wide manhunt afterwords and did in fact find some evidence the hijackers were aided.
Second, why do you assume that the anthrax letter that killed the first person in Florida ... the man that worked just a few miles from where the hijackers were staying in Florida ... was mailed after 9/11? Sure, some seem to think his exposure happened on September 19th from a letter (the Lopez letter) sent to AMI. But when was the letter mailed and received? MSNBC quoted Newsweek (
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067576/site/newsweek/) saying that the Lopez letter arrived a week
before 9/11.
This site,
http://www.postalmag.com/editorial14.htm, dedicated to postal employees, also says that the Lopez letter arrived the 4th. Here's another site that says the 4th:
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/anthraxreport.htm.
Perhaps this might resolve the question:
http://anthrax2001.blogspot.com/ "The media reports on the AMI letters confirm what the CDC reports in many important details. The media reported that Bob Stevens was indeed seen by his colleagues holding a letter close to his face on September 19, 2001. It was pointed out by Phil Brennan writing for Newsmax that this letter that Stevens was seen reading
had actually arrived at AMI on September 4, 2001." Phil Brennan said Stevens held it up to his face and then put it down on the keyboard (where traces of anthrax were found). So maybe Steven's contracted the anthrax on September 19th, however the letter arrived at AMI before 9/11. And if it arrived before 9/11 to coincidentally infect someone working within a few miles of where the hijackers stayed, that sort of rules out a domestic terrorist, doesn't it?
Or maybe the source wasn't that letter. We really don't know. But we do know Stevens started showing symptoms some time before October 2nd, when he was hospitalized. This somewhat authoritative report (
http://www.fpd.umn.edu/files/GlobalChron.pdf link no longer working) said the onset of symptoms was around September 28th. Inhalation anthrax has an uncertain incubation time (from less than a week or two, to as much as 2 months). The median time is reported to be 10 days according to one study. The CDC says its generally less than 2 weeks but "due to spore dormancy and slow clearance from the lungs, the incubation period for inhalational anthrax may be prolonged." And according to CNN, Florida Health Secretary Dr. John Agwunobi advised anyone who spent more than an hour in the AMI building
since August 1st to report for testing. Just to give you an idea of how uncertain officials might really be about the timeline.
The bottom line is we don't really know when Stevens was exposed. The hijackers killed on 9/11 could indeed have done it within the margins of certainty on what we do know. Or others who didn't kill themselves but aided the plot could have done it. So don't be so quick to rule out that possibility. Especially when you haven't explained how the first case just happened to show up within a few miles of where the hijackers were staying.
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Several of the hijackers had met with the wife of the editor of the magazine where the victim worked. Atta and several hijackers ask about crop dusters at a time when they were already training to fly hijacked commercial planes into buildings. Atta sought a loan to modify a crop duster. To what purpose?
Source?
Geez, don't you know anything about this case?
From the Baltimore Sun:
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/balt-sun.html
Another hijacker, Mohamed Atta, explored the availability of crop-dusting aircraft and visited a Florida pharmacy seeking help for his red, irritated hands, conceivably caused by use of disinfectants.
... snip ...
The pharmacy is not far from the tabloid newspaper publishing company in Boca Raton where the first anthrax victims worked, and some hijackers had rented an apartment from the wife of an editor at The Sun, one of American Media Inc.'s publications.
From the Palm Beach Post:
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc11.html
Gloria Irish, a real estate agent who is the wife of Mike Irish, editor-in-chief of AMI's The Sun, helped two of the hijackers, Hamza Alghamdi and Marwan Al-Shehhi, rent apartments in Delray.
Satisfied?
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Five: Atta and another hijacker sought treatment for skin lesions in June that in hindsight (after 9/11) both the doctor who saw them (Dr Tsonas) and the pharmacist they visited said was "consistent with cutaneous anthrax".
This is incorrect. On June 25th Ziad Jarrah took Ahmed al-Haznawi to a hospital to be treated for a gash on his leg - at the advice of their landlord. In 2002 this was erroneously reported as a "dark lesion" and there was suspicion of a link to the Anthrax attacks, but thorough investigations by the FBI concluded that this was false.
You say the facts were erroneously reported? Your source? Here's one of mine (which seems authoritative enough):
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxhijackerslink.html
Source: New York Times, March 23, 2002.
Report Linking Anthrax and Hijackers Is Investigated
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOHNSTON
The two men identified themselves as pilots when they came to the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last June. One had an ugly, dark lesion on his leg that he said he developed after bumping into a suitcase two months earlier. Dr. Christos Tsonas thought the injury was curious, but he cleaned it, prescribed an antibiotic for infection and sent the men away with hardly another thought.
But after Sept. 11, when federal investigators found the medicine among the possessions of one of the hijackers, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Dr. Tsonas reviewed the case and arrived at a new diagnosis. The lesion, he said in an interview this week, "was consistent with cutaneous anthrax."
Dr. Tsonas's assertion, first made to the F.B.I. in October but never disclosed, has added another layer of mystery to the investigation of last fall's deadly anthrax attacks, which has yet to focus on a specific suspect.
The possibility of a connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax-laced letters has been explored by officials since the first anthrax cases emerged in October. But a recent memorandum, prepared by experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, and circulated among top government officials, has renewed a debate about the evidence.
The group, which interviewed Dr. Tsonas, concluded that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax, which causes skin lesions, was "the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available." The memorandum added, "Such a conclusion of course raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks."
... snip ...
Dr. Tsonas's comments add to a tantalizing array of circumstantial evidence. Some of the hijackers, including Mr. Alhaznawi, lived and attended flight school near American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., where the first victim of the anthrax attacks worked (case 5 and case 7). Some of the hijackers also rented apartments from a real estate agent who was the wife of an editor of The Sun, a publication of American Media.
... snip ...
For his part, Dr. Tsonas said he believed that the hijackers probably did have anthrax.
"What were they doing looking at crop-dusters?" he asked, echoing experts' fears that the hijackers may have wanted to spread lethal germs. "There are too many coincidences."
In recent interviews, Dr. Tsonas, an emergency room doctor, said Mr. Alhaznawi came into the hospital one evening in June 2001, along with a man who federal investigators believe was another hijacker, Ziad al-Jarrah, believed to have taken over the controls of United Flight 93.
They used their own names, he added, not aliases.
"They were well-dressed foreigners," he said. "I assumed they were tourists."
The men explained that Mr. Alhaznawi had developed the ulcer after hitting his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Dr. Tsonas recalled that Mr. Alhaznawi appeared to be in good health, and that he denied having an illness like diabetes that might predispose him to such lesions. The wound, he recalled, was a little less than an inch wide and blackish, its edges raised and red.
Dr. Tsonas said he removed the dry scab over the wound, cleansed it and prescribed Keflex, an antibiotic that is widely used to combat bacterial infections but is not specifically recommended for anthrax.
The encounter lasted perhaps 10 minutes, Dr. Tsonas said.
He took no cultures and had no thoughts of anthrax, a disease at that time was extremely rare in the United States and was unfamiliar even to most doctors.
In October, amid news reports about the first anthrax victims, Dr. Tsonas, like other doctors, threw himself into learning more about the disease. An incentive was that his hospital is relatively near American Media, so victims there might come to Holy Cross for treatment.
Dr. Tsonas said he forgot entirely about the two men until federal agents in October showed him pictures of Mr. Alhaznawi and Mr. Jarrah, and he made positive identifications.
Then, agents gave Dr. Tsonas a copy of his own notes from the emergency room visit and he read them. "I said, `Oh, my God, my written description is consistent with cutaneous anthrax,' " Dr. Tsonas recalled.
... snip ...
After his meetings with F.B.I., Dr. Tsonas was contacted early this year by a senior federal medical expert, who asked him detailed questions about the tentative diagnosis.
Last month, experts at Johns Hopkins also called Dr. Tsonas, saying they, too, were studying the evidence. The Hopkins analysis was done by Dr. Thomas Inglesby and Dr. Tara O'Toole, director of the center in Baltimore and an assistant secretary for health and safety at the federal Energy Department from 1993 to 1997.
In an interview, Dr. O'Toole said that after consulting with additional medical experts on the Alhaznawi case, she was "more persuaded than ever" that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax was correct.
Now let's see your source for your rather bold dismissal.
