IRAQ: Terrorist connection that never was

May 22, 2002
Issue 

Another of the US government's post-September 11 lies has been exposed — and from the horse's mouth. According to the April 28 Newsweek magazine, US officials have confirmed that the alleged leader of the September 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, could not have met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague five months before.

Within hours of the September 11 attacks, Washington's politicians and pundits had began searching for a "smoking gun" to implicate Iraq — and serve as an excuse for another US war. Atta's mythical meeting in the Czech Republic was just the ticket.

Countless commentators repeated the rumour that Atta had travelled to Prague in April 2001 to meet with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, an Iraqi diplomat and President Saddam Hussein's roving "super-spy", according to the accounts.

Depending on which blowhard you listened to, al Ani was either delivering Saddam's personal orders for the September 11 attacks or arranging for the delivery of anthrax to an unspecified al Qaeda cell for a follow-up mail attack.

Finally, eight months after September 11, the FBI and Czech authorities have settled on the same story. The Czechs — who went back and forth on their story numerous times — now say they have no solid evidence that Atta was in Prague, and US officials admit there's no evidence that he even left the US

[From Socialist Worker, weekly paper of the US International Socialist Organization. Visit <http://www.socialistworker.org>.]

From Green Left Weekly, May 22, 2002.
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