[1] The source for the claim came from a contact the Czech intelligence had within the Iraqi embassy,[4] described in The Boston Globe as "a single informant from Prague's Arab community who saw Atta's picture in the news after the 11 September attacks, and who later told his handlers that he had seen him meeting with Ani.
[citation needed] On October 20, 2001, The New York Times published a story by John Tagliabue saying Czech officials denied the meeting ever occurred.
[7] On October 26, Czech Republic Interior Minister Stanislav Gross responded by calling a press conference at which he "confirmed" that Atta "did make contact with an officer of the Iraqi intelligence" in Prague, namely al-Ani, who was later expelled from the country.
"[11] On 15 March 2002 David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post: Even the Czechs, who initially put out the reports about Atta's meeting with al-Ani, have gradually backed away.
According to the Times report, "Czech officials also say they have no hard evidence that Mr. Ani was involved in terrorist activities, although the government did order his ouster in late April 2001."
[16] According to columnist Robert Novak, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "confirmed published reports that there is no evidence placing the presumed leader of the terrorist attacks in the Czech capital.
[18] Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet released "the most complete public assessment by the agency on the issue" in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee in July 2004, stating "Although we cannot rule it out, we are increasingly skeptical that such a meeting occurred.
"[19] John E. McLaughlin, who at the time was the Deputy Director of the CIA, described the extent of the Agency's investigation into the claim: "Well, on something like the Atta meeting in Prague, we went over that every which way from Sunday.
"[20] A senior administration official told Walter Pincus of The Washington Post that the FBI had concluded that "there was no evidence Atta left or returned to the U.S. at the time he was supposed to be in Prague."
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III outlined the extent of their investigation into the hijacker's whereabouts in a speech in April 2002: "We ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on, from flight reservations to car rentals to bank accounts.
[22] In August 2002, Czech foreign intelligence chief František Bublan publicly backed away from the claim that Atta met al-Ani, saying that rumors of such meetings "have not been verified or proven."
The Prague Post reported that "Bublan said that promoting a so-called 'Prague connection' between Atta and al-Ani might have been a ploy by U.S. policymakers seeking justifications for a new military action against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
In the final analysis, the 9/11 Commission Report makes this statement: "These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001.
Nobody claimed he had met al-Ani at that time, but conservative columnist Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in the National Review that his trip was considered suspicious.
Video surveillance cameras at a Prague bus terminal showed him playing slot machines at the station's Happy Days Casino before disappearing.
[citation needed] In September 2004, Jiří Růžek, the former head of the BIS, told the Czech newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes, "This information was verified, and it was confirmed that it was a case of the same name.
[31] According to Con Coughlin, executive foreign editor of The Daily Telegraph, Mohamed Atta is mentioned in a handwritten letter from the former chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, Gen. Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, to Saddam Hussein.
[33]Coughlin quoted Ayad Allawi giving personal assurance over the document's authenticity: "We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda ...
"[35] According to the newsmagazine, "The Telegraph story was apparently written with a political purpose: to bolster Bush administration claims of a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime."
"[37] Atta's own religious and political convictions made him violently opposed to the Saddam regime; according to the 9/11 Commission Report, "In his interactions with other students, Atta voiced virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American opinions, ranging from condemnations of what he described as a global Jewish movement centered in New York City that supposedly controlled the financial world and the media, to polemics against governments of the Arab world.
According to Newsweek, "Democrats charged in a written statement that intelligence officials had failed to demonstrate 'that disclosing the [cable] ... would reveal sources and methods or otherwise harm national security.'
The Democrats also complained that officials' refusal to declassify the cable 'represents an improper use of classification authority by the intelligence community to shield the White House.