CIA releases declassified documents from 9/11 file

[leveymg]

1. Bizarre given that the CTC budget quadrupled after 1998. More important, the release shows Cheney

intentionally mislead the public about Atta having contact with the Iraqi Embassy in the Czech Republic.

Read down into the article, and here's the gold:

One of the previously unreleased documents involves 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian national who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center's north tower. According to a Dec. 8, 2001, CIA report that was sent to the White House Situation Room, the spy agency had already made a preliminary determination that Atta had not in fact traveled to Prague in the Czech Republic in May 2000 to rendezvous with a senior official of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. That he would have met with the IIS was significant for intelligence officials looking for a connection between al-Qaida and Iraq.

But one day after the report was sent to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney claimed on NBC's "Meet the Press" that it had been "pretty confirmed" that Atta had gone to Prague several months before the attack. According to the 9/11 Commission report, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity after a similarly named Pakistani tried to get into the Czech Republic but was turned away. The document was the basis for a footnote in chapter seven of the 9/11 report.

Even though the information about Atta meeting with the ISS was later disproved, it still resonated with those bent on going to war with Iraq.

Cheney should be arrested.