http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/politics/17prag.html

June 17, 2004

No Evidence of Meeting With Iraqi

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 16 - A report of a clandestine meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer first surfaced shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. And even though serious doubt was cast on the report, it was repeatedly cited by some Bush administration officials and others as evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

But on Wednesday, the Sept. 11 commission said its investigation had found that the meeting never took place.

In its report on the Sept. 11 plot, the commission staff disclosed for the first time F.B.I. evidence that strongly suggested that Mr. Atta was in the United States at the time of the supposed Prague meeting.

The report cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance camera in Virginia showing Mr. Atta withdrawing money on April 4, 2001, a few days before the supposed Prague meeting on April 9, and records showing his cellphone was used on April 6, 9, 10 and 11 in Florida.

The supposed meeting in Prague by Mr. Atta, who flew one of the hijacked jets on Sept. 11, was a centerpiece of early efforts by the Bush administration and its conservative allies to link Iraq with the attacks as the administration sought to justify a war to topple Saddam Hussein.

The Sept. 11 commission report also forcefully dismissed the broader notion that there was a terrorist alliance between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The report said there might have been contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

In effect, the commission report endorsed the views of officials at the C.I.A. and F.B.I., who have long been dismissive of a supposed Prague meeting and of the administration's broader assertions concerning an Iraq-Qaeda alliance.

The panel's findings effectively rebuke the Pentagon's civilian leadership, which set up a small intelligence unit after the Sept. 11 attacks to hunt for links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This team briefed senior policy makers at the Pentagon and the White House, saying that the C.I.A. had ignored evidence of such connections.

The C.I.A.'s evidence of contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq dates to the early 1990's, when Mr. bin Laden was living in Sudan. The debate within the government was over their meaning.

The C.I.A. concluded that the contacts never translated into joint operational activity on terrorist plots; the Pentagon believed that the C.I.A. was understating the likelihood of a deeper relationship.

The staff report cited evidence that Mr. bin Laden explored the possibility of cooperation with Iraq in the early and mid-1990's, despite a deep antipathy for Saddam Hussein's secular regime.

The report said Sudanese officials, who at the time had close ties with Iraq, tried to persuade Mr. bin Laden to end his support for anti-Hussein Islamic militants operating in the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq, and sought to arrange contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.

A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly visited Sudan three times and met Mr. bin Laden there in 1994. Mr. bin Laden reportedly requested space in Iraq to establish terrorist training camps as well as assistance in acquiring weapons, "but Iraq apparently never responded," the commission report stated.

The staff report added that two senior Qaeda operatives, previously identified as Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, "adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq."

Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Czech officials said they had received reports that Mr. Atta had met in April 2001 with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer stationed in Prague.

But the C.I.A. and F.B.I., and some top Czech officials, quickly began to cast doubt on the story, and Czech security officials were never able to corroborate the initial report, which was based on a single source. That source made the report after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Mr. Atta's photograph was published worldwide, and after it had already been reported that Czech border records showed Mr. Atta had visited Prague a year earlier, in 2000.

The evidence concerning Mr. Atta's whereabouts in Virginia and Florida in early April 2001, at the time of the purported Prague meeting, severely weakens the case for it.

The staff report's findings on the Prague meeting were also based in part on reporting from unidentified detainees in United States custody. One is Mr. Ani, who was captured and taken into American custody after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Under questioning, he has denied that the meeting ever happened, American officials have said.