The Eleventh Day

Washington Post

poll in September 2003. (

Editor & Publisher

, 3/26/03,

USA Today

, 9/6/03).

3

Atta/Prague/Iraqi intelligence:

An informant reported to Czech intelligence after 9/11 that photographs of Mohamed Atta resembled a man he had seen meeting with an Iraqi diplomat and suspected spy named Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague at 11

A.M

.

on April 9, 2001. Investigation indicated that neither Atta nor Ani had been in Prague at the time alleged. Atta was recorded on closed-circuit TV footage in Florida on April 4, and his cell phone was used in the state on the 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th. Atta and Shehhi, moreover, apparently signed a lease on an apartment on the 11th. This information, while not certain proof, strongly suggests that Atta was in the United States on April 9. CIA analysts characterized the alleged Prague sighting as being “highly unlikely.” Nevertheless, the report crept into prewar intelligence briefings as having been a “known contact” between al Qaeda and Iraq.

In addition to the alleged Atta meeting, rumors have long circulated that two other hijackers, Mihdhar and Hazmi, had contact with an Iraqi agent. This was alleged to have been Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, who acted as a greeter for Arab visitors in Kuala Lumpur at the time of the terrorist summit there in 2000. Shakir was captured in 2002. The CIA later received information that “Shakir was not affiliated with al Qaeda and had no connections with IIS [Iraqi intelligence].”

(Atta/Prague: CR, 228–, Report, “U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, 108th Cong., 2nd Sess., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 2004, 340–, “Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy,” Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Dept. of Defense, 2/9/07, 5–, but see Edward Jay Epstein, “Atta in Prague,”

NYT

, 11/22/05; Shakir: Report, “Postwar Findings About Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments,” U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 109th Cong., 2nd Sess., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 9/8/06, 111.)

4

Mylroie propagated:

e.g.

National Interest

, Winter 95/96,

New Republic

, 9/24/01, CR, 336, 559n73, Laurie Mylroie,

The War Against America

, NY: Regan, 2001,

WSJ

, 4/2/04, “The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed,” 5/11/04,

www.frontpagemagazine.com

;

5

Investigation:

Michael Isikoff and David Corn,

Hubris

, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2007, 72–, and refs., Clarke, 94–, 232;

6

multiple/“My view”:

Washington Monthly

, 12/03.

7

“We went back”:

int. of Michael Scheuer for

Frontline:

“The Dark Side,”

www.pbs.org

. As described earlier in this book, bin Laden had an antipathy for Saddam Hussein and had sought Saudi government backing to use his fighters to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait (see p. 212). Though there are reports that bin Laden and Iraqi representatives did meet to discuss possible cooperation as early as 1992, there is no evidence that anything came of the encounters. Reporting in 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that prior to the invasion of Iraq, the CIA had “reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship … no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al Qaeda attack” (e.g. Wright, 295–, Report, “U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” 346–).

8

CIA Report 2003/“no credible”/?pressure/?“questions”:

Report, “U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” 314, 322, 353, 363, 449–.

9

Duelfer/senior intelligence officials:

The detainee to whom Duelfer referred was Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi, who had headed the M-14 section of the Mukhabarat, the principal Iraqi intelligence agency. Duelfer noted the episode in a 2009 book and in an interview. The story was reported by Robert Windrem, senior research fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security and a longtime producer for NBC (Charles Duelfer,

Hide and Seek

, NY: PublicAffairs, 2009, 416, Robert Windrem, “Cheney’s Role Deepens,” 5/13/09,

www.dailybeast.com

).

10 “There were two”/“We were not”: McClatchy News, 4/21/09, Report, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services,” 110th Cong., 2nd Sess. 11/20/08, 72.

11 Suskind/forgery/brief storm/denials: Following Ronald Suskind’s account of the forgery’s origins in his 2008 book, The Way of the World, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers wrote letters saying he intended to follow up. As this book went to print, however, there was no sign that he did. The Suskind book suggests that the forgery was handwritten by former Iraqi intelligence chief Tahir Habbush, who began cooperating with the CIA even before the Iraq invasion and was eventually paid off and “resettled.” The purported memo was slipped to a British reporter, billed as authentic, by an aide in the Interim Governing Council in Iraq, and published in late 2003 in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph (Ronald Suskind, The Way of the World, NY: Harper, 2008, 361–, CIA statement, 8/22/08, www.cia.gov, “Statement from Rob Richer,” http://suskinsresponse.googlepages.com, “A Note to Readers,” www.ronsuskind.com, Letters from Rep. Conyers to Rob Richer, John Maguire, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, & John Hannah, 8/20/08, www.judiciary.house.gov).

12 Giraldi: Philip Giraldi, “Suskind Revisited,” 8/7/08, www.amconmag.com;

13 “manufactured”: int. Paul Pillar for Frontline: “The Dark