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Omaha Steve

(99,632 posts) Tue Jun 19, 2012, 04:59 PM Jun 2012

CIA releases declassified documents from 9/11 file

Source: AP-Excite

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and ADAM GOLDMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Budgetary woes in the CIA unit that tracked Osama bin Laden prior to the deadly 2001 strikes led analysts to believe that catching the al-Qaida leader was unlikely, according to government records published Tuesday.

Many of the newly released documents are cited in the 9/11 Commission report, published in 2004. The documents, dated between 1992 and 2004 are heavily blacked out and offer little new information about what the U.S. knew about the al-Qaida plot before 2001.

The National Security Archive obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request and published them on its website Tuesday. The archive is a private group seeking transparency in government.

The CIA had no immediate comment.

FULL story at link.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120619/D9VGE3FG5.html

This July 22, 2004 file photo shows a Barnes and Noble book store in Springfield, Ill., displaying "The 9/11 Commission Report", the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attack upon the United States. The CIA released hundreds of pages of declassified documents related to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that detail the agency’s budgetary woes leading up to the attacks and its attempts to track al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Many of the documents are cited in the 9/11 Commission report. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

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CIA releases declassified documents from 9/11 file (Original Post) Omaha Steve Jun 2012 OP

Bizarre given that the CTC budget quadrupled after 1998. More important, the release shows Cheney leveymg Jun 2012 #1

leveymg

(36,418 posts)

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

Reply to Omaha Steve (Original post)

Tue Jun 19, 2012, 05:15 PM

Jun 2012

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.

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