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repeatedly, almost obsessively, that Iraq may in fact have been involved in the September 11 plot.” The Vice President liked to cite the Czech intelligence report suggesting that hijack leader Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague. See note below—evidence was developed strongly suggesting that the report was unreliable (10/7/02 address: “Address to the Nation on Iraq,” www.presidency.ucsb.edu; mentioned 9/11: Christian Science Monitor, 3/14/03; “White House played”: Shenon, 126–, 381–, & see Report, “Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Offcials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information,” U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, 110th Cong., http://intelligence.senate.gov).

2 polls: The references are to a Pew Research poll of February 2003, a Knight-Ridder poll in January that year, and a 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