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The CIA gathers foreign intelligence
by, among other means, penetrating the governments of
potentially hostile foreign states and maintaining liaisons
with the intelligence services of friendly states. If
information emerges from such sources about possible
attacks within the United States, it is responsible
for passing it on to the FBI and other law enforcement
agencies, or, if urgent enough, directly to the National
Security Advisor in the White House.
One friendly nation it maintained
a liaison with prior to 9-11-2001 was the Czech Republic.
On April, 22, 2001, the Czech
deputy foreign minister, Hynek Kmonicek, ordered the
expulsion of a top Iraq in Prague, second consul Ahmed
Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, after receiving information
from the Czech counterintelligence service that al-Ani
had met with a suspicious Arab student. The BIS had
been concerned that this meeting might be connected
to a previous plan for state-sponsored terrorism by
Iraq— a car bombing of the headquarters of Radio Free
Europe— which it had learned about through the defection
of al-Ani's predecessor at the Iraq Embassy. The expulsion
was a major public event.
The
BIS identified (after 9-11) the suspicious
Arab student as Mohammed Atta, who had previously traveled
to Prague en route to the United States in 2000.
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Questions:
1) Did the CIA learn through
its liaison with the Czech Republic the reasons for
the expulsion of Al-Ani prior to 9-11-2001?
2) Did it learn about the Iraqi
bomb plot against Radio Free Europe through its liaison
with either the Czechs or MI-6 (which debriefed the
Iraqi defector)?
3) Did it learn that the BIS
had concerns over a suspicious Arab who had previously
gone from Prague to the US?
4) Did it request any traces
be made on Al-Ani or his putative contact?
5) Did it pass on a report about
either al-Ani or the bomb plot against Radio Free Europe,
which falls under FBI jurisdiction, to the FBI or the
joint task force?
Witnesses:
Ambassador Hynek
Kmonicek, now the Czech delegate to
the UN in New York. (Kmonicek has stated that there
is "detailed evidence" that led Czech counterintelligence
to conclude that the individual al-Ani had met with
was Mohamed Atta?)
Stanislav Gross, the Minister
of Interior of the Czech Republic, who has expressed
confidence in the evidence that al-Ani met Atta.
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