One of Dick Cheney’s favorite lies — that 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attacks — has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. Atta wasn’t even in Prague at the time of the alleged meeting and the 9/11 Commission has concluded, “We do not believe that such a meeting occurred.” Naturally, Cheney continues to repeat the claim anyway, because he is a man without shame.
But just to add to the list of people who know Cheney is lying badly, George Tenet, as he walks out the CIA door for the last time, made clear that he, like everyone else, doesn’t believe Cheney’s claim, either.
George J. Tenet, the departing director of central intelligence, has told Congress that the C.I.A. is “increasingly skeptical” that a Sept. 11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001, an assessment very different in tone from continuing assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that such a meeting might have taken place.
In a letter, sent to Congress on July 1, Mr. Tenet said Mr. Atta “would have been unlikely to undertake the substantial risk of contacting any Iraqi official” at such a date, when the Sept. 11 plot was well under way.
The statement, the most complete public assessment by the agency on the issue, was sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee in response to a question posed by the committee’s ranking Democrat, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, at a hearing on March 9. It was made public by Senator Levin on Thursday, as Mr. Tenet bid farewell to his colleagues at a ceremony at the agency’s headquarters. He leaves his post this weekend.
Of course, Cheney has far too much invested in his lie to back down now.
[A spokesman for Mr. Cheney, Kevin Kellems] said Mr. Cheney’s public statements had “reflected the evolving judgment of the intelligence community, as briefed to him by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Poor Kellems; he has to lie to accommodate Cheney’s lies.
Cheney’s public statements have been about pushing a bogus agenda to justify an unnecessary war. The intelligence community’s take on the non-existent Atta meeting haven’t been “evolving”; they’ve been consistently at odds with Cheney’s agenda.
To that extent, Tenet was repeating what was widely already known. Still, it’s nice to get one more person highlighting Dick Cheney’s mendacity.