Edward Jay Epstein (previous post here) is the author of a new book on Hollywood, The Big Picture (Random House, 2005), and is in the process of writing a book on the 9/11 Commission. In this fascinating Opinion Journal piece, Mr. Epstein explains the maddening difficulties of tracking down the truth of whether 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague during April, 2001. Particularly interesting is the following excerpt, which describes Czech intelligence agent Jiri Ruzek’s troubling experience in dealing with the American intelligence community:
On Sept. 11, Mohamed Atta’s picture was shown on Czech television, and the next day the BIS’s [the Czech intelligence agency] source in the Iraqi Embassy dropped a bombshell. He told his BIS case officer that he recognized Atta as the Arab who got in the car with [Iraqi intelligence agent] al-Ani on April 9. Mr. Ruzek immediately relayed the secret information to Washington through the CIA liaison. The FBI sent an interrogation team to Prague, which, after questioning and testing the source, concluded that there was a 70% likelihood that he was not intentionally lying and sincerely believed that he saw Atta with al-Ani. The issue remained whether he had mistaken someone who resembled Atta for the 9/11 hijacker. Meanwhile, records were found showing that Atta had applied for a Czech visa in Germany in 2000, and made at least one previous trip to Prague (from Bonn, by bus, on June 2, 2000, flying to Newark, N.J., the next day).
Less than a week after Mr. Ruzek shared the BIS’s confidential information with American intelligence, it was leaked. The Associated Press reported, “A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has received information from a foreign intelligence service that Mohamed Atta, a hijacker aboard one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center, met earlier this year in Europe with an Iraqi intelligence agent.” CBS named al-Ani as the person meeting with Atta in Prague.
Mr. Ruzek was furious. He considered what he had passed on to the FBI to be unevaluated raw intelligence, and its disclosure not only risked compromising the BIS’s penetration in the Iraqi Embassy but also greatly reduced the chances of confirming the intelligence in the first place.
Read the entire piece.