A former Iraqi intelligence officer said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told U.S. officials no such meeting occurred, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Citing U.S. officials familiar with classified intelligence reports, the newspaper said Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, who was taken into U.S. custody in July, told interrogators he did not meet Mohamed Atta in Prague.
That reported meeting was used by conservatives within and outside the Bush administration as evidence of a link between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In the run-up to the war, U.S. President George W. Bush argued that invading Iraq was part of his administration's anti-terrorism campaign.
U.S. officials cautioned that Ani may have lied to interrogators about the meeting, but the CIA and FBI eventually concluded that the meeting probably did not take place and that there was no evidence that Saddam's government was involved in the Sept. 11 hijack attacks, the Times said.
Czech officials initially confirmed reports that an Iraqi spy had met with Atta in Prague, even as the CIA and FBI said it was unable to corroborate them. The meeting eventually became a key element in a battle between the CIA and Bush administration hawks over prewar intelligence, the Times said.
Officials said that since Saddam's government was toppled and the United States gained access to Iraqi officials and files, the CIA has still not uncovered evidence that might change its prewar assessment of the connections between Saddam and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the report said.