March 29, 2006: Cheney Finally Concedes that Alleged Atta-Iraqi Agent Meeting ‘Has Been Pretty Well Knocked Down Now’

In an interview, Vice President Cheney says, “We had one report early on from another intelligence service that suggested that the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague, Czechoslovakia. And that reporting waxed and waned where the degree of confidence in it, and so forth, has been pretty well knocked down now at this stage, that that meeting ever took place. So we’ve never made the case, or argued the case that somehow [Saddam Hussein] was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming. But there—that’s a separate proposition from the question of whether or not there was some kind of a relationship between the Iraqi government, Iraqi intelligence services and the al-Qaeda organization.” [White House, 3/29/2006] This is a reversal for Cheney, who strongly argued that the meeting took place, even after most experts concluded that it did not (see June 17, 2004).