The Mohamed Atta Prague claim
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Among the fabrications John Kiriakou identifies in the making of the Iraq war, one is singled out by name and dismissed without qualification.

The claim

When Dick Cheney went on television and tied Mohamed Atta to Saddam Hussein, specifically to the Iraqi intelligence service station chief in Prague, that, Kiriakou says, was just a big lie. An out-and-out lie. There was absolutely no evidence that Mohamed Atta ever met with any representative of the Iraqi government. It was made up.  

The motive he ascribes

Kiriakou's explanation of why the fabrications were necessary is that the decision preceded the evidence. He says he always believed there was a plan to attack Iraq from before George W. Bush even won the presidency, that there was a movement among prominent neoconservatives to have a plan ready to pitch if and when Bush won, and that it could be disguised in any way they wanted. September 11, he says, was the most convenient way to do it, and the easiest. 

He adds a second, more personal motive: he always believed the animosity between the Bush White House and Saddam Hussein was very personal, and that it was rooted in Saddam's attempt to assassinate President George H. W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993. 

The parallel fabrication

The Prague story sat alongside intelligence Kiriakou says the CIA knew to be false. There were parallel sources, he explains: the reporting being supplied by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, which those at the CIA knew was fabricated, and even though the agency was telling the White House it was false, the office of the vice president elected to use that phony information to justify the war. 

Kiriakou's assessment of the strategic result is that it was self-defeating: the war emboldened the Iranians, because Saddam Hussein was the only bulwark against Iranian hegemony in the Gulf, and he was removed for personal reasons in a decision that made no geopolitical sense at all. 

See also

- Dick Cheney
- Iraq WMD intelligence
- Ahmed Chalabi
- Saddam Hussein
- 1993 Bush Kuwait assassination plot
- Office of Special Plans Israeli leak
- Curveball
