Left-swinging pundits are still taking shots at Vice President Cheney over his response in a June 17, 2004, CNBC interview with Gloria Borger. (Alan Colmes revisited the episode on last night's (7/19/04) Hannity & Colmes.)

        Borger and Cheney were discussing the disputed theory that Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April 2001.

CNBC's GLORIA BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohamed Atta for a minute because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."

VP CHENEY: No, I never said that.

BORGER: OK.

VP CHENEY: I never said that.

BORGER: I think that is...

VP CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9 of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down, we just don't know.

(emphasis added)

        In fact, Cheney did use the phrase "pretty well confirmed" in a Meet the Press interview on December 9, 2001, over two-and-a-half years ago. Pundits like Colmes have been citing this as evidence that the Vice President is somehow dishonest.

        However, at that time of the interview, news of a possible Atta meeting had just come to light, and it may have seemed "pretty well confirmed" to Cheney. Czech intelligence, to this day, continues to stand by this important piece of intelligence. (Here is a MUST-SEE link.)

        So, where's the bias? Borger and other reporters have harked back to this one remark over two-and-a-half years ago when in three more-recent appearances on Meet the Press, Vice President Cheney said exactly what he said to Borger, that the Atta meeting is unconfirmed and alleged!

        (Meet the Press (Sunday mornings, NBC) is hosted by Tim Russert.) (Starting with the most recent:)

        1. Cheney on Meet the Press, 9/14/03:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: With respect to 9/11, of course you've had the story that's been publicly out there: The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack. But we've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know. (emphasis added)
 

        2. Cheney on Meet the Press, 9/8/02:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I’m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can’t say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the intelligence business.

RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that and the president?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it’s unconfirmed at this point. We’ve got...

RUSSERT: Anything else?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is-again, I want to separate out 9/11, from the other relationships between Iraq and the al-Qaeda organization. But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years.

(emphasis added)

 

        3. Cheney on Meet the Press, 3/24/02:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: [on Iraq] ... With respect to the connections to al-Qaida, we haven't been able to pin down any connection there. I read this report with interest after our interview last fall. We discovered, and it's since been public, the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, but we've not been able yet from our perspective to nail down a close tie between the al-Qaida organization and Saddam Hussein. We'll continue to look for it. (emphasis added)

 

        By the way, those who scream that the Bush administration was bent on finding a 9/11 - Saddam link ever since September 11 should take note of what Vice President Cheney said to Tim Russert only five days after 9/11 on Meet the Press:

RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation? [Sept. 11 attacks]

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.
 

 

TheMediaReport.com says ... The media's bias against Vice President Cheney is "pretty well confirmed."