Declassified document contradicts Cheney's claim of Iraqi connection to 9/11

Despite this briefing, just days later on Dec. 9, 2001, Cheney told the late Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, that the meeting in Prague had been “pretty well confirmed.”

Even after the CIA had again refuted the link between Iraq and the 9/11 hijacker, Cheney still repeated it during a Sept. 2003 appearance on Meet the Press. Shortly after Russert confronted him with polling that showed as much as 69 percent of Americans believed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney responded:

With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public 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 anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

The problem with that now appears to be that the vice president did know the intelligence was bogus, but continued repeating it to support his argument for war. No link was ever established between the Iraqi regime and the attacks of Sept. 11.