Whose hoax was this, anyway?

Might there be more to the supposedly discredited Telegraph story (about Abu Nidal’s possible training of September 11 terrorist Muhammad Atta) than meets the eye?
Originally, Glenn Reynolds linked to the story, and when I read his link I recalled the very suspicious circumstances of Abu Nidal’s death — and, in particular, this contemporaneous spin, which struck me as classic disinformation.
I got a coveted Instalanche, and then when the first story was (apparently) discredited I felt terrible, because I do try to be accurate and I don’t want to be seen as someone who’d help fuel a false story. (Not that Glenn Reynolds or anyone else could have known anything more than the Telegraph knew, but this isn’t a question of fault; just accuracy.)
I know there’s always a risk taking these stories at their face value, but I feel obligated to return to the matter again now that I have seen this Newsmax report:

In a development that adds evidence to the case that Iraq played a direct role in the worst attack ever on the U.S., reports show that Ziad Jarrah – who piloted the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers had discovered they were on a suicide mission – also had ties to Nidal.
Like Atta, Jarrah traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where three al-Qaeda operatives plotted their attack. The other member of the Hamburg cell was Marwan al Shehhi, who drove his plane into the World Trade Center’s South Tower. Jarrah’s assigned target: the White House.
“A constant figure in Jarrah’s life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah,” reported the Wall Street Journal in August 2002. “According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to [Abu] Nidal’s terror group.”
The Journal’s Asla Aydintasbas – the only U.S.-based reporter to explore the Nidal-9/11 link in any depth – reported that the Palestinian terror kingpin spent much of his terrorism career as a hired hand, often in service to Iraq or Syria.
Just days before Aydintasbas’ report, Nidal had been found dead in Baghdad of multiple gunshot wounds; his demise ruled a suicide by Saddam’s security forces.
Der Spiegel reporter Gunther Latsch told Aydintasbas that Ziad Jarrah was “very close” to his great-Uncle Assem, the Abu Nidal operative: “He was the one who picked him up at the airport when [Ziad] first came to Germany. The uncle paid for his apartment. He really took care of him.”
Then, just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, Uncle Assem disappeared, after living in Germany for 18 years. The 9/11 hijacker relative has not been spotted since.
Even before the 9/11 attacks, U.S. intelligence feared Abu Nidal would play a role in what they warned at the time was a growing terror alliance between Saddam and bin Laden.

I do not have any way of verifying this story, but it certainly deserves further investigation.
If it turns out to be true, then it might be worth considering whether (as Dan Darling suggested) Muhammad Atta in fact had a double who deceived American authorities as to his whereabouts:

….[I]t apparently escapes Isikoff and Hosenball to note that if Atta were planning to leave the country illegally (something he would have had to have done in order to visit either the Czech Republic or Iraq), he could easily have laid a false paper trail – especially if he was planning on going to Iraq (which would have raised definite red flags if he were tracked during that period). (Link via HipperCritical.)

What if Atta did such a good job that his deception is still working?


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