The staff statements by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States are but the latest evidence that the commission is a national embarrassment. It was last seen insulting this city’s finest and bravest who fell on September 11 as “not worthy of the Boy Scouts.” The two staff reports released Wednesday are riddled with holes.

One of the statements deals with the question of whether the September 11 leader, Mohammed Atta, met with an officer of Iraq intelligence the April before the attack. The commission’s statement says, “We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI’s investigation places him in Virginia as of April 4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta’s cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida.”

This certainly strikes us as something much less than conclusive proof that the meeting did not occur. Sightings of Atta in America on April 4 and April 11 are hardly inconsistent with his being in Prague on April 9. Tens of thousands of Americans travel to Europe each year for a week or less. A lot of them go to the bank before their trips and withdraw substantial amounts of cash. And some of them even lend their cellular phones to friends to use while they are away. Nor do we put much stock in “detainee reporting.” That’s a polite way of saying what jailed terrorists tell us. Why would anyone trust them?

We checked yesterday with the Czech Embassy at Washington, D.C., and it isn’t exactly backing away from the account of the Prague meeting. The embassy’s spokesman, Petr Janousek, said, “There may have been a meeting, but we’re not sure. Nobody is sure whether there was a meeting or not. Nobody can say anything for certain.”That’s a far cry from the commission’s “We do not believe that such a meeting occurred.”

Another staff statement deals with contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It says, “There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

No collaborative relationship? Remember what Secretary of State Powell told the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. “This senior al-Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of al-Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al-Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al-Qaida leader Muhammad Atif, did not believe that al-Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help.”

Mr. Powell said, “Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq. The support that this detainee describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abdallah al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gasses. Abdallah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.”

The September 11 Commission staff is trying to pick and choose which detainees it believes. It believes the ones who say there was no Atta meeting in Prague and no ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq, but it doesn’t believe — or even mention — the one cited by Mr. Powell. The commission offered no explanation of its inconsistency. We don’t find any of the detainee accounts particularly credible, but when it came to deciding whether to act to protect America against the risk of another attack like September 11 — perhaps one with chemical or biological weapons — the prudent course was to act as if the most dangerous accounts, which comported with much other evidence, were true.

Imagine, after all, the commission that would be convened if Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had unleashed chemical or biological weapons against New York and if Mr. Powell’s response had been, “the terrorists we detained told us they had nothing to do with Iraq.” Or, “We were warned but didn’t believe the terrorist who warned us.” The commission would be pondering why anyone would bet American security on a terrorist’s word or why the warning was ignored. The 9/11 Commission just doesn’t seem to grasp that in this context it does not look like an institution to which one would want to entrust the national security.