Posted on 08/10/2005 9:13:33 PM PDT by Pikamax
9/11 Commission's Staff Ignored Military's Early Identification of Chief Hijacker By DOUGLAS JEHL and PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - The Sept. 11 commission was warned by a uniformed military officer 10 days before issuing its final report that the account would be incomplete without reference to what he described as a secret military operation that by the summer of 2000 had identified as a potential threat the member of Al Qaeda who would lead the attacks more than a year later, commission officials said on Wednesday.
The officials said that the information had not been included in the report because aspects of the officer's account had sounded inconsistent with what the commission knew about that Qaeda member, Mohammed Atta, the plot's leader.
But aides to the Republican congressman who has sought to call attention to the military unit that conducted the secret operation said such a conclusion relied too much on specific dates involving Mr. Atta's travels and not nearly enough on the operation's broader determination that he was a threat.
The briefing by the military officer is the second known instance in which people on the commission's staff were told by members of the military team about the secret program, called Able Danger.
The meeting, on July 12, 2004, has not been previously disclosed. That it occurred, and that the officer identified Mr. Atta there, were acknowledged by officials of the commission after the congressman, Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, provided information about it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is from the Times? Is their editor on vacation?
It will run on page Z-30.
Now that's very, very,.....illogical....
/intelligence?
FYI Ping
Or maybe it's whitewash for the Plame thing.
"But aides to the Republican congressman who has sought to call attention to the military unit that conducted the secret operation said such a conclusion relied too much on specific dates involving Mr. Atta's travels and not nearly enough on the operation's broader determination that he was a threat."
So was it just the "Republican's" aides, or was it everybody's, and this is counter-spin directed to him.
typical NYTimes disinformation.
Of course, Atta's travels are of particular interest to Prague...
I'm sure they also ignored Laurie Mylroie's testimony.
"Mr. Felzenberg said staff investigators had become wary of the officer because he argued that Able Danger had identified Mr. Atta, an Egyptian, as having been in the United States in late 1999 or early 2000. The investigators knew this was impossible, Mr. Felzenberg said, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000."
Maybe he had a different passport? Doh!
> This is from the Times? Is their editor on vacation?
Too big for them to ignore (unlike Air Enron).
But they will try to manage it.
Note the title:
"9/11 Commission's Staff Ignored ..."
Not the Commission. Their Staff.
Scapegoat time.
One Commissioner, Gorelick, of course, either already
knew, or pretended not to know when this came up.
History will show that Bush's greatest blunder, the thing about which he was most stupid, was his failure to purge EVERY Clintonista and ensure that no Clintonista ever had a role in his administration. The dem scumbags on the 9/11 Commission had no interest in the facts or the truth, just in protecting Willie and, indirectly, Hillie.
....bingo...Bingo....BINGO!
Had this been last minute info that "Rumsfeld and Bush knew!" the presses would have been stopped.
i could think of a few others, but i take your point.
Does anyone have an email address for Gorelick?
She must hear from the public on this.
1964 - The Warren Commission
2004 - The 9/11 Commission
I want to know what documents he took and possibly replaced (with new ones) and which ones he shredded :0)
2004 - The 9/11 Commission
well put!
See this:
http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/08/10/able-dangersandy-berger-connection/
She links to Dr. Sanity and The Jawa Report; Dr. Sanity's got a timeline for the whole thing; Rusty (Jawa Report) has more.
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/08/motive-for-bergers-bizarre-behavior.html
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/111281.php
I agree with you on Berger and Clark.
Also, for the past couple of weeks it seems we've had a thread a day about Clinton making a speech from some corner of the World. It's as if he's trying to pull the attention away from Washington for some reason or another.
The summer of 2000? President Bush should have taken action immediately that summer. Immediately! Oh, wait...
Mr. Felzenberg said staff investigators had become wary of the officer because he argued that Able Danger had identified Mr. Atta, an Egyptian, as having been in the United States in late 1999 or early 2000. The investigators knew this was impossible, Mr. Felzenberg said, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000.
Late 1999 would be around the millennium, now wouldn't it
I can't believe this was from the slimes. I hope Weldon keeps plugging away at this. We all deserve to know the truth about 9/11 and the warnings that were ignored ahead of it.
1964 - The Warren Commission
2004 - The 9/11 Commission
bump
Gorelick was responsible for the lack of intelligence shared between agencies, wasn't she? Didn't she author the memo in 1995 that preventing information sharing?
Bill Clinton was all about politics and ZERO about National Security. What else could explain why the Iraqi connection to the OKC Bombing was ignored, or why OBL on a silver platter was denied?
Bill Clinton was a coward, he and that useless moron Dick Morris never considered anything unless it was politically advantageous, and to Hell with what is good for the Country.
In the coming years, the Clinton Administration will be exposed and the History Books will not be kind to William Jefferson "Blythe" Clinton and the hundreds of "Fall Guys" he carefully chose to surround himself with
Yep!
Gorelick had no business being on that panel and should have been a witness
AND we would never have known about that memo if it wasn't for John Ashcroft brining it up at his hearing before the Commission
Gorelick went pale at that point
Jamie Gorelick, you are going down.
You can throw in the Church Committee and Torricelli in there for the down fall of our intell gathering
That's what I was thinking .. this sure doesn't sound like the Times.
BINGO, and Richard Clark is right behind her
There has to be an Able Danger paper trail regarding this information. If it no longer exists, then it should be reported and assumed that Berger destroyed the information.
I like the "travel records confirmed". What, they thought that knew exactly where he was every day of 1999?
Sounds more like it didn't fit into their notion of the problem, so they ignored it. A lot like the reason we didn't connect the dots before, and a lot like what happens so much in our government.
Here's a radical idea. Fire EVERY SINGLE CIVIL SERVANT. Then hire all new staff. You can re-hire the existing people, but the must be put in different departments.
Two years of hell, but after that, thousands of NEW IDEAS from people who don't know "how it is always done".
In my employment, they have a program which rotates people around. It hurts when you lose a good person out of your project, but it brings you new people who have a fresh perspective.
"Something really stinks in Washington when the republicans say nothing about Gorelicker and Sandy Burglar.They should have been raising hell over these two issues but instead they did nothing.The sellout just keeps rolling along."
I agree. I now want to see both parties destroyed.
The whole point of the 9/11 commision was to white wash the Clinton Administration.
Jamie Gorelick, call your office. The wall is crumbling.
If the cell members lent or borrowed or traded cell phones and or credit cards, the data mining would show a hit for the person with the cell phone or credit card hit, NOT the physical person who may have used it.
Atta's cards or cell phones might have been used (getting hits on Able Danger's radar) with Atta not even in the country.
That would be nice .. but we can't .. it's against the law
Why do you think many of the Clinton people took Civil Servant jobs before he left office?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/09/AR2005080900661.html
Excerpt:
According to Weldon, Able Danger identified Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi as members of a cell the unit code-named "Brooklyn" because of some loose connections to New York City.
Weldon said that in September 2000 Able Danger recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists." However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement.
Weldon did not provide details on how the intelligence officials identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a cell.
Defense Department documents shown to an Associated Press reporter Tuesday said the Able Danger team was set up in 1999 to identify potential al-Qaida operatives for U.S. Special Operations Command. At some point, information provided to the team by the Army's Information Dominance Center pointed to a possible al-Qaida cell in Brooklyn, the documents said.
However, because of concerns about pursuing information on "U.S. persons" _ a legal term that includes U.S. citizens as well as foreigners admitted to the country for permanent residence _ Special Operations Command did not provide the Army information to the FBI. It is unclear whether the Army provided the information to anyone else.
The command instead turned its focus to overseas threats.
Just like that, they wave it away without investigating it any further. There could be many reasons why the dates and time didn't match -- how about using different passports for starters. Atta's name itself most definitely deserves further scrutiny -- but noooooooo they didn't like the dates so they just wave it off.
In translated Clinton speak, the quote above in bold should read:
"This information did not fit in with the conclusions we reached before the commission ever got started."
It's the same today. What's good for America, is bad for Democrats. What's bad for America, is good for Democrats.
I prey [sic] that Hillary runs in 2008.
Yea just like he took action on the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole
OF COURSE the commission ignored the information - - it would have reflected poorly on the Clinton Administration, but more importantly it would have ruined one of their own, Jamie Gorelick.
"History will show that Bush's greatest blunder, the thing about which he was most stupid, was his failure to purge EVERY Clintonista and ensure that no Clintonista ever had a role in his administration."
Been sayin' it from day one.
No decent person would work for the Slickmeister.
The 9/11 Commission KNEW about this all along but didn't even mention it in their report. Who did they cover up for? Bill Clinton, because it was the lawyers in his administration that cleared the path for the 9/11 hijackers.
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