NYT: 9/11 Commission's Staff Rejected Report on Early Identification of Chief Hijacker

New York Times ^ | August 11, 2005 | DOUGLAS JEHL and PHILIP SHENON

[OESY]

...Al Felzenberg, who served as the commission's chief spokesman, said earlier this week that staff members who were briefed about Able Danger at a first meeting, in October 2003, did not remember hearing anything about Mr. Atta or an American terrorist cell. On Wednesday, however, Mr. Felzenberg said the uniformed officer who briefed two staff members in July 2004 had indeed mentioned Mr. Atta....

Mr. Felzenberg said the commission's staff remained convinced that the information provided by the military officer in the July 2004 briefing was inaccurate in a significant way....

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.

"There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report," Mr. Felzenberg said. "This information was not meshing with the other information that we had."

But Russell Caso, Mr. Weldon's chief of staff, said that "while the dates may not have meshed" with the commission's information, the central element of the officer's claim was that "Mohammed Atta was identified as being tied to Al Qaeda and a Brooklyn cell more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, and that should have warranted further investigation by the commission."

Mr. Caso: "If Mohammed Atta was identified by the Able Danger project, why didn't the Department of Defense provide that information to the F.B.I.?"

Mr. Felzenberg confirmed an account by Mr. Weldon's staff that the briefing... had been conducted....

[OESY]

[bitt]

info ping

[Ron in Acreage]

The 9/11 Commission was only formed to run interference for the Clinton administration. Nothing but a whitewash. The report was written before the first hearing ever occured.

[mainepatsfan]

The MSM went right along with it.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

Was it documents revealing the attention to Mohammed Atta during the klinton administration that Sandy Berger stuffed into his pants and socks at the Natl Archives? We KNOW Burger was one of the main players in allowing UBL to carry on unmolested and uncaptured......

[Tsunamii]

Mr. Felzenberg said. "This information was not meshing with the other information that we had."


AKA: Stop muddling up our conclusions with facts.

[PhiKapMom]

So this spokesman and his staff had selective memory loss until the facts came out. That means the 9-11 Commission Report was flawed from the beginning.

This may actually be better then if he had briefed them because some of the 9-11 Commission members are livid and it shows the length the Clintonites went to in order to keep this information from being made public.

I hear Ms. Clinton's Presidential bid ticking away and headed down the sewer as more and more information is revealed about her and her husband's administration. Perfect ad -- Do you want the person(s) who allowed 9-11 to happen to be anywhere near the WH?

The MSM cannot ignore all of this forever as talk radio and other places like FR keep exposing the Clinton lies of them and their minions.

[Ron in Acreage]

When the GOP put liberal RINO Keane in charge, I knew it was over.

[mainepatsfan]

They were more worried about everyone being in agreement than getting to the truth.

[Quilla]

"Furthermore," Mr. Caso said, "if Mohammed Atta was identified by the Able Danger project, why didn't the Department of Defense provide that information to the F.B.I.?"

How could anyone pose this question without a single mention of Gorelick's wall?

[pro610]

This story is too big for the media to ignore,
All Conservatives need to keep the pressure on the media to find out why the Clinton administration tried to cover this up.

[OldFriend]

With the aiding and abetting of Tom Kean.

[Ron in Acreage]

Exactly! They had a predetermined outcome. Blame no one, despite all roads leading to Clintons justice dept. failings and incompetence. Intentional, i'm convinced.

[mainepatsfan]

The MSM media is going to give the Gorelick memo the Swift Boat Vets treatment. Ignore it and hope they don't have to cover it.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Ron in Acreage]

re; post 13. Right on.

[Hornet19]

With Gorelick on the commission and Sandy Berger stealing documents, the fix was in.

[mewzilla]

They're trying to blame the staffers.

Let's haul everyone up and have them testify UNDER OATH, and then we'll see who says what.

[rabidralph]

Rove's plan is coming together :-) Remember that quote from Bill Clinton the day of the attacks? "I knew it was Al Qaeda..." Perhaps, he wasn't grandstanding.

[mainepatsfan]

The MSM knows Hillary can't win if she's perceived to be weak on terrorism. This story can't help her.

[Ron in Acreage]

They'll only lie under oath anyway. The GOP leadership will leave Weldon hanging out to dry to look like a kook. They are truly gutless.

[Quilla]

Ever wonder why Gorelick erected the wall in the first place? Check this out!

How Chinagate Led To 9-11

[mewzilla]

I doubt everyone will :)

And all it takes is one.

[Ron in Acreage]

I don't think there are enough voters who would trust this countries national security to a woman. Not even democrats.

[ConsentofGoverned]

"They'll only lie under oath anyway. The GOP leadership will leave Weldon hanging out to dry to look like a kook. They are truly gutless."

We MUST contact congress about this and DEMAND the testimony of those involved: Gorelick on down..STOP letting the elites protect each other. I hope GW BUSH will allow this to happen but I have been very disappointed so far>> marc rich pardons..nothing, Berger..slap on wrist and oK for security clearance in 3 yrs..China money to clintons..nothing, Bush Sr and Clinton acting like pals ..anyone see a pattern here??

[Ron in Acreage]

Birds of a feather.....It's disgusting. I wonder why I vote sometimes.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Tom Kean's GOP credentials should be withdrawn.

[Sacajaweau]

I just love it when the Dem camp goes "silent". There's a big Dem conference going on somewhere. Yeh, I know...they're on vacation which gives the biased media a "shhhhh" option.

[johnny7]

Not exclusively.

The MAIN focus was to blame as much as possible on Bush... and of course, the CIA.

[conservative in nyc]

So far, there's no proof of a link between the Sandy Burgling and the Able Danger al-Qaeda organization chart. According to April press reports, Sandy burgled five drafts of the Richard Clarke millennium "after action review" from early 2000, and his handwritten notes on those reports. The Able Danger chart including Atta wasn't put together until the summer of 2000. So Sandy couldn't have burgled the chart, unless it was created earlier or the MSM's reporting is otherwise wrong.

Able Danger WAS looking into al-Qaeda links since 1999. So it's possible that information other than the chart could have made its way into the burgled after-action report.

[rod1]

We need a good cartoon of Jamie plugging the Al-Qaida information flow dike since that appear to be the reality of this US disaster.

Thanks a bunch Gorelick, Reno and Sandy (I have a pants load) Burger.

[q_an_a]

too right. the commission is now proof that it was a set up. How much else was left out because it did not match what one side thought or was willing to tell?

[LurkedLongEnough]

NOTHING at CNN.com. That is a statement in itself.

Thankfully, I don't have TV, so I won't be aware if this story's not covered there either. Grrrr....

[toomanygrasshoppers]

The GOP leadership will leave Weldon hanging out to dry to look like a kook. They are truly gutless.

They are more interested in protecting their "phoney baloney jobs" than doing what is right for the People.

[randog]

A couple of points:

1) How can the 911 commissioners claim that they don't remember meeting with DOD officials? Didn't they keep meeting notes, or did they write the entire 911 Report from memory?

2) Why did they choose to delete any references of Able Danger from the report? Why not mention it, even if it went against their other "facts"?

3) Can I get a refund for my purchased copy of the 911 Report, or will they be issuing an addendum that says, "Oh, yeah--there were some military dudes that said they had some info on the 911 hijackers, but it doesn't matter"?

[advance_copy]

Hmmmm. Summer of 2000, eh? Let's see, who was Jamie Gorelick working for then? The 9/11 commission report was a coverup for slick Willie's lawyers who cleared the path for the hijackers.

[Enterprise]

In essence, Gorelick set up a system that shielded the Clinton Administration from criminal investigations.

The central question in all this can be this: If Gorelick knowlingly set up rules to obstruct investigations of criminal and national security matters, when is she going to be indicted? (We know the answer to this, but I had to ask anyway.)

[blackie]

It was a Clinton administration cover up!

Jamie Gorlick led the lying brigade!

Hang 'em High ~ Bump!

[Sidebar Moderator]

Your post #26 has been deleted because it contained more material from the same New York Times article which was excerpted by the original poster of this thread.

The New York Times is an excerpt and link only site. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts

Please do not attempt to bypass copyright restrictions by completing more or all of the story in a response.

Thank you.

[pepperhead]

What is all this going to do to Lee Hamilton's so called good reputation. LOL

[leprechaun9]

How about John Ashcroft's live TV testimony, before the 911 Commission of pimps of the election industry? Independent of blaming this on the staff who "Didn't Tell Us", were you at all listening to what John Ashcroft was saying or did you only have him testify as a PR move?

[putupjob]

Please folks, be reasonable. Why would the commission looking into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks consider it significant that intelligence data that mentioned Mohammed Atta by name might have existed. The commission was convened to see if any intelligence data existed concerning the hijackers. What did ATTA have to do with all that?

Are we really overdoing it? Are we expecting a commission to connect dots that loosely connected together?

Let's be honest, the name ATTA shouldn't have necessarily have raised any hackles in connection with this investigation. It would be just such a remote association. Besides, before this commission met, who had ever heard of Mohammed ATTA.

</sarcasm>

[Eroteme]

So far, there's no proof of a link between the Sandy Burgling and the Able Danger al-Qaeda organization chart. According to April press reports, Sandy burgled five drafts of the Richard Clarke millennium "after action review" from early 2000, and his handwritten notes on those reports. The Able Danger chart including Atta wasn't put together until the summer of 2000. So Sandy couldn't have burgled the chart, unless it was created earlier or the MSM's reporting is otherwise wrong.

Able Danger WAS looking into al-Qaeda links since 1999. So it's possible that information other than the chart could have made its way into the burgled after-action report.

Just because the finished Able Danger chart postdates the documents Berger stole doesn't mean that the information wasn't all there as text. Too, I'm not convinced that press reports accurately reflect what was stolen.

I think the widely accepted "fact" that each of the stolen documents were from Richard Clarke's after-action report on the foiled Millenium bombing plot is misleading. The whole thing always struck me as typically clintonesque, sleight of hand misdirection.

Initial reports described the stolen documents as dealing with the terrorism threat at the turn of the millenium. That encompasses any document dealing with terrorism in 1999-2000. Seamlessly, the lower-case millenium morphs to a capital M, and voila, it's assumed that it's Clarke's report at issue. I think this was intentional.

Because the facts of the case are sealed, we have only the circle jerk reporting of the MSM confirming each others' take on what exactly was stolen.

As I said here at the time the theft occurred, Berger would not have undertaken such an extraordinarily risky mission merely to prevent embarrassment over the LA Millenium plot. The facts of that incident were already known. Clinton and his administration had already survived it. No, it had to have been something radioactive--something as yet unknown and off-the-charts damaging. Mohammed Atta's name in a 1999 or early 2000 document fits the bill.

Sandy Berger was supposed to have been sentenced July 8th in a curiously lenient plea agreement whose terms include a requirement that he cooperate in the investigation. That sentencing has been postponed. So either Berger has not cooperated, or his cooperation is still needed and ongoing.

[small voice in the wilderness]

Who knew that WHOA....TMI was an actual position that could be adopted on the 9/11 panel??

[blackie]

He'll just say that it's all new to him. :)

[A Citizen Reporter]

Al Felzenberg, who served as the commission's chief spokesman, said earlier this week that staff members who were briefed about Able Danger at a first meeting, in October 2003, did not remember hearing anything about Mr. Atta or an American terrorist cell. On Wednesday, however, Mr. Felzenberg said the uniformed officer who briefed two staff members in July 2004 had indeed mentioned Mr. Atta....

Unbelieveable! NOW he remembers it, eh?

They discounted the information because it didn't "mesh" with the Clinton's idea of the "truth".

Rush is discussing this story now.

[OESY]

9/11 COMMISSION IGNORED KEY FACTS ON HIJACKERS
By Michelle Malkin · August 11, 2005 07:44 AM


The 9/11 Commission was supposed to give the America people a complete, unbiased story of the government failures that led up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. But the Commission now admits its acclaimed Final Report ignored key information provided by a U.S. Army data mining project, Able Danger, which identified Mohammed Atta and several other hijackers as potential terrorists prior to the September 11 attacks. The Able Danger team recommended that Atta and the other suspected terrorists be deported. That recommendation, however, was not shared with law enforcement officials, presumably because of the "wall" between intelligence activities and domestic law enforcement.

According to the New York Times, the 9/11 Commission officials said that Able Danger had not been included in their report because some of the information sounded inconsistent with what they thought they knew about Atta.

In other words, the Commission staffers were told about the project but ignored it because it didn't fit their pre-conceived conclusions.

Fortunately, the Commission has now 'fessed up. But not before trying to avoid blame earlier this week. Lee Hamilton, one of the Commission's co-chairs, said:

The Sept. 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."
Ed Morrissey, who has been following the story closely, comments on the Commission's blame-avoidance techniques and speculates as to why Able Danger was excluded from the Commission's report:

First we hear that no such [briefing] occurred. After that, the Commission says one might have occurred in October 2003 but that no one remembered it. Now we find out that the Commission had two meetings where [they] heard about Able Danger and its identification of Mohammed Atta, including one just before they completed their report. Instead of saying to themselves, "Hey, wait a minute -- this changes the picture substantially," and postponing the report until they could look further into Able Danger, they simply shrugged their shoulders and published what they had.
Why? Able Danger proved that at least some of the intelligence work done by the US provided the information that could have helped prevent or at least reduce the attacks on 9/11. They had identified the ringleader of the conspiracy as a terrorist agent, even if they didn't know what mission he had at the time.

What does that mean for the Commission's findings? It meant that the cornerstone of their conclusions no longer fit the facts. Able Danger showed that the US had enough intelligence to take action -- if the government had allowed law enforcement and intelligence operations to cooperate with each other. It also showed that data mining could effectively identify terrorist agents.

So what did the Commission do? It ignored those facts which did not fit within its predetermined conclusions. It never bothered to mention Able Danger even one time in its final report, even though that absolutely refuted the notion that the government had no awareness that Atta constituted a terrorist threat. It endorsed the idea of data mining (which would die in Congress as the Total Information Awareness program) without ever explaining why. And while the Clinton policy of enforcing a quarantine between law enforcement and intelligence operations came under general criticism, their report never included the fact that the "wall" for which Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick had so much responsibility specifically contributed to Atta's ability to come and go as he pleased, building the teams that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.


Morrissey expanded on the latter point in an earlier post:

Why didn't the Commission press harder for military intelligence, and if the Times' source has told the truth, why did they ignore the Able Danger operation in their deliberations? It would emphasize that the problem was not primarily operational, as the Commission made it seem, but primarily political -- and that the biggest problem was the enforced separation between law enforcement and intelligence operations upon which the Clinton Department of Justice insisted. The hatchet person for that policy sat on the Commission itself: Jamie S. Gorelick.
We will be hearing much more about this story. For blogger reactions, check out Morrissey, The Jawa Report, Baldilocks, Just One Minute, and The Anchoress. For more on Gorelick's conflict of interest, see here, here, and here.

***

Updates:

Jim Geraghty says Able Danger may be one of the biggest stories to come down the pike in awhile. He's right. And check out Geraghty's takedown of 9/11 Commission's work:

[A]s for the 9/11 Commission, after all that patting themselves on the back, all that gushing praise from left, right, and center, after their work was called "miraculous" by Newsday, and the nomination for a National Book Award, and calling their own work "extraordinary"... man, these guys stink. Really, if this checks out, and the staffers had information like this and they disregarded it, never believing that we in the public deserved to know that the plot's ringleader was identified, located and recommended to be arrested a year before the attacks... boy, these guys ought to be in stocks in the public square and have rotten fruit thrown at them. What a sham.

More at Villainous Company: "The Farce Continues"