Posted on 08/14/2005 11:22:47 AM PDT by george76
New questions about whether the U.S. had information about the 9/11 mastermind years before the attacks
Just how damning are allegations by Congressman Curt Weldon that a secret Pentagon intelligence operation pegged hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat nearly two years before he led the 9/11 attacks? When Weldon first made the charge in a new book and in a June speech on the House floor, it met with little attention, but perhaps due to the August heat or the approaching fourth anniversary of the attacks, the accusation ignited controversy last week.
The question is whether it has any substance. Weldon says a data-mining exercise, called Able Danger, spotted Atta and other hijackers in 1999, but Pentagon lawyers in September 2000 blocked officials running the program from handing the tip to the FBI.
Weldon’s further allegation that the 9/11 commission was alerted to the alleged oversight but ignored it prompted the defunct panel to conduct an investigation last week before issuing a statement late Friday saying members had received only an 11th-hour mention of Atta that “was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation.”
Meanwhile, at Weldon’s request, House intelligence committee chairman Peter Hoekstra told TIME he is investigating the matter...
Pentagon officials are playing down any controversy. They say they can find nothing produced by the Able Danger program...
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
That these same complicit individuals are still drawing a paycheck and/or lucrative government pension is the worst travesty of all and shows us how corrupt the system really is. Who are they? Let us know their names. And where are they? We will picket their homes and at least let decent citizens know who and where they are, just as we do with sexual predators who are also lawbreakers.
NEWSFLASH: The 9-11 Commission Report has been flushed down a toilet at GITMO. Where's the outrage?
Remember thr endless claims that there was no connection between Saddam and OBL and Iraq and terror? How could these idiots be so sure about the proof of a negative? They couldn't be! But, siad often enough and loud enough, they assumed that the sheep would accept it as fact.
Willie's buddy, Marc Rich, and many others made a fortune from Saddam's oil vouchers. Rich paid Willie for his pardon with Iraqi oil money.
Just as there was a major conspiracy to cover the Whitewater dishonesty, Willie, the dems and the ultra-left wing have manipulated evidence so as to divery attention from Willie's role in the 9/11 attack.
Overlooked? Nonsense!! Berger stole evidence of Willie's involvement; the Commission hid/ignored evidence of Willie's involvement!!!
Ole BJ Clinton was too busy unzipping his pants to pay attention to stuff like this.
OTOH, the only one saying this is TIME, so I'd take that, too, with a grain of salt.
Whether or not Weldon's report is completely accurate the Commission put out about 3 different, all conflicting, versions of what they knew, in a matter of about 3 days..So I would not reject his report out of hand. (See Captain's Quarters blog.com for the best analysis and factual recitation of all of this.)
After having first denied that staff had been briefed on Able Danger, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said no reference was made to it in the final report because "it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks," the AP reported.
The only dispute over Atta's whereabouts is whether he was in Prague on April 9, 2001, to meet with Samir al Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer. Czech intelligence insists he was. Able Danger, apparently, had information supporting the Czechs."
with Mark Steyn's take on the same statement:
Atta way to blow 9/11 panel's credibility
"If you want to know everything wrong with the 9/11 Commission in a single sound bite, consider this from Al Felzenberg, its official spokesman, speaking Wednesday:
''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. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had.''
Later on in the article it is made clear that the time frame they are talking about is pre-2000. Able Danger put Atta in the USA way before the Commission's time line.
I think Mark Steyn's interpretation sounds the more plausible one. That of course does not mean that Able Danger did not have any information on a possible Prague meeting, or that we (us FReepers) should stop looking for new clues.
Yes. I thinkSteyn is and has been more correct about this. Check out an article posted here a day or so ago entitled "Able Danger and the jiggered timeline" to see how Steyn's view and the detailed analysis by edwardjayepstein mesh.
Good job comparing those two statements like that. Thanks for doing that. And yes, we'll keep looking.
If as many suspect, the purpose of the "wall" was to hide the extent of "Chinagate", the date of Gorelick's letter shutting the door on cooperation between the FBI, CIA and DOD is relevant because the illegal fundraising began directly following the 1994 election. I believe that the Traitor-in-Chief had a meeting in early December 1994 that began the technology for money exchange with China.
If you go through backhoe's collected links you'll find what you are looking for.
I remember I collected some of those dates when the story first broke - and there were a number of private meetings between the Clinton's and the Chinese just before the wall slammed shut!
It's so funny how the DUmmies and Michael Moore won't touch this issue. A quick glance at DU shows 60% of the threads about this nutcase Sheehan.
This is partially repeated from above and expanded...
" What is speculation, but is interesting speculation: "
* " The 9/11 Commission staffers who felt the information about Able Danger wasn’t worth mentioning to their bosses could, conceivably, be imbeciles. Perhaps, more plausible, is that they had a particular view they wished the report to express, and the Able Danger revelations contradicted that view. Another possibility: These staffers in question didn’t tell Kean, Hamilton, Roemer, or Lehman, but they did tell another member or other members of the Commission, who instructed them to leave it out of the briefings, summaries, and reports given to Kean, Hamilton, Roemer, Lehman, and/or other members. (COUGH gorelick COUGH)"
* " No one has concretely tied this new information to the strange, felonious behavior of Sandy Berger, smuggling documents out of the National Archives. But boy, if the document in question related to Able Danger’s warning and the decision to not act upon it, his actions would make a lot more sense, wouldn’t they? "
* The mystery of Atta in Prague is a third.
It is good that we all are looking for new clues.
Mark Steyn: "Mugged by reality?" is also worth reading again...
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16034303%5E7583,00.html
Thank you for your good work.
Why haven't we heard more of the connection made so well by Mylroie? I'm certain there are many logical and plausible arguments to be made. Here's mine. Intelligence is not math. It is analysis made of a number of difficult to prove and often contradictory bits and pieces. I think Blair and Bush believed this information pointed to a state sponsor(Iraq) but (a) it can't be proven like a math theorem*; and (b) snakes in the Dept of State and CIA establishment have consistently been dribbling out the contrary bits which cannot be refuted without reference to secret info and without giving away secret methods and sources of gathering that info.
*That's why state sponsors use false flag operations. And that seems to be what the Brits are dealing with in their bombing investigations. They know who carried the bombs; know they didn't do it alone; can't find out who masterminding, coordinated and financed it.
That is an absolutely excellent observation, and one I had never previously considered, ScaniaBoy.
There will be a lot more to this story.
Captain's quarters blog.com has some very interesting stuff about te Hamburg cell (Friday or Saturday's posts) indicating that it was broken up on tips from our CIA and FBI. He connects it to the Able Danger story.
While Hanjour and Hazmi were settling in New Jersey, Atta and Shehhi were returning to southern Florida. 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. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain and back under his true name.This is from a June, 2004 NRO interview with Stephen Hayes:
NRO: Did Mohammed Atta meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague — multiple times? Hayes: I wish we knew. Atta was in Prague under very strange circumstances in May 2000. What's unclear is whether he returned, as initially reported, in April 2001. If he did, it wasn't under his own name. But news reports claiming that the meeting couldn't have taken place because U.S. intelligence has documentation placing him in the U.S. are not accurate. One of the things I report in the book is that both George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice say privately that they believe the April 2001 meeting took place.
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