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 ...
The Czechs neverbacktracked on the claim--that was a lie. Tenet's last statement on this was the matter was inconclusive and the Czechs still insist the story is true.
No one saw Atta in the US on that date, and the FBI's sole contrary evidence is that his cellphone was used in FLorida when he was reported to be in Prague.
Quote:
The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.
And the commentary:CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April 2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross continues to stand by his information.It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.
Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring 2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after arriving in Prague for the second time.
In Washington, the FBI moved to quiet the Prague connection by telling journalists that it had car rentals and records that put Atta in Virginia Beach, Va., and Florida close to, if not during, the period when he was supposed to be in Prague. The New York Times , citing information provided by "federal law enforcement officials," reported that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001, and by April 11, "Atta was back in Florida, renting a car."
Newsweek reported that, "the FBI pointed out Atta was traveling at the time [in early April 2001] between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va.," adding, "The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts." And intelligence expert James Bamford, after quoting FBI Director Robert Mueller as saying that the FBI "ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on," reported in USA Today , "The records revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time he supposedly met the Iraqi in Prague."
All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license.
His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April).
Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias" to "meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague." Clearly, it was not beyond the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers to use aliases.
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/PragueConnection.htm
Yup. Epstein has covered this better than anyone. And to my knowledge he is the only one to have noted that INS records show Atta entered the US twice on the same date at the same point of entry with teo different visas.
Atta had fake passports, too, and could have easily used them to fakeout the INS.
Well, we know he had fake travel docs on his last trip to Prague; we know Ramzi Yousef used a fake passport to get to Iraq gfrom NYC after the WTC bombing. Why in the world would anyone give this much weight to the absence of INS records showing Atta here in 2000 after all that?(And as Steyn observes we DO have 11 million aliens in the US for whom INS has no valid records.)
Exactly so. What was it Donald Rumsfeld said; something like the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The 9/11 Commission was able to track Atta and his cell and the other 9/11 co-conspirators after the fact.
They have extensive timelines, know who and where the attacks were planned: basically everything.
So, why wouldn't Able Danger be able to find out enough information before the attacks.
All any intelligence agency would have needed is the names of people to watch out for, which Able Danger had. I once crossed the border from Canada and the border guards knew every purchase I made with my credit card on that very same day.
What I want to know is if the 9/11 Commission did any investigating on their own, or did they rely solely on information coming into them.
If Able Danger was able to track Atta to the Brooklyn cell and perhaps, according to the Pittsburg Gazette today, to meeting with an Iraqi intel officer in Prague before 9/11, using open sources, why couldn't the 9/11 Commission do the same?
Also, why was the woman who created The Wall which didn't let intelligence agencies talk to each other, given responsibility on the 9/11 Commission to decide what information got sent to the full Commission, which was itself in chargae of determining why intelligence agencies didn't talk to each other?
It's the most senseless exercise I've ever seen.
At the Kennedy compound.
Well, I doubt that but the bin Laden family had several properties in Boston and when you read the time-lines they always include where Atta stayed while on his travels. Except when he's in Boston it makes no mention of where he stayed.
On 9/10/01 it seems that he went to extremes to not stay in Boston. I suspect it is because he didn't want any aftermath focus there.
Here's an interesting blog on a website, purportedly written by a member of the Able Danger team:
http://inteldump.powerblogs.com/posts/1123659720.shtml#1373
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