DID THE BERGEN RECORD BREAK SOMETHING HERE? (Able Danger Member Interview)

Mike Kelly, a columnist for the Bergen Record of New Jersey, had Curt Weldon’s staff arrange an interview with a member of Able Danger.

For a year before the 9/11 attacks, the Wayne Inn was home to Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaida mastermind behind the hijacking plot that killed almost 3,000 people...

A former member of the military intelligence team told me in an interview that it had enough data to raise suspicions. "But we were blocked from passing it to the FBI."

The connect-the-dots tracking by the team was so good that it even knew Atta conducted meetings with the three future hijackers. One of those meetings took place at the Wayne Inn. That's how close all this was - to us and to being solved, if only the information had been passed up the line to FBI agents or even to local cops.

The story begins a year before the attacks. A top-secret team of Pentagon military counter-terror computer sleuths, who worked for a special operations commando group, was well into a project to monitor al-Qaida operations.

The 11-person group called itself "Project Able Danger." Think of them as a super-secret Delta Force or SEAL team. But instead of guns, they relied on advanced math training as their key weapons. And instead of traditional spying methods or bust-down-the-door commando tactics, the Able Danger group booted up a set of high-speed, super-computers and collected vast amounts of data.

The technique is called "data mining." The Able Danger team swept together information from al-Qaida chat rooms, news accounts, Web sites and financial records. Then they connected the dots, comparing the information with visa applications by foreign tourists and other government records.

From there, the computer sleuths noticed four names - Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

All four turned out to be hijackers. Atta and al-Shehhi took a room at the Wayne Inn. They rented a Wayne mail drop, too, and even went to Willowbrook Mall. Al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi took rooms at a motel on Route 46 in South Hackensack.

What is interesting about this information now is that a CIA team, working separately from the Able Danger Team, had set its sights on al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi. The two were already on a CIA terror watch list and still had managed to obtain U.S. visas.

The CIA feared al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi might try to slip into the United States. But the CIA lost track of them after they left a terror meeting in Malaysia in early 2000 for Bangkok. Worse, the CIA waited until the summer of 2001 to tell the FBI that two suspected terrorists had visas to enter the United States - and might be here…

By mid-2000, the Able Danger team knew it had important information about a possible terrorist plot. Because of a peculiar series of computer links that went through Brooklyn, the team began referring to the four future hijackers as the "Brooklyn cell." Their movements and communications were raising too many suspicions.

Perhaps just as alarming, even the Able Danger team understood its limits. When lawyers blocked Able Danger's request to approach the FBI, the team simply went back to its work and kept quiet - even after the 9/11 attacks occurred.

Why? If the Able Danger team was so concerned about U.S. security, why didn't it approach Congress or even the press to sound an alarm?

When I posed that question in my interview with the Able Danger team member, he fell silent. Listening on a speaker phone, a congressional staffer interrupted: "Have you ever seen what happens to whistleblowers?"

Back in my wire service days, I used to cover Washington for the Bergen Record. I never dealt with Kelly, but my understanding is that he’s been at the paper for nearly three decades, and been a columnist about half that time. He’s no green rookie. And I can say from my experience with the Record that the editors were not lackadaisical. The North Jersey communities they cover were hard hit by 9/11. I doubt the editors would permit a columnist to quote an unnamed source, throwing out allegations as explosive as this, if they didn’t find him credible. If he gave off any whiff of nuttiness, I have a feeling this column would have been written quite differently.

In my previous post, I had stated that the accounts of Weldon’s guy and the 9/11 Commission were so different that this can’t be a simple misunderstanding – somebody’s lying. And an account with a lot of details (like the Commission’s Friday release) tends to seem more plausible than a vague one. Well, this account offers a lot of details. Anybody in North Jersey want to contact the Wayne Inn? They remember anybody who looked like Atta staying a year? Do they still have their pre-2001 guest records?

It still would be helpful if any one of these eleven guys in Able Danger could come forward and answer these questions publicly, not just with print reporters. I realize they have careers to think of, but as the tag line for “Patriot Games” said, “Truth needs a soldier.”

http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2MzkzNTY5

State police tie Sept. 11 leader to Wayne inn

Friday, June 20, 2003

By RANDY DIAMOND
TRENTON BUREAU

Mohamed Atta, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, lived in a Wayne motel for about a year before the attacks, state police said Thursday.

The revelation - the first time authorities have placed Atta in the motel - came after state police Superintendent Joseph R. Fuentes testifed Thursday afternoon before the Assembly Homeland Security Committee about his agency's efforts to combat terrorism.

In his testimony, Fuentes confirmed what officials had said previously: New Jersey was one of the launching points for the Sept. 11 attacks and that some of the 19 hijackers moved through New Jersey hotels and used New Jersey-based criminal networks to obtain identification documents.

Fuentes would not go into detail, but Sgt. Kevin Rehmann, a state police spokesman, later said Fuentes was referring to Atta. Rehmann said Atta had lived in the Wayne Motor Inn on Route 23 for a year. Atta is thought to have been the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks and was on American Airlines Flight 11, which slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Rehmann could not provide dates for Atta's stay or say whether other hijackers stayed at the motel. He said the matter was still under investigation.

A clerk at the motel said Thursday night he had worked there for only a month and had no knowledge of past guests.

The Record has previously reported that several of the terrorists were seen in Passaic County and that two unidentified terrorists stayed at the Wayne motel.

Two days after the attacks, FBI agents searched the Wayne Motor Inn's guest records and took copies of several receipts, hotel employees said at the time.

The motel has been used as a filming location for several episodes of "The Sopranos."

At the Izumi Hibachi Steakhouse, next door to the motel, FBI agents interviewed employees and seized receipts because several suspected hijackers ate there, employees said. An employee said on condition of anonymity that one of the men asked which way was east. According to Islamic custom, worshipers must face east, toward Mecca, as they pray.

Agents visited the restaurant twice, the employees said.

Atta also allegedly visited a seafood store about 500 feet from the hotel, accompanied by another hijacker, Marwan Al-Shehhi. The store owner told The Record that he identified the two hijackers in photographs that FBI agents showed him.

Fuentes said at Thursday's hearing that northern New Jersey, in particular, remains a possible terrorist target because of its large population and proximity to New York City.

"We need to be more vigilant than other parts of the country,'' he said.

He said two dozen state police detectives have been assigned to the state Office of Counterterrorism to guard against attacks.

Fuentes also said his agency opens the state's emergency operations center in West Trenton and regional operations centers in Jersey City and Buena Vista in South Jersey - staffing them 24 hours a day - whenever the federal Department of Homeland Security raises the terrorism threat alert level to orange.

Thank you. I'm close enough to know locals who frequent the Wayne Inn bar. They've know this since late 2002.

The question becomes where did the 9/11 investigators start their line of inquiry that lead them back to Atta's residence in the Wayne Inn.

The possibility arises that someone connected to the Able Danger crew had passed along the information to the investigators. There were many other breadcrumb trails that would have lead 9/11 investigators to the Wayne Inn, so until the question is asked and answered, nothing can be assumed. There is info on this in the 9/11 report, I just don't have it available atm.

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