That's not the first wall she erected, just the first one that worked.
Posted on 08/09/2005 6:09:18 AM PDT by LibFreeUSA
WASHINGTON - More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military-intelligence unit identified Mohamed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of an al-Qaeda cell operating in the United States, according to Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.) and a former defense intelligence official.
In the summer of 2000, the team, known as "Able Danger," prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the FBI, Weldon and the former intelligence official said yesterday.
The recommendation was rejected, and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Atta and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas.
Under American law, U.S. citizens and green-card holders may not be investigated in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Weldon and the former intelligence official said it may have reinforced a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law-enforcement agency.
A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including executive director Philip Zelikow, were told about the program during an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Atta's name. The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.
Weldon first spoke publicly about the episode in June, in a little-noticed speech on the House floor and in an interview with the Times-Herald in Norristown. The matter resurfaced yesterday in a report by GSN: Government Security News, which is published every two weeks and covers issues related to homeland security. That report was based on accounts by Weldon and the former intelligence official that were made available to the New York Times yesterday in Weldon's office.
In a telephone interview from his home in Pennsylvania, Weldon said he was basing his assertions on similar ones made by at least three other former intelligence officers with direct knowledge of the project. He said some of the officers had first called the episode to his attention shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
First hint on Atta
The account is believed to be the first assertion that Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the 19 hijackers, only Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had been identified as potential threats by the CIA before the summer of 2000, and information about them was not provided to the FBI until the spring of 2001.
Weldon has long been a champion of the kind of data-mining analysis that was the basis for the work done by the Able Danger team.
The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the Able Danger unit had been established by the Special Operations Command in 1999, under a classified directive issued by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about al-Qaeda networks around the world.
'Taking out' targets
"Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision-makers options for taking out al-Qaeda targets," the former defense intelligence official said. He said that he himself had delivered the chart in the summer of 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters, in Tampa, Fla., and said it had been based on information drawn from unclassified sources and government records, including those of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
"We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them," the former intelligence official said. The unit, which relied heavily on data-mining techniques, was modeled after those first established by Army intelligence at the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center, now known as the Information Dominance Center, at Fort Belvoir, Va., the official said.
Weldon is an outspoken figure who is a vice chairman of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee. He said he had recognized the significance of the episode only recently, when he contacted members of the military intelligence team as part of research for his book, Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America and How the CIA Has Ignored It. Weldon's book prompted one veteran CIA member to strongly dispute the reliability of one Iranian source cited in the book, saying the Iranian "was a waste of my time and resources."
Weldon said that he had discussed the Able Danger episode with Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and that at least two congressional committees were now looking into the episode.
In the interview yesterday, Weldon said he had been aware of the episode since shortly after the Sept. 11 attack, when members of the team first brought it to his attention. He said he had told Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, about it in a conversation in September or October of 2001 and had been surprised when the Sept. 11 commission report made no mention of the operation.
Col. Samuel Taylor, a spokesman for the military's Special Operations Command, said no one at the command now had any knowledge of the Able Danger program, its mission or its findings. Taylor said if the program existed, it was probably a highly classified "special access program" or other highly compartmented program that only a small number of military personnel would have been briefed on.
During the interview in Weldon's office, the former defense intelligence official showed a floor-size chart depicting al-Qaeda networks around the world that he said was a larger, more detailed version of one prepared by the Able Danger team in the summer of 2000.
But he said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photos of Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as Mihdhar and Hazmi, all of whom were identified as members of an American-based "Brooklyn" cell, one of five around the world.
The official said the link to Brooklyn was meant as a term of art rather than literally, saying the unit had no firm evidence linking the men to Brooklyn but that a computer analysis seeking to establish patterns in links between the four men had found that "the software put them all together in Brooklyn."
Jamie Gorelick,Hellish Memories BUMP!
So, how high up the chain of command (at CENTCOM, or wherever) did their case get 'stopped' (rejected)????
I want NAMES!!!
Tell me what happed to the Admiral responsible for the defense of U.S. Pacific Territories / Pearl Harbor on December 1941???
It has never been reported that Atta and al-Shehhi were on anybodies radar prior to 9/11.
We did know that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were known to the CIA, but we didn't know they were also identified by the DOD.
Oh, thank you for confirming that, True Capitalist. I appreciate it.
This smells of a cover up. Many people had to have remembered this chart with the hijackers photos, but remained silent.
Exactly! I have wondered why the DOJ would let Berger off like they did, but Republicans acting this way is not new. Remember the Waco investigation? Republicans and even some Democrats (I think a member of the Congressional Black Caucus tore into Reno) were very disgusted and appalled but ended up finding no wrong doing. The Clinton impeachment was stopped by Republicans who thought lying under oath to a grand jury was proper conduct of a President. Seems sometimes the Republicans and the Dems are on the same side, their own, and we sit in the middle and suck on it.
Why was this information not discovered during the 911 commission hearings? Seems to me that we need an oversight commission to the 911 hearings, hopefully this time with honest to God citizens and not politicians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's not the first wall she erected, just the first one that worked.
We all know that apprehending Osama bin Ladin and dismantling Al Queda were at the TOP of the Clinton administration priorities. Don't we? (sarc-off)
Its not Clinton's fault. Monica's the one who blew it.......
;-)
that's a good point. wasn't anyone else looking into this, was Berger the first one to "reach" those documents in the archives and steal/destroy them?
I'm trying to remember......Berger was gathering information for Bill Clinton's testimony(?) before the 911 comission. Maybe Berger was considered staff? Staff never seems to have a name/s.
Douglas Jehl better go read a book, start with The 3rd Terrorist, and then Deriliction of duty. The second one doesn't have any pictures though.
Yeah, how about freepers. At least we would know it was done right.
Exactly! At least that's my vote...but I've been wrong before, heck, I voted for a Democrat once.
The 9/11 Commission, which had not seen the documents before they disappeared, is convinced that they were given all the pertinent information while compiling their final report.
How do they know? Mr. Berger went to the National Archives in the fall of 2003, the Commission would not get around to looking at those particular documents until the following spring.
Adding to the mystery, Mr. Berger was caught making prohibited cell phone calls to an "unauthorized authority" and he also must have been suffering from a bad case of "Al Gore's Iced Tea Syndrome", which necessitated many suspicious trips to the Archives john.
So, what was Sandy Bergler up to? A hint comes from the 9/11 report, which states that Richard Clarke had suggested getting Osama bin Laden no less than four times - May 1998, June 1999, January 2000 and August 2000. Each time, Berger scribbled "no" in the margin.
Despite the ferocious rewriting of history by the Clintonistas, they essentially took a legalistic, law enforcement towards the burgeoning terrorist threat.
Osama bin Laden had been at war with the United States since the early 1990's. The Clinton Administration simply declined to fight back.
The answer to your question is yes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.