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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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 Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 7:21 pm Post subject: Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00 |
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well at least there is proof that the Clinton admin had this info...aint it strange how the 9/11 commission missed this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/politics/09intel.html?pagewanted=print&oref=login
| Quote: | August 9, 2005
Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.
In the summer of 2000, the military 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 Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.
The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas. Under American law, United States citizens and green-card holders may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Mr. Weldon and the former intelligence official said it might 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 Philip Zelikow, the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Mr. Atta's name.
The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.
Mr. 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, Pa. The matter resurfaced on Monday in a report by GSN: Government Security News, which is published every two weeks and covers domestic-security issues. The GSN report was based on accounts provided by Mr. Weldon and the same former intelligence official, who was interviewed on Monday by The New York Times in Mr. Weldon's office.
In a telephone interview from his home in Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon said he was basing his assertions on similar ones by at least three other former intelligence officers with direct knowledge of the project, and said that some had first called the episode to his attention shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The account is the first assertion that Mr. 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 al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been identified as potential threats by the Central Intelligence Agency before the summer of 2000, and information about them was not provided to the F.B.I. until the spring of 2001.
Mr. Weldon has long been a champion of the kind of data-mining analysis that was the basis for the work of the Able Danger team.
The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the team 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.
"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 delivered the chart in summer 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and said that it had been based on information 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.
Mr. 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 C.I.A. Has Ignored It."
Mr. Weldon's book prompted one veteran C.I.A. case officer to strongly dispute the reliability of one Iranian source cited in the book, saying the Iranian "was a waste of my time and resources."
Mr. Weldon said that he had discussed the Able Danger episode with Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and that at least two Congressional committees were looking into the episode.
In the interview on Monday, Mr. 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 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. If the program existed, Colonel Taylor said, it was probably a highly classified "special access program" on which only a few military personnel would have been briefed.
During the interview in Mr. Weldon's office, the former defense intelligence official showed a floor-sized chart depicting Al Qaeda networks around the world that he said was a larger, more detailed version similar to the one prepared by the Able Danger team in the summer of 2000.
He said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photographs of Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi, who were identified as members of what was described as an American-based "Brooklyn" cell, as one of five such Al Qaeda cells around the world.
The official said the link to Brooklyn was meant as a term of art rather than to be interpreted literally, saying that the unit had produced no firm evidence linking the men to the borough of New York City 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."
According to the commission report, Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi were first identified in late 1999 or 2000 by the C.I.A. as Qaeda members who might be involved in a terrorist operation. They were tracked from Yemen to Malaysia before their trail was lost in Thailand. Neither man was put on a State Department watch list before they flew to Los Angeles in early 2000. The F.B.I. was not warned about them until the spring of 2001, and no efforts to track them were made until August 2001.
Neither Mr. Shehhi nor Mr. Atta was identified by the American intelligence agencies as a potential threat, the commission report said. Mr. Shehhi arrived in Newark on a flight from Brussels on May 29, 2000, and Mr. Atta arrived in Newark from Prague on June 3 that year.
The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a "Brooklyn" cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003.
The official said he had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta as a member of a Qaeda cell in the United States. He said the staff encouraged him to call the commission when he returned to Washington at the end of the year. When he did so, the ex-official said, the calls were not returned.
Mr. Felzenberg, the former Sept. 11 commission spokesman, said on Monday that he had talked with some of the former staff members who participated in the briefing.
"They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell," Mr. Felzenberg said. "They were told about the Pentagon operation. They were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefers had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten their attention."
As a result of the briefing, he said, the commission staff filed document requests with the Pentagon for information about the program. The Pentagon complied, he said, adding that the staff had not hidden anything from the commissioners.
"The commissioners were certainly told of the document requests and what the findings were," Mr. Felzenberg said.
Philip Shenon and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article. |
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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GM Strong
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 1579
Location: Penna
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| Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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Curt Weldon is my Congressman, I am proud to say, and he worked hard on this. He has his S**T together. You had better believe he has it right!!! He is also a supporter of our veterans and the mission. I was fortunate enough to thank him personally on Veterans Day last year where a local brew pub was hosting the Vet's Day broadcast of "The Big Talker" WPHT. Thank Congressman Weldon if you can and know he isn't letting go of this.
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 9:19 pm Post subject: |
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| GM Strong wrote: | | Curt Weldon is my Congressman, I am proud to say, and he worked hard on this. He has his S**T together. You had better believe he has it right!!! He is also a supporter of our veterans and the mission. I was fortunate enough to thank him personally on Veterans Day last year where a local brew pub was hosting the Vet's Day broadcast of "The Big Talker" WPHT. Thank Congressman Weldon if you can and know he isn't letting go of this. |
I bet you are proud! PA really needs him. |
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wwIIvetsdaughter
Captain
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 513
Location: McAllen, Texas
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:15 am Post subject: |
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| Rush discussed this report today. First for the moonbats who carp "why didn't Bush do more to prevent 9/11!? Just who was President in 2000 when this information came about? Answer: Clinton. More for the moonbats: why wasn't this important information shared? Answer: The Clinton Justice Department and that woman who was second in command behind Reno (name escapes me, served on 9/11 Commission). A "wall" was erected whereby this type of information was not shared between the CIA and domestic agencies like the FBI. The Clinton Admin. wanted to treat terrorism like a law-enforcement matter when they bothered to pay any attention at all. PS Someone help me with this woman's name! |
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GM Strong
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 1579
Location: Penna
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:29 am Post subject: |
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That would be Jamie Gorelick. She was also on the 911 Commision to review her own gross neglect while she was the defact head of the Clintonista Justice Dept. Reno was an inept figurehead. Both were Hillary Hacks.
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BuffaloJack
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 1637
Location: Buffalo, New York
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:35 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/abledanger.asp
| Quote: | Able Danger, the 9/11 Commission & the Strange (But Now Explainable) Actions of Sandy Berger
By Sean Osborne, Senior Analyst & Military Affairs Expert & Douglas J. Hagmann,Director
10 August 2005: Hey America… do you remember the strange actions of President Clinton’s national security adviser Sandy Berger during the 9/11 Commission investigation when he removed highly classified terrorism documents that should have been turned over to that independent commission? Did you ever wonder what Berger was attempting to hide and even more importantly, why? Did you also wonder why, even though he committed a felony, he received nothing more than a slap on the wrist while various political and intelligence officials played down his actions, wanting them to disappear as quickly as possible? It appears that we just might have discovered the answers to these and other troubling questions: Able Danger.
Able Danger is the code name of a secret team of U.S. Army military intelligence operatives created in 1999 under a directive signed by General Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about al Qaeda networks around the world. In mid-2000, the Able Danger team discovered the existence of the key 9/11 terror cell of Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawar al-Hamzi inside the U.S. and recommended to their military superiors that the FBI be called in to “take out that cell,” according to Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania House member and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. That information was presented in the summer of 2000 in the form of a chart complete with photographs of the terrorists to the Pentagon's Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Our intelligence was dead-on accurate, but was not acted upon a full year before the 9/11 attacks.
In fact, Representative Weldon said Able Danger members had recommended that the information they uncovered be shared with the FBI, but the idea was rejected and they “were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn’t exist.”
Despite the findings of Able Danger, absolutely no action was pursued to take out the cell during the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, said Weldon. The reason? Mohammed Atta possessed a “green card” at the time. Under the rules of the Clinton Justice Department, lawyers working for Special Operations decided that anyone holding a green card had to be granted essentially the same legal protections as any U.S. citizen. They did not want to recommend that the FBI go after someone holding a green card, Weldon told his House colleagues on June 27, 2005 during a speech, known as a “special order,” which he delivered on the House floor. Defense Department lawyers were also said to be reluctant to suggest a bold action by FBI agents after the bureau’s disastrous 1993 strike against the Branch Davidian religious cult in Waco, Texas.
Read Curt Weldon’s June 27, 2005 Testimony
This week, Representative Weldon and a former defense intelligence official said they had spoken with three Able Danger team members, all still working in the government, including two in the military, and that they were consistent in asserting that Mohammed Atta's affiliation with a Qaeda terrorism cell in the United States was known within the Defense Department by mid-2000 but was not acted upon. Further and after the fact, the 9-11 Commission was reportedly never told about Able Danger or its findings.
Enter Sandy Berger – During the 9/11 Commission
While the investigation by the 9/11 Commission was in progress, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who served as Clinton's national security adviser for all of President's Clinton’s second term, was caught removing documents from the national Archives – the very same documents that should have been turned over to the independent commission probing the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Berger ultimately admitted to intentionally taking and destroying various classified documents relating to terrorism collected under the Clinton administration. Berger and his lawyer said on July 19, 2004 that he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also “inadvertently” took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio. Those documents reportedly included an assessment of America's terror vulnerabilities at airports, something very relevant to Able Danger’s findings and key to the 9/11 attacks. What Sandy Berger did was a felony, yet was allowed a generous plea agreement of a fine and a three-year suspension of his security clearance.
Under the prism of Able Danger, we are now able to make sense out of the previously curious actions of Sandy Berger.
Able Danger & the Saga of the 9/11 Commission; Warren Commission Redux
According to Weldon, staff members of the 9/11 Commission were briefed on the findings of the Able Danger intelligence unit within the Special Operations Command and about the specific recommendation to break up the Mohammed Atta cell, yet those members reportedly decided not to brief the commission’s members on those matters. Why not?
Clearer now is the conflict of interest of having Jamie Gorelick, the Assistant Attorney General under Bill Clinton serving on the 9/11 Commission. Ms. Gorelick worked directly for Janet Reno and was directly involved in matters that were under review by the 9/11 Commission.
Remember the reason the findings of Able Danger were not acted upon? In his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft stated the following:
"In 1995, the Justice Department embraced flawed legal reasoning, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required," he said. "The 1995 Guidelines and the procedures developed around them imposed draconian barriers to communications between the law enforcement and intelligence communities. The wall left intelligence agents afraid to talk with criminal prosecutors or agents. In 1995, the Justice Department designed a system destined to fail."
Continuing his testimony, Ashcroft stated:
"Somebody built this wall.” Ashcroft added: "The basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum entitled 'Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this Commission."
Ashcroft was referring to Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration as well as general counsel at the Department of Defense. Both jobs put her at the very center of the former administration's anti-terrorism efforts. Consequently, her actions, as well as those of her superiors, were the subject of review by the very commission on which she is a member. Most assuredly, that is a huge conflict of interest. In her position at the Justice Department, Gorelick wrote a memo that provides a picture of the role she played setting policy for intelligence gathering and sharing during the Clinton Administration. The memo stemmed from the Justice Department's prosecution of the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Gorelick wrote in 1995:
“During the course of those investigations, significant counterintelligence information has been developed related to the activities and plans of agents of foreign powers operating in this country and overseas, including previously unknown connections between separate terrorist groups." We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."
And therein is the framework for the legal conundrum faced by Able Danger, and why Atta and his minions were free to hijack 4 airliners on 9/11. |
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/abledanger.asp
And all this is why Sandy Berger got caught stuffing classified documents down his pants, in his socks and in his pockets.
This Clinton crony should have been given a dozen years in prison instead of just a slap on the wrist and to have his security clearance revoked for 3 years.
_________________
Swift Boats - Qui Nhon (12/69-4/70), Cat Lo (4/70-5/70), Vung Tau (5/70-12/71)
Last edited by BuffaloJack on Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:41 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tanya
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 13 Aug 2004
Posts: 570
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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From April 13, 2004
JOHN ASHCROFT SLAMMED JAMIE GORELICK TODAY:
~snip~
"Attorney General John Ashcroft strongly defended the Bush administration and himself today before the 9/11 commission, laying the blame for intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks squarely on the presidency of Bill Clinton."
~snip~
"Referring to the 1995 document that constructed the figurative wall, Mr. Ashcroft went on to say, "Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission."
Mr. Ashcroft was a referring to Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic member of the independent, bipartisan, 10-member commission, who was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration."
http://www.instapundit.com/archives/015012.php |
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coldwarvet
Admiral
Joined: 03 Jun 2004
Posts: 1125
Location: Minnetonka, MN
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:11 pm Post subject: |
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The Clinton legacy continues to be defined.
CWV
_________________
Defender of the honor of those in harms way keeping us out of harms way.
"Peace is our Profession"
Strategic Air Command - Motto
USAF 75-79 Security Police |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Continuing his testimony, Ashcroft stated:
"Somebody built this wall.” Ashcroft added: "The basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum entitled 'Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this Commission."
Ashcroft was referring to Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration as well as general counsel at the Department of Defense. Both jobs put her at the very center of the former administration's anti-terrorism efforts. Consequently, her actions, as well as those of her superiors, were the subject of review by the very commission on which she is a member. Most assuredly, that is a huge conflict of interest. In her position at the Justice Department, Gorelick wrote a memo that provides a picture of the role she played setting policy for intelligence gathering and sharing during the Clinton Administration. The memo stemmed from the Justice Department's prosecution of the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. |
I remember watching Ashcroft's testimony before the 911 Commission hearings. The whole emphasis of the questioning was to pin blame on the Bush Administration for the 911 attack. After being raked over the coals by the Democrat commission members, Ashcroft made this bombshell statement. I jumped out of my chair and yelled YES!!!!
It was the Clinton Administration (Gorelick/Reno) who were responsible for the poor intelligence!!
Gorelick was embarrassed and there was some talk that she should not be serving on the 911 Commission Hearings. That was dropped and the hearings went on.
We didn't know it at the time, but it was during the 911 Commission hearings that Sandy Berger was doing his dirty deeds smuggling out Clinton Administation documents in his pants and destroying them. It wasn't until months later that we heard of a Justice department investigation into Berger's activities. I wondered what could be so DAMNING to Clinton that Berger would risk CRIMINAL CHARGES to destroy??
Now, with Weldon speaking out, I think it was 'ABLE DANGER' which if exposed, would put the blame directly on Clinton Administration policy.
A full year before the 911 attacks, Clinton's policy would not allow the FBI to investigate Able Danger's intelligence on the terrorists!!
| Quote: | In the summer of 2000, the military 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 Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.
The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas. Under American law, United States citizens and green-card holders may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Mr. Weldon and the former intelligence official said it might have reinforced a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency. |
And apparently, neither Berger nor Richard Clarke spoke of Able Danger to the Commission, since the commission members are now saying that they never heard of this.
Something really smells here, this is major blockbuster stuff, and I think Sandy Berger's light-fingers and stuffed pants was part of a COVER-UP.
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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coldwarvet
Admiral
Joined: 03 Jun 2004
Posts: 1125
Location: Minnetonka, MN
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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Time for another bi-partisan objective poll. Who's legacy is worse?
1. President Clinton
2. President Carter
_________________
Defender of the honor of those in harms way keeping us out of harms way.
"Peace is our Profession"
Strategic Air Command - Motto
USAF 75-79 Security Police |
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I have no love for Clinton but I have to say Carter. He was horrible, the worst, and not strong enough to have been President. And surrounded himself with plenty of other weaklings. Good thing the terrorists weren't up for 9/11 while he was in office. But he taught them well. |
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SOLTC
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 30 Jul 2004
Posts: 25
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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Just one caution!
I think I know what unit "Able Danger" was the code name for.
If I'm right, this unit (under its current code name) is one that is operating
very effectively in OEF and OEF. They are real "unsung heroes".
Go after the Clinton bureaucrats.
I served at one point with a Marine officer who was part of the planning staff for Eagle Claw. He was at the final briefing at the WH. The President was very attentive, but VP Mondale acted like a real wimp.
Jimmy Carter listened to too many people.
Bill Clinton is really Anti-military. He had to be told to go to Walter Reed to visit the wounded from Somalia.
JoeC |
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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| SOLTC wrote: | Just one caution!
I think I know what unit "Able Danger" was the code name for.
If I'm right, this unit (under its current code name) is one that is operating
very effectively in OEF and OEF. They are real "unsung heroes".
Go after the Clinton bureaucrats.
I served at one point with a Marine officer who was part of the planning staff for Eagle Claw. He was at the final briefing at the WH. The President was very attentive, but VP Mondale acted like a real wimp.
Jimmy Carter listened to too many people.
Bill Clinton is really Anti-military. He had to be told to go to Walter Reed to visit the wounded from Somalia.
JoeC |
Certainly. They did their job, and well and recommended action to be taken and it wasn't. I doubt anyone blames them. |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:08 pm Post subject: |
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SOLTC wrote:
| Quote: | Just one caution!
I think I know what unit "Able Danger" was the code name for.
If I'm right, this unit (under its current code name) is one that is operating
very effectively in OEF and OEF. They are real "unsung heroes".
Go after the Clinton bureaucrats. |
From Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters:
(emphasis mine, shawa)
Now the 9/11 Commission wants some answers for these new documents:
Members of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terror attacks called on Congress to determine whether the Pentagon withheld intelligence information showing that a secret American military unit had identified Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as potential threats more than a year before the attacks.
The former commission members said the information, if true, could rewrite an important chapter of the history of the intelligence failures before Sept. 11, 2001.
"I think this is a big deal," said John F. Lehman, a Republican member of the commission who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration. "The issue is whether there was in fact surveillance before 9/11 of Atta and, if so, why weren't we told about it? Who made the decision not to brief the commission's staff or the commissioners?"
According to the Times' source, however, he did explicitly brief the Commission on the existence of the Able Danger program and its identification of Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as al-Qaeda operatives, as mentioned yesterday:
The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed the former staff director of the Sept. 11 panel, Philip D. Zelikow, and at least three other staff members about Able Danger when the staff members visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003. The official said that he had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta in the briefing as a member of the American terrorist cell.
This hearkens back to the 9/11 Commission report. As I noted yesterday, the volumnous report comprises almost 600 pages. Yet the report remains incredibly bereft of insight on military intelligence. It only contains 13 references to military intelligence at all, over half of which specifically refer to Pakistani military intelligence. American MI only gets mentioned in their recommendations and not in the analysis of how the US failed to detect the 9/11 plot before its successful conclusion. In retrospect, that gaping hole in analysis seems highly odd, almost as if the 9/11 Commission never bothered to ask the Pentagon about its intelligence missions -- or simply disregarded evidence relating to it.
Could the latter be possible? Consider the single mention of "data mining" in the report on page 388-9. The Commission notes that "scattered units at Homeland Security and the State Department" perform data mining and screening without explaining which units do what. MI falls within the DHS. However, not a word gets mentioned as to what results data mining produced. Nevertheless, in the same breath, the Commission endorses data mining on a wider and more coordinated scope than ever before.
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.
Again, this begs the question of what else the Commission ignored, especially in terms of military and civilian intelligence, in order to reach its conclusions. It also undermines their recommendations to create two new levels of bureaucracy for the intelligence services. Instead, if the Able Danger development pans out, it means that the best fix is the Patriot Act and a reduction in bureaucratic drag on intelligence, not an increase in it. Congress needs to start from scratch and completely reinvestigate 9/11, this time outside the heat of a partisan presidential election cycle.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005175.php
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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