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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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 Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 12:39 am Post subject: |
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FOX News reports 911 Commission Staffers will be making a trip to National Archives to look for notes re 'Able Danger'.
I hope this will not be another pants-stuffing affair.
Could be a CYA expedition!!
KEEP THE SECURITY CAMERAS TRAINED ON EVERY MOVE THEY MAKE!!!
| Quote: | Source: 9/11 Panel Staffers Probing Documents on 'Able Danger'
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
WASHINGTON — Staff assistants to the Sept. 11 commission are planning a trip to the National Archives to retrieve their notes on a U.S. military unit's information that four of the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers were inside the United States a year before the attacks, FOX News has learned.
Defense Department documents show that the information, developed by a classified defense intelligence unit dubbed "Able Danger," wasn't handed over to the FBI because of concerns about pursuing information on foreigners admitted to the country for permanent residence.
A source familiar with the Sept. 11 commission told FOX News on Wednesday that the aides who still have security clearances are looking for a memo about a briefing given to four staff members by defense intelligence officials during an overseas trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in Fall 2003.
The date of the archives expedition is not yet known. The National Archives are located just outside of Washington, D.C.
The activity comes after Lee Hamilton (search), co-chairman of the now-disbanded commission, said he wanted to know whether defense intelligence officials knew of the Al Qaeda-linked attackers' activity but failed to tell law enforcement.
In an interview with FOX News, Hamilton said there should be a comprehensive review by Congress and the Pentagon into the claims. He said this potentially cruicial information could change the way history sees Sept. 11, 2001.
Members of the commission are reviewing claims that more than a year before the 2001 attacks defense intelligence officials had identified ringleader Mohammed Atta (search) and three other hijackers, and that they were already inside the United States. A statement could come by the end of the week
"The Sept. 11 commission (search) did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."
Hamilton's remarks Tuesday followed findings by Rep. Curt Weldon (search), R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, that made front-page news.
In June, Weldon displayed charts on the floor of the U.S. Senate showing that Able Danger identified the suspected terrorists in 1999. The unit repeatedly asked for the information to be forwarded to the FBI but apparently to no avail. Various news outlets picked up on the story this week.
Weldon told FOX News on Wednesday that staff members of the Sept. 11 commission were briefed at least once by officials on Able Danger, but that he does not believe the message was sent to the panel members themselves. He also said some phone calls made by military officials with Able Danger to the commission staff went unreturned.
"Why weren't they briefed? Was there some deliberate attempt at the staff level of the 9/11 commission to steer the commissioners away from Able Danger because of where it might lead?" Weldon asked. "Why was there no mention of Able Danger?"
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Sept. 11 commission looked into the matter during its investigation of government missteps leading to the attacks and chose not to include it in the final report.
A group of Sept. 11 widows called the September 11th Advocates issued a statement Wednesday saying they were "horrified" to learn that further possible evidence exists, and they are disappointed the Sept. 11 commission report is "incomplete and illusory."
"The revelation of this information demands answers that are forthcoming, clear and concise," the statement said. "The Sept. 11 attacks could have and should have been prevented."
Sept. 11 Staffers Investigate
Hamilton confirmed that commission staff members learned of Able Danger during a meeting with military personnel in October 2003 in Afghanistan, but that the staff members do not recall learning of a connection between Able Danger and any of the four terrorists now mentioned. He also said no mention made of Atta.
It was "inconceivable" that staffers would have missed such a reference, Hamilton told FOX News.
According to the source who spoke with FOX News, none of the staffers believe they were ever told specifically about Atta having been identified by defense intelligence before the 2001 attacks.
But after the October 2003 trip, the commission staff members pursued Able Danger further and asked the Pentagon to produce documents related to the unit, which they were, FOX News has also learned.
Still, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld....Cont'd at FOX NEWS |
_________________
“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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Tanya
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 13 Aug 2004
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Army_(Ret)
Lt.Jg.
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 108
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| Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 2:24 am Post subject: |
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Clinton Administration's Gorelick Wall
Prevented Arrest of Mohammed Atta
August 10, 2005
Rush Limbaugh discussed this at length.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, now to this 9/11 business. We have some audio sound bites here from Congressman Curt Weldon to go along with this story. I've got two versions of the story, one is by the Associated Press, the other is in the New York Times. I wanted to give you highlights of both. The AP story: "The Sept. 11 commission will investigate a claim that U.S. defense intelligence officials identified ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as a likely part of an al-Qaeda cell more than a year before the hijackings but didn't forward the information to law enforcement." Now, knowing what you already know about this, what does that lead sentence say to you? That lead sentence could possibly say to you, "Why, those scum at the Pentagon, why didn't they tell anybody? They knew it. They sat on it! And this was the Clinton administration, or somebody trying to sabotage Clinton? That's what it was, they were trying to sabotage Clinton. The defense department, they didn't like Clinton because he was--" I'm predicting this will be the spin from the left.
This is totally untrue, but this lead is totally incorrect. They didn't forward the information to law enforcement is not the correct way to say it. They couldn't forward the information to law enforcement because there was a wall which prevented them from doing so, erected by Jamie Gorelick who ran the justice department while Janet Reno was the face of that department. "Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa. and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said Tuesday the men were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as 'Able Danger.' If true, that's an earlier link to al-Qaeda than any previously disclosed intelligence about Atta. Sept. 11 commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton said Tuesday that Weldon's information, which the congressman said came from multiple intelligence sources, warrants a review. He said he hoped the panel could issue a statement on its findings by the end of the week. 'The 9/11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell,' said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. 'Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation.'"
Now, that is not true. That is not true, folks, that is simply not true. They were told about it and they didn't do anything about it because Jamie Gorelick was on the committee. "The Sept. 11 commission's final report, issued last year, recounted numerous government mistakes that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Among them was a failure to share intelligence within and among agencies. According to Weldon, Able Danger identified Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi as members of a cell the unit code-named 'Brooklyn' because of some loose connections to New York City. Weldon said that in September 2000--" And who was president then? Bill Clinton. "--Able Danger recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI 'so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists.' However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement. Weldon did not provide details on how the intelligence officials identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a cell."
That's the AP version, let's see how the New York Times treats this. This is by Philip Shenon and Douglas Jehl, headline: 9/11 panel members asked Congress to learn if Pentagon withheld files on hijackers in 2000. So along with the AP, the New York Times is now bending over backwards to blame the Pentagon and not the Clinton administration for these screw-ups. "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. John Lehman, a Republican member of the commission, said, 'I think this is a big deal. 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?' Mr. Lehman and other commissioners said that because the panel had been formally disbanded for a year, the investigation would need to be taken up by Congress, possibly by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Thomas H. Kean, the commission chairman, said, 'If this is true, somebody should be looking into it.' Spokesmen for the commission members said this week that although the staff was informed by the Pentagon in late 2003 about the existence of a so-called data-mining operation called Able Danger, the panel was never told that it had identified Mr. Atta and the others as threats."
So, they were told about Able Danger. They were told the Pentagon was digging deep. They were told that the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA, had come up with this information, just didn't specify what it was. "In a final report released last summer called the authoritative history of the attacks, the commission of five Democrats and five Republicans made no mention of the secret program or the possibility that a government agency had detected Mr. Atta's terrorist activities before Sept. 11. The Pentagon has had no comment on the credibility of the accounts from Mr. Weldon and the intelligence official. The official said in an interview Monday that the Able Danger team was created in 1999 under a directive signed by Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about Al Qaeda networks around the world. The official said the information was also not shared with the C.I.A. or other civilian intelligence agencies. 'This was a highly compartmented program with very limited distribution.'" Yeah, well, this needs to be said again, they weren't allowed to share the information. Again, what we are being told here is that, well, Atta was here legally. Really? Well, how many driver's licenses did he have? How many different visas did he have?
It's strange that we knew everything about this guy the day of these attacks. We knew everything about him. We knew where he was, we knew where he trained, we knew where he lived in Florida. We knew how he recruited the members, we knew how they bought those airline tickets on the morning of September 11th to go get on these airplanes to hijack them. We knew everything we wanted to know about Mohammed Atta the day of and the day after 9/11. So we had to know a lot about him before then. There's a reason that this information was not shared with law enforcement above and beyond the fact that he was here legally and it couldn't be shared. If he was here legally, how did we have such a dossier on this guy and we were able to identify practically what he had for breakfast that day? There's a lot more known about this guy than anybody is willing to let on because it was released that day and the day after. And the real question here is, those who knew it didn't pass it on. Why? And this all happened during the administration of Bill Clinton and Richard Clarke. Let's not forget that, folks. Richard Clarke who said they gave the Bush administration everything, turned over everything that they knew, and the Bush administration didn't take it seriously. Really? Look at what we're now learning.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, we'll go to CNN. Yesterday afternoon, Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. This is a bite here in which Congressman Weldon explains how he found out about the Gorelick wall and how it prevented the sharing of information about the 9/11 hijackers in the Clinton administration. This question from Wolf is a long one. Let me just paraphrase the question. "Congressman, you've got all this from a former DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency official, is that right?"
WELDON: One, I've got about a dozen that I've been working with, and, Wolf, this goes back to '99 and 2000 when as the chairman of the defense research subcommittee I was pushing money in for the increasing use of data collaboration and data mining. The prototype for that was being used by Special Forces command in the army on this project called Able Danger. Now, I wasn't aware of the specifics of what they did until two weeks after 9/11 when they brought me a chart that I took down to the White House and gave to the Steve Hadley, that actually showed Al-Qaeda cells.
RUSH: So Wolf says, well, "What's most shocking here is that if in fact elements of the DIA were tracking Atta and three of the future hijackers, they decided they couldn't share this information with the FBI, because, what, these guys were in the US legally, and it would be inappropriate to let the FBI know to watch what they were doing?"
WELDON: What we now know is that lawyers within the administration, we don't know whether they were DOD lawyers or White House lawyers, lawyers within the administration told the Special Forces folks three times, you cannot share this information with the FBI. They even put stickies over top of the faces of Mohammed Atta saying they're here legally, they have green cards, you can't give anything to the FBI. The second reason they gave them was, were concerned about the political fallout that occurred after Waco so we didn't want Special Forces command giving information of this type to the FBI. That stopped it dead in its tracks.
RUSH: This is unbelievable! This is unbelievable. With this kind of thinking we're going to lose this country. We may as well open the borders and let everybody in no matter what we know about them so as we don't offend anybody or upset our political legacy because of what happened at Waco, we couldn't afford another raid there on these guys up in Brooklyn where they were hanging out because we had our legacy to worry about, so you can't tell anybody about this. We got two more to go. Blitzer says another shocking element of the story is that the 9/11 Commission say they never knew about this. Al Felzenberg, the former commission spokesman tells the New York Times that the 9/11 Commission staffers were not told a thing about the Brooklyn cell, they were told about the Pentagon operation, they were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefer had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten to their attention, the Brooklyn cell referring to Mohammed Atta and his cohorts.
WELDON: Let's put the intelligence folks under oath and let them be cross-examined, and let's put the staffers on the 9/11 Commission under oath and let those under oath tell what information they gave. The intelligence officials I've been talking to, and it's well more than one, have told me they identified this cell and they mention the Mohammed Atta. That's not one person, that's several people. The question the American people deserve to have answered is why did the 9/11 Commission staff decide this wasn't worth pursuing? I've talked to two commissioners, Democrat Tim Roemer, a good friend of mine, John Lehman, Republican, good friend of mine. Over the past two months each of them separately told me they were never briefed on Able Danger. How could the 9/11 commissioners never be briefed on a secret task force that was designed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Shelton and carried out by General Schoomaker? To me that's just unexplainable.
RUSH: Fox News this morning, Fox and Friends, the question from Brian Kilmeade to Curt Weldon, "Do you think this is under the same guise as to why Sandy Burger would go into the national archives and stuff everything into his pockets and seemingly have to hide some records?"
WELDON: I would hope that's not the case, but it needs to be looked at. Why did the staff of the 9/11 Commission, who were briefed by Able Danger intelligence officers, not brief the commissioners themselves? And why was there no mention in the extensive volumes of the 9/11 Commission, why was there no mention of Able Danger?
RUSH: To put this in context, Weldon is saying defense officials told the people they talked to, the staff members of the 9/11 Commission, who conducted a lot of the interviews, "We told them all about Able Danger, we told them all about Mohammed Atta, we told them we had this, we told them we could not share the information, we were told not to share the information with anybody at the FBI because they were here legally or the wall that existed." And the staffers didn't tell the 9/11 Commissioners because you got Kean and Hamilton saying, "We didn't know about this," and you've got Lehman saying, "We didn't know about this." But Weldon says the staffers knew all about it. You cannot erase a simple fact, and that is that Jamie Gorelick, the author of the wall preventing the sharing of such information was a commissioner on this panel and that right there might provide some staffers a roadblock to imparting that information. But I'm not sure that they all weren't told anyway. I'm not sure I believe it.
END TRANSCRIPT
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Peace is acheived through victory |
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PhantomSgt
Vice Admiral
Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 972
Location: GUAM, USA
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| Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 10:02 am Post subject: |
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Wahabbism is taught far beyond Saudi Arabia and it is no wonder that most terrorists have ties that bind them to their cause.
You would be surprised to find how many US Muslims were aware of what was going to happen on 9/11 in New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Of course the Chicago and LA attacks were interrupted by the President shutting down the skies on 9/11.
_________________
Retired AF E-8
Independent that leans right of center. |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 11:48 am Post subject: |
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Commission spokesman now admits briefing by DI officer, but they blew it off. Didn't want to mess up their predetermined "facts".
| Quote: | August 11, 2005
9/11 Commission's Staff Rejected Report on Early Identification of Chief Hijacker
By DOUGLAS JEHL and PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - The Sept. 11 commission was warned by a uniformed military officer 10 days before issuing its final report that the account would be incomplete without reference to what he described as a secret military operation that by the summer of 2000 had identified as a potential threat the member of Al Qaeda who would lead the attacks more than a year later, commission officials said on Wednesday.
The officials said that the information had not been included in the report because aspects of the officer's account had sounded inconsistent with what the commission knew about that Qaeda member, Mohammed Atta, the plot's leader.
But aides to the Republican congressman who has sought to call attention to the military unit that conducted the secret operation said such a conclusion relied too much on specific dates involving Mr. Atta's travels and not nearly enough on the operation's broader determination that he was a threat.
The briefing by the military officer is the second known instance in which people on the commission's staff were told by members of the military team about the secret program, called Able Danger.
The meeting, on July 12, 2004, has not been previously disclosed. That it occurred, and that the officer identified Mr. Atta there, were acknowledged by officials of the commission after the congressman, Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, provided information about it.
Mr. Weldon has accused the commission of ignoring information that would have forced a rewriting of the history of the Sept. 11 attacks. He has asserted that the Able Danger unit, whose work relied on computer-driven data-mining techniques, sought to call their superiors' attention to Mr. Atta and three other future hijackers in the summer of 2000. Their work, he says, had identified the men as likely members of a Qaeda cell already in the United States.
In a letter sent Wednesday to members of the commission, Mr. Weldon criticized the panel in scathing terms, saying that its "refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose."
Al Felzenberg, who served as the commission's chief spokesman, said earlier this week that staff members who were briefed about Able Danger at a first meeting, in October 2003, did not remember hearing anything about Mr. Atta or an American terrorist cell. On Wednesday, however, Mr. Felzenberg said the uniformed officer who briefed two staff members in July 2004 had indeed mentioned Mr. Atta.
Both Mr. Weldon's office and commission officials said they knew the name, rank and service of the officer, but they declined to make that information public.
Mr. Weldon and a former defense intelligence official who was interviewed on Monday have said that the Able Danger team sought but failed in the summer of 2000 to persuade the military's Special Operations Command, in Tampa, Fla., to pass on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation the information they had gathered about Mr. Atta and the three other men. The Pentagon and the Special Operations Command have declined to comment, saying they are still trying to learn more about what may have happened.
Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday that the military was working with the commission's unofficial follow-up group - the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, which was formed by the panel's members when it was disbanded - to try to clarify what had occurred.
Mr. Felzenberg said the commission's staff remained convinced that the information provided by the military officer in the July 2004 briefing was inaccurate in a significant way.
"He wasn't brushed off," Mr. Felzenberg said of the officer. "I'm not aware of anybody being brushed off. The information that he provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing" from the commission's investigation.
Mr. Felzenberg said staff investigators had become wary of the officer because he argued that Able Danger had identified Mr. Atta, an Egyptian, as having been in the United States in late 1999 or early 2000. The investigators knew this was impossible, Mr. Felzenberg said, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000.
"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," Mr. Felzenberg said. "This information was not meshing with the other information that we had."
But Russell Caso, Mr. Weldon's chief of staff, said that "while the dates may not have meshed" with the commission's information, the central element of the officer's claim was that "Mohammed Atta was identified as being tied to Al Qaeda and a Brooklyn cell more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, and that should have warranted further investigation by the commission."
"Furthermore," Mr. Caso said, "if Mohammed Atta was identified by the Able Danger project, why didn't the Department of Defense provide that information to the F.B.I.?"
Mr. Felzenberg confirmed an account by Mr. Weldon's staff that the briefing, at the commission's offices in Washington, had been conducted by Dietrich L. Snell, one of the panel's lead investigators, and had been attended by a Pentagon employee acting as an observer for the Defense Department; over the commission's protests, the Bush administration had insisted that an administration "minder" attend all the panel's major interviews with executive branch employees. Mr. Snell referred questions to Mr. Felzenberg.
The Sept. 11 commission issued its final report on July 22, 2004. Mr. Felzenberg noted that the interview with the military officer had taken place in the final, hectic days before the commission sent the report to the printers, and said the meeting reflected a willingness by the commission to gather facts, even at the last possible minute.
"Lots of stuff was coming in over the transom," Mr. Felzenberg said. "Lots of stuff was flying around. At the end of the day, when you're writing the report, you have to take facts presented to you." |
New York Times
_________________
“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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J. Toy
Seaman Apprentice
Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 96
Location: Pa.
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 2:15 am Post subject: |
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UNBELIEVABLE!!! (via NRO)
| Quote: | THE 9/11 COMMISSION IN MORTAL DANGER [John Podhoretz]
It behaved disgracefully and in a nakedly partisan fashion, with former officials of the Clinton administration attempting to use the platform to damage the president's reelection chances. Then, after months of ludicrous conduct, out of nowhere came the brilliantly conceived and written report that set a new standard of eloquence and coherence for government documents, became a major bestseller and redeemed the commission's reputation.
Well, that didn't last long.
In a story filed at 7:10 PM, the Associated Press is now confirming all the particulars of what will now forever be called the Able Danger disaster. The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.
And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.
And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.
And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies.
I was very skeptical of this Able Danger stuff about Atta, thought it was just sme way Rep. Curt Weldon was trying to sell a book. No longer. This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.
So was the staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?
More important, what will co-chairmen Tom (pound his fist on the table) Kean and Lee (look sorrowful) Hamilton do and say in the next 36 hours about this calamity?
Posted at 08:07 PM
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Add another 3000 dead souls to Clinton's legacy
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Corpsman, 1969-1973 |
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dcornutt
PO3
Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 267
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 2:20 am Post subject: |
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You notice EVERYBODY is being very nebulous with the dates "more than a year", " a little more than a year before the attacks..etc. It was "CLINTON" admin. Makes you wonder what S. Berger was trying to sneak multiple copies out of of the NA of??? I've seen leftW blogs...talking about how this is another notch against the Bush admin...etc. They don't even understand the fact that this happened at the very end of Clinton's admin. Now...that said..here's the "real" questions: WHO..were the people in the Pentagon at that time..responsible for this?
Gorelick and her supporters claimed at the time in the 9/11 investigation (thanks to Ashcroft)...that her memo did NOT preclude agency's talking to each other in such circumstances. That it was simply "some" people who took it that way_or a way in which it was not intended. So....who were they then?_that question was never answered.
I would like to see a list of names of the pentagon legal minds...responsible for this. You'd think..that would be something "any" reporter worth their salt could dig up???? And you'd think they could at least be accurate (given this info came from very direct information sources about "when"..how..etc)..that they could say..it was 1999 when this was first uncovered. It was 2000 when they started reporting it. And by late 2000 was when these people were up in arms over it. (right before the 2000 presidential election)
The elections were not even held for president yet..when this was being squashed and swept under the rug. It just angers me to no end.
So...let me ask you one BIG question that I bet EVERYONE has forgotten about by now_and for which I feel these diversions, obfuscations..etc..serve well to divert:
IF..M Atta.."was" in fact...in a different timeline and places than the commission thought...then what DOES that mean...as to his meeting in Prague with Iraqi INTel agent????? that the Russians and everybody else continue to this day to swear was true?? (that the commission dismissed because they said he was in Florida at the time?).
We got a "politically" correct 9/11 commission report. We are about to get the "real" one. |
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becca1223
PO3
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 293
Location: Colonial Heights, VA
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165408,00.html
| Quote: | Raw Data: Weldon Letter on 'Able Danger'
Thursday, August 11, 2005
On Wednesday, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, sent the following letter to the former 9/11 Commission members, also known as the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, in which he rejects the Commission's claim that they were not briefed on "Able Danger".
Below is a copy of a letter sent by Congressman Curt Weldon to the former 9/11 Commission members:
August 10, 2005
The Honorable Thomas H. Kean, Chairman
The Honorable Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chairman
9/11 Public Discourse Project
One DuPont Circle, NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton:
I am contacting you to discuss an important issue that concerns the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and our country's efforts to ensure that such a calamity is never again allowed to occur. Your bipartisan work on The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States shed light on much that was unclear in the minds of the American people regarding what happened that fateful day, however there appears to be more to the story than the public has been told. I bring this before you because of my respect for you both, and for the 9-11 Commission's service to America.
Almost seven years ago, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 established the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, otherwise known as the Gilmore Commission. The Gilmore Commission reached many of the same conclusions as your panel, and in December of 2000 called for the creation of a "National Office for Combating Terrorism." I mention this because prior to 9/11, Congress was aware of many of the institutional obstacles to preventing a terrorist attack, and was actively attempting to address them. I know this because I authored the language establishing the Gilmore Commission.
In the 1990's, as chairman of the congressional subcommittee that oversaw research & development for the Department of Defense, I paid special attention to the activities of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Ft. Belvoir. During that time, I led a bipartisan delegation of Members of Congress to Vienna, Austria to meet with members of the Russian parliament, or Duma. Before leaving, I received a brief from the CIA on a Serbian individual that would be attending the meeting. The CIA provided me with a single paragraph of information. On the other hand, representatives of LIWA gave me five pages of far more in-depth analysis. This was cause for concern, but my debriefing with the CIA and FBI following the trip was cause for outright alarm: neither had ever heard of LIWA or the data mining capability it possessed.
As a result of experiences such as these, I introduced language into three successive Defense Authorization bills calling for the creation of an intelligence fusion center which I called NOAH, or National Operations and Analysis Hub. The NOAH concept is certainly familiar now, and is one of several recommendations made by your commission that has a basis in earlier acts of Congress. Despite my repeated efforts to establish NOAH, the CIA insisted that it would not be practical. Fortunately, this bureaucratic intransigence was overcome when Congress and President Bush acted in 2003 to create the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (now the National Counterterrorism Center). Unfortunately, it took the deaths of 3,000 people to bring us to the point where we could make this happen. Now, I am confident that under the able leadership of John Negroponte, the days of toleration for intelligence agencies that refuse to share information with each other are behind us.
The 9-11 Commission produced a book-length account of its findings, that the American people might educate themselves on the challenges facing our national effort to resist and defeat terrorism. Though under different circumstances, I eventually decided to do the same. I recently published a book critical of our intelligence agencies because even after 9/11, they were not getting the message. After failing to win the bureaucratic battle inside the Beltway, I decided to take my case to the American people.
In recent years, a reliable source that I refer to as "Ali" began providing me with detailed inside information on Iran's role in supporting terror and undermining the United States' global effort to eradicate it. I have forwarded literally hundreds of pages of information from Ali to the CIA, FBI, and DIA, as well as the appropriate congressional oversight committees. The response from our intelligence agencies has been underwhelming, to put it mildly. Worse, I have documented occasions where the CIA has outright lied to me. While the mid-level bureaucrats at Langley may not be interested in what I have to say, their new boss is. Porter Goss has all of the information I have gathered, and I know he is ready to do what it takes to challenge the circle-the-wagons culture of the CIA. And Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is energized as well. Director Goss and Chairman Hoekstra are both outstanding leaders that know each other well from their work together in the House of Representatives, and I will continue to strongly support their efforts at reform.
All of this background leads to the reason I am writing to you today. Yesterday the national news media began in-depth coverage of a story that is not new. In fact, I have been talking about it for some time. From 1998 to 2001, Army Intelligence and Special Operations Command spearheaded an effort called Able Danger that was intended to map out al Qaeda. According to individuals that were part of the project, Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat before 9/11. Team members believed that the Atta cell in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but somewhere along the food chain of Administration bureaucrats and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing the information to the FBI. These details are understandably of great interest to the American people, thus the recent media frenzy. However I have spoken on this topic for some time, in the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, on the floor of the House on June 27, 2005, and at various speaking engagements.
The impetus for this letter is my extreme disappointment in the recent, and false, claim of the 9-11 Commission staff that the Commission was never given access to any information on Able Danger. The 9-11 Commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter. Furthermore, commissioners never returned calls from a defense intelligence official that had made contact with them to discuss this issue as a follow on to a previous meeting.
In retrospect, it appears that my own suggestions to the Commission might have directed investigators in the direction of Able Danger, had they been heeded. I personally reached out to members of the Commission several times with information on the need for a national collaborative capability, of which Able Danger was a prototype. In the context of those discussions, I referenced LIWA and the work it had been doing prior to 9/11. My chief of staff physically handed a package containing this information to one of the commissioners at your Commission's appearance on April 13, 2004 in the Hart Senate Office Building. I have spoken with Governor Kean by phone on this subject, and my office delivered a package with this information to the 9-11 Commission staff via courier. When the Commission briefed Congress with their findings on July 22, 2004, I asked the very first question in exasperation: "Why didn't you let Members of Congress who were involved in these issues testify before, or meet with, the Commission?"
The 9-11 Commission took a very high-profile role in critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to outside information. The commissioners very publicly expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house. Therefore it is no small irony that the Commission would in the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when information of potentially critical importance was brought to its attention. The Commission's refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the Commission worked to expose.
Questions remain to be answered. The first: What lawyers in the Department of Defense made the decision in late 2000 not to pass the information from Able Danger to the FBI? And second: Why did the 9-11 Commission staff not find it necessary to pass this information to the Commissioners, and why did the 9-11 Commission staff not request full documentation of Able Danger from the team member that volunteered the information?
Answering these questions is the work of the commissioners now, and fear of tarnishing the Commission's legacy cannot be allowed to override the truth. The American people are counting on you not to "go native" by succumbing to the very temptations your Commission was assembled to indict. In the meantime, I have shared all that I know on this topic with the congressional committee chairmen that have oversight over the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of our intelligence gathering and analyzing agencies. You can rest assured that Congress will share your interest in how it is that this critical information is only now seeing the light of day.
Sincerely,
CURT WELDON
Member of Congress
cc:
Richard Ben-Veniste
Fred F. Fielding
Jamie S. Gorelick
Slade Gorton
Bob Kerrey
John F. Lehman
Timothy J. Roemer
James R. Thompson
Dennis Hastert
Peter Hoekstra
Frank Wolf
Pat Roberts
Richard Shelby
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SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
ABLE DANGER AND ATTA
Ledeen's Lair
To the Point News
By Michael Ledeen
Friday, August 12, 2005
At first I thought there was a short circuit in my ouija board, because there were sparks coming out of the thing, just when I thought I’d finally connected with my old friend, the late James Jesus Angleton, former legendary head of CIA counterintelligence.
But then I realized that it was, indeed, Angleton, cursing and sputtering (his poetic side — the side that made him the editor of The Yale Literary Review when he was an undergraduate in New Haven back in 1940 — somehow got lost when he got angry).
ML: Hey! That used to be my ear...
JJA: Sorry, sorry, but this Able Danger business is just too much.
ML: You mean Congressman Curt Weldon’s discovering that a military intelligence unit called Able Danger figured out a year before 9/11 — from open sources — that Mohammed Atta was part of an al Qaeda cell inside the United States, but Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick stopped them (three times!) from telling the FBI?
JJA: Damn right, but that’s not even the half of it. All these stories, all this faux shock, “oh my gosh, we knew it but we couldn’t act on it”, they just make me sick.
ML: But they’re true enough, aren’t they?
JJA: Half true, except for the original reaction from those phonies at the 9/11 Commission, that bunch who think they’re the first eternal commission in American history, all those pompous moralists who pronounce on everything that happens. They just lied.
ML: So it seems. They said they never heard about it, but then it turns out that they had, but they ignored it.
JJA: They ignored it, because it didn’t quite fit with what they wanted to say. Which, of course, is the whole point. It’s why we didn’t — couldn’t, actually — act on it.
ML: How so? I thought the Army thought it was illegal to pass on the information to a law-enforcement agency, so they didn’t. The usual mess, with the lawyers getting in the way of rational policy.
JJA: It wasn’t illegal, first of all. How could it have been? The "information" wasn’t proprietary, and it wasn’t secret. The data came from newspapers and magazines, they just analyzed it, and apparently they analyzed it quite well.
There was no legality that prevented them from pointing out the significance of the data to anyone — law enforcement or Army cook. It’s just nonsense. Some prissy lawyer in the JAG undoubtedly lectured these guys about spreading sensitive information, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t decisive.
Their superiors blocked the analysis for a much more important reason: It didn’t fit with what the policymakers wanted to believe.
ML: I think I understand. You’re saying that Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, and the others didn’t want to have to act against terrorist groups inside the United States, so the system didn’t send them information...
JJA: That would have compelled them to take action. It’s very bad for your career to tell the policymakers things they don’t want to hear. But don’t personalize this: It wasn’t just Clinton, Berger, and the others around them; it went on for decades. Even Reagan basically didn’t want to do anything about terrorism. It goes back a long time.
ML: Yeah, Ford and Carter weren’t exactly gung-ho either.
JJA: Right. So, as usual, the "scandal" is the wrong scandal. You know a thing or two about that, don’t you?
ML: You mean the Rome thing?
JJA: Exactly. You put the Pentagon in touch with people who really knew what was going on, didn’t you? Those Iranians...
ML: Iranians who provided the U.S. government with accurate information about Iranian activities in Afghanistan aimed against American troops. The information seems to have saved American lives.
JJA: And what happened? Did you get a medal?
ML: Uh, well, not exactly.
JJA: Don’t be coy with me. State and CIA threw a tantrum over it, and decreed that nobody should talk to those Iranians ever again.
ML: In fact, Rumsfeld gave orders that Pentagon officials were forbidden to talk to Iranians, period. One DoD official, who had Persian relatives, asked if all family members were off limits.
JJA: HoHo, that’s how it works.
ML: No good deed goes unpunished.
JJA: Yes, yes, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We have two cases where life-saving information was available, but the system refused to accept it, because the political considerations were more important.
In the Weldon story, the administration didn’t want to know about terrorist groups operating inside the United States. In the Rome story, they didn’t want to know about Iranian groups killing Americans.
In the first case, we’d have had to act against sleeper cells, which is a very nasty business. In the second case, we’d have had to act against the biggest terror sponsor in the Middle East, another can of worms. Better to pretend we didn’t know, hope that nothing terrible would happen, and concentrate on career advancement.
ML: And blame it on the lawyers if anybody finds out.
JJA: Right. But I’m still steamed about the 9/11 commission. Did they ever ask you about the Rome business?
ML: Nope. And the Senate Intelligence Committee, which spent a lot of time looking into the Rome story, doesn’t seem to have inquired why the contacts were terminated. And the Raab-Silverman Commission, which did some of the very best work on all this, didn’t mention it in their report, although they did ask me about it.
JJA: Of course not, nobody wants to talk about it, because it doesn’t fit their story.
ML: In fact, the very few journalists who have written about it have invariably quoted some of your former colleagues hinting that there must have been some nefarious plot in there somewhere...
JJA: Perfect. They take drastic action to ensure we don’t know what the Iranians are up to, all the while punishing the people who got the information. And in the Weldon business, the only action taken was to prevent the FBI from being told that Atta and his fellow murderers were planning to kill Americans here.
And notice that none of the usual explanations works here. The information wasn’t classified, so "compartmentalization" can’t explain or justify it. It’s political, and in Washington, politics trumps policy every time.
ML: So what should we do?
JJA: WHAT SHOULD WE DO???
The sparks started up again. I couldn’t make it out clearly, and some of it isn’t appropriate for this publication, but I’m pretty sure I heard him say "fire the bastards" at one point. But then the ouija board really did short out, and I was never able to confirm that he said it, or who he might have had in mind. |
SBD |
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J. Toy
Seaman Apprentice
Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 96
Location: Pa.
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| Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:58 am Post subject: |
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September should be a very interesting month!!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1473116/posts
BREAKING!!! - Weldon says records were ordered destroyed!! (Able Danger)
Dom Giordano Show - 1210AM Radio "Big Talker" - Philadelphia | 29 AUG 05 | Vanity
Posted on 08/29/2005 6:23:38 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
Congressman Curt Weldon (R - Pennsylvania) gave another exclusive interview to Dom Giordano this evening (Monday) and broke the news that he will be giving a speech on September 8th (next Monday) during which he will present yet another 'Able Danger' witness. This new witness will attest (and will swear under oath when called) that he was "ordered to destroy records" relating to the 'Able Danger' program.
This order to destroy the records occurred prior to 9-11-01. Weldon intimated that it happened during the Clinton Administration.
The witness, who Weldon did not name, says that he was ordered to destroy records and was threatened with jail if he failed to comply. Weldon said that he has the names of the people involved, including the person who gave the order, and HE WILL NAME THEM in his speech.
Congressman Weldon also said that his staff has met with Senator Arlen Specter's (R - Pennsylvania) staff regarding the upcoming Judiciary Committee hearings. Weldon wants to be sure that everybody is on the same page. Weldon also said that he will do whatever he has to do to make sure that ALL the facts come out and that the process "is not manipulated".
Curt Weldon is like a pit bull on a steak. He expressed disgust with the "incompetence" of the 9-11 Commission and said that the victims of the 9-11 terror attacks deserve answers. Weldon is determined to see that they get them.
Weldon did express confidence in Tim Roehmer and John Lehman and speculated that perhaps the poor job done by the Commission was the result of an incompetent staff. Weldon sounded amazed and disappointed that so much important information was either glossed over or swept under the rug by the Commission.
Weldon will give his September 8th speech either to the National Press Club or to a "9-11 families" group which has asked him to speak. He apparently hasn't nailed down the exact venue yet.
_________________
Corpsman, 1969-1973 |
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Navy_Navy_Navy
Admin
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 5777
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| Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:23 am Post subject: |
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Whoa! Shades of Kerry & McCain shredding papers and refusing to call witnesses. 
| Quote: | | Curt Weldon is like a pit bull on a steak. |
Yah, thank God that someone is, hm?
It seems like the 9-11 report came out, the media worked hard at making it say whatever they wanted it to say and then it went away. *poof*
If this is true, the people for it need to be given government accommodations for a few decades.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 10:52 am Post subject: |
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Thank God for Curt Weldon, but sheesh, waiting for Sept. 8th??
That's10 days away!!! I'm afraid it won't last that long. Pressure can be brought to bear against this witness, and cause him/her to back out, especially if their military career is endangered. Get him/her in front of the cameras now!!
Obviously, the Pentagon has some 'splainin to do.
What I find perplexing, is that Shaffer says the Army is advising him 'to just tell the truth', (tacit approval to get the story out) but the Pentagon seems to be stalling.
From a Shaffer interview last night:
http://www.wtopnews.com/?sid=558226&nid=251
| Quote: | Intrigue Over Able Danger Grows
Updated: Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005 - 4:31 AM
J.J. Green, federalnewsradio.com
WASHINGTON - The primary whistleblower who says a secret military intelligence unit identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist a year before the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks is coming forward to say the the Pentagon and Sept. 11 commission have tried to discredit him.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is one of the military officers who contends a unit code-named Able Danger identified Atta in 2000. He says three other Sept. 11 hijackers also were identified.
Shaffer, a member of the elite military intelligence team, is the first of a dozen people who are expected to verify the Able Danger story.
"Some folks in DoD I don't think are too happy with this information coming forward for whatever reason, and lot of folks who have this information are considering very carefully how they bring themselves forward," Shaffer tells federalnewsradio.com and WFED, which are part of the WTOP Radio Network.
Shaffer says the problem is not coming from military brass.
"Every time I've talked to the Army they've said tell the truth. There have been other conversations that I have had with other elements of DoD, and I think you all have seen some of this in the press where there was a whisper campaign and some other not so subtle means of dissuasion -- kind of put out there to wave people off this."
Schaffer says he's bothered by the continuing relationship between Pentagon and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the Sept. 11 Commission.
"Why would the Pentagon be providing information to a commission that no longer exists? The 9-11 commission does not exist."
U.S. Sen. Slade Gordon, R-Wash., came out and said the Pentagon was leaking information to him and others on the commission, Shaffer said, raising the question of whether the defense department is trying to cover up something.
The Pentagon has said there is no evidence of intelligence information on the hijackers a year before the attacks, but did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Shaffer and Capt. Scott Philpott say they've commented about Able Danger to the Sept. 11 commission, but weren't taken seriously.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, does want to know more about the Able Danger unit. He has asked the FBI to hand over all information related to it. |
_________________
“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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