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| 9/11 Commission's Staff Rejected Report on Early Identification of Chief Hijacker |
| 2005-08-11 |
| The same folks critizing the intelligence community for not "connecting the dots" have a few questions of their own to answer for. 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. What Was Known About the 9/11 Plot: An AmendmentThe 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. |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #7 Read Gorelicks bio paragraph at Schlumberger. Notice anything missing? No mention of the Justice Department. Her other past occupations are listed, her foundations, yadda-yadda, but the fact that she was big heat at DoJ isn't there. Isn't that usually something you want everyone to know? |
| Posted by: Steve White 2005-08-11 15:40 |
| #6 Additional speculation over at Captain's Quarters: Staff members now are searching documents in the National Archives to look for notes from the meeting in Afghanistan and any other possible references to Atta and Able Danger, Felzenberg said. And so now we come back to the National Archives -- and October 2003. One of Sandy Berger's last visits to the Archives where he took highly classified material out the door with him was in October 2003, around the time that the Commission first heard about Able Danger. Does this start to sound just a little too convenient and coincidental? Even without the possible Berger theft as part of the story, this constant shifting of the story underscores the massive credibility deficit that the Commission has now earned. First they never heard of Able Data. Then, maybe a low-level staffer told them about the program but not the Atta identification. Next, the military met with the Commissioners but didn't specify the Atta identification. Now, we finally have confirmation that the Commission itself -- not just its low-level staff -- knew that military intelligence had identified Mohammed Atta as an al-Qaeda operative a year before 9/11. Instead of reporting it, the Commission buried it. This points to some disturbing questions. It looks like the Commission decided early to pin blame on the intelligence community rather than the bureaucracy which stripped it of its ability to act in the interests of our security. Who benefited from that? Commissioner Jamie S. Gorelick. Who else stood to lose if the real story came out? The answer to that may well be the NSA director who conducted a clumsy raid on the National Archives in the middle of the investigation. |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-08-11 14:35 |
| #5 the 9/11 commission report was a whitewash from the start.putting Jamie gorelick on that Commission was liking hiring a goat to be your gardener.if you watched gorelick during the hearings, you could see her physically schmoozing the chairmen at every hearing.she puts up the wall on the able danger and other reports while she was in the AG office and then on the commission deflects anything which will point to her and the other left wing lamebrains under Clinton.The Commission pointed out,correctly,that we had no Humint capabilities prior to 9/11,butdid not point to the people who actively prevented the development of that capability starting w/ Frank Church and Walter Mondale in the mid seventies,and up to the Asst Sec at State, I think,Steve Smith,who ordered the CIA not to associate with nasty people in their effort to infiltrate terorist organizations.AFTER 9/11 Smith was unrepentant and announced that he was comfortable with hisa actions "because the CIA got to associate with a better quality informant" |
| Posted by: john e morrissey 2005-08-11 11:42 |
| #4 Wow, JU. So Gorelick not only put up walls between FBI and CIA/DIA, but also serves on Schlumburger's board (since 2002)? So much for the evil Cheney/Halliburton connection. Nice find! |
| Posted by: BA 2005-08-11 11:16 |
| #3 Jolly: The blame game is what the 9/11 Commissionn was all about. In the end, it appears it fell victim to the same problems it accused the intelligence agencies of having: only utilizing information that supported their preconceptions. Ironic isn't it? |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-08-11 10:30 |
| #2 Here's another interesting connection ... Schlumberger has been linked to UNSCAM. Notice who's on the Board of Directors? http://www.oilfield.slb.com/content/about/board.asp |
| Posted by: Jereger Uloling8494 2005-08-11 09:50 |
| #1 The articles on this subject focus on the blame game, but what I find amazing is that someone was actually able to ID Atta as a potential threat. I hope we haven't given away too much about how we did this. One article I read gave some details that I think were a little too explicit. |
| Posted by: jolly roger 2005-08-11 08:59 |