ABLE DANGER

Congressman Curt Weldon has questions for former 9/11 commission members.

He rejects their claim that they never heard of ABLE DANGER.

Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, sent the following letter yesterday to the Former 9/11 Commission Members, also known as the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, rejecting the Commission's claim that they were not briefed on "Able Danger".

In the letter, Congressman Weldon calls on the 9/11 Public Discourse Project to answer two fundamental questions:

#1) What lawyers in the Department of Defense made the decision in late 2000 not to pass the information from Able Danger to the FBI?

#2) 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?

Read the letter.

How is the MSM spinning this one?

The New York Times account, published August 11:

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.

While the Times admits the commission's staff were told about Able Danger, it offers an explanation, an excuse, as to why the information never made it into the commission's final report.

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.

...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.

...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.

Note the Times lays the groundwork for blaming the Bush administration. It's the "minder's" fault.

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."

How lame!

The reason such dramatic information was not taken up by the commission was because things were so hectic. Lots of stuff was flying around.

In effect, Felzenberg is saying that getting the report to the printers took precedence over the quality of the information in the report.

It is inexcusable that Able Danger was ignored.

The information is explosive.

The latest on Able Danger, appearing on the Times website, from AP:

The Sept. 11 commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday.

Al Felzenberg, who had been the commission's spokesman, said Tuesday the panel was unaware of intelligence specifically naming Atta. But he said subsequent information provided Wednesday confirmed that the commission had been aware of the intelligence.

It did not make it into the final report because the information was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks, Felzenberg said. The commission has gone out of existence, although individual members of the panel continue to follow closely the Bush administration's progress in implementing their recommendations.

...Felzenberg said an unidentified person working with Weldon came forward Wednesday and described a meeting 10 days before the panel's report was issued last July. During it, a military official urged commission staffers to include a reference to the intelligence on Atta in the final report.

Felzenberg said checks were made and the details of the July 12, 2004, meeting were confirmed. Previous to that, Felzenberg said it was believed commission staffers knew about Able Danger from a meeting with military officials in Afghanistan during which no mention was made of Atta or the other three hijackers.

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.

He sought to minimize the significance of the new information.

''Even if it were valid, it would've joined the lists of dozens of other instances where information was not shared,'' Felzenberg said. ''There was a major problem with intelligence sharing.''

Two points:

1) The mention of searching the National Archives reminds me of Sandy Berger's crimes. I hope that staff members at the Archives are paying close attention to how documents are being handled and that they are on "sock watch."

2) I would hope that Able Danger's findings would not have been lumped in with the "lists of dozens of other instances where information was not shared."

So much was made of the August 6, 2001 PDB. Anti-Bush forces used it to cast blame on the admininstration for not preventing the 9/11 attacks.

Don't you think the fact that the identities of four hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, were known by the government more than a year prior to 9/11 is significant?

The pieces of the puzzle are coming together. A specific motive for Sandy Berger's actions is becoming clearer and Bill Clinton's legacy gets more tarnished.