9/11 Commission - Able Danger coverup?

[JW]

This summary goes from fact to speculation, but what is needed here is to nail down the facts. And what is obvious here is that the 9/11 Commission did not report all the facts about 9/11 intelligence. I don't see this as a partisan issue. I would like to know the truth.

One person of interest in this is Gorelick. It was pointed out at the time the commission was formed that Gorelick had a conflict of interest since she had been involved in decisions that possible hindered the flow of important intelligence regarding 9/11. Seems like she should have been testifying before the commission rather than helping shape the report. I think that is a valid criticism of the commission.

And, yes, I know that to some National Review is the devil, but the papers are full of stories about this matter this weekend, rumor, and speculation, and denials. The story is out there, though I notice some of our major news channels are not that interested in the story.

http://tks.nationalreview.com/archives/072802.asp


What we know:

* In 1999, the Pentagon established an intelligence unit called Able Danger, assigned to seek out and identify al-Qaeda cells and members for U.S. Special Operations Command. This group reportedly used data mining from open sources.

* Approximately August or September 2000, Able Danger identified an al-Qaeda cell in Brooklyn. An intelligence official and Rep. Curt Weldon claim that the AD unit identified Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and included a photo of Atta. (Weldon claims that he has spoken to four persons involved with the program.) At least two of those men were pilots on the hijacked flights.

* Able Danger analysts recommended the information be passed on to the FBI so that the cell could be rounded up. Accounts in Government Security News, the New York Times, and the Associated Press indicate that Pentagon lawyers decided that anyone holding a green card (as it was believed the cell members did) had to be granted essentially the same legal protections as any U.S. citizen. Thus, the information Able Danger had gathered could not be shared with the FBI, the lawyers concluded. This is in keeping with “the wall” philosophy and policy established in 1995 by Assistant Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, in which intelligence and law enforcement were directed to go beyond what the law requires to keep intelligence-gathering and criminal law enforcement separated.

* The prohibition against sharing intelligence on Atta and the others should not have applied since they were in the country on visas. They did not have permanent resident status.

* At least two 9/11 Commission staffers were told of Able Danger’s findings on at least two occasions by members of the military intelligence community.

* Information about Able Danger was not passed on to the commissioners Tom Kean, Lee Hamilton, Tim Roemer, or John Lehman. If the other members of the commission have indicated whether or not they were informed of this information, I have not seen those reports.

* The 9/11 Commission Report, which everyone and their brother praised as a comprehensive and definitive analysis of the flaws in U.S. counterterrorism operations before 9/11, now has at least one giant glaring hole in it. One cannot help but wonder what else got left out, because some staffer or staffers seemed to think it wasn’t important enough. I relish the wording in this comment: “The 9-11 Commission’s job was to find and connect all the intelligence dots that obviously didn't get connected prior to 9-11, and then recommend how we can connect the dots better and faster next time. It wasn’t part of their job to erase the dots they didn’t like, before connecting. Doing that, implies that their conclusions were arrived at well before the investigation was complete.”

What we don’t know:

* Just how many names Able Danger wanted to forward to the FBI. However, the wording in the Government Security article indicates that these four names were the only four that popped up on AD’s data-mining operation.

Thus, the information Able Danger had amassed about the only terrorist cell they had located inside the United States could not be shared with the FBI, the lawyers concluded.
Unless the former intelligence officer quoted in the story is lying, these four guys were all that Able Danger found.

* Whether the military lawyer who denied Able Danger’s request to pass on the information checked with any superiors.

* It seems very hard to imagine this information would not be passed on to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, and the White House’s point man on counterterrorism, Richard Clarke. Yet, as of this moment, we have no direct confirmation that this information went any higher than the Pentagon lawyer.

What is speculation, but is interesting speculation:

* The 9/11 Commission staffers who felt the information about Able Danger wasn’t worth mentioning to their bosses could, conceivably, be imbeciles. Perhaps, more plausible, is that they had a particular view they wished the report to express, and the Able Danger revelations contradicted that view. Another possibility: These staffers in question didn’t tell Kean, Hamilton, Roemer, or Lehman, but they did tell another member or other members of the Commission, who instructed them to leave it out of the briefings, summaries, and reports given to Kean, Hamilton, Roemer, Lehman, and/or other members. (COUGHgorelickCOUGH)

* No one has concretely tied this new information to the strange, felonious behavior of Sandy Berger, smuggling documents out of the National Archives. But boy, if the document in question related to Able Danger’s warning and the decision to not act upon it, his actions would make a lot more sense, wouldn’t they?

[Arles]

I'm getting a little tired of all this "gotcha" politics in regards to 9-11. The idea that if [insert random person from the collection of George Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Jaime Gorelick or Sandy Berger] was not there, 9-11 would not have happened is extremely counterproductive. There was an inheirant problem with our system of dealing with terrorists and my only concern is that that system be adjusted to limit the chance of future communication and secruity issues.

Now, I do think that this story is interesting and should be checked out (thanks to JW for posting it). But the point of the investigation should not be to pin blame on Gorelick, Clinton or Berger, but to make sure that this information would now go to the FBI if it was obtained regarding three new terrorists in similar situations tomorrow. If the answer to that question is "Yes", none of this really bothers me as it has already been fixed.

If the answer is "No", then fix the problem without making a kangaroo court out of everything and generating all the political grandstanding that has often followed anything associated with 9-11.

[CamEdwards]

I talked with Jim (the author of this piece, who's a friend of mine) at length about this yesterday. Even if the Pentagon lawyers had said Gorelick's "wall" meant Able Danger couldn't relay this message to the FBI, there's no reason why it couldn't have been bumped up the chain of command to Cohen and NSA Berger.

That doesn't mean it was, of course. But it will be interesting to see how this story plays out, and it's amazing to me that this wasn't even included in the 9/11 commission report.

[JW]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

I talked with Jim (the author of this piece, who's a friend of mine) at length about this yesterday. Even if the Pentagon lawyers had said Gorelick's "wall" meant Able Danger couldn't relay this message to the FBI, there's no reason why it couldn't have been bumped up the chain of command to Cohen and NSA Berger.

That doesn't mean it was, of course. But it will be interesting to see how this story plays out, and it's amazing to me that this wasn't even included in the 9/11 commission report.

I agree with both Arles and Cam. The idea should be not to place blame but to find the intell problems and fix them. There is enough blame to go around in both the Clinton and Bush administrations that we don't need finger-pointing. However, this does seem like an important omission in the 9/11 commission report, and I have believed from the start that due to Gorelick's involvemend in the development of policy for flow on intell, that she should have been testifying before the commission rather than helping shape the report. We need to find the full truth here and learn from it, and that is why the Able Danger story needs to be publicized.

[MrBigglesworth]

What the Corner says now:

WE MAY OWE THEM A BIG APOLOGY [John Podhoretz] A day or two ago, I posted a note of caution about the Able Danger scandal, and that note of caution has now turned into a full-fledged symphony -- and some of us on the Right who have been making a big stink about this may have been had.

Weldon now isn't sure Atta was on the chart, he says he gave away his only hard copy of the chart, and his photo was not on the reconstructed chart in 2001, 2002, 2003, or 2004. It's looking like Weldon is at least embellishing his story, if not outright lying.

hxxp://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1093694,00.html

In a particularly dramatic scene in Weldon’s book, Countdown to Terror, the Pennsylvania Republican described personally handing to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley, just after Sept. 11, an Able Danger chart produced in 1999 identifying Atta. But Weldon told Time he’s no longer certain Atta’s name was on that original document. The congressman says he handed Hadley his only copy. Still, last week he referred reporters to a recently reconstructed version of the chart in his office where, among dozens of names and photos of terrorists from around the world, there was a color mug shot of Mohammad Atta, circled in black marker.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by Arles

I'm getting a little tired of all this "gotcha" politics in regards to 9-11. The idea that if [insert random person from the collection of George Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Jaime Gorelick or Sandy Berger] was not there, 9-11 would not have happened is extremely counterproductive. There was an inheirant problem with our system of dealing with terrorists and my only concern is that that system be adjusted to limit the chance of future communication and secruity issues.

Now, I do think that this story is interesting and should be checked out (thanks to JW for posting it). But the point of the investigation should not be to pin blame on Gorelick, Clinton or Berger, but to make sure that this information would now go to the FBI if it was obtained regarding three new terrorists in similar situations tomorrow. If the answer to that question is "Yes", none of this really bothers me as it has already been fixed.

If the answer is "No", then fix the problem without making a kangaroo court out of everything and generating all the political grandstanding that has often followed anything associated with 9-11.

Amen.

If all the energy the 4th Estate is spending on identifying and assigning blame for 9/11 was instead channelled towards bringing current vulnerabilities/problems to light, we'd all be a lot better off.

[JW]

Originally Posted by MrBigglesworth

What the Corner says now:

Weldon now isn't sure Atta was on the chart, he says he gave away his only hard copy of the chart, and his photo was not on the reconstructed chart in 2001, 2002, 2003, or 2004. It's looking like Weldon is at least embellishing his story, if not outright lying.

hxxp://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1093694,00.html

Very interesting. However, we also have this from MSNBC, dated today.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8932844/

WASHINGTON - The leaders of the 9/11 commission late Friday disputed a congressman’s criticism that the panel did not adequately investigate a claim that four hijackers were identified as al-Qaida members more than a year before the attacks.

In a joint statement, former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said a military official who made the claim had no documentation to back it up. And they said only 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta was identified to them and not three additional hijackers as claimed by Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

With this much confusion and contradiction, it would be nice to get to the bottom of it.