Original Post on Able Danger story in "
`Able Danger' Sign of Clinton 9/11 Failures... Not so fast"
UPDATES
Regionals carry AP story
New York Times' Doug Jehl on the Commission's former spokesman Al Felzenberg who is changing story daily.
Washington Post says key players are claming up while they investigate.
Weldon posted on his web site Letter to former 911 Commission dated August 10, 2005.
Larry Johnson, former counter terrorism CIA discredits Weldon, calls for refocus on Bush Team's inaction.
Snips...
Regional Papers carrying
AP story out late August 11, 2005 (NYT version)
Some newer items:
The information did not make it into the final report because it was not
consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the
attacks, Felzenberg said.
The discourse project, Pentagon and at least two congressional committees are looking into the issue. If found accurate, the intelligence would change the timeline for when government officials first became aware of Atta's links to al-Qaida.
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. Felzenberg sought to minimize the
significance of the new information.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his
House counterpart, Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, are looking into the issue.
NOTE: Roberts got whacked by RawStory yesterday (awesome timeline, too).
New York Times’ Douglas Jehl is targeting the Commission’s former spokesman Al Felzenberg who is changing his tune and story daily. Correction Posted.
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.
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.
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.
The investigators knew this was impossible, Mr. Felzenberg said, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000. (break to next para)
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
"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."
Flying around? Facts presented to you?
Washington Post says key players are claming up while they investigate.
Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said this week that none of the four commission staff members present during the Asia trip briefing recalls any mention of Atta or a terrorist cell. Felzenberg said the 2003 briefing focused generally on Able Danger, which officials have said relied heavily on computerized analysis of public data.
"The name 'Atta' or a terrorist cell would have gone to the top of the radar screen if it had been mentioned," he said.
Felzenberg declined to comment yesterday on the July 2004 interview with the military officer, citing a commission investigation into the allegations that could be completed as early as today. Pentagon officials have also declined to comment this week.
Weldon posted on his web site a Letter to former members of the 911 Commission dated August 10, 2005.
First some CIA bashing:
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.
Then the central call of action:
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.
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?
Angry widow calls for investigation of the investigation...
TAMPA - With details emerging Thursday that the Sept. 11 commission omitted crucial information from its final report last year, a group of 9/11 widows called for creation of a new independent panel.
"I'm very disturbed, and I want to get some answers," said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, died in the World Trade Center. "I want to know what the truth is."
Her organization, the September 11th Advocates, or the Jersey Girls, was instrumental in pushing for creation of the Sept. 11 commission.
And in the same story
SOCOM spokesman, who is in Tampa, says they will investigate and report to the public.
At SOCom Thursday afternoon, Col. Samuel Taylor, a spokesman, said they were trying to get answers, too.
Taylor said the investigation should not take too long, and that SOCom planned to share the results with the public.
Taylor joined the SOCom commander, Gen. Doug Brown, and other staff and dignitaries at a memorial service to honor special operations forces killed in action.
"The mood here could not be more positive," Taylor said after the brief ceremony.
"The mission is too important."
SOCom manages the nation's secret commando units and has played a central role in the war on terror since Sept. 11.
Larry Johnson, former counter terrorism analysis at CIA discredits Weldon, but calls for refocus on Bush Team’s inaction.
Couple cuts:
Before conspiracy theories get too far down the road a few cautionary notes on the Curt Weldon generated "ABLE DANGER" conspiracy. Let's start with the source of this information--Congressman Curt Weldon. Congressman Weldon's track record on issues like this is consistently spotty. Usually he gets a portion of the story correct but screws up the most important parts. That appears to be the case here.
Clearing up role of SOCOM:
The biggest flaw in Weldon's scenario appears to be the role of SOCOM aka the Special Operations Command. SOCOM in 2000 was a weak command with no operational role in 2000. Even after 9-11 SOCOM struggled to try to function like the other regional CINCs. Prior to January 2003 SOCOM was barely a "supporting" command and did not function as a "supported" command. A "supporting" command has resources it can give to "supported" commands. In other words, a "supported" command has the authority to call upon and employ military assets from other commands. In the case of SOCOM it was essentially an administrative headquarters command but did not have a battlestaff nor did it control deployable military forces. It was only in early 2003 that Secretary Rumsfeld directed SOCOM to play a more aggressive role in tracking and killing Al Qaeda operatives.
Getting to the Point:
The real failing, which the 9-11 Commission refuses to embrace, is that the various agencies of the Federal Government had enough pieces of the puzzle that, if assembled into a coherent picture, could have prevented the attacks on 9-11. There was enough public info in 2000 about the need to focus on the threat posed by Bin Laden. Milt Bearden and I called for this in November of 2000. Richard Clarke presented National Security Advisor Condileeza Rice with a memo outling a more comprehensive strategy to find and finish Bin Laden. At the end of the day, the Bush Administration ignored the issue of terrorism until 10 September 2001, when the National Security Council held a meeting to discuss terrorism policy. Regrettably that meeting was too little, too late.
[empahsis added]
Roger that, Larry.
The Noise Machine:
AM Division; Pick their favorites to blame; Rush – Clinton, Hannity - Jamie Gorelick, Clinton “Insider” on Commission, Savage – Everybody
PRINT/BLOG Division; Washington Times – focus Jamie Gorelick, of course.
Just a
sample of the blame-game they are focused on now:
The information that “Able Danger” knew of the presence of an al-Queda cell in New York a year prior to the 9/11 attacks was given to the Sept. 11 Commission staff in October 2003, and now we find that Commission members themselves were not informed prior to their issuing their report. And, Jamie Gorelick, the former Clinton Justice Department official responsible for the very directive that prevented “Able Danger” from passing its information to the FBI, is a member of the Commission charged with finding out what we knew and when we knew it before the 9/11 attacks.
Here is what Richard A. Clark, former counter-terrorism advisor for both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, testified to in prepared remarks before the Sept. 11 Commission on March 24, 2004: _“In retrospect, we know that there was information available to some in the FBI and CIA that al Qida [sic] operatives had entered the United States. That information was not shared with the senior FBI counter-terrorism official (Dale Watson) or with me, despite the heightened state of concern in the Counter-terrorism Security Group.”_
As the Washington Times noted in April 2004: _“Ms. Gorelick has been among the most partisan and aggressive Democratic panel members in questioning the anti-terror efforts of the Bush administration. The nation deserves a full accounting from Ms. Gorelick of why the Clinton administration felt it necessary to go the extra mile in order to hamper the capability of law enforcement and intelligence agents to talk to one another. If Ms. Gorelick fails to provide this, her actions would bring into serious doubt the credibility of the commission.”_
[emphasis theirs]
And IC
public forum site discusses use of “data-mining” and restrictions on collecting data on “US Persons”.