Posted on 08/08/2005 8:31:46 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.
In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.
The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas. Under American law, United States citizens and green-card holders may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Mr. Weldon and the former intelligence official said it might have reinforced a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.
A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including Philip Zelikow, the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Mr. Atta's name.
The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.
Mr. Weldon first spoke publicly about the episode in June, in a little-noticed speech on the House floor and in an interview with The Times-Herald in Norristown, Pa. The matter...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bu....I mean, Clinton's fault.
Let's see... the summer of 2000... okay, that would be during the tenures of The Bent One, Janet Sterno and Screwy Louis Freeh.
The inability of the different intelligence agencies to talk to each other is what made 9/11 possible. That's why the Patriot Act is important.
> ... the information was not shared ...
No mention of the Clintonian info walls, of course.
Maybe this is what Sandy Burglar was trying to keep out of the light of day.
So there were many missed signals... Big deal. Missed them for Pearl Harbor too. You can dig back in history, especially in the information age) and find pre-cursors to any event with perfect 20-20 hind sight.
There are probably 100s of these reports that DID NOT PAN OUT, which those that delight in finding these loose ends don't point out.
Funny thing for the NYT, there's no way to harm Bush.
I don't care to do favors for the bent one, but IIRC, those walls go back to the mid 1970s and the Church committee hearings. Besides that, when the CIA shared intel with the FBI, it can come back to bite you. IIRC, during the prosecutions for the African embassy bombings, it came out that we were monitoring Al Qaeda satellite telephones. Since that came out they stopped using them.
See, they were already plotting in 2000, because they KNEW that the Governor of Texas would plot with his brother, the Governor of Florida, and his Daddy's Supreme Court to become President. And they KNEW that the Governor would be doing Israel's bidding once he stole the election, in contrast to the then-curren Administration, whose First Lady once kissed Mrs. Arafat in public.
Liberalism is so intellectually bankrupt, that a sleep-deprived conservative can mock their adherents at will.
I'm glad to see that someone was minding the store. Clinton / Reno's FBI was busy putting together Project Megiddo with lots of help from the SPLC and the ADL.
Clinton / Reno's FBI was ready for them evil white Christians when they came out of their church compounds shooting at 0001 hours on 1 Jan., 2000.
"Al Qaeda?" asked a puzzled Attorney General Reno. "Is that an extremist Christian racist, right-wing, anti-women's rights groups, you know, against abortion? Is it a right-wing political group saying bad things about the President."
"No General it's. . . ."
"Don't bother me then. I've got work to do fighting terrorists," the Attorney-General said as she waved the man out of her office. Isn't Al a Vice-President or something? she asked herself.
And who was Commander and Chief of the Military at this time ? Perhaps Clinton was too busy admiring his great generalship in the Balkans, where as Commander in Chief he helped Albanian Muslim Drug Running Terrorist takeover Kosovo. Ah yes. I remember those patriotic Albanian Americans in New York volunteering to fight in Kosovo ! Supposedly a lot of Al Queda's funding right now is being derived from said Kosovo Drug Runners. Who ironically are running drugs into Europe. And who does the left conspiratorially blame the problem on ? Someone who was still governing Texas while all this was occurring. Someone who was denied concession the night he won the Presidency. Someone the left stated was not 'elected' but 'selected'. Someone who was dealt the worse possible hand from leftist who were dealing from the bottom of the deck.
Even with that horrible poker hand, Bush has played a real fine game.
What did the Hildabeast know and when did she know it?
And most importantly, Bubba, the husband of Mrs. Bubba.
"No mention of the Clintonian info walls, of course."
Jamie Gorelick is the one to thank for this.
Bump.
Could this be what Berger was trying to steal from the National Archives?
Lest anyone forget, here's the reason why this occurred:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/mccarthy200404130845.asp
You notice, however, that those evil Republicans are mentioned in the first sentence. And the Clinton's "Gorelick Wall" is conspicuously absent from comment.
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