New Pre-9/11 Intel Questions

Able Danger, the 9/11 Commission & the Strange (But Now Explainable) Actions of Sandy Berger

By Sean Osborne, Senior Analyst & Military Affairs Expert

& Douglas J. Hagmann,Director

10 August 2005: Hey America… do you remember the strange actions of President Clinton’s national security adviser Sandy Berger during the 9/11 Commission investigation when he removed highly classified terrorism documents that should have been turned over to that independent commission? Did you ever wonder what Berger was attempting to hide and even more importantly, why? Did you also wonder why, even though he committed a felony, he received nothing more than a slap on the wrist while various political and intelligence officials played down his actions, wanting them to disappear as quickly as possible? It appears that we just might have discovered the answers to these and other troubling questions: Able Danger.

Able Danger is the code name of a secret team of U.S. Army military intelligence operatives created in 1999 under a directive signed by General Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about al Qaeda networks around the world. In mid-2000, the Able Danger team discovered the existence of the key 9/11 terror cell of Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawar al-Hamzi inside the U.S. and recommended to their military superiors that the FBI be called in to “take out that cell,” according to Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania House member and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. That information was presented in the summer of 2000 in the form of a chart complete with photographs of the terrorists to the Pentagon's Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Our intelligence was dead-on accurate, but was not acted upon a full year before the 9/11 attacks.

In fact, Representative Weldon said Able Danger members had recommended that the information they uncovered be shared with the FBI, but the idea was rejected and they “were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn’t exist.”

Despite the findings of Able Danger, absolutely no action was pursued to take out the cell during the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, said Weldon. The reason? Mohammed Atta possessed a “green card” at the time. Under the rules of the Clinton Justice Department, lawyers working for Special Operations decided that anyone holding a green card had to be granted essentially the same legal protections as any U.S. citizen. They did not want to recommend that the FBI go after someone holding a green card, Weldon told his House colleagues on June 27, 2005 during a speech, known as a “special order,” which he delivered on the House floor. Defense Department lawyers were also said to be reluctant to suggest a bold action by FBI agents after the bureau’s disastrous 1993 strike against the Branch Davidian religious cult in Waco, Texas.

Read Curt Weldon’s June 27, 2005 Testimony
This week, Representative Weldon and a former defense intelligence official said they had spoken with three Able Danger team members, all still working in the government, including two in the military, and that they were consistent in asserting that Mohammed Atta's affiliation with a Qaeda terrorism cell in the United States was known within the Defense Department by mid-2000 but was not acted upon. Further and after the fact, the 9-11 Commission was reportedly never told about Able Danger or its findings.

Enter Sandy Berger – During the 9/11 Commission

While the investigation by the 9/11 Commission was in progress, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who served as Clinton's national security adviser for all of President's Clinton’s second term, was caught removing documents from the national Archives – the very same documents that should have been turned over to the independent commission probing the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Berger ultimately admitted to intentionally taking and destroying various classified documents relating to terrorism collected under the Clinton administration. Berger and his lawyer said on July 19, 2004 that he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also “inadvertently” took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio. Those documents reportedly included an assessment of America's terror vulnerabilities at airports, something very relevant to Able Danger’s findings and key to the 9/11 attacks. What Sandy Berger did was a felony, yet was allowed a generous plea agreement of a fine and a three-year suspension of his security clearance.

Under the prism of Able Danger, we are now able to make sense out of the previously curious actions of Sandy Berger.

Able Danger & the Saga of the 9/11 Commission; Warren Commission Redux

According to Weldon, staff members of the 9/11 Commission were briefed on the findings of the Able Danger intelligence unit within the Special Operations Command and about the specific recommendation to break up the Mohammed Atta cell, yet those members reportedly decided not to brief the commission’s members on those matters. Why not?

Clearer now is the conflict of interest of having Jamie Gorelick, the Assistant Attorney General under Bill Clinton serving on the 9/11 Commission. Ms. Gorelick worked directly for Janet Reno and was directly involved in matters that were under review by the 9/11 Commission.

Remember the reason the findings of Able Danger were not acted upon? In his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft stated the following:

"In 1995, the Justice Department embraced flawed legal reasoning, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required," he said. "The 1995 Guidelines and the procedures developed around them imposed draconian barriers to communications between the law enforcement and intelligence communities. The wall left intelligence agents afraid to talk with criminal prosecutors or agents. In 1995, the Justice Department designed a system destined to fail."
Continuing his testimony, Ashcroft stated:

"Somebody built this wall.” Ashcroft added: "The basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum entitled 'Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this Commission."
Ashcroft was referring to Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration as well as general counsel at the Department of Defense. Both jobs put her at the very center of the former administration's anti-terrorism efforts. Consequently, her actions, as well as those of her superiors, were the subject of review by the very commission on which she is a member. Most assuredly, that is a huge conflict of interest. In her position at the Justice Department, Gorelick wrote a memo that provides a picture of the role she played setting policy for intelligence gathering and sharing during the Clinton Administration. The memo stemmed from the Justice Department's prosecution of the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Gorelick wrote in 1995:

“During the course of those investigations, significant counterintelligence information has been developed related to the activities and plans of agents of foreign powers operating in this country and overseas, including previously unknown connections between separate terrorist groups." We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."
And therein is the framework for the legal conundrum faced by Able Danger, and why Atta and his minions were free to hijack 4 airliners on 9/11.

Oh, MSM is getting on this.

The NY Times will run a piece on Weldon tomorrow saying he is a right wing extremist.

If this would have been under the Bush administration, the headline would have screamed. "Bush Knew After All" "Jersey Girls and the Democrats demand impeachment proceedings immediately."

We should start a commission to study how the commission failed to gather this information. maybe get some old party hacks to run it. Is Tom Kean available? We'll call it the 9-11 Commission Commission. We'll get the wives of 9-11 Commission members to form a coffee clatch. It'll be great fun.

They're on it today...blaming it on the Pentagon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/politics/10intel.html

This might explain Berger AND THE AGREEMENT THAT BUBBA WILL NEVER BE PROSECUTED FOR ANY CRIME AFTER HE LEAVES OFFICE.

CBS News! Is this thing getting legs?

And will it be possible for the 9/11 Commission bury it?

This could get interesting.

CBSNews identifies Curt Weldon as "The congressman, considered something of a maverick on Capitol Hill, initially made his allegations in a floor speech in June that garnered little attention."

After watching Weldon this morning on FOX & Friends, what made the biggest impression on me was his explanation of how totally bogus it is to claim the information gathered by the Able Danger unit couldn't be shared with intelligence agencies. Here's a snippet of Weldon's remarks on FOX & Friends this morning.

""Lawyers within the administration — and we're talking about the Clinton administration, not the Bush administration ... said 'you can't do it,'" and put post-its over Atta's face, Weldon said. "They said they were concerned about the political fallout that occurred after Waco ... and the Branch Davidians."

But Able Danger was largely using open-source information that was available on the Internet and other public mediums, Weldon said, adding that there was no law prohibiting such information from being passed on to law enforcement."

Neither will Sandy Burglar. The fix is in.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165268,00.html

There's the link to Weldon's comments on Fox & Friends

Did you ever wonder what Berger was attempting to hide and even more importantly, why?

How can this not be the number one question going on in the minds of journalists? Why doesn't FOX news have a daily update for its viewers regarding this matter?

Smells like a Gorelick to me.

Interesting. And don't forget, GW could make an issue of this -- if he wanted to. He won't. They're all one big happy family in DC.

We should start a commission to study how the commission failed to gather this information.

James Gorelick? ..sorry, Jamie Gorlick.

The CBS report that were aired and repeated last night. is named Wyatt Andrews. I was impressed. Of course, none of us should hold our collective breaths until the 9-11 Commission finally gets around to discovering Jamie Gorelick's purpose on that committee was more "CCA" than anything else.

She (Gorelick) was the plant from the Clinton administration, to control the commissions outcome.

Gee....I think this is the same time period that Linda Tripp was at the Pentagon and at the height of "Monica".

Fox reported around 10:15 that the Pentagon sent information about this matter to the 9/11 Commission in 2003.

So either staffers didn't pass it on, or everyone on that commission is a liar.