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To: SueRae

This was excerpted this morning from the NY Times which points at the staff ...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....

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.

"There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report," Mr. Felzenberg said. "This information was not meshing with the other information that we had."

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."

Mr. Caso: "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... had been conducted....


43 posted on 08/11/2005 6:47:23 AM PDT by PhiKapMom (AOII Mom -- J.C. for OK Governor in '06; Allen/Watts in 2008)
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To: PhiKapMom
""There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, ...

What Incompetence!!!! Would they argue that there are not 6-11 million illegals in the US because we have no record of their entry???????? Is it incompetence, or is it something else?

150 posted on 08/11/2005 11:57:23 AM PDT by cookcounty (Army Vet, Army Dad.)
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To: PhiKapMom
Gee, they know that Atta , unlike most Al-Qaeda terrorists, never used one of those false passports, therefore Atta could not have been in the US, therefore the data mining info was useless? Give me a BREAK!!!
151 posted on 08/11/2005 12:00:24 PM PDT by cookcounty (Army Vet, Army Dad.)
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