WELDON REJECTS 9/11 COMMISSION CLAIM THEY NEVER HEARD OF "ABLE DANGER"

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Yesterday, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, sent the following letter to the Former 9/11 Commission Members, also known as the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, rejecting the Commission's claim that they were not briefed on "Able Danger".

In the letter, Congressman Weldon calls on the 9/11 Public Discourse Project to answer two fundamental questions:

#1) What lawyers in the Department of Defense made the decision in late 2000 not to pass the information from Able Danger to the FBI?

#2) 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?

Below is a copy of a letter sent by Congressman Curt Weldon to the Former 9/11 Commission members.

I am contacting you to discuss an important issue that concerns the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and our country's efforts to ensure that such a calamity is never again allowed to occur. Your bipartisan work on The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States shed light on much that was unclear in the minds of the American people regarding what happened that fateful day, however there appears to be more to the story than the public has been told. I bring this before you because of my respect for you both, and for the 9-11 Commission's service to America.

Almost seven years ago, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 established the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, otherwise known as the Gilmore Commission. The Gilmore Commission reached many of the same conclusions as your panel, and in December of 2000 called for the creation of a "National Office for Combating Terrorism." I mention this because prior to 9/11, Congress was aware of many of the institutional obstacles to preventing a terrorist attack, and was actively attempting to address them. I know this because I authored the language establishing the Gilmore Commission.

In the 1990's, as chairman of the congressional subcommittee that oversaw research & development for the Department of Defense, I paid special attention to the activities of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Ft. Belvoir. During that time, I led a bipartisan delegation of Members of Congress to Vienna, Austria to meet with members of the Russian parliament, or Duma. Before leaving, I received a brief from the CIA on a Serbian individual that would be attending the meeting. The CIA provided me with a single paragraph of information. On the other hand, representatives of LIWA gave me five pages of far more in-depth analysis. This was cause for concern, but my debriefing with the CIA and FBI following the trip was cause for outright alarm: neither had ever heard of LIWA or the data mining capability it possessed.

As a result of experiences such as these, I introduced language into three successive Defense Authorization bills calling for the creation of an intelligence fusion center which I called NOAH, or National Operations and Analysis Hub. The NOAH concept is certainly familiar now, and is one of several recommendations made by your commission that has a basis in earlier acts of Congress. Despite my repeated efforts to establish NOAH, the CIA insisted that it would not be practical. Fortunately, this bureaucratic intransigence was overcome when Congress and President Bush acted in 2003 to create the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (now the National Counterterrorism Center). Unfortunately, it took the deaths of 3,000 people to bring us to the point where we could make this happen. Now, I am confident that under the able leadership of John Negroponte, the days of toleration for intelligence agencies that refuse to share information with each other are behind us.

The 9-11 Commission produced a book-length account of its findings, that the American people might educate themselves on the challenges facing our national effort to resist and defeat terrorism. Though under different circumstances, I eventually decided to do the same. I recently published a book critical of our intelligence agencies because even after 9/11, they were not getting the message. After failing to win the bureaucratic battle inside the Beltway, I decided to take my case to the American people.

In recent years, a reliable source that I refer to as "Ali" began providing me with detailed inside information on Iran's role in supporting terror and undermining the United States' global effort to eradicate it. 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. Director Goss and Chairman Hoekstra are both outstanding leaders that know each other well from their work together in the House of Representatives, and I will continue to strongly support their efforts at reform.

All of this background leads to the reason I am writing to you today. Yesterday the national news media began in-depth coverage of a story that is not new. In fact, I have been talking about it for some time. From 1998 to 2001, Army Intelligence and Special Operations Command spearheaded an effort called Able Danger that was intended to map out al Qaeda. According to individuals that were part of the project, Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat before 9/11. Team members believed that the Atta cell in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but somewhere along the food chain of Administration bureaucrats and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing the information to the FBI. These details are understandably of great interest to the American people, thus the recent media frenzy. However I have spoken on this topic for some time, in the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, on the floor of the House on June 27, 2005, and at various speaking engagements.

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.

In retrospect, it appears that my own suggestions to the Commission might have directed investigators in the direction of Able Danger, had they been heeded. I personally reached out to members of the Commission several times with information on the need for a national collaborative capability, of which Able Danger was a prototype. In the context of those discussions, I referenced LIWA and the work it had been doing prior to 9/11. 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?

Answering these questions is the work of the commissioners now, and fear of tarnishing the Commission's legacy cannot be allowed to override the truth. The American people are counting on you not to "go native" by succumbing to the very temptations your Commission was assembled to indict. In the meantime, I have shared all that I know on this topic with the congressional committee chairmen that have oversight over the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of our intelligence gathering and analyzing agencies. You can rest assured that Congress will share your interest in how it is that this critical information is only now seeing the light of day.

SOME TV Transcripts from FOX News this evening 08/11/05:

Wrapping up from Brit's Show, is Chris Wallace:

Thees military officials have told me they will testify under oath as to the content of their meetings, what they said, the mentioning of ties to al-qaeda, and mohamed atta.

>> Staff working for the 9/11 commissioners received two briefings by military intelligence officials, the first in october of 2003 and the second on july 12, 2004rks10 days before the final report was published. In both instances, commission staff were told about a military intelligence unit called able danger and its efforts to track bin laden's network which including the identification of atta and three other hijackers living in the U.S. Weldon wants to know why this information didn't go any higher.

>> I don't blame the commissioners right now, because they were never briefed to the best of my knowledge. I'm asking these questions of the 9/11 staff. Was there a deliberate attempt by one or more staffers to keep this information away from the commissioners. >> One day after denying that atta was brought up during the briefings, a commission staffer said no information came to life it did deal with the lead hijacker but didn't appear in the final report because the informations not consistent with what the commission knew about atta's travels before the attacks.

>> It has nothing to do when when he arrived in the u.S. It was more about the relationships they were able to identify, the ties between cells.

>> In an interview this week with fox, the former vice chairman of the 9/11 commission said they would make every efforts to clarify the issue.

>> We don't think we missed something at this point, but we owe the american people a very clear, clean statement of accountability as to what happened.

>> And late today, I met with a former intelligence official who worked on an el dangerer, the official said he personally briefed commission staffers in afghanistan in october 2003, and while she showed interest in able dangerer, by early 2004, he was told they required no further information. Chris. Chris: Catherine, any idea at all if they were briefed back in october of 2004, why this didn't set off alarm bells on the commission? Any explanation of that at all?

>> Really now the way the story is going there, are two central questions. If, indeed, the sources are correct, the staffers are briefed, why was it they made a decision not to kick it higher up to the commissioner level and include it in the report? I think the second element is if they were able to identify atta and the others in june of 2000, why was it that the information was never transferred to the f.B.I. And who ultimately made that decision to block it? Chris. Chris: Two big questions. We'll await the answers. Thank you very much.

From the start of Shep's News at 6PM 08/11/05

nd why wasn't the intelligence mentioned in the final report? Catherine herridge, live in D.C.

>> I met with an intelligence firbled (sic, AGENT) who worked on able danger. They identified five key al qaeda cells in the summer 26000. They were based in U.S., Kenyan, tanzania, yemen and hamburg, germany, which we know now is the central hub for the 9/11 operation. The former intelligence commission confirmed it can youed atta and three other future hijackers. What's significant he said they also identified ramsey binal shib. He was refused a visa to the united states before the attacks. He also provided money and assistance to zacarias moussaoui. He personally briefed staffers in afghanistan in october 2003 and while they showed interest in able danger and atta information, by early 2004 he was told they required no further intelligence. The republican congressman at the heart of this controversy told fox today these military contacts -- intelligence, are willing to go on the record.

>> They told me they would testify under oath as to the content of their meetings, what they said, the mentioning of ties to al qaeda and mohammed atta.

>> A big reversal as spokesman for the 9/11 commission acknowledged that staffers were briefed about atta and able danger in july of 2004. But they says the information was not included in their final report because it just did not matchup with what they knew about atta's travel before the attacks. Shep? Shepard: Catherine herridge live on the hill.

Able Danger
by Dan Darling on August 12, 2005 02:30 PM

Unlike many other commentators, I'm going to restrain my partisanship in accusing former Clinton administration officials in covering up the "Able Danger" information, which the Associated Press now appears to have confirmed the particulars of. If they did in fact try to cover things up for political purposes, then it's just more shame on them and yet more evidence of just how politicized things became during the course of the 9/11 Commission.

As long-time readers are aware, I have long been skeptical of accepting the Commission and its claims as the sum total of dogmatic proof as it relates to terrorism and a whole host of other issues. If one desires a decent example of this, the lack of any substantive discussion of the convergence between Western, Iranian, and Saudi intelligence services in the Balkans during the 1990s alongside al-Qaeda is Exhibit #1 that somebody decided that some things are best left unsaid despite an enormous amount of documentation to the contrary. In all fairness, this topic is touched upon by Richard Clarke (whose media blitz was one of the first signs that any objectivity that had beforehand existed in the Commission was being thrown aside in the interests of the commissioners' egos and their PR machine) in Against All Enemies, which is cited extensively in the final report.

If one accepts like me that there are likely a number of significant factual errors in the Commission's final report then you can probably see why I think demystifying it is a good thing. If information was in fact suppressed, incidentally, then I think someone also needs to take a look into the other accusations (coming from one of the 9/11 commissioners themselves, no less!) of evidence suppression contained in Ken Timmerman's book to see whether or not they pan out or not since the idea that such suppression could have occurred is now moving from the speculative into the factual.

The other bit of information that I find particularly satisfying to see coming out of these revelations is the fact that it was Curt Weldon, a man who has been most unfairly slandered by his critics as a know-nothing and a dupe when it comes to intelligence matters, who is single-handedly responsible for this story getting any traction whatsoever. I would strongly suggest to his critics that they might at the very least grant the congressman a little more credit as far as both his intellect and his credulity are concerned, as he has now brought forth information that we as Americans ought to be extremely grateful for.

www.windsofchange.net

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