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

email from Weldon's office | 8-10-05 | Weldon office

[doug from upland]

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.

August 10, 2005

The Honorable Thomas H. Kean, Chairman

The Honorable Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chairman

9/11 Public Discourse Project

One DuPont Circle, NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20036

Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton:

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.

Sincerely,

CURT WELDON

Member of Congress

cc:

Richard Ben-Veniste

Fred F. Fielding

Jamie S. Gorelick

Slade Gorton

Bob Kerrey

John F. Lehman

Timothy J. Roemer

James R. Thompson

Dennis Hastert

Peter Hoekstra

Frank Wolf

Pat Roberts

Richard Shelby

[JLAGRAYFOX]

If you go back to my earlier posts on this site, you will see that I predicted the 911 commisssion was a waste of time, and would be tryng to cover Bill Clinton's butt. As you can now clearly see I was right , and Bill Clinton and the entire Democrat Party has the blood of innocent 911 victims dripping from their filthy, vermin hands. The truth always opts.

[MNJohnnie]

President Clinton had the DOD spying on American Citizens.


I could believe that if Atta had been a Republican or Conservative activist. Considering what Atta was, I am surprised he doesn't show up as a Clinton campaign contributor!

[sandydipper]

I betcha the papers that Sandy Burglar swiped from the National Archives mentioned the Able Danger information.

[devolve]

--

Actually, Bud Garner is the older brother of one of my HS classmates and cousin of another HS classmate.

I served in the army somewhat later.

That was an email Bud Garner sent out this morning to all of the PBHS "Beanpickers" - later changed to "Golden Tornadoes" - I preferred "Beanpickers" - but then - I was a teenage cowboy..... (Brahmas, Quarter Horses, Gators in our pastures)

Bud survived the sinking of his ship by a Japanese submarine in the Pacific campaign.

Bud is now the official City Historian of Pompano Beach, Florida - he writes a newspaper column and has written books on old Pompano and early Florida - his stories are written in an easy readable style and are a refreshing change from reading the phony revisionist garbage cranked out by most writers and journalists today.

His emails are always something to look forward to.

I used some of the photographs Bud sent me on my "WWII - White Cliffs Of Dover" webpages - a Tribute to WWII Vets and all Vets, their families, and our current troops, reserves, and NG. - But my webhost is (allegedly) transferring files and webpages to other "more reliable" servers right now - or so thay claim. I have lots of original WWII songs in .mp3, .wav, and .ram formats and short audio clips from FDR, Churchill, Truman.

I hope I get it back online as I had set it up. I was to busy (dumb) too "mirror" those pages and files on a separate webhost website - that was before the November 2004 elections.

Now I tend to upload everything to 2-5 websites as insurance. No excuses.

--

Bud Garner and his WWII buddies are a good comparison to the John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, al-Gore, Slick Willie Clinton, Hillary, Janet Sterno, Joe Biden, Clarke/Clark, Sandy Berger, Joe Plame-Wilson, Gorelich-Wall cancer in America today that sides with the enemy and believes that talking, commissions, diplomacy, appeasement, bribery is the "progressive future".

911 blew that BS away in seconds.

--

[americaprd]

Remember that all of this about Atta's green card was going on when the CLinton Admin was legalizing immigrants, including many felons, by the thousands without background checks of any kind. Why? To get as many people to vote for Gore as possible in the 2000 election...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21739

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15598

Excerpt:

The 684-page INS inspector general report was released with little fanfare during a congressional hearing in September. Its most stunning allegation -- that the Clinton-Gore White House had hijacked the INS for partisan political purposes in what amounted to massive voter fraud -- never emerged as a campaign issue until after election day, when it became evident that Al Gore owed his near-victory in Florida to hundreds of thousands of newly-minted citizens in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.

According to the IG report, many of those new voters should never have been granted citizenship.

Some were convicted felons. Others had overstayed tourist visas and were working illegally. Close to 200,000 never underwent any background check, so INS does not know to this day whether they were eligible for citizenship. Few passed an English language and citizenship test worthy of the name. Some could not understand their own swearing-in, because the ceremony was conducted in English.

[JewishRighter]

Just emailed her:

Re: Able Danger

Dear Ms. Gorelick:

What did you know about Able Danger and when did you know it? You owe an answer to the American people.

VTY

[jimfrommaine]

President Clinton is the worst President in American history. The only time he acted against Al-qaeda was right before his impeachment. We bombed empty bases with cruise missiles. Well, if it was good enough to take out Bin laden then, why not the day after, or the day after that? It was a political stunt, pure pr nonsense.
We cut in run in Somalia, we side with the terrorists in Bosnia. We do nothing after the 1993 World trade center bombings, the embassy's\ in Kenya, the U.S.S Cole. The ACLU types set up an intelligence wall that aides the terrorists. And let's not forget about Loral, and China now able to take out West Coast cities if we defend Taiwan. And of course he gave billions to the North Koreans to stop building nukes. That turned out real swell.

[cvq3842]

I know what you mean.

[bray]

The clinton/gorelicker Cover-up continues!!! Weldon Rox!!

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters

[JewishRighter]

I'm not sure it would hurt to send a short note with the re: Able Danger. Even if they just scan the subject lines, they'll see a ton of fury out here.

[cvq3842]

I know what you mean.

Thanks for your service, also.

I am a real novice when it comes to computers, but I'll look for your site when it's up.

[XJarhead]

I'd guess attorneys or other professional-level people rather than secretaries.

[txhurl]

I think Maestro mentioned one of the docs was Richard Clarke's proposal to off Bin Laden (while BL was tractable), and Berger had written 'no' in the margin of the report.

[TomasUSMC]

U.S. Representative Dave Weldon, M.D., F.A.C.P. of Melbourne, Florida, is an Army veteran and physician who was sworn into his first political office in November 1994 to serve the people of Florida's 15th Congressional District.

---

What do you think about Presidential quality? He's got military on his resume and a doctor. His name seems to show up on most important National Security matters.

[americaprd]

You've got the wrong Weldon. The person in the articles is Curt Weldon from PA, not to be confused with Dave Weldon from Florida.

[TomasUSMC]

SEMPER FI

[TomasUSMC]

Thanks Americaprd.

[AGreatPer]

"The President was against the Commission because there had already been a Senate Intelligence(I think) Commission. The findings were published on the web at one time....including suggestions for the future.

President Bush nailed the new commission for what it was...a "sanitize" Bubba campaign for Hillary."

Thank you for reminding us about that.

I remember now being with the DC Chapter at a protest around that time and a protester brough up the point that Bush was against this. I didn't know that at the time and now you put it together for me.

Hope Rush brings up this Weldon leter today.

[nuclady]

Thank you so much for this article. I was hoping it got legs. This is a travesty! I hope Rush continues on this today. It is up on his web page. Have you sent to Drudge???

[GLH3IL]

Maybe the White House didn't authorize the DOD to do it. Perhaps the DOD had a sense that something nasty was brewing domestically that would be of concern to them so they wanted a heads up because they knew of "The Wall" and didn't want to be in the dark intelligence-wise.

Just a very loose guess...but it would seem to make sense to a small degree.