Posted on 08/11/2005 5:57:46 PM PDT by TonyInOhio
It behaved disgracefully and in a nakedly partisan fashion, with former officials of the Clinton administration attempting to use the platform to damage the president's reelection chances. Then, after months of ludicrous conduct, out of nowhere came the brilliantly conceived and written report that set a new standard of eloquence and coherence for government documents, became a major bestseller and redeemed the commission's reputation.
Well, that didn't last long.
In a story filed at 7:10 PM, the Associated Press is now confirming all the particulars of what will now forever be called the Able Danger disaster. The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.
And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.
And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.
And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies.
I was very skeptical of this Able Danger stuff about Atta, thought it was just sme way Rep. Curt Weldon was trying to sell a book. No longer. This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.
So was the staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?
More important, what will co-chairmen Tom (pound his fist on the table) Kean and Lee (look sorrowful) Hamilton do and say in the next 36 hours about this calamity?
I quickly looked through all the Arab names, but right now it's almost 2:00 am here. I book marked the page to give it a better search tomorrow. Man, there's a lot of Muslims there!
"Grandpa Dave said it on another thread. We need to concentrate on HOW the wall forced a government agancy that had identified Atta as a terrorist to speak nothing of it to the governement agencies that could have taken him down and PREVENT 9/11. All those lives sadly snuffed out. Because of Gorelick's wall. And the Democrats had her sit on the commission investigating the whole thing!!!!!"
Lets add one more question here.
Why was this wall erected by Gorelicker, and who paid for that wall?
A selection of commission staff names for anyone doing research on 9/11 Commission staff - I'm trying some Google searches now - these are the ones that strike me as worthy of possible scrutiny (but it's hard to tell any party affiliations from brief bios - I'm just guessing which ones seem to have served under Clinton administration and/or had possible conflict of interest):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1461535/posts?page=134#134
placemark
Good work. Thanks for the link.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1461535/posts
Have y'all seen this?
The Myth of Military Lawyers-William Arkin -December 14, 2001
On the first night of Operation Enduring Freedom, according to Seymour Hersh's reporting in The New Yorker, U.S. intelligence tracked a convoy "carrying Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader" to a "building" in Kabul (actually it was Kandahar), where permission to open fire was sought.
By Hersh's account, word came back from U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, in Tampa, Florida, that Gen. Tommy Franks disallowed the strike because his staff lawyer - the Judge Advocate General (JAG) - "doesn't like this." Hersh's conclusion: Omar got away "due to political correctness." The incident, he concluded, was emblematic of "constraints placed by the government on the military's ability to wage war during the last decade."
Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks followed up with a story echoing the view of Air Force officers that they had been thwarted numerous times from hitting top Taliban and Al Qaeda members because they were "unable to receive clearance." Again the CENTCOM JAG, a Navy Captain, was singled out, and the issue was framed as a question over "how much weight to give to concerns about avoiding civilian casualties."
This is obviously a core question in modern warfare, particularly air warfare. But Hersh's and Ricks's reporting places too much emphasis on the military legal adviser. The problem is not law, or lawyers. It is an inaccurate and distorted picture of civilian vulnerability in air warfare and unresolved questions about how best to fight modern air wars.
Political Law
The "law of armed conflict," as the military calls it, or "international humanitarian law," as the human rights community labels it, is an overlapping collection of norms, conventions and treaties going back to the 19th century. This body of law governs the conduct of operations, protection of civilians, and treatment of prisoners.
Given the litigious nature of the United States, it should be no surprise that the American military has more lawyers than all other countries combined. Legal advisers are integral to planning and operations at all levels, reviewing targets and rules of engagement. Even at the White House level, constraints on civilian damage, either implicit or explicit, are articulated by legal counsel. Specific rules of engagement are further developed in the Pentagon by the Defense Department civilian leadership and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with legal input, of course.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, what to bomb is not an issue; the law is so embedded within the modern military that there is institutional consensus. In the remaining one percent of cases though, command decisions or political considerations tend to take over the selection of targets. When the political hierarchy doesn't decide, computer models tend to have disproportionate influence. Military lawyers are relegated to the background.
(snip)
On the first night of Operation Enduring Freedom, intelligence officers in Gen. Franks' headquarters in Florida and in Washington could not say with any certainly who was in the convoy. As is the case with most controversial actions, you get different versions of events from different people. Pentagon officials insist that a group of individuals were observed entering a mosque in Kandahar, but given uncertainties over their identities, no one was going to approve a strike. Others report that a green light was later given - there was no veto by any military lawyer - but whether it was Omar or not will never be known.
IN THE BALANCE..Legal and Health and Safety Implications of Terrorist Threats (TOO RICH!!)
bttt
ping for later.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
ping
http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?z1=&PopupMenu_Name=Defense/Security&CatCodePairs=Issue,DESE;
Curt Weldon was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal Wednesday morning. It's about 33 minutes long via RealPlayer. He obviously has questions and he wants answers. I don't believe he is going to let go of this. Good overview.
THIS IS THE SMOKING GUN - THE DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN CAUGHT WITH THEIR PANTS DOWN - WHOOOOO HOOOOO!!
It's about damn time these smug, arrogant jerks were put in their place. And .. if one more of them says, "there's no connection between the terrorists and Iraq" - they're lying through their teeth.
That's why they couldn't allow it to be known about Atta - and that has to be the documents Berger went after to destroy.
Rush is going to have a field day with this tomorrow - I can hardly wait!!!
This is really HUGH AND SERIES!!!
Alvin S. Felzenberg Deputy for Communications for the 9-ll Commission said a few days ago, Commission staffers were hurrying to the National Archives to check their notes. What a crock!!! They know Berger had already sanitized the Archives! But really, there's no way those staffers would have followed the law, and actually put their incriminating notes in the National Archives.
Nope! No doubt in my mind at all.
And .. I believe it was being floated that the documents had something to do with the Millinium bomber .. but I never believed that because that had already been exposed as a Clinton lie - the dems had nothing to do with catching the bomber - it was just a savy border patrol agent who was just doing her job. I never thought that was anything important enough to risk stealing - but this Atta thing was definitely worth the risk.
And .. this revelation about a connection between Atta and Iraq - PROVES ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT BUSH KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING WHEN HE TOOK OUT SADAAM AND HIS CRONIES.
What are the anti-war people going to do when they find out their main reason for being against the war has just flown the coop ..??
nosuchblog No matter where you go, there you are.
|
|
|
Iraq-al Qaeda XV: More on Atta, Prague, and MSM lies
One of the enduring mysteries to me about the 9/11 investigation is why there was such an energetic disinformation campaign, by the US government and media, about Mohammed Atta. The 9/11 Commission report contained quite a bit of weasel-wording, which the media and government officials could cherry-pick to make the points they wanted. For example, the Commission report says "No evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001". But two paragraphs later, it also says "These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001". Guess which sentence was quoted by the MSM? A big part of the argument that Atta could not have been in Prague on 9 April 2001, meeting with Samir al-Ani of Iraqi Intelligence, is the absence of travel records between the US and the Czech Republic in the name of "Mohammed Atta" a that time. But we KNOW the 9/11 hijackers had various false documents, so it is impossible to say whether he may have travelled under another name. Al Ani's own diary for the day records a meeting with a "Hamburg student", which is how Atta and some of the other hijackers were referred to in other sources and documents. Subsequently, the 9/11 report says "The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports". But this isn't altogether true. In February 2004, two Algerians names Khaled Madani and Moussa Laour were arrested in Spain on suspicion of furnishing phony passports to, among others, Mohamed Atta. Ramzi Binalshibh, the operational manager of the 9/11 plot, admitted as much in interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, although he denies Atta met al-Ani in Prague, as have al-Ani and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, both of whom are also in custody. The Commission report also reported that Atta had visited Prague two previous times, in "1994 and 2000". It says the visit was on his way from Germany to the United States: "On the latter occasion, he arrived by bus from Germany, on June 2, and departed for Newark the following day". This passage is both false and misleading. Atta visited Prague not once but twice in 2000, at which time he exhibited a strange determination to get there. He made the first attempt to visit Prague from Hamburg on 22 May, when he was turned around at the border for not having a Czech visa. He immediately went to Bonn and applied for a visa (on 26 May) to enter the Czech Republic, then, upon learning it wouldn't be ready until 31 May, flew to Prague without a visa on 30 May and spent the night in the airport, returning to Germany the next day. Then, with visa in hand, he returned to Prague yet again on 2 June, transferring to his flight to Newark, NJ. That's a lot different from what the 9/11 Commission reports, and it casts the rest of the narrative in a very different light. There's a whole lot of that sort of thing in the Commission's report, and even more in the MSM coverage of the whole story. The New York Times, in October 2002, reported that Czech President Vaclav Havel called President Bush to say he had reported the meeting did not take place. This led to a speedy and angry contradiction from Havel himself, who said that he never did any such thing. This game went on for quite a while: the MSM would claim the Czechs had retracted their claim, then the Czechs would say "No we haven't and we still think the meeting took place". But ask any self-important bureaucrat in Washington and they will remember only the (false) page 1 headlines in the Washington Post, and will say "Those reports were discredited. The meeting didn't take place". The more knowledgeable mandarins may cite the FBI claims, leaked to the Washington Post, that they had rental car records for Atta covering the period in April 2001 when Atta supposedly went to Prague. But, as I have reported before, there are no such records. Someone simply lied in their leak to the press in order to add credibility to a story that isn't true. Mohammed Atta was stopped for speeding (in Marwan al-Shehhi's car) in Fort Lauderdale on 22 April 2001, at which time he was cited for not having a driver's licence. Amazingly, while awaiting his court date for not having a license, he was issued a Florida Driver's License in May 2001. If you or I were cited for driving without a license, you can bet the DMV wouldn't give us one until that charge was adjudicated, and probably not for a couple of years after that. But I guess they make special exceptions for the most bloodthirsty terrorist in history. But while the DMV may have extended special courtesies to Mohammed Atta, I seriously doubt a rental car company would. I don't think there is any way Atta could have rented a car in early April 2001 when he didn't have a driver's license until May. Eventually, like the missing 727, the story just died and everyone forgot about it, having never gotten to the truth. There was apparently a pretty comprehensive, broadly-based effort in government and the media to discredit the possibility that this meeting took place, because if it did, there could be essentially no disputing Iraq involvement in 9/11. In fact, if it did in fact happen, it would seem to indicate that Iraq was the paymaster for the whole 9/11 conspiracy. If that were true, it would be good to know, wouldn't it? Would it not cast everything that has happened in the last 4 years in rather a different light? posted Friday, 21 January 2005
|
|
Richard Clarke's Pentagon Papers/VVAW Connection (starting Post 44)
A few with stuff on Gorelick:
Lawmakers Say Misstatements Cloud F.B.I. Chief's Credibility (Post 60)
"John Deutch was an undesecretary in President Carter's Energy Department and a member of the Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee from 1979-1980. During his time there, Jamie Gorelick acted as his legal counsel."
GORELICK-GATE SCANDAL -- Former Clinton Justice Official Fingered As Culprit For 9/11 Botch-up!
1996: Clinton Considered Jamie Gorelick for CIA Director
Did Gorelick's infamous memo provide the missing link between Chinagate and 9/11?
FReeper Research: GORELICK WORKED WITH RICHARD CLARKE! (HHS website transcript)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.