Posted on 08/12/2005 6:54:48 AM PDT by CyberAnt
(CNSNews.com) -- Members of the 9/11 commission apparently left some key information out of their "comprehensive" report on the terror attacks - because their own staffers didn't tell them about it.
Press reports said commission staffers are now planning to retrieve their notes from the National Archives to find out if they overlooked important information. (They did, one U.S. senator says.)
The staffers are looking for information about a secret U.S. military unit called Able Danger. That military unit learned -- one year before the 9/11 attacks -- that a terror cell including Mohammed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers was operating in the United States.
Information about the terror cell was not handed over to the FBI, although Able Danger repeatedly requested that the FBI be told. Sen. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) says Pentagon lawyers in the Clinton administration refused to tell the FBI, because the four terrorists were in the country legally.
Because the Clinton administration barred U.S. intelligence agencies from sharing information with the FBI, Pentagon lawyers reportedly argued that information on the legal residents could not be shared with the FBI.
Thursday's New York Times reported that 9/11 commission staffers were told that Able Danger had identified a terror cell in the country - a full ten days before the 9/11 commission issued its final report on the terror attacks.
Sen. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) told Fox News on Wednesday that commission staffers were briefed at least once on Able Danger, but he does not believe that panel members were told about it.
"Why weren't they briefed? Was there some deliberate attempt at the staff level of the 9/11 commission to steer the commissioners away from Able Danger because of where it might lead?" Weldon said on Fox News Wednesday.
Weldon also told Fox that some commission staffers did not return phone calls from members of the Able Danger military unit.
Thursday's New York Times reported that Weldon has just sent a letter to commission members, in which he "criticized the panel in scathing terms, saying that its '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.'"
'Hats off to Weldon'
Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Fox & Friends on Thursday that "Able Danger and what they learned" is a "huge deal."
"We will learn that we should have known about [the Sept. 11 attacks] and that we could have prevented it," he said.
"And hats off to Curt Weldon," Shays said, for directing the media's attention to critical information that other government agencies and the 9/11 commission apparently had no interest in pursuing. (Weldon, in a show-and-tell on the Senate floor in June 2005, explained that Able Danger had identified the four suspected terrorists in 1999.)
Said Shays, "Bottom line is -- we had a defense organization that knew about this [terror] cell... they knew about these guys; they knew about four of the 19 hijackers."
Lee Hamilton, the 9/11 commission's co-chair, told Fox News on Wednesday, "The Sept. 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell. Had we learned of it, obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."
In another development, a group of Sept. 11 widows that demanded a probe of the events leading up to 9/11 issued a statement saying it is disappointed to learn that the commission's final report is "incomplete and illusory."
Copyright © 1998-2005 CNSNews.com - Cybercast News Service
Time for a new tagline...
Why not ..? Weldon was a member of the House committee who received the information directly from Able Danger.
And if you don't believe the military intel group existed, you can always check with General Shelton who headed the group.
If Weldon believes certain members of the commission .. that's his personal choice. Weldom may have information from them that we are not privy to.
You bet. But the American public has already been hosed once. In the interest of not getting hosed again, I think Weldon shouldn't believe jack from anyone until it's said under oath.
Trust but verify :)
Leni
Well .. you make a good point.
Yep! I think so too. But .. the Pentagon records are separate - so I don't think anybody like Berger would have access to those. I could be wrong, but I'm hoping I'm not.
I find that difficult to believe, unless the 911 Commission members [not staffers] are complete morons [not to difficult to imagine] and the brains behind the 911 Commission was the staffers, or being directed by one or more staff members.
IMHO ... That would be rather difficult. It would be much easier for the 911 Commission members themselves to decide what they wanted the report to contain and exclude all other evidence. Out of sight, out of mind, if you will.
Sandy Berger was sent to the archives to deliberately remove as much incriminating evidence as he could. And he did.
Build their gallows high
Yep.
I had such high hopes when we defeated Al Gore in 2000.
Unfortunately, GWB...in his mono-maniacal quest for a "new-tone"...and the so far unilateral "bipartisanship"... has let us down in so many ways, they are too numerous to list.
And the political charade just kept getting worse, and worse, where we witnessed the national security criminals were the ones calling for the patriots to be imprisoned...and "frog-marched" in orange jump suits before the dock...!!
The hutzpah of these malfeasants...was staggering and beggared belief.
The manifestly criminal intent of Joe Wilson and Richard Clarke to betray our national security to abet John Kerry's candidacy...continues to go unpunished. No wonder Ashcroft asked out of the AG's job...if GWB wouldn't let him proceed against the enemies foreign and domestic because of the political "passes" being issued right and left (mostly Left).
The failure of either Richard Clarke or George Tenet to mention EITHER "Able Defense's" existence to Condileeza, Powell or Rumsfeld or the Phillipines report of the Al-Quaeda Plane Plot...were manifestly chargeble with misfeasance, and possibly treason itself. The latter case was serious enough that it triggered appointing a commission headed up by Al Gore...tasked by Bill Clinton to recommend airline security measures...which he then proceeded to never implement. All because such industry-expensive recommendations would be deleterious to "his" economy. [And remember it was "all about the economy...stupid"]
Notice how both Al Gore and Bill Clinton were real quiet about that airline security commission's findings and recommendations all during the last 5 years. And apparently nary a word about it from either Clarke or Tenant either. Think about the political hay GWB could have made out of that. A demonrat could never again show his ugly mug on national television without the bloody red shirt of 9-11 being hung around their necks...and properly so.
Meanwhile, what do we see? GWB subsequently awards George Tenet a Presidential Medal of Freedom...
and don't forget Clarke....Everything crossed his desk.
(hmm...there seems to be a pattern here....)
And George Tenet's. And NEITHER OF THEM briefed Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell or President Bush on the foiled Al-Queda Project Bojinka attack, the resulting Al Gore-led Airline Security Commission's recommendations, or the warnings of the DOD's ABLE DANGER infiltration task force.
Thank God for Curt Weldon finally spilling the beans here. I suspect that any inside sources we had with Able Danger have long since been burned, and there was no longer any shred of legitimate operational or strategic security basis for continued secrecy of these reports...only purely political reasons. Hence they were necessarily constitutionally illegitimate reasons...i.e., treasonous Xlintonian reasons.
What do the Xlinton's have on the Bush's ? That is what it keeps coming back to.
And I can't stop thinking about those 900+ FBI files that Hitlery carries around with here everywhere in her plastic valise...
This is a great link - thanks!
I thought the anlysis was excellent. ESPECIALLY coming from a rather liberal paper.
That's why I posted it - I don't want people to get the impression that everybody on the left is ignoring this revelation.
I have to admit that I'm surprised this is getting coverage.
GWB has defended the Clinton administration from day one of his administration. He lied about the damage Clinton's people did to the computers - breaking off all the Ws, he lied about the damage done to the offices as Clinton's people left, he lied about the filthy words Clinton's people left on the walls and the porno sites left on the computers. And made the tax payers clean up the damage and buy new computers, while saying there was no damage done.
It was that day I realized there was not much difference between GWB and Bill Clinton. Bush will do anything to protect the Clinton administration, to the detriment of America.
BTTT
Lee Hamilton is a lying bum.
Yeh, the long and the short of it were in Sandy Berger's pants. The documents were the long of it, and ............... the short of it.
In the best Clintonesque gravely voice: "Ah didn't ask one person to steal anything for me, not once, never."
That means he told Sandy Burglar to "go get it to cover my big doughy white b*tt".
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