Posted on 08/13/2005 4:42:28 AM PDT by SueRae
WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug 12 - Today Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, released the following response to a statement by the former 9/11 Commission regarding the ABLE DANGER operation.
ABLE DANGER was about linkages and associations of individuals identified with direct links to Al-Qaeda and not about dates and times.
To clarify, ABLE DANGER was a Department of Defense planning effort, tasked to Special Operations Command (SOCOM) by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The task assigned to ABLE DANGER was to identify and target Al-Qaeda on a global basis and, through the use of cutting edge technology (data-mining, massive parallel processing, neural networking and human factors analysis) and enhanced visualization and display tools, present options for leaders (national command authority) to manipulate, degrade or destroy the global Al-Qaeda infrastructure.
The 9/11 Commission has released multiple statements over the past week, each of which has significantly changed - from initially denying ever being briefed to acknowledging being briefed on both operation ABLE DANGER and Mohammed Atta. The information was omitted primarily because they found it to be suspect despite having been briefed on it two times by two different military officers on active duty. Additionally, the 9/11 Commission also received documents from the Department of Defense on ABLE DANGER.
Despite their varied statements, two critical questions remain unanswered.
1) Why did the Department of Defense fail to pass critical information obtained through ABLE DANGER to the FBI between the summer and fall of 2000?
2) Why did the 9/11 Commission staff fail to properly follow-up on the three separate occasions when they received information on ABLE DANGER and Mohammed Atta?
I will continue to push for a full accounting of the historical record so that we may preclude these types of failures from happening again.
BUMP!!!
Good for Weldon....keep the focus on the Commission and its apparent cover-up.
I can see Tom Kean, Lee Hamilton and Jamie Gorelick with the monkey hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil smiles on their faces. Absolutely disgusting.
Build their gallows high
No way, this has to ba a joke. A republican congress critter with a set of balls?
Push for a special prosecutor, Congressman.
Looks like we need a 9-11 Commission Commission.
1) I want to know why Gorelick, the woman responsible for The Wall, was put in charge of looking at all the information coming in to the 9/11 Commission and deciding what got disseminated to the full Commission.
It doesn't make sense that the Commission investigating intelligence failures would put the woman in charge of making sure that intelligence people couldn't talk to each other in charge of disseminating information.
2) I want to know why the Commission has changed their stories 4 times.
3) There is an article on FR now that Commission members say the Able Danger operative who briefed them didn't have back-up. The article states the Able Danger operative briefed the Commission one time.
Weldon clearly says they were briefed 3 times.
4) Did it occur to the Commission to wonder why, within hours of the 9/11 attacks, we were able to so easily identify the 19 hijackers and that Atta was the ringleader?
We now know it's probably because of Able Danger.
5) Since Able Danger culled its information using open sources, surely that same information was available to the 9/11 Commission.
Did they only investigate information that was brought to them (and they didn't even do that appropriately we now understand) or did they do any investigation on their own?
If they did do investigating on their own, why didn't they find out what Able Danger found out using open sources?
6) Why did the Commission in charge of investigating intelligence failures itself have an intelligence failure in terms of not sharing ALL information that was brought to them?
A start in the right direction but not enough. Someone is guilty of dereliction of duty. Someone is guilty of compromising our nation's security.The wall of immunity for these individuals must be torn down and they should be prosecuted. Nothing short of prison time will do.
If the feds can put Martha Stewart behind bars for making questionable profits in a business transaction then surely prison is justified for those causing 3000+ deaths through intent or gross negligence!!!
Enough of blanket immunity and coverages for the ruling class. Time to kick some political a**, on all levels.
The Commission is starting to lie, and say there must be something wrong with "Able".
They are covering their butts !
(Radio News Sat. morning)
Wouldn't you???
The American People deserve the truth and if it hurts the feeling of liberals and democrats, too damn bad.
Texas US Senator John Cornyn is another good contact; thank you for that information.
Because calling my Senator (Lindsey Graham) will be useless, imo.
How 'The Wall' worked so well to keep terrorism alive.
I haven't had my coffee yet, so I'll have to re-read this several times, but oh my. My first reaction? Weldon has thrown in the towel, Gorelick's wall will hold. Hamilton and Keane's statement is the end of it.
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