WELDON RESPONDS TO OMISSION OF ABLE DANGER FROM 9/11 REPORT

Curt Weldon ^ | 8/12/2005 | curt weldon

[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.”

[TexasCajun]

I saw Cornyn's senate speech posted yesterday, I had forgotten how powerful and important it was in light of Able Danger's revelations and Gorlick's table seat instead of witness chair.

[txrangerette]

Your charge is reckless.

[txrangerette]

The wall will hold? There is no such wall today. What are you talking about?

[putupjob]

Kean has already issued a statement that the Able Danger information was not considered historically significant by the 911 commission.

[Peach]

I'll have to re-read his speech; I sort of skimmed through it yesterday.

[Peach]

Do you honestly believe that it's up to President Bush to sentence Sandy Berger?

And if the president even called the prosecutor to suggest a sentence, all hell would break lose.

I respectfully recommend that you re-think that position and maybe a little studying on how these things work would be in order.

[ChuckHam]

I thought a federal judge was responsible for sentencing. But don't let a little detail like that get in the way of your agenda.

[Lakeshark]

Heck with the prosecutor, hold hearings and grill these "commisioners" in public view.....

[Founding Father]

Had you taken the time to read anything about this case you would have learned that the Bush Department of Justice entered into a plea agreement, with an agreed sentence, with burglar. Of course the judge must accept the plea and sentence, but go find a case where the judge turns down the governments request when a deal has been reached.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former national security adviser Sandy Berger will plead guilty to taking classified documents from the National Archives, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Berger, who served in the Clinton administration, will enter the plea Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, said Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra.

The plea agreement, if accepted by a judge, ends a bizarre episode in which the man who once had access to the government's most sensitive intelligence was accused of sneaking documents out of the Archives in his clothing.

The charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of a year in prison and up to a $100,000 fine.

However, a federal law enforcement official said a plea agreement calls for Berger to serve no jail time but to pay a $10,000 fine, surrender his security clearance for three years and cooperate with investigators. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the pending court proceeding. A judge must approve the agreement.

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Berger Will Plead Guilty To Taking Classified Paper

By John F. Harris and Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A01

Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism.

Berger's plea agreement, which was described yesterday by his advisers and was confirmed by Justice Department officials, will have one of former president Bill Clinton's most influential advisers and one of the Democratic Party's leading foreign policy advisers in a federal court this afternoon.

The deal's terms make clear that Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, then later lost them.

He described the episode last summer as "an honest mistake." Yesterday, a Berger associate who declined to be identified by name but was speaking with Berger's permission said: "He recognizes what he did was wrong. . . . It was not inadvertent."

Under terms negotiated by Berger's attorneys and the Justice Department, he has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and accept a three-year suspension of his national security clearance. These terms must be accepted by a judge before they are final, but Berger's associates said yesterday he believes that closure is near on what has been an embarrassing episode during which he repeatedly misled people about what happened during two visits to the National Archives in September and October 2003.

Lanny Breuer, Berger's attorney, said in a statement: "Mr. Berger has cooperated fully with the Department of Justice and is pleased that a resolution appears very near. He accepts complete responsibility for his actions, and regrets the mistakes he made during his review of documents at the National Archives."

The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business.

The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil.

Archives officials have said previously that Berger had copies only, and that no original documents were lost. It remains unclear whether Berger knew that, or why he destroyed three versions of a document but left two other versions intact. Officials have said the five versions were largely similar, but contained slight variations as the after-action report moved around different agencies of the executive branch.

National Archives officials almost immediately suspected that Berger had removed materials after his Oct. 2, 2003, visit. They called Bruce R. Lindsey, a former White House lawyer and Clinton's liaison to the archives to complain. Lindsey, sources said, called Berger, who soon acknowledged to archives officials that he had removed documents -- by accident, he told them -- and returned notes that he made, as well as the two documents he had not destroyed.

A criminal investigation, which eventually brought witnesses before a grand jury, was soon underway. The probe came to light last July, prompting Berger's resignation as a senior foreign policy adviser to 2004 Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

Berger's archives visit occurred as he was reviewing materials as a designated representative of the Clinton administration to the national commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The question of what Clinton knew and did about the emerging al Qaeda threat before leaving office in January 2001 was acutely sensitive, as suggested by Berger's determination to spend hours poring over the Clarke report before his testimony.

The Berger associate authorized to speak with reporters described the chronology the former national security chief gave to the Justice Department in his negotiations with the Justice Department. On Sept. 2, 2003, the associate said, Berger put a copy of the Clarke report in his suit jacket. He did not put it in his socks or underwear, as was alleged by some Republicans last summer. On Oct. 2, 2003, he again spent hours at the archives and took four more versions of the document. Back in his office, he studied them in detail, realized they were largely identical, and took the scissors to three of the copies, the associate said.

Berger friends regarded the agreement as fair, given the circumstances, and Breuer's statement praised the "professionalism" of the lawyers he worked with at the Justice Department.

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Don't let the facts get in the way of your mouth.

[YaYa123]

I was predicting,(on first read), there will be no public scrutiny on the history, or the dire consequences, of Gorelick's wall. No examination of why Gorelick would create the wall in the first place, and no public rebuke of Gorelick. She will never be called upon to explain it...hence she remains protected, eerily, by the wall she created.

[ohhhh]

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.

Government technology run by the left is worthless and did nothing to stop the twin towers from being destroyed.

[Right_in_Virginia]

BTTT

[mict42]

Representative Weldon is a patriot in search of treasonous acts and actors.

[mewzilla]

Weldon changed his tune the day after the story broke. He started blaming the staffers. But I think the horse has left the barn.

[ChuckHam]

What facts are you speaking of? That article doesn't say President Bush recommended a sentence. But don't let a little detail like that get in the way of your agenda.

[txrangerette]

You are supposed to be impressed by the length of the post...

:o)

[Brilliant]

Able Danger is just the tip of the iceberg. If you knew all the stuff the partisan staffers whitewashed from the report, you would explode.

[oceanview]

as Rush said yesterday, the political class (both parties) protects itself.

[oceanview]

who controls the DOJ? who does the Attorney General work for?

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

I thought the RATs were sure that Bush had prior knowledge about the 9-11 attack.

Turns out that certain RATs knew; they just didn't share with the incoming administration.