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

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.

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.”

"Thank God for John Ashcroft!!!!!"

Bush chastises Ashcroft
in private statements
at the White House
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 7:27 p.m. ET April 29, 2004

"Ashcroft, Justice rebuked"

In opening remarks before commissioners began their inquiry, Bush told commission members he was disappointed with the Justice Department and its treatment of Jamie Gorelick, a commission member and a former Justice Department official.

NBC's David Gregory reported that Bush specifically criticized Attorney General John Ashcroft in connection with Gorelick's treatment. The president told commissioners he did not approve of the “fingerpointing.”

On Wednesday the Justice Department released internal documents on its official Web site; critics of Gorelick have said the documents raise questions about her serving on the commission. Despite the White House's admonishment of Justice, NBC's Pete Williams reported Thursday that the memos remain on the Justice Department's Web site.

Some Republican senators have argued that the commission's work won't be done until they interview Gorelick, whom they accuse of authorizing the “wall” between intelligence and law enforcement agencies some have said may have contributed to a climate that made the Sept. 11 attacks possible.

====

Listen, I'm sure Berger was "fishing" at the National Archives, to catch and destroy anything detrimental to the Clinton administration. Read the following article, keeping in mind the main mission of the democrats on the 9-ll commission was to protect AND praise the Clinton accomplishments fighting terrorism. Their added goal was to make Bush look bad by comparison. Read the following article and tell me there's not the possibility Berger wasn't desperate to cleanse the archives of untrue, Clinton enhancing documents. Remember too, all Clinton had going for him on the fight against terrorism, was the safe Millenium celebrations.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4864792/
Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent
SPECIAL REPORT

Senior investigative correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:26 p.m. ET April 29, 2004
"It's almost become an article of faith at the 9/11 commission hearings that high-level meetings in Washington helped stop a terrorist attack at the Los Angeles airport just before the turn of the millennium. But the inside-the-Beltway gospel just isn't true.

NBC News went back to the customs agent who actually stopped an al-Qaida terrorist from entering the United States in 1999, and she says it was her gut instincts — not meetings in Washington — that helped her make the arrest.

In December of 1999, upon arriving on a ferry from Canada, al-Qaida operative Ahmed Ressam was arrested with a trunk full of explosives. His plan: to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.

Some members of the 9/11 commission now argue that al-Qaida’s plot was foiled because of almost frenetic White House meetings that month, keeping the bureaucracy on its toes.

On April 13, 2004, 9/11 commission member Timothy Roemer said, “The Clinton administration has a great deal of success during this time period. My theory is, because of this small group that is meeting at the top levels of government.”

NBC News decided to take a close look at what happened four years ago. Was the bomb plot foiled by an alert White House or by an alert agent on the front lines?

“His story didn’t make sense to me,” said customs inspector Diana Dean. Now retired, Dean was working the border that night. On a hunch something wasn’t quite right, she questioned Ressam and asked him to pop his trunk. Inside were big bags of white powder that were first thought to be drugs.

But that night, drug tests came back negative. When investigators looked further, they found timers and realized the powder was explosives.

Dean said, “My heart dropped right into my toes when I realized what it was.”

She says no one had told her anything about being on alert for terrorists.

“I don’t recall any specific threats," she added. "I don’t recall anybody saying watch for terrorists.”

Customs officials confirm that no alert had gone out to the field.

The Clinton administration was at battle stations during this period, and that extraordinary effort helped foil al-Qaida plots against Americans in Jordan. But there’s simply no evidence that meetings in Washington stopped the planned attack on American soil.

In fact, senior counterterror officials attribute catching Ressam to good training and sheer luck.

As for Dean, she received an award and today shrugs off revisionist history in Washington, noting that success has many fathers."

But you are not alone in thinking Berger was at the National Archives to destroy any reference to Able Danger. The following website is great on this theory:

http://bamapachyderm.com/archives/2005/08/11/able-danger-and-911/

Here's an excerpt:
"Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I would really like to know what Berger knew about Able Danger; and if he wrote a memo, or signed off on one, that specifically related to Able Danger; and that prevented the dissemination of information that might have led to the arrest of the 9/11 hijackers before they could carry out their plans. And, could that memo–or copies–have been in the National Archives?
It is, of course, unlikely in the extreme that it still exists after his foray into the archives.

I would add this, that the documents that Berger has admitted to stealing and destroying were said by him to have been in regards to preparing remarks for the 9/11 Commission on the 1999 al Qaeda Millennium bombing attempts.
…
Would those documents directly implicate Berger as some one who had prevented Atta’s name from being passed to the FBI? Possibly. This would not mean that Berger really knew about Atta–since hundreds of memos must have crossed his desk every day–but if there was a paper trail linking Atta’s name to Berger’s office this would be embarrasing, to say the least. It would be enough to kill his reputation in a way that the actual stealing of the documents couldn’t.

But in any event, Berger’s office, at least in late 1999 and probably until he left office in early 2001, seems to be the go-between place for various agencies intent on foiling al Qaeda plots in the U.S. If we are looking for a face to put on the idiot who decided that it would be better to follow ‘policy’ rather than break it–just months after a plot to blow up LAX by al Qaeda was accidentally disrupted–I would suggest beginning an investigation there."

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