Atta way to blow 9/11 panel's credibility [Mark Steyn]

SUN-TIMES ^ | August 14, 2005 | Mark Steyn

[AmericanVictory]

Isn't Podhoretz a guy who makes his living selling his writings? Why should we trust him? If everyone who tries to sell their writings cannot be trusted, it will be difficult to get trustworthy information. Maybe we should look into what they're saying and find out where it leads and whether it's true or not.

[TVenn]

Tuesday

Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the now-disbanded commission, said Tuesday that members of the panel could issue a statement by the end of the week after reviewing claims that officials had identified ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers.

"The 9/11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohamed Atta or of his cell," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Had we learned of it, obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."

---

Friday

AP) The leaders of the 9/11 commission late Friday disputed a congressman's criticism that the panel did not adequately investigate a claim that four hijackers were identified as al Qaeda members more than a year before the attacks.

In a joint statement, former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said a military official who made the claim had no documentation to back it up. And they said only 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta was identified to them and not three additional hijackers as claimed by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

[kimosabe31]

This is a bombshell. I'm worried that Bush will try to smother it in the interest of preserving public trust /faith in government.

[OESY]

The 9/11 Commission report para. 11.1 concluded that the emergence of al Qaeda in the late 1990s "presented challenges to U.S. governmental institutions that they were not well-designed to meet." Among the failures was that we did not understand the gravity of the threats posed by terrorists because leaders could not imagine such attacks.

Now it appears the Commission itself was woefully inadequate in design, i.e., its membership composition, and in its failure of imagination to suspect that existing mindsets should be challenged, that the INS-supplied information which didn't mesh with military-intelligence findings might have been wrong.

Instead of reporting all known facts about Atta, including evidence contradictions and analytical dissents that the Commission prescribed for the Bush administration, Kean, Hamilton, other members and their staff excluded information that did not agree with their predetermined notions of how 9/11 happened.

The question is, What other pieces of information were withheld because they did not "mesh" with conventional wisdom, or were rejected as being too controversial for the report, or were left out because of time pressures brought on by the rapidly approaching presidential election?

[OESY]

EXHIBIT 1.

[jaydubya2]

The 9/11 Commission. What a bunch of idiots. Why have investigations if there only for show. These people ignored the obvious and wasted our time and money!

[Binghamton_native]

We also had most of the other hijackers come through here (to stay somewhere) during this earlier period.

I probably should know from other posts, but where is 'here'?

[OrioleFan]

At first, the commission denied that it knew anything about "Able Danger": "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," insisted Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair.

Hamilton probably called Gore-lick and asked her if she knew anything about Able Danger, and she probably fed him this response and the subsequent response that the dates/times didn't match up.

[CyberAnt]

You are so correct! Visuals say a lot more.

[johnb838]

Ashcroft?

[johnb838]

Weldon says he's going to subpoena the military intelligence guys. And since it was all open source data, it won't compromise a thing. I wish he'd subpoena Jamie Gore-lick and roast her @ss over an open fire.

[johnb838]

I think a Citizen Oversight Committee would be great, but actual goobernmental hearings and charges would be better. How about Ashcroft as a special prosecutor? How about Ken Starr? Heh Heh.

I hate congressional hearings, but apparently what I hate more is ex-goobernmental hacks and suspects preening and posturing and trying to relive the glory days while they bury the bast under BS.

[johnb838]

I don't think the Bush administration is strategizing.

[johnb838]

that crew needs to go dark and go deep to keep that name from view.

"What boat are you on, Sailor?""SSN 223,Sir!"

[OESY]

Mark Steyn, August 14, 2005:

"So, when the 9/11 Commission starts saying that there's "no way" something can happen when it happens every single day of the week, you start to wonder what exactly is the point of an official investigation so locked in to pre-set conclusions.

"For example, they seemed oddly determined to fix June 3, 2000, as the official date of Atta's first landing on American soil -- even though there were several alleged sightings of him before that date, including a bizarre story that he'd trained at Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. Atta was a very mobile guy in the years before 9/11, shuttling between Germany, Spain, Afghanistan, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the Philippines with effortless ease. I've no hard evidence of where he was in, say, April 2000. The period between late 1999 and May 2000 is, in many ways, a big blur. He might have been in Germany, he might have been in Florida, attempting to get a U.S. Farm Service Agency loan for the world's biggest cropduster, as reported by USDA official Johnell Bryant."


The 9/11 Commission Report, Foresight--And Hindsight, page 347 (Authorized Edition):

" 2. The CTC [CounterTerrorism Center] did not develop a set of telltale indicators for this method of attack. For example, one such indicator might be the discovery of possible terrorists pursuing flight training to fly large jet aircraft, or seeking to buy advanced flight simulators."


COMMENT: For starters, here are a few telltale indicators that might have concerned those who evaluated the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission after learning members and staff omitted information contrary to its conclusions:
1. Young male Islamic radicals traveling widely, having expressed a desire to harm the U.S. and Israel.
2. Porous U.S. borders and insufficient immigration controls on foreign aliens in country.
3. Inquiries into crop dusting, weaponized sprays, flight training, etc., not business-related on the part of a known 9/11 hijacker who was not supposed to be in country in that time-period.
4. Military intelligence units reporting information contrary to accepted Commission premises.
5. Prosecutors uncomfortable with artificial (not legally required) "walls" erected against sharing intelligence information.
6. Hypotheses rejected without reliable and credible proof under slipshod or politicized processes of review.
7. Commission members with conflicts of interest or self-serving agendas in an election year.
8. Weak commission leadership that valued consensus over results that would lead to strengthening American defenses, including the effectiveness of its national intelligence apparatus.

[eureka!]

bump

[txhurl]

I often wonder how much FReeping (if any) goes on in Crawford.