This is from Andrew McCarthy at NRO:
I had to be AWOL yesterday and couldn’t respond to John’s “blather and palaver” post. For now, though, it’s more important to note some new developments.
The Washington Times has a very interesting story this morning. A former military intelligence officer anonymously told the paper that Able Danger did indeed identify Mohammed Atta and three of the other eventual suicide hijackers before the attacks but were blocked by Pentagon lawyers from sharing this information with the FBI.
Significantly, reading this story side-by-side with the memorandum the Commission issued last week to rebut Congressman Curt Weldon’s allegations, it seems certain that this former intelligence officer is a source additional to the naval intelligence officer interviewed by the Commission staff in July 2004, right before the final report was issued). (That naval intelligence officer is the source whose claims are what John referred to as uncorroborated “blather and palaver” in arguing against my contention that the Commission should have disclosed and rebutted those claims in a footnote.)
The former intelligence officer also told the Washington Times that he “he tried to broker meetings between the FBI and the Special Operations Command to turn over information that Able Danger had uncovered, including that hijackers Marwan Al-Shehhi, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhamzi were with Atta in the United States.” If that is true, there may be other identifiable people at the FBI and the Pentagon who can shed light on whether this really happened.
This former intelligence official is plainly not anonymous to everyone in government, because he claims to have been one of those interviewed by the 9/11 Commission staff in Afghanistan in October 2003 – and to have been rebuffed when he asked for a follow-up meeting with the staff when he returned Stateside in January 2004. In any event, he alleges that at least two of the staffers appeared to take copious of what he said.
The passage of the WashTimes article that I found most intriguing is this one (italics is mine): "But Pentagon officials have said they have uncovered no specific intelligence data from the Able Danger unit concerning an Atta-led terrorist cell, other than a few intelligence analyses that mention his name[.] …"
Come again? The aforementioned memorandum the Commission issued last week asserted pointedly that there was no mention of Atta's name either at the October 2003 briefing the staff acknowledges receiving on Able Danger, or in any of the documentation the Defense Department made available at the Commission’s request after that briefing. Is the Pentagon now saying that there are pre-9/11 intelligence analyses generated by Able Danger that do allude to Atta by name? It would be nice to know that officially from the Defense Department rather than relying on unattributed Pentagon statements to the media.
Further, assuming it is true that this former intelligence official is known both to the 9/11 Commission staffers who interviewed him, to the Pentagon, and to the Washington Times to whom he is speaking out publicly but anonymously, is there any good reason why the public should not get to hear from him directly so that his credibility can be assessed?
And shouldn’t we (a) be shown any pre-9/11 Able Danger work product that mentions or refers to Atta and his cohorts (sanitized to avoid disclosing any vital intelligence methods and sources), or (b) told flatly and officially by the Defense Department that no such documents exists?
If it turns out that there are such documents, shouldn’t we be told whether they were disclosed to or withheld from the Commission when it made its comprehensive request for Able Danger documentation? And shouldn’t Congress be making its own inspection of the notes made by the Commission staffers in connection with the October 2003 briefing?
There are very good reasons to be skeptical about this story – the charges are explosive, Congressman Weldon appears to have backtracked on some critical details, and it is hard (though not impossible) to believe government pre-9/11 knowledge of the hijackers could have stayed under wraps this long, especially after a lengthy, high profile investigation. Skepticism is a good reason to proceed with caution. But it is important to proceed and get answers to these questions.
Can you refresh my memory? I recall when the story first broke Rumsfeld was quoted as saying he had never heard of Able Danger. Did he correct himself or did he truly not know?