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I just realized much of what Weldon told Specter in the hearing was a re-cap of what he had said on the House floor many months ago. The following is an excerpt of Weldon's House presentation:

http://curtweldon.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=32111

"...Mr. Speaker, September 11 touched all of us; 3,700 of us were wiped out. Two weeks after 9/11, my friends from the Army's Information Dominance Center in cooperation with special ops brought me a chart. This chart, Mr. Speaker, this chart. Two weeks after Ð9/11, I took the basic information in this chart down to the White House. I had asked for a meeting with Steve Hadley, who at that time was Deputy National Security Advisor. The chart was smaller. It was 2 feet by 3 feet, but the same information was in the center.

Steve Hadley looked at the chart and said, Congressman, where did you get that chart from? I said, I got it from the military. I said, This is the process; this is the result of the process that I was pitching since 1999 to our government to implement, but the CIA kept saying we do not need it.

Steve Hadley said, Congressman, I am going to take this chart, and I am going to show it to the man. The man that he meant, Mr. Speaker, was the President of the United States. I said, Mr. Hadley, you mean you have not seen something like this before from the CIA, this chart of al Qaeda worldwide and in the U.S.? And he said, No, Congressman. So I gave him the chart.

Now, Mr. Speaker, what is interesting in this chart of al Qaeda, and you cannot see this from a distance, but right here in the center is the name of the leader of the New York cell. And that name is very familiar to the people of America. That name is Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attack against us. So prior to 9/11, this military system that the CIA said we did not need and could not do actually gave us the information that identified Mohammed Atta's cell in New York. And with Mohammed Atta they identified two of the other terrorists with them.

But I learned something new, Mr. Speaker, over the past several weeks and months. I have talked to some of the military intelligence officers who produced this document, who worked on this effort. And I found something out very startling, Mr. Speaker. Not only did our military identify the Mohammed Atta cell; our military made a recommendation in September of 2000 to bring the FBI in to take out that cell, the cell of Mohammed Atta. So now, Mr. Speaker, for the first time I can tell our colleagues that one of our agencies not only identified the New York cell of Mohammed Atta and two of the terrorists, but actually made a recommendation to bring the FBI in to take out that cell. And they made that recommendation because Madeleine Albright had declared that al Qaeda, an international terrorist organization, and the military units involved here felt they had jurisdiction to go to the FBI.

Why, then, did they not proceed? That is a question that needs to be answered, Mr. Speaker. I have to ask, Mr. Speaker, with all the good work that the 9/11 Commission did, why is there nothing in their report about able danger? Why is there no mention of the work that able danger did against al Qaeda? Why is there no mention, Mr. Speaker, of a recommendation in September of 2000 to take out Mohammed Atta's cell which would have detained three of the terrorists who struck us?

[Time: 11:40]

Those are questions, Mr. Speaker, that need to be answered.

Last week, I asked the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, my good friend, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, my good friend, who I have the highest respect for both of these individuals, to allow us to proceed with an investigation that has not yet been brought forward to the American people and our colleagues in this body.

We need to know, Mr. Speaker, why those recommendations, if they, in fact, occurred, as my intelligence military friends told me that they occurred, why were they stopped. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have been told informally that they were stopped because the lawyers at that time in 2000 told them that Mohamed Atta had a green card and they could not go after someone with a green card.

I have also been told, Mr. Speaker, that it was because of the fear of the lawyers of the fallout that had occurred on the Waco attack in Texas just a short time earlier. Mr. Speaker, if that is, in fact, the case, that is an outrage and a scandal. If our reason for not going after the Mohamed Atta cell was because of the fear of the fallout from Waco, then someone needs to answer some questions.

The bottom line process in all of this, Mr. Speaker, is that this capability, which the CIA said we did not need, which the CIA said was not necessary, which was, in fact, being used by the military, both the Army and Special Forces command did something the CIA did not do. It identified the key cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11, and it actually gave us a suggestion to deal with that cell. Mr. Speaker, this story needs to be investigated. This information needs to be pursued.

Now, Mr. Speaker, in spite of the CIA's refusal to implement a national collaborative center, thank goodness our President did respond, and in January of 2003, standing in this very chamber, in the State of the Union speech, he announced the TTIC, the Terrorism Threat Integration Center. Mr. Speaker, the TTIC is identical to the NOAH, no different, same concept, same design, linkage together in one location of all 33 classified systems.

But, Mr. Speaker, we proposed that in 1999, 2 years prior to 9/11. The administration put it into place in January of 2003. That is the same capability that the CIA said we do not need that, Congressman; we cannot do that, Congressman; we have better ways to assess emerging threats. TTIC has now been reformed. It is now known as the NCTC, the National Coun ter ter ror ism Center, but Mr. Speaker, I still have concerns, and I rise this evening to express those concerns.

This capability was produced in 1999 and 2000 by the IDC, the Information Dominant Center. I asked them to update me on al Qaeda, to show me what they can do today at the IDC. This, Mr. Speaker, is al Qaeda today. It is obviously impossible for anyone watching our television monitor to see what is on this chart. I have had this chart magnified by a large factor and have large copies in my office.

Each of these little individual people are cells of al Qaeda, are groups of al Qaeda, clusters of al Qaeda around the world. In fact, Mohamed Atta's cell is identified in this chart. This chart, Mr. Speaker, was prepared through the national collaborative efforts of our IDC, using, Mr. Speaker, open source data. That chart was produced with open source data.

What troubles me, Mr. Speaker, is in talking to my friends in the defense community who work with the NCTC, I have learned that quite possibly the NCTC cannot duplicate this capability. That is a question I plan to get answered this week because we have a

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very new and very capable leader of the NCTC that hopefully will tell me I am wrong, that they can produce this kind of capability to understand a threat group like al Qaeda.

I rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, to raise the importance of intelligence collaboration. We can never allow ourselves to return back to the days prior to 9/11, to the days where individual agencies or individual agencies that think that they have all of the answers in providing security for our country and intelligence for our agencies and our policy-makers. Mr. Speaker, we can never return to the days of 1999 and 2000, and I hope this is not the case today, but back in those days where the agency bureaucrats were fighting with each other over who would take credit for the best information. Let me read a couple of excerpts, Mr. Speaker.

Back in 1999, when I was pushing the CIA to establish this collaborative capability and our military was actually using that capability, focusing on emerging threats like al Qaeda, this conversation went back and forth, Mr. Speaker, September 1999. This is, by the way, written from military intelligence officers, a summary of notes to me.

At the military's inception, the CIA drags its feet and limits its support to the effort. In an off-the-record conversation between the DCI and the CIA representative to this military unit, a man that I will call Dave and our military intelligence officer explains that even though he understands the military's effort is against the global infrastructure of al Qaeda, he tells me that the CIA will, and I quote, never provide the best information on al Qaeda, end quote. Why would they not do that? Because of the effort that they were taking as part of a finding they had on bin Laden himself and if the military's project was successful it would, quote, steal their thunder. Steal the CIA's thunder.

Dave went on to say that short of the CINC, General so and so, calling the Director, George Tenet, directly, the CIA would never provide the best information to the military on al Qaeda. To my knowledge, that information was never provided.

Mr. Speaker, never again can America allow intelligence bureaucrats to argue back and forth over who is going to steal whose thunder, that you heaven forbid would want to embarrass the CIA because a military intelligence unit got information that is supposed to be under their authority and jurisdiction.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to read all these pages, but this classified information that I have to back up what I have given in unclassified format, will be provided and has been provided for the chairman of our intelligence oversight committee and our armed services oversight committee.

Again, I have to ask the question, why did the 9/11 Commission not investigate this entire situation? Why did the 9/11 Commission not ask the question about the military's recommendation against the Mohamed Atta cell? Why did the 9/11 Commission not document the internal battles and disputes between agency personnel going after the same terrorist organization al Qaeda?

If we are truly going to have an understanding of the need to reform our intelligence system, then we have to be honest with the American people about the past.

[Time: 23:50]
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because I am very troubled by what I have seen and by what I have heard. I have interviewed and talked to some very brave military intelligence officers who, back in 1999 and 2000, were involved in protecting America. They knew what we needed, and they were trying to do it. As I have read to you, there were some in other agencies, especially the CIA and some in DIA, who were saying you cannot do that, that is not your area. That is our area. You cannot steal our thunder. That is our job, not your job.

Never again, Mr. Speaker, can we allow agency bureaucrats to argue over who is going to get the credit for solving the next attack or planned attack against us. I do not rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, to embarrass anyone. I rise tonight because of my own frustration. We knew 6 years ago what direction we had to go. The agency said we do not need that, Congressman, we know better than the Congress. Trust us.

Thank goodness President Bush put that system in place when he took office. If we had had that system in 1999 and 2000, which the military had already developed as a prototype, and if we had followed the lead of the military entity that identified the al Qaeda cell of Mohamed Atta, then perhaps, Mr. Speaker, 9/11 would never have occurred. Certainly taking out the Mohamed Atta cell and two of the terrorists that were with him, would have had a profound positive impact in shutting down the major plan against us that moved forward on September 11, 2001..."