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WE MAY OWE THEM A BIG APOLOGY (And other selections from NRO RE: Able Danger)
NRO ^ | 8-14-05 | John Podhoretz

Posted on 08/14/2005 6:10:27 PM PDT by Stellar Dendrite

WE MAY OWE THEM A BIG APOLOGY [John Podhoretz] A day or two ago, I posted a note of caution about the Able Danger scandal, and that note of caution has now turned into a full-fledged symphony -- and some of us on the Right who have been making a big stink about this may have been had.

The 9/11 Commission has put out a very detailed memo defending itself that basically says Rep. Curt Weldon and the unnamed Navy officers who have made a big stink about Able Danger are stretching it bigtime. The basis of their charge is two-fold:

First, that 9/11 staffers met with folks in Afghanistan in 2003 who told them about Able Danger and that Mohammed Atta had been identified by that military-intelligence operation. Here's what the commission says: "As with their other meetings, Commission staff promptly prepared a memorandum for the record. That memorandum, prepared at the time, does not record any mention of Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers, or any suggestion that their identities were known to anyone at DOD before 9/11. Nor do any of the three Commission staffers who participated in the interview, or the executive branch lawyer, recall hearing any such allegation."

What's more, in February 2004, commission staff members read Able Danger documents at the Pentagon: "None of the documents turned over to the Commission mention Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers. Nor do any of the staff notes on documents reviewed in the DOD reading room indicate that Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers were mentioned in any of those documents."

That's about as strong a denial as there can be, and it sounds credible to me.

The second part of the charge is that in July 2004, the Commission met with the unnamed Naval officer. Here's its description of what happened: " In early July 2004...the prospective witness was claiming that the project had linked Atta to an al Qaeda cell located in New York in the 1999-2000 time frame. Shortly after receiving this information, the Commission staff’s front office assigned two staff members with knowledge of the 9/11 plot and the ABLE DANGER operation to interview the witness at one of the Commission’s Washington, D.C. offices....

"According to the memorandum for the record on this meeting, prepared the next day..., the officer said that ABLE DANGER included work on 'link analysis,' mapping links among various people involved in terrorist networks. According to this record, the officer recalled seeing the name and photo of Mohamed Atta on an 'analyst notebook chart'....The officer being interviewed said he saw this material only briefly, that the relevant material dated from February through April 2000, and that it showed Mohamed Atta to be a member of an al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn."

We now know that there were 60-odd names on that chart. Is it really plausible that this Navy officer specifically recalled the name "Mohammed Atta" and the image of his face? Especially since there is no documentary record to support his charge in Defense Department files, at least not in the files shown to the 9/11 Commission?

I submit there is good reason to believe the Navy officer may have been extrapolating because he was so upset to discover that the "data mining" operation he found out about wasn't being properly shared with domestic law-enforcement agencies. And without more proof than a four-year-old memory that may have been faulty, the Commission was right to be skeptical about the value of this testimony.

As for Curt Weldon, remember that he's trying to sell a book. It's now up to him to put up or shut up. Can he or anyone else supply evidence stronger than the evidence presented to date about this that the Pentagon was in possession of Mohammed Atta's name a year before the attacks? I doubt he can or he would have already.

------

WHAT HATH CURT WELDON WROUGHT? [John Podhoretz] From tomorrow's Time Magazine about Rep. Curt Weldon and his Able Danger claims, which arose out of a soon-to-be-published book: "In a particularly dramatic scene in Weldon’s book, Countdown to Terror, the Pennsylvania Republican described personally handing to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley, just after Sept. 11, an Able Danger chart produced in 1999 identifying Atta. But Weldon told TIME he’s no longer certain Atta’s name was on that original document. The congressman says he handed Hadley his only copy. Still, last week he referred reporters to a recently reconstructed version of the chart in his office where, among dozens of names and photos of terrorists from around the world, there was a color mug shot of Mohammad Atta, circled in black marker."

If Time's account is accurate, Weldon has done something very, very bad with this whole story -- something either knowingly dishonest, unknowingly crazy, or foolishly naive -- and he should be held accountable for it. Posted at 02:40 PM

---

THE RECORD SHOWS I'M NO FAN OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION... [John Podhoretz] ...in fact, I've written innumerable columns and scores of thousands of words against it, some of them in this space. The commission was intellectually corrupt and corrupted. But Andy, consider this: The commission hears, in July 2004, from a guy who says that four years earlier he saw, on a chart with 60 other people on it, the face and name of Mohammed Atta. He has no proof of this, and the commission itself examined documents at the Pentagon months earlier from the same operation and found nothing there. With nothing else to go on, this isn't even worthy of a footnote. It's just blather and palaver, and let's be honest here -- would you have remembered a specific name like "Mohammed Atta" from a list of 60 names in 2000? We didn't know it was 60 names when this first came out. Weldon and the Naval officer guy made it sound like there were only five names.

Now, as my earlier item on Time magazine noted, Weldon is backing off his contention in his book that he had given the Bush NSC a chart with Atta's name on it just after the attacks in 2001.

None of this passes the smell test. And an apology is due the 9/11 Commission staff at the very least, I think, because some of us were in effect contending that they were sloppy or dishonest or covering something up. Sounds like they were being professional to me.


TOPICS: Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 911commission; abledanger; apology; atta; gorelick; levin; orin; podhoretz; rush; weldon
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To: Stellar Dendrite

They cast aspersions on Weldon because he's trying to sell a book. Of course, the Commission has a motive to lie inasmuch as they are trying to save their plummeting reputations.

I guess the question I have is why the let the Commission staff go back over their notes if the Commission had been dissolved. It would have been very easy to pull a Sandy Berger.


41 posted on 08/14/2005 6:24:54 PM PDT by Brilliant
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To: jimbo123
You seem to be parroting the "Smear Weldon" talking points. Funny how the actions of the former heads of the 9/11 Committee didn't seem to seem unusual to you.

When did I smear Weldon? I'm asking if his facts are true, and hoping he'll reveal all. Sorry if that's a smear to you, but tough. And how do YOU know about my opinion about the action of the 9/11 committee heads?

If you're telepathic and know all the facts about this case the way you seem to know my private thoughts, lay it all out. Until then, I'm simply asking for all the facts. I didn't know some FReepers were so sensitive to the truth about this commission being brought out as opposed to wishful thinking, but again, tough.

42 posted on 08/14/2005 6:24:57 PM PDT by Darkwolf377 ("The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they'll be when you kill them."-Wm. Clayton)
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To: Darkwolf377
"Where did Weldon get this stuff from?"

Dan Rather?

43 posted on 08/14/2005 6:24:58 PM PDT by fish hawk (hollow points were made to hold pig lard)
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To: Stellar Dendrite

comment -- still think Gorelick, her bosses and associates are *ssholes. /comment.


44 posted on 08/14/2005 6:25:05 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand (see my FR page for a link to the tribute to Terri Schaivo, a short video presentation.)
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To: Stellar Dendrite; Baynative; doug from upland; Southack; Pukin Dog; Fedora; jimbo123; Calpernia; ...

Can someone comment?

How about, certain serial criminals at large remain active--and active in covering their tracks, until proven guilty and imprisoned....


45 posted on 08/14/2005 6:25:13 PM PDT by The Spirit Of Allegiance (SAVE THE BRAINFOREST! Boycott the RED Dead Tree Media & NUKE the DNC Class Action Temper Tantrum!)
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To: Stellar Dendrite

Funny how Podhoertz isn't interested in finding out what's in those 15 boxes of Able Danger documents...


46 posted on 08/14/2005 6:25:41 PM PDT by jimbo123
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To: fish hawk

No, if he got this from Rather it would have proven Bush plotted 9-11 back in the seventies. And it would have been written on Dukes of Hazard stationary


47 posted on 08/14/2005 6:26:10 PM PDT by Darkwolf377 ("The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they'll be when you kill them."-Wm. Clayton)
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To: Phsstpok

I see I'm not the only one who thought his slipshod stemcell debate made him look like a punk.

If you notice, he's posting more than anyone these days. I'm not the biggest Ponnoru fan, but I suspect , given his seniority at the magazine, that he's a little irked that Pod has come in and tried to throw his impressive girth around Naional Review.


48 posted on 08/14/2005 6:26:11 PM PDT by Cosmo (Liberalism is for girls)
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To: Stellar Dendrite

This NRO piece by JP was included as part of another thread this AM and discussed at length. No new information has emerged since then.


49 posted on 08/14/2005 6:27:24 PM PDT by Cautor
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To: the Real fifi

CQ seems to be agreeing with him now.


50 posted on 08/14/2005 6:28:45 PM PDT by CasearianDaoist
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To: Blurblogger

John is usually very thorough and he is on our side. But I still want answers. I still want Jamie Gorelick raising her right hand. This wall was created shortly after OKC. It was when the Clintons needed to stonewall on Chinese money. We need answers. Yes, Jack Nicholson, we can handle the truth. I'll let you know when I see it.


51 posted on 08/14/2005 6:28:57 PM PDT by doug from upland (The Hillary documentary is coming -- INDICTING HILLARY)
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To: Darkwolf377
True, but that wall issue has been there all along and nothing has happened.

Well, to be fair, The Wall has been known, but what hasn't been known is that intelligence had detected these people in advance and then got shut down by The Wall on flimsy grounds. Up until now, it had seemed that The Wall simply left us blind to anything, not deliberately suicidal.

52 posted on 08/14/2005 6:29:02 PM PDT by atomicpossum (Replies should be as pedantic as possible. I love that so much.)
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To: Phsstpok
Lots of folks are suddenly questioning Rep Weldons credibility because... get this... several people have questioned his credibility! Case closed.

That's not fair--how is it saying "case closed" to ask for proof of Weldon's claims? Don't you want the facts in hand so we can charge Gorelick and company?

I don't know Podhoretz's deal--thanks for the backstory on the stem cell thing--but it's a legit point to make that Weldon hasn't come across with any smoking gun, merely stated that he found this out. So let's just see his information. What is wrong with that? Better to ask these questions now so Gorelick and crew can't try to muddy the water later.

53 posted on 08/14/2005 6:29:16 PM PDT by Darkwolf377 ("The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they'll be when you kill them."-Wm. Clayton)
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To: Stellar Dendrite

Right away we are to believe this is all about selling a book? I don't believe that is the case. Weldon seems to speak credibly. Let's have a congressional hearing now.


54 posted on 08/14/2005 6:29:32 PM PDT by stocksthatgoup (Polls = Proof that when the MSM want your opinion they will give it to you.)
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To: Darkwolf377

Who said this?


"I have no special knowledge, but I'm saying this looks like Weldon (who some here were proposing should run for president based on this alone!) is stretching the truth to sell books."


55 posted on 08/14/2005 6:29:55 PM PDT by jimbo123
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To: Darkwolf377

That's a good point, I think. You'd think that an assemblage of facts, however tangental to the 9/11 emission's thesis, would at least be warranted -- if only in the form of an appendixed outline in the back of the book.


56 posted on 08/14/2005 6:30:06 PM PDT by Cosmo (Liberalism is for girls)
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To: Stellar Dendrite
DID THE BERGEN RECORD BREAK SOMETHING HERE?

DID THE BERGEN RECORD BREAK SOMETHING HERE?

Mike Kelly, a columnist for the Bergen Record of New Jersey, had Curt Weldon’s staff arrange an interview with a member of Able Danger. He uncovers a few tidbits we haven't heard before: For a year before the 9/11 attacks, the Wayne Inn was home to Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaida mastermind behind the hijacking plot that killed almost 3,000 people...

A former member of the military intelligence team told me in an interview that it had enough data to raise suspicions. "But we were blocked from passing it to the FBI."

The connect-the-dots tracking by the team was so good that it even knew Atta conducted meetings with the three future hijackers. One of those meetings took place at the Wayne Inn. That's how close all this was - to us and to being solved, if only the information had been passed up the line to FBI agents or even to local cops.

The story begins a year before the attacks. A top-secret team of Pentagon military counter-terror computer sleuths, who worked for a special operations commando group, was well into a project to monitor al-Qaida operations.

The 11-person group called itself "Project Able Danger." Think of them as a super-secret Delta Force or SEAL team. But instead of guns, they relied on advanced math training as their key weapons. And instead of traditional spying methods or bust-down-the-door commando tactics, the Able Danger group booted up a set of high-speed, super-computers and collected vast amounts of data.

The technique is called "data mining." The Able Danger team swept together information from al-Qaida chat rooms, news accounts, Web sites and financial records. Then they connected the dots, comparing the information with visa applications by foreign tourists and other government records.

From there, the computer sleuths noticed four names - Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

All four turned out to be hijackers. Atta and al-Shehhi took a room at the Wayne Inn. They rented a Wayne mail drop, too, and even went to Willowbrook Mall. Al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi took rooms at a motel on Route 46 in South Hackensack.

What is interesting about this information now is that a CIA team, working separately from the Able Danger Team, had set its sights on al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi. The two were already on a CIA terror watch list and still had managed to obtain U.S. visas.

The CIA feared al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi might try to slip into the United States. But the CIA lost track of them after they left a terror meeting in Malaysia in early 2000 for Bangkok. Worse, the CIA waited until the summer of 2001 to tell the FBI that two suspected terrorists had visas to enter the United States - and might be here…

By mid-2000, the Able Danger team knew it had important information about a possible terrorist plot. Because of a peculiar series of computer links that went through Brooklyn, the team began referring to the four future hijackers as the "Brooklyn cell." Their movements and communications were raising too many suspicions.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle at the end:

Perhaps just as alarming, even the Able Danger team understood its limits. When lawyers blocked Able Danger's request to approach the FBI, the team simply went back to its work and kept quiet - even after the 9/11 attacks occurred.

Why? If the Able Danger team was so concerned about U.S. security, why didn't it approach Congress or even the press to sound an alarm?

When I posed that question in my interview with the Able Danger team member, he fell silent. Listening on a speaker phone, a congressional staffer interrupted: "Have you ever seen what happens to whistleblowers?"

Again, the Able Danger member had no answer.

Back in my wire service days, I used to cover Washington for the Bergen Record. I never dealt with Kelly, but my understanding is that he’s been at the paper for nearly three decades, and been a columnist about half that time. He’s no green rookie. And I can say from my experience with the Record that the editors were not lackadaisical. The North Jersey communities they cover were hard hit by 9/11. I doubt the editors would permit a columnist to quote an unnamed source, throwing out allegations as explosive as this, if they didn’t find him credible. If he gave off any whiff of nuttiness, I have a feeling this column would have been written quite differently.

In my previous post, I had stated that the accounts of Weldon’s guy and the 9/11 Commission were so different that this can’t be a simple misunderstanding – somebody’s lying. And an account with a lot of details (like the Commission’s Friday release) tends to seem more plausible than a vague one. Well, this account offers a lot of details. Anybody in North Jersey want to contact the Wayne Inn? They remember anybody who looked like Atta staying a year? Do they still have their pre-2001 guest records?

It still would be helpful if any one of these eleven guys in Able Danger could come forward and answer these questions publicly, not just with print reporters. I realize they have careers to think of, but as the tag line for “Patriot Games” said, “Truth needs a soldier.”

[Posted 08/14 05:52 PM]

I note the above was posted after John Podhoretz's piece. I can't say if he was aware of it.

57 posted on 08/14/2005 6:30:21 PM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
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To: atomicpossum
You're correct, that's a good point.

One good thing about this is that even if Podhoretz's position is correct, and I don't say it is, it pushes the story into more than one yes-or-no area. There's a lot to look at here. I just think it's better to get all the facts together and THEN attack Gorelick and company, rather than wanting to get her so bad and then cobbling together some facts with half-truths.

58 posted on 08/14/2005 6:31:11 PM PDT by Darkwolf377 ("The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they'll be when you kill them."-Wm. Clayton)
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To: jimbo123

That's Pod himself. He sounds alot like Kristol...They seem to have the same opinion too...Both hail from the Standard....both hang on Fox News.

Yeah, I think there's something suspcious here...but that's just me and my tinfoil hat talking.


59 posted on 08/14/2005 6:31:38 PM PDT by Cosmo (Liberalism is for girls)
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To: Stellar Dendrite
We now know that there were 60-odd names on that chart. Is it really plausible that this Navy officer specifically recalled the name "Mohammed Atta" and the image of his face? Especially since there is no documentary record to support his charge in Defense Department files, at least not in the files shown to the 9/11 Commission?

After 9/12/2001? Absolutely! His name and image should have caught the full and undivided attention of anyone in the intelligence community and certainly the commission members investigating 9/11.

60 posted on 08/14/2005 6:32:37 PM PDT by NonValueAdded ("Freedom of speech makes it much easier to spot the idiots." [Jay Lessig, 2/7/2005])
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