Free Republic

A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon (R) looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed...

Slade Gorton claims to already know the results of the Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. He says they will agree with him - that Able Danger was historically insignificant. That it "didn't have anything to do with 9/11" at all! Let's hope Mr. Gorton is in for a rude awakening. If not, it begs the question, how does he know so much about classified proceedings in the Senate that the American public has not been allowed to hear for ourselves? From Lou Dobbs last night: DOBBS: Congressman Curt Weldon claims a secret Pentagon project known as Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta...

Mary Laney's criticisms of the 9/11 Commission [column, Aug. 22] and, in particular, my colleague Jamie Gorelick, are totally unfounded.The Commission was told of the existence of Able Danger in October 2003. It immediately demanded all Able Danger documents concerned with Islamist terrorism from the Department of Defense -- and received them. Neither the officer telling us about Able Danger, nor congressman Weldon nor the Able Danger records names Mohammed Atta or any other 9/11 terrorists. Nor has the recent exhaustive DOD review of its records found any such mention.One week before publication of the 9/11 Commission's report last year,...

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation...is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks...

NEW YORK - The former police and fire chiefs who were lionized after the World Trade Center attack came under harsh criticism Tuesday from the Sept. 11 commission, with one member saying the departments' lack of cooperation was scandalous and "not worthy of the Boy Scouts." Former fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen and former police chief Bernard Kerik shot back with infuriated responses to John Lehman's questions, the strongest of a series of pointed statements from the panel. "I couldn't disagree with you more strongly," Von Essen replied. "I think it's outrageous that you make a statement like that." Outside...

<p>April 12, 2004 -- President Bush yesterday said there was no "actionable intelligence" in the CIA memo on al Qaeda that he got a month before the Sept. 11 attacks. "Had I known there was going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop the attack," Bush said in his first public comments since the Aug. 6, 2001, memo was released Saturday.</p>

<p>"If President Bush had followed every last letter of Richard Clarke's recommendations starting Inauguration Day, it still would not have prevented 9/11," the Wall Street Journal says.</p> <p>"How do we know this? Richard Clarke says so," the newspaper said in an editorial.</p>

<p>RICHARD CLARKE: There was no plan on al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration ... In January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. [They] decided to ... vigorously pursue the existing policy [and] ... initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years.</p>