Able Danger: Coverup, Cowardice, or Cluster$@^

Deborah Orin suggests that this is a coverup. I would tend to agree. I think it is a combination of it being cowardice on the part of Gorelick, Berger, and others in the Clinton Administration, but primarily Gorelick to refuse to get up before the Commission and candidly explain her decisions to expand the wall between intel, law enforcement, and military. If she believes what she did was right, then she should be proud to explain her decision.

Commission staffers at first denied knowing about the elite military unit known as Able Danger, but later admitted they were briefed — twice — and Atta was specifically named. Still, it was conveniently left out of the 9/11 report.

It gets worse. Gorelick's defenders might argue that hindsight is 20-20. But that excuse doesn't work in this case, because she was warned way back then — when the see-no-evil wall was created.

That warning came right from the front line in the War on Terror — from Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who headed up key terror probes like the prosecutions for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

White — herself a Clinton appointee — wrote directly to Reno that the wall was a big mistake.

However, Gorelick knows that doing so would cause her reputation irreperable harm and expose her to attacks from all sides. Sure, some would say that she's the fall-guy for Bush's failures, or that there's some other mitigating factors in the 9/11 intel failures, which leads me to the cluster$@!% scenario, but Gorelick must explain herself.

Gorelick has not been compelled to do so. And that, is a major mistake on the part of the Commission and Congress. Mary Jo White was one of the best prosecutors in the country, and was a major figure in leading prosecutions against terrorists in the US. Her office had more experience dealing with terrorism than any other in the country. So, if she believed that the wall was a huge mistake, then anyone in their right mind should have come to that conclusion. It was a colossal mistake.

Meanwhile, Captain Ed notes that the final report makes next to no mention of the White memos:

And here the Commission engages in its second covert act of omission in order to protect those who made it impossible for the intelligence community to act on its findings. What happened to the second White memo? Mary Jo White gets three mentions in their final report, all of them in the footnotes, and none of them refers to her warnings to Gorelick or Janet Reno. Nowhere does the Commission reveal her objections to the wall or her efforts to reverse the Gorelick decision.

The Commission must explain why it chose not to call Gorelick to testify and why they discounted the clearly relevant White memos. In fact, someone should explain why Gorelick was on the panel and not testifying before it considering her role in creating the wall.

Under the cluster$@$^ scenario (and yes, I'm using different characters each time - I try to keep this a PG related site), the Commission's errors and omissions, plus Gorelick's errors fit within a larger pattern of failure to communicate and poor transitioning between Administrations, plus lax attitudes towards transportation security across all sectors. It also points to finding a political outcome convenient to both political parties without seeking the answers that the Commission was supposed to determine based on the facts.

Meanwhile, Michael Ledeen seeks a seance with James Jesus Angleton who was a former CIA counter intel head. Ledeen suggests that the information was blocked because it didn't meet the policy needs of the Administration - the Clinton Administration that is.

Their superiors blocked the analysis for a much more important reason: It didn’t fit with what the policymakers wanted to believe.

Ledeen also notes that this problem isn't just confined to the Clinton years, it happened in other Administrations as well as they sought to avoid dealing with terrorism for decades. Reagan was stung by the terrorism of the 1983 barracks bombings and never did provide a strong response. Clinton's weak response was primarily a legalistic one, but that was too shortsighted and reactive. Bush carried on the legalistic view through to 9/11, but made a sea-change thereafter in taking the fight to the terrorists. However, even now one can see him getting wobbly as support for his actions has waned (much of it due to biased media coverage, which would much rather focus on US body counts than that we're taking the fight to terrorists who would much rather be left alone to plan their next major attack on the US without the interruption of US Marines kicking down doors, B-52 bombers dropping bomb loads on their heads, or special forces schlepping through the mountains after terrorists on the run).

UPDATE:
Ace of Spades has more, courtesy of Phinn. I agree with Ace - this is a huge story, with tremendous consequences. One of the reasons that the 9/11 Commission apparently discounted the Able Danger information was because it conflicted with their timeline for Atta's movements. Able Danger apparently would have permitted a timeline that allowed for Atta to meet with Iraqi agents in Prague. And confirming that meeting's existence would have had practical and political consequences - namely supporting Bush's contention that Iraq was directly related to the WoT, and would have undermined Democrat resistance to the war (and exposed the Left to the fact that they were supporting terrorists through their actions).

What I still don't get is why GOP members of the Commission would go along with leaving Able Danger out. That did not serve this country at all. Why would they go along with this? The GOP members need to explain their actions as well.

UPDATE II:
MarkLevinFan has the audio interview of Rep. Weldon who appeared on his show to discuss Able Danger, the 9/11 Commission, and related issues. Definitely worth a look.

UPDATE III:
Captain Ed is doing yeoman's work on Able Danger, and is in the process of streamlining access to Able Danger related stories on his site.

Also, check out this story from Open Fire. Political expediencies determined the Report outcome, not the facts. Sad, but that conclusion is quickly becoming realized.

Further, Macsmind suggests that there are plenty of holes in the Able Danger story before we can conclude that there was some 9/11 Commission coverup. He makes some interesting points, are are worth keeping in mind going forward. However, this should still be investigated to its conclusion, whatever that may be.

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