Able Danger: Debunking the Bunk

This is a thought provoking commentary about the Able Danger mess.

No one has said Able Danger is a figment of Weldon’s Lucky Charmed imagination. Far from it. Indeed, the Post article on Saturday revealed that there’s a second DIA analyst who has come forward to confirm that a Pentagon unit had detected the hijackers were in the US, but that the unit was ordered to move onto other things, and the FBI was wasn’t notified. The Commissioners still say that information wasn’t passed up to them by Phil Zelikow. That’s a gravely serious matter that needs to be investigated.

Most of the the Able Danger debunking effort seems to be an ad hominem attack on Curt Weldon and an attempt to deflect attention from the bigger picture. Weldon is almost beside the point. Let’s focus on what the DIA guys were saying to Zelikow. There are two DIA intelligence officers who have confirmed that Army Intelligence produced a matrix that showed the primary 9/11 hiajckers inside the U.S. months before the attacks. It was irresponsible in the extreme for the staff director to have thrown this information away and not tell the Commissioners about it, if indeed he didn’t.

The material questions about Weldon’s claim seem to devolve into three very slim, almost irrelevant, issues. Those issues are 1) whether the chart had Atta’s name on it — note, no one is contesting that there was a DoD chart produced that showed four al-Qaeda-linked terrorists detected inside the US — 2) whether it had Atta inside the US in late 1999 or in mid-2000 (note, that’s a discrepancy that needs to be checked out, not something that should have led to Zelikow throwing the information out); and 3) that the UBL cell on the chart was designated the “Brooklyn Cell”, and nothing places Atta in Brooklyn. Well, the chart isn’t about Atta — it’s about al-Qaeda, which I recall had substantial (in the $$$millions) financial ties to the al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn. What this seems to actually reveal is that DoD was aware in 1999 of funding sources that flowed from the mosque to the UBL cells then preparing an attack inside the U.S. Serious stuff. Should have been thoroughly investigated by the Commission, but apparently wasn’t. Why?

Well, those are the questions I've been asking, haven't I.

You know you're going to be in for some rough treatment when Mark Steyn weighs in. The 9/11 Commission should be advised to batten down the hatches, stow all luggage, and return their seats to the locked and upright position. Turbulence ahead.

So, when the September 11 Commission starts saying there's "no way" something can happen when it happens every single day of the week, you start to wonder what exactly is the point of an official investigation so locked-in to pre-set conclusions.

For example, they seemed oddly determined to fix June 3, 2000, as the official date of Atta's first landing on American soil -- though there were several alleged sightings of him before, including a bizarre story he had trained at Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. Atta was a very mobile guy in the years before September 11, shuttling between Germany, Spain, Afghanistan, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the Philippines with effortless ease. I've no hard evidence of where he was in, say, April 2000. The period between late 1999 and May 2000 is, in many ways, a big blur. He might have been in Germany -- or in Florida, attempting to get a U.S. Farm Service Agency loan for the world's biggest crop duster, as reported by Agriculture Department official Johnell Bryant, local bank officials and others.

But I do know it's absurd to suggest he was never in the United States until June 3, 2000, simply because the INS says so.

September 11 was a total government fiasco: INS, CIA, FBI, Federal Aviation Administration, all the hotshot acronyms failed spectacularly. But appoint an official commission and let them issue an official report and suddenly everyone says, oh, well, this is the official version of September 11. If they say something didn't happen, it can't possibly have happened.

Readers may recall that I never cared for the commission. There were too many showboating partisan hacks -- Richard ben Veniste, Bob Kerrey -- who seemed more interested in playing to the rhythms of election season. There was at least one person with an outrageous conflict of interest: Clinton Justice Department honcho Jamie Gorelick, who shouldn't have been on the commission but instead a key witness. And there were far too many areas where members seemed interested only in facts that supported a predetermined outcome.

Maybe we need a September 11 Commission Commission to investigate the September 11 Commission. A body intended to reassure Americans that the lessons of that terrible day had been learned instead engaged in at best transparent politicking and collusion in posterior-covering and at worst something a much darker and more disturbing.

Curiously strong language. Good for Steyn.

UPDATE:
Jim Geraghty slams Rep. Weldon for getting just enough facts right to get people talking (about Weldon), but missing the key details - like just what Able Danger was able to determine before 9/11 (you know, the mention of Atta and three other 9/11 terrorists). Accountability works both ways, and Weldon is plum out if the DoD information release does not present any new information that would back up Weldon's assertions.

Again, we go back to square one, which is how did Weldon get this information - and that has been under question for some time although he appeared to get the information from members of the Able Danger team. Also, why did no one on the team step forward sooner with this information, even as an anonymous source to speak with the press - we know that happens all the time, so why not on a program that appeared to pull the names before the attacks.

We're still left wondering why the Commission did not include the Able Danger report(ing) in its Report, if only as a footnote to show that it had done its due diligence. There are still aspects of the Report that should get a closer examination, but sadly that closer examination may not happen because of Weldon's actions.

And Geraghty updates himself because one of the Able Danger team will be on television tonite, so we'll have to see what comes of that. (via levi from queens, posting at LGF.)