Able Danger: Rethinking Prague

First we have the timeline established by the 9/11 Commission. Then there is the data that was not included in the timeline because the Commission considered the data to be too flimsy or that it conflicted with their timeline.

The problem for the Commission is that the Able Danger information, which never appears to have been considered by the Commission in the first place, let alone mentioned in the final report, suggests that the Commission timeline is flawed.

There are lots of questions about where Atta was in the months leading up to 9/11. Was he in contact with Iraqi agents in Prague? Did he have other contacts that we are unaware of? The Commission discounted the Prague meeting but did so on the basis of Atta's cell phone usage. The cell phone records suggest that Atta's phone was used in the United States during the time when he might have been in Prague.

There is no tangible evidence that he was actually in the US, only those phone records. There are no conversations or eyewitness accounts that peg him as being in the US. There is the supposition that Atta never used any aliases to travel.

So the Prague encounter remains a mystery. It's a mystery that has a whole bunch of folks quite interested because if Atta did meet with an Iraqi agent in Prague before the 9/11 operation, then we might have tangible and direct evidence of Iraq's involvement in the 9/11 attacks which resulted in the murder of more than 3,000 Americans. Note that I use the words might, because we still wouldn't know what was discussed, or whether Iraq actually sanctioned the attacks. But, it certainly raises suspicions when you have a terrorist organization meeting up with Iraqi intelligence agents in the weeks and months before the worst terrorist attack on US soil.

We do know that Iraq had no problem working with terrorist groups before. Saddam sponsored Palestinian terrorism, and gave shelter to major terrorist figures. Then, there are the purported links between Iraq and the 1993 WTC bombing.

So, where does this leave Able Danger. We still have much to learn about the program, what it found, and whether it uncovered the 9/11 plotters. However, this much is clear; the 9/11 Commission failed to examine all of the information related to the attacks, and its resulting report is flawed on that basis.

UPDATE:
Papadoc has more on the Prague connection, and asks why Geraghty and Podhoretz are slamming Rep. Weldon despite the fact that Rep. Weldon has provided a consistent message on data mining as an intel tool that needs to be better exploited for our national defense.

Strata sphere has some questions about searches using Arab names. He wonders whether Mohammed Atta is like searching for John Smith in a US phone book. Too many to count, and too many to be a worthwhile search. However, he does note some potential connections between the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 WTC bombing.

Curious.

And one other relevant issue ought to be addressed. I've often spoken of intelligence failures, and the 9/11 Commission makes that a centerpiece of their report. Edward Jay Epstein would beg to differ. He suggests that it was policy failures by the policy makers that are to blame. He points to how two teams of well qualified people, looking at the same data could reach vastly different conclusions. It is on those conclusions that policy makers must decide far reaching policy.

If policy-makers, including the President, are responsible for vetting the intelligence that they use, is the term "intelligence failure" anything more than convenient camouflage for a failure of policy-makers?

UPDATE II:
The New York Post has a potentially damning story on its hands. Damning, that is, to the 9/11 Commission:

A Pentagon secret intelligence team identified 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta through a probe of blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman — the mastermind of the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center, it was revealed yesterday.
An outside contractor to the intelligence unit, code named Able Danger, has told congressional staffers Atta's name was discovered by a computer data-mining search of connections to Abdel-Rahman, the Muslim cleric in prison for inspiring the 1993 trade center bombing and a plot to blow up New York landmarks.

Contractor James D. Smith testified that a California researcher was later able to purchase Atta's photograph from an Islamic Web site, officials confirmed.

Smith could not be reached for comment.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer — the Able Danger liaison who first went public — yesterday told The Post Atta popped up on the radar screen because his links to the blind sheik paralleled those of the 1993 trade center bombers.

"[Data analyst J.D. Smith] found Atta by linkages not to immigration issues but to the mosque system," he said. "Basically [Atta] was associating with known radical clerics."

This new information would go a long way to explaining how Atta's photograph was able to be included in the Able Danger information without the need for a visa photo or other immigration data.

That Atta may have known or affiliated with the 1993 terrorists is a big development, because there have been continued questions over whether the 1993 terrorists had Iraq links, and all of this was missed by the Commission.

UPDATE II:
Check out the stuff other bloggers have been saying: The Strata-Sphere, Weapons Of Mass Discussion, Let Freedom Ring, Boxer Watch, What Attitude Problem, Intel Dump, Flopping Aces, and JunkYard Blog. Just keep scrolling.