Thursday, August 11, 2005

Questions Answered; Questions Asked

Thanks to everyone from Villainous Company, The Anchoress, and The Jawa Report for stopping by. It's much appreciated. I hope you folks stick around, ask a few questions of your own, and check out all I have to offer on my humble little site.

Earlier today, it would seem that one of the original questions I asked was answered:

Who provided Rep. Weldon with the information regarding Able Danger? The answer would appear to be various military officers attached with the Able Danger program. Baldilocks explains via a Weldon speech:
But I learned something new, Mr. Speaker, over the past several weeks and months. I have talked to some of the military intelligence officers who produced this document, who worked on this effort. And I found something out very startling, Mr. Speaker. Not only did our military identify the Mohammed Atta cell; our military made a recommendation in September of 2000 to bring the FBI in to take out that cell, the cell of Mohammed Atta. So now, Mr. Speaker, for the first time I can tell our colleagues that one of our agencies not only identified the New York cell of Mohammed Atta and two of the terrorists, but actually made a recommendation to bring the FBI in to take out that cell. And they made that recommendation because Madeleine Albright had declared that al Qaeda, an international terrorist organization, and the military units involved here felt they had jurisdiction to go to the FBI.
So, these military officers involved in the program informed Rep. Weldon.

Did they inform anyone else? Why is Weldon the only source?

One question down, plenty remain.

See also:
Questions Mount on Able Danger
Enableing Danger

UPDATE:
No sooner than I post this, that I come across some serious information via John Podhoretz at National Review. The AP (via The New York Times) confirms all the particulars about Weldon's accusations. I let Mr. Podhoretz say it best:
The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.

And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.

And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies.

I was very skeptical of this Able Danger stuff about Atta, thought it was just sme way Rep. Curt Weldon was trying to sell a book. No longer. This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.

So was the staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?
I too have wondered about Weldon - especially considering his penchant for wanting to sell his book and that his comments have been dismissed as being kooky.

The problem is that Weldon happened to be right on the mark. He started asking questions and made comments that aroused suspicions. Something was rotten about the treatment of Able Danger by the 9/11 Commission. Namely, they didn't treat it at all. They treated it as though it didn't exist. Their results and conclusions flow from excluding the Able Danger information. That doesn't sit right with me at all.

I'm going to let others focus on the political fallout from this revelation, but I want people to focus on the more crucial issue of what was behind Able Danger intel not being shared, how that policy came about, and what we are doing to keep it from happening in our current war efforts.

And for the record, I do believe that Congress had better subpoena the usual suspects on both sides of the aisle to get to the bottom of it - especially Gorelick, Clarke, and Berger.

UPDATE II:
Northeast Intelligence Network has more.

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