Rep. Weldon Claims Shredding of Able Danger Info Ordered

A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa.

Weldon declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.

A Senate Judiciary Committee aide said the witnesses for Wednesday's hearing had not been finalized and could not confirm Weldon's comments.

The key information missing here is not the identification of the person who was ordered to shred the information, but the identification of the person who ordered the information.

On Wednesday, former members of the Sept. 11 commission dismissed the "Able Danger" assertions. One commissioner, ex-Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said, "Bluntly, it just didn't happen and that's the conclusion of all 10 of us."

Weldon responded angrily to Gorton's assertions.

"It's absolutely unbelievable that a commission would say this program just didn't exist," Weldon said Thursday.

Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

If the 9/11 Commission doesn't believe the sun rises in the East, does that mean it doesn't happen? That's apparently the situation we now face. The Pentagon has confirmed that Able Danger existed, and that there are people who corroborate the Able Danger information that Rep. Weldon has asserted. Five people, including Lt. Col. Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have come forward with information relating to Able Danger and findings that contradict the 9/11 Commission's Report, which makes no mention of Able Danger, the Gorelick wall of separation, or Mary Jo White's rebuttal briefs.

UPDATE:
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