New Pre-9/11 Intel Questions

[Nbadan]

Sept. 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers were identified by defense intelligence officials more than a year before the attacks, but information about possible al Qaeda connections never was sent to law enforcement, Rep. Curt Weldon said Tuesday.

The 9/11 Commission will investigate the claim. Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton said that Weldon's information warrants a review. Hamilton says the commission "did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell."

Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said the hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as “Able Danger,” which determined they could be members of an al Qaeda cell.

Weldon said that in September 2000 the unit recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI “so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists,” Weldon said in an interview.

However, Weldon said Defense Department lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally.

“In fact, I'll tell you how stupid it was, they put stickies on the faces of Mohammed Atta on the chart that the military intelligence unit had completed and they said you can't talk to Atta because he's here” legally, Weldon said.

CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports that Weldon says he got the story from three agents in the Able Danger unit, one of whom confirmed this to CBS News.

Weldon did not provide details on how the intelligence officials first identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a cell.

The congressman, considered something of a maverick on Capitol Hill, initially made his allegations in a floor speech in June that garnered little attention. His talk came at the end of a legislative day during a period described under House rules as “special orders” — a time slot for lawmakers to get up and speak on issues of their choosing.


The issue resurfaced Monday in a story by the bimonthly Government Security News, which covers national security matters.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he was unaware of the intelligence until the latest reports surfaced.

But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Sept. 11 commission looked into the matter during its investigation into government missteps leading to the attacks and chose not to include it in the final report.

Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the commission, confirmed that the panel's investigators had been aware of Able Danger but said they “don't recall any mention of Mohammed Atta” or of cell.

The Sept. 11 commission's final report, issued last year, recounted numerous government mistakes that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Among them was a failure to share intelligence within and among agencies.

Despite the conflict over who knew about Atta and when, Andrews reports that most experts say that this kind of information would be shared today. Under the 9/11 intelligence reforms, Pentagon agents are now allowed to tip off the FBI to suspected terrorists.

CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/09/terror/main769440.shtml)

RUMSFELD QUESTIONED on "Able Danger" during today's 8/9/05 press conference with General Myers (On C-SPAN).

Paraphrasing from memory, a couple of hours later:

Mr. Secretary, can you clarify today's story that four of the 9/11 hijackers were identified as potential terrorists in 2000 by a military intelligence team?

Rumsfeld: No, I can't. The first time I ever heard about it was this morning and I can't tell you any more right now.

"The account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks."

Ummm, no, it is not...

The German press cited German federal police in September 2001 saying that the CIA had Atta and the Hamburg cell under surveillance from January to June 2000, while he and they were still in Hamburg, and that the Americans did not inform the Germans of this at the time. They watched him buy "chemicals" in Frankfurt and visit the U.S. consulate in Berlin that May, where he applied for and received a visa to travel to the U.S.

Also, what about all the foreign surveillance? Putin delivered a warning straight from his office - the Russians said 25 suicide pilots had entered the United States for an attack - the Mossad provided a list of 19 men planning an attack in the U.S., including at least four of those alleged to be ringleaders(Atta, Shehhi, Alhazmi, Almidhar) - Jordan in its warning correctly named the operation "Big Wedding" - Echelon nations said the plan was to crash planes into "high-value" U.S. and Israeli targets.

Why has none of THAT been reported?

[Clandestino]

if they had been talked to before committing any crimes, i'm sure the aclu would have claimed it was in violation of their civil liberties..

[The Ressurrected One]

That Gorelick chick needs to be flown into the side of a mosque in Fallujah.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Way to duck my thread, you pussy (NBA Dan).

http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23294

It happened on the Clinton Administration's watch, try again.

[Nbadan]

Way to duck my thread, you pussy (NBA Dan).

http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23294

It happened on the Clinton Administration's watch, try again.

Oh, because you make such a logical argument, right?

:rolleyes

Just what did you want Clinton to do? The FBI had Matta and at least 3 other main hijackers under surveillance until some of them left the country immediately before the 00 election. Then the CIA and German police had Matta and the German cell under surveillance. Matta returned to the U.S. after the election and the FBI lost track of him. Clinton warned W that the most immediate threat to the U.S. was Al-Queda. Joe Wilson was saying, 'someone throw me a bone over here', but nobody in the * administration cared about domestic terrorism because they were still to busy trying to pass Reagan's Star Wars. Then came the August 6 memo, "Al-Queda determined to attack the U.S.", you would think the WH had enough information to start connecting the dots.

[JoeChalupa]

If it happened on Clinton's watch then he needs to take the blame.
But maybe like another great president, he may "not recall" the events.

The bottom line that matters to me is not so much who is at fault. That there were screwups all over the place for a number of years is quite obvious.
What matters to me is that we do not continue to repeat the screwups in the future.
We have a broken and ailing intel community. It must be fixed and restored back up to working speed ASAP.

[duncan_21]

What scares me is the gov walks hand in hand with those who profit from war and are intelligence community especially the NY FBI headquarters are more worried about coverin their asses then protecting our country.

Hell we got a president who's family of a few generations ago helped fund hitler.

[Nbadan]

Here is some cool insight into Mohammed Atta. (http://www.madcowprod.com/mcmnpremierewmv.html) The man the U.S. calls the US mastermind behind the Sept.11th attacks. What a lot of people don't know is that Atta lived with a American girlfriend in tiny Venice Florida while attending flight school preparing for the attacks. This is the first interview I have seen with his girlfriend, Amanda Keller and she provides some very interesting information about Atta and the rest of his co-conspirators.

The segment with Keller starts about half way through the video.

[Nbadan]

nbadan i salute you for your tireless efforts to destory neo-conservativism


i'm worried about your personal safety though--
what happens when dirty bombs go off in several cities in the US and the black choppers come hovering over your house?

I'm all ready for that. I have duct tape, plastic sheeting and a "I Love Gitmo' tee-shirt ready to go.


:lol

[duncan_21]

You guys should buy Peter Lance's book the 911 commission cover up. Basically he's been saying the same thing for years now.

[Nbadan]

Cong. Weldon's Preemptive Strike Against the CIA
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Mark G. Levey

snip:

Republican Cong. Curt Weldon's disclosure that U.S. Army Intelligence watched four al-Qaeda hijackers inside the U.S. before 9/11 is a GOP attempt to deflect a long-expected report by the CIA's Inspector General's office. Like the FBI IG report into the Bureau's pre-9/11 "intelligence failure" released in June, the CIA's internal audit is expected to contain shocking new details of errors and negligence by senior Bush Administration officials that led to the "catastrophic success" of the al-Qaeda attacks.

Weldon's widely-publicized campaign of disinformation has spun the story so that blame is laid at the feet of the Clinton Administration for the 9/11 attacks eighteen months after the CIA and DoD failed to notify the FBI about the presence inside the U.S. of terrorists known to have entered the country in late 1999 and early 2000.

The CIA IG report is reportedly complete, and is currently being reviewed by former DCI George Tenet and other Agency officials who are the subject of highly damaging accusations that the CIA withheld information and misled U.S. law enforcement about the 9/11 hijackers.

Cong. Weldon's remarks have fueled controversy over responsibility for the failure by US government agencies to prevent the 9/11 hijackings.

Weldon first spoke publicly about the issue on 27 June in a little-noticed speech on the House floor, and to a local paper in his Pennsylvania constituency.

snip:


Weldon claims that course of action was rejected in large part because the four al-Qaeda operatives were in the US on valid entry visas.

He asserts Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally.

That claim is simply inconsistent with the law as it existed at the time. That was not and is not government policy. For one thing, the Pentagon's lawyers whom Weldon claims made the decision to withhold information from FBI knew full well that the four suspects were not "U.S. persons" (citizens or lawful permanent residents, aka "green card" holders.)

The matrix the Army Able Danger unit had compiled was based on data from entry records provided by INS, which clearly showed the four al-Qaeda operatives had all entered the U.S. as non-immigrants with visas.

Warrant requirements under the Foreign Intelligence Survellance Act (FISA) and information-sharing restrictions simply did not apply to the 9/11 hijackers. This is basic national security and immigration law. Anyone who's familiar with FISA warrant and information sharing guidelines in place at that time knows Weldon's version is a most implausible cover story.

In fact, CIA, DOD and other intelligence agencies could do all the electronic monitoring they wanted on the al-Qaeda suspects, AND SHARE IT WITH THE FBI, because the subjects of wiretaps were all non-resident aliens, exempt from FISA warrant requirements.

snip::

It is time that the public learns why things got complicated, and stickies might have been applied. In 2000, the surveillance of the incoming al-Qaeda cells was just part of an enormous, ongoing multi-agency monitoring operation of international terrorism, WMD proliferation, arms and drug dealing, political influence peddling, and money laundering. The Army's Able Danger Intelligence unit apparently had indiscriminate access to a lot of this data, which also included data gained from warrantless NSA taps of the communications of US persons and non-US persons, alike.

Intelligence analysts are supposed to separate this out, and obtain FISA warrants where US persons are involved to authorize continuation of these intercepts. But, the agencies by and large didn't bother to seek warrants -- which is a violation of the law. That made this data the fruit of illegal searches, and the FBI didn't want to touch it, for fear that it would ruin its criminal investigations that overlapped the CIA and DIA's domestic operations.

Meanwhile, over at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI national security managers were attempting to cover a maelstrom of terrorist groups, Saudi financiers, Israeli espionage agents, corrupt politicians, and corruption within the US intelligence agencies. This is what Sibel Edmonds has tried so hard to blow the whistle about. This job was immensely complicated by the fact that the al-Qaeda ranks were riddled with double-agents serving multiple intelligence agencies, all of which were simultaneously spying on each other inside the U.S. The whole thing got too hot, and the bureaucracy overloaded. Bad decisions were made to allow operations to continue for fear of stepping on the toes of the CIA and foreign agencies working both with and against U.S. interests.

After the 2000 election, national security managers put the brakes on investigative lines that were touching on subjects that might get people fired. For its own reasons, the Bush Administration shut down much of the remaining counter-terrorism apparatus. By early 2001, it was widely known within law enforcement and intelligence circles that some strange things were going on at DoD, the FISA court, and within FBI counter-terrorism. The number of FISA warrant requests actually declined during the 18 months leading up to the 9/11 attacks, and few new applications were filed during the summer before the attacks. Recall, this is at a time that Tenet's hair was said to be "on fire". For more on the chaos of US counterterrorism in 2001, please see: "THE CRIMES OF 9/11 (Part 4): Bush White House, CIA, FBI Bungled Risky Warrantless Surveillance Operation - 3,000 Died."

9/11 could have been avoided. The al-Qaeda cells could have been rolled up, if the order had been given by President Bush. Without that order, nobody was going to be arrested.

Finally, everyone knew there was a serious problem and nobody wanted to create more of paper trail than they had to. Warrants create paper trails, which might get people fired, subpoenaed before hostile committees, and indicted by grand juries. As a result, given the choice, people stopped requesting warrants. Had the agencies complied with the law regarding FISA warrants, Mohamed Atta and his buddies would have had to be arrested, given what was being learned from illegal wiretaps and consensual monitoring. This is an area, not surprisingly, the 9/11 Commission didn't even begin to touch on.

The CIA Inspector General's Report does not exonerate Tenet and other Agency officials for withholding information from the FBI on the basis that Cong. Weldon claims. The law clearly allowed CIA, DoD and FBI to share information about Mohamed Atta and the Al-Qaeda suspects who would carry out the hijackings. They did. The so-called FISA Wall did not cause the failure of US counterterrorism that led to their "catastrophic success" on 9/11.

Weldon's accusations are what's known as a "limited hangout" in intelligence jargon. It is an attempt to poison the well of public discourse for the far more damaging revelations about Bush Administration incompetence and obstruction of U.S. counter-terrorism that is about to be made public.
Instead, the CIA report will detail a much more complex picture of bad decisions by Agency policymakers who tried to comply with Bush White House orders that interfered with management of a mounting crisis.

Buzzflash (http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/08/con05285.html)

[Nbadan]

He asserts Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally.

That claim is simply inconsistent with the law as it existed at the time. That was not and is not government policy. For one thing, the Pentagon's lawyers whom Weldon claims made the decision to withhold information from FBI knew full well that the four suspects were not "U.S. persons" (citizens or lawful permanent residents, aka "green card" holders.)

The matrix the Army Able Danger unit had compiled was based on data from entry records provided by INS, which clearly showed the four al-Qaeda operatives had all entered the U.S. as non-immigrants with visas.

Warrant requirements under the Foreign Intelligence Survellance Act (FISA) and information-sharing restrictions simply did not apply to the 9/11 hijackers. This is basic national security and immigration law. Anyone who's familiar with FISA warrant and information sharing guidelines in place at that time knows Weldon's version is a most implausible cover story.

In fact, CIA, DOD and other intelligence agencies could do all the electronic monitoring they wanted on the al-Qaeda suspects, AND SHARE IT WITH THE FBI, because the subjects of wiretaps were all non-resident aliens, exempt from FISA warrant requirements.

Well so much for that imaginary 'wall' the NeoCons keep trumpeting as their out for any responsibility in the intelligence gathering and sharing by different agencies before Sept 11th. There simply was no wall protecting any of the 911 hijackers. Warrant requirements under the Foreign Intelligence Survellance Act (FISA) and information-sharing restrictions simply did not apply to the 9/11 hijackers. The law clearly allowed CIA, DoD and FBI to share information about Mohamed Atta and the Al-Qaeda suspects who would carry out the hijackings. They did. The so-called FISA Wall did not cause the failure of US counterterrorism that led to their "catastrophic success" on 9/11.

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, the whitewash of this whole nasty incident has started on the hill


The commission statement raises significant doubts about the likelihood that Able Danger could have identified Atta or other Sept. 11 hijackers as al Qaeda operatives and placed them in Brooklyn in 1999 or early 2000. Atta never lived in New York and did not enter the United States until June 2000, and two other key hijackers mentioned by the intelligence officer in media interviews were not in the country until 2001, the statement said.

...

...a former defense intelligence official, has told media outlets and Weldon that he briefed the commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, and three other staff members about Able Danger's identification of Atta during an overseas meeting in October 2003. The commission said in its statement that its records of the briefing, held in Bagram, Afghanistan, include no mention of Atta and that none of the staff members who attended recalls such a claim.

The second person, described by the commission as a U.S. Navy officer employed at the Defense Department,...said he briefly saw the name and photo of Atta on an "analyst notebook chart." The material identified Atta as part of a Brooklyn al Qaeda cell and was dated from February through April 2000, the officer said.

...

But the commission statement said that because no documents or other evidence had emerged to support the claim, "the commission staff concluded that the officer's account was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation."

Washinton Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/12/AR2005081201655.html)

Is this a complete reversal or what? Flip-floppers.