ABLE DANGER ARCHIVE

Friday, August 12, 2005 - 07:43 PM

Copyright 2005, Mark G. Levey

Fri Aug 12th, 2005 at 10:16:35 PDT

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 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.

According to a front-page New York Times report published on August 10, a US Army intelligence unit prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to Special Operations Command that the FBI be informed. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/politics/11intel.html; also, see, How Bin Laden and Mohamed Atta Escaped Gen. Franks http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/10/145513/501

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.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4135400.stm

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.

Certainly, DoD lawyers didn't get that one wrong. Not for the reason being offered by Weldon and other GOP operatives.

Weldon's account does not explain why Post-It stickies might be applied to photos of Atta before the matrix could be shown outside the DoD. The story being spread by Weldon and the GOP is a flimsy, almost laughable CYA cover now being resurrected to blame Clinton.

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, http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00257.htm

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. 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 are 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.

COPYRIGHT 2005, Mark G. Levey.

Original http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6923

August 12, 2005

by Justin Raimondo

In January of this year, Rep. Curt Weldon made a speech to the House of Representatives – a speech which no one took notice of, and which hardly anyone heard, except maybe inveterate C-SPAN watchers – in which he made a number of extraordinary assertions:

"Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my attention over the past several months that is very disturbing. I have learned that, in fact, one of our Federal agencies had, in fact, identified the major New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11; and I have learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, that Federal agency actually was prepared to bring the FBI in and prepared to work with the FBI to take down the cell that Mohamed Atta was involved in in New York City, along with two of the other terrorists.

"I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that when that recommendation was discussed within that Federal agency, the lawyers in the administration at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card, and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident. So we did not allow that Federal agency to proceed.

"Mr. Speaker, what this now means is that prior to September 11, we had employees of the Federal Government in one of our agencies who actually identified the Mohamed Atta cell and made a specific recommendation to act on that cell, but were denied the ability to go forward. Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America."

Something about this doesn't quite ring true: none [.pdf] of the hijackers had a green card. Most came in on tourist visas: some had made easily detectable false statements on their visa applications, and might have been legally deported.

And what does Waco have to do with anything? The connection seems tenuous, at best. However, let us pass over that, for the moment, and concentrate on Rep. Weldon's further remarks: he avers that two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, his "friends" at the Army's Information Dominance Center – "in cooperation with special ops" – brought him a chart that had been created by a secret military unit known as "Able Danger": using "data-mining" techniques, this top secret military intelligence unit had identified Mohammed Atta and three of the hijackers as being part of an Al Qaeda cell in the U.S. This chart, with a visa photo of Mohammed Atta at its center, was created a year before 9/11. Weldon says he took the chart to Stephen Hadley, at the National Security Council, who said he had never seen any such chart, and that he would bring it to "the man" – i.e., the President.

Now it isn't all that surprising that neither Hadley, nor the President, had any inkling of Operation "Able Danger." What's truly startling, however, is that when Weldon talked to those who made the chart, he discovered that not only had they identified the New York cell of Mohammed Atta and two of the other terrorists, but also that a recommendation had been made to take out the cell – and it had been vetoed. By whom – and why? As Weldon put it in his speech:

"That is a question that needs to be answered, Mr. Speaker. I have to ask, Mr. Speaker, with all the good work that the 9/11 Commission did, why is there nothing in their report about able danger? Why is there no mention of the work that able danger did against al Qaeda? Why is there no mention, Mr. Speaker, of a recommendation in September of 2000 to take out Mohammed Atta's cell which would have detained three of the terrorists who struck us?"

A good question, one that was thoroughly ignored for months, until something called the "Government Security News" picked up the story, and this was followed by a piece in the New York Times by Douglas Jehl, and one this [Thursday] morning, that basically confirmed the outlines of Weldon's story.

A "former defense intelligence official" involved in "Able Danger" was cited to buttress Weldon's assertion, and he claims in the first Times story that, yes, he brought the chart produced by his team to Special Operations Command (SOC) because "We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them." At SOC headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, however, they draw a complete blank:

"Col. Samuel Taylor, a spokesman for the military's Special Operations Command, said no one at the command now had any knowledge of the Able Danger program, its mission or its findings. If the program existed, Colonel Taylor said, it was probably a highly classified "special access program" on which only a few military personnel would have been briefed."

According to Al Felzenberg, former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, investigators on his staff had been told about the "Able Danger" program, but, he claimed, there was no mention of Atta, which is why the 9/11 Commission report never mentions the subject, even obliquely. However, the former defense intelligence official cited in Jehl's first story begs to differ. He says that Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and three other members of the Commission staff, had been briefed, and that

"He had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta as a member of a Qaeda cell in the United States. He said the staff encouraged him to call the commission when he returned to Washington at the end of the year. When he did so, the ex-official said, the calls were not returned."

Jehl reported on Wednesday that, according to Felzenberg, who had talked to former staff members of the Commission,

"They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell. They were told about the Pentagon operation. They were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefers had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten their attention."

The next day, however, the former Commission staffers were singing a different tune. In their follow-up story, Jehl and Philip Shenon report the Commission staff was indeed briefed in a meeting held on July 12, 2004, at which Atta's name figured prominently, and that this has been acknowledged by the same officials who were denying everything 24 hours earlier. The briefing had been discounted, these officials now claim, because the information offered didn't "mesh" with what they thought they already knew, and, besides, the 9/11 Commission report was all ready to go to the printer. The addition of a piece of information that would have substantially altered the content was apparently not considered important enough to tell the printer to wait.

The main thrust of the 9/11 Commission's findings was that there was a "lack of actionable intelligence": the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center represented a gigantic "intelligence failure," which blocked attempts to take out Bin Laden in Afghanistan. But the point is that what was needed was actionable intelligence in America, not Afghanistan. In the aftermath, many lamented the fact that, if only some version of the PATRIOT Act had been in place prior to 9/11, the attacks might have been prevented. As I wrote when the Commission first began its work, this

"Sounds superficially plausible, except when one considers that there was plenty of actionable intelligence about the 9/11 plotters: there were warnings galore, as we are beginning to discover, not only from foreign intelligence agencies but from our own agents and analysts.

"Yes, but these warnings were 'nonspecific': that's the standard official excuse. Except it isn't true: the ringleader of the 9/11 plot, Mohammed Atta, was under surveillance by authorities the year before the attacks, in Hamburg, Germany. Atta and his associates were well-known to law enforcement and intelligence agencies, U.S. and foreign, long before the 9/11 terror attacks.

"What did they know and when did they know it? That is a key question for the 9/11 Commission to ask, and answer."

It is interesting to note that the Commission staffer who received – and discounted – the "Able Danger" information, Dietrich L. Snell, is the prosecutor who convicted Abdul Hakim Murad in the "Bojinka" terrorist conspiracy case, a 1995 plot to crash airplanes into several U.S. landmark buildings, including the Pentagon and the World Trade Center – a scheme that later morphed into the 9/11 conspiracy. Murad offered to cooperate with investigators in return for a sentence reduction, but prosecutors, led by Snell, turned him down.

The list of "mistakes," glitches, and tales of staggering incompetence that preceded the worst "intelligence failure" since a certain wooden horse was brought behind the walls of Troy, is getting rather suspiciously long. Here's another:

"The National Security Agency intercepted two messages on the eve of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon warning that something was going to happen the next day, but the messages were not translated until Sept. 12, senior U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday.

"The Arabic-language messages said, 'The match is about to begin' and 'Tomorrow is zero hour.' They were discussed Tuesday before the House-Senate intelligence committee during closed-door questioning of Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the NSA, the agency responsible for intercepting and analyzing electronic messages."

This Washington Post story, you'll recall – and certainly Slate media columnist Jack Shafer will recall it – was the occasion for a stern rebuke from the White House, and especially from Vice President Dick Cheney, whose anger was sufficient to spark an FBI investigation into who leaked the truth.

As we approach the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the official story of what happened that day, and how it happened, is beginning to unravel in a spectacular manner. The official version is that the nineteen conspirators, acting alone and without the foreknowledge or even the suspicion of any outside agency, pulled off a complex series of operations involving at least four separate airplanes, all carried out within minutes of each other, pirouetting in the sky in perfect synchronicity before barreling down on their targets nearly simultaneously. This fiery moment was the climax of years – as many as five years – of plotting, preparations, and a largely subterranean existence lived by the conspirators, until they emerged, on that fateful day, like avenging angels of darkness coming down from the sky.

However, the various anomalies that go unexplained by this fanciful theory have begun to accumulate until the pressure to revise what we know of the history of the 9/11 conspiracy has become irresistible. The "Able Danger" revelations merely confirm what we've been saying in this space for years: that revisionism in this area of historical research is essential if we're going to begin to understand 9/11, and all that followed from it. As Condi Rice's appearance before the 9/11 Commission showed, the administration knew a lot more than it ever told anyone.

In December, 2001, Carl Cameron did a four-part series on Fox News that detailed extensive Israeli spying in the U.S., a report that proved prescient in light of recent developments, and he started out his riveting account with a bang:

"Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

"There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are 'tie-ins.' But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, 'evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information.'"

While the story was largely ignored in the U.S., Germany's Die Zeit followed it up, in 2002, with an account entitled "Next Door to Mohammed Atta," in which the respected German weekly detailed close surveillance of Atta and his crew in southern Florida by Israeli intelligence in the months leading up to 9/11.

In April, 2004, I wrote about another Die Zeit piece by the same author, Oliver Schrom, entitled "Deadly Mistakes," a fascinating chronology of the errors, bureaucratic bungling, and seemingly deliberate obstructions that prevented U.S. authorities from taking what they knew about the hijackers, putting it together, and apprehending Atta and his gang before they could pull off their deadly deed. From Schrom we learned that the fabled Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) for August 6, 2001, whose title – "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." – Rice famously blurted out at her appearance before the 9/11 Commission, was originally much longer than the version finally declassified and released by the White House. In the course of this account, Schrom also revealed the following:

"Langley, August 23, 2001. The Israeli Mossad intelligence agency handed its American counterpart a list of names of terrorists who were staying in the US and were presumably planning to launch an attack in the foreseeable future. According to documents obtained by Die Zeit, Mossad agents in the US were in all probability surveilling at least four of the 19 hijackers, among them [Khalid ] al-Midhar. The CIA now does what it should have done 18 months earlier. It informs the State Dept., the FBI and the INS. The names al-Midhar and [Nawaf] al-Hazmi are promptly put on an investigation list, as probable members of Al Qaeda. Al-Midhar is expressly noted as a probable accomplice in the USS Cole attack. The first acknowledgement arrives quickly. The INS writes that according to its information, both men are currently in the US.

"Now both men are pursued vigorously…."

These individuals – Atta, Khalid al-Midhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and Marwan al-Shehhi – are the very same "Brooklyn cell" identified by the "Able Danger" data-miners. The Mossad "observed" them for nearly half a year, and then, at the very last moment, turned over their names to the Americans. Too late, as it turns out: but is that really the end of the story?

In both instances, you'll note, we have the same sort of excuse – not quite airtight – for why we didn't move to apprehend the 9/11 plotters. In the case of the "Able Danger" operation, although the authorities had the legal means at their disposal, they were supposedly restrained by the recent memory of … Waco. This seems not at all credible: is there really any comparison between the figures of David Koresh and Osama bin Laden, either in terms of impact or importance? One was a marginal messiah of a homegrown mini-cult, the other an international terrorist leader of a well-financed and far-flung military organization.

In the case of the Israelis' belated intelligence-sharing, the rationale for inaction was supposedly due to legal constraints that erected a "firewall" preventing the sharing of intelligence procured by different agencies, notably the FBI and the CIA. As critics of this excuse-making note, however, law enforcement agencies failed to make proper use of the legal tools available to them:

"On May 24, 2002, in response to an FOIA lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the FBI released a confidential memorandum sent by a Justice Department official to an FBI lawyer in April 2000. The memo voiced concern about mistakes made by the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section, and in particular, by that Section's (UBL) Osama Bin Laden Unit: 'You have a pattern of occurrences indicating an inability on the part of the FBI to manage its FISAs [foreign intelligence surveillance operations].' One well-publicized episode revealed that an FBI agent had prevented Minneapolis agents from obtaining a warrant to search Zacarias Moussaoui's computer just a month before 9/11. This, apparently, was not an isolated incident. …

"We now know that two of the 9/11 hijackers were on FBI watch lists of suspected terrorists, yet they were able to enter the country and remain undetected. In March 2002 the media reported that the INS had wrongly issued visa waivers for four Pakistanis who arrived in the US on a Russian merchant ship and quickly disappeared."

We're supposed to believe that, if only we'd passed the PATRIOT Act before 9/11, and subjected ourselves to a regime of total surveillance, giving up such remnants of our civil liberties as still existed, we might have escaped the wiles of Bin Laden and his fellow Islamist supermen, who single-handedly pulled off a spectacular terrorist act that changed the course of history. Now, according to this all-too-familiar refrain, we'll just have to get used to having our email read, our phones tapped, and our every movement kept under close surveillance by our beneficent and all-knowing government. The only alternative is living at the mercy of terrorists.

As we are beginning to learn, however, that is lie, and a rather self-serving one to boot. It wasn't the lack of information, or an inability to detect the death cultists in our midst, that prevented us from stopping the plot dead in its tracks. Rather, it was a persistent obstructionism coming from some quarters. As Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who blew the whistle on the efforts of the FBI's Washington office to quash the investigation into Al Qaeda, put it:

"I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hansen, who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort."

As the number of unfortunate "coincidences" and "mistakes" begins to pile up, Rowley's quip is no longer a joke. Is it possible that Bin Laden had allies, enablers, some of them inside the U.S. government? In a September 13, 2001 New York Times column that purported to give an exclusive window on what went on inside the presidential bunker as the Twin Towers burned, William Safire wrote:

"A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that "Air Force One is next." According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.

"(I have a second, on-the-record source about that: Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, tells me: "When the president said `I don't want some tinhorn terrorists keeping me out of Washington,' the Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. In light of the specific and credible threat, it was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort.")

The terrorists could have had knowledge of top secret U.S. security procedures only if they had moles – spies – inside the government. How else would Bin Laden's boys get direct access to our code words?

No one doubts that the nineteen hijackers, and the Al Qaeda organization, financed, organized, and carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But there is growing doubt that they did it without at least the passive collaboration of a silent partner, one who wielded considerable influence on our government – and had ready access to its secrets. In retrospect, it appears as if Atta and his fellow mass murderers had a guardian angel – or rather, a guardian devil – watching over them. At every turn, just when it seemed they would be apprehended, fate – or whomever – intervened, obstructing the normal means of interception and keeping the conspiracy on track. It's almost as if they traveled in a security bubble, protected by – what? By whom?

I can hear the skeptics now: It's a "conspiracy theory"! Yikes! But what explanation for how and why 9/11 happened isn't a "conspiracy theory," after all? Atta & Co. certainly didn't advertise their plans. The question is, will we accept the Official Conspiracy Theory, or an alternative one that comports with all the known facts?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

My short book, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, compiles pretty much all we know up to this point about the "silent partner" angle on the 9/11 narrative – one, I might add, that was completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission, along with the information about the "Able Danger" intelligence-gathering operation. Check it out.

– Justin Raimondo

Copyright 2005 Justin Raimondo.

Original http://www.madcowprod.com/08122005.html

Army Intel Unit Exposes Massive FBI 9.11 Cover-Up

August 12,2005-Venice, FL.

by Daniel Hopsicker

The importance of this week’s revelation that an Army intelligence unit was tracking Mohamed Atta’s movements in the U.S. during 1999 and 2000 is so mind-boggling that it seems nobody quite gets it yet...

You’ve been hearing it for three years in articles in the MadCowMorningNews, and in "Welcome to TerrorLand."

Now you can hear it from an elite Army intelligence unit, one with at least several patriots with very large cojones. Their testimony is clear, explicit, and uncompromisingly contradicts the FBI's official story. Only one conclusion can be drawn from it...

The FBI has been telling a massive lie to the 9.11 Commission and the American people, a lie whose result has been to halt in its tracks, as a Commission spokesman freely admitted on Thursday, the investigation into the murder of almost 3000 people.

People go to jail for that sort of thing, don’t they?

God willing, we may be about to find out. 

The Dog Ate the 9.11 Commission's Homework

9.11 Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg on Thursday excused the Commission’s decision to withhold from their Report any mention of the Army Able Danger intelligence unit in Tampa which was tracking Mohamed Atta and other members of his terrorist cadre during 1999 and 2000.

Felzenberg cited the fact that the information provided to them by military officers in the unit did not agree with the FBI’s timeline concerning Atta’s arrival in the U.S.

Information provided by a military officer from Able Danger did not make it into the final report, "because it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks," Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said.

Staff investigators became wary of the officer, Felzenberg stated, after he stated that the military unit had identified Atta as having been in the United States by late 1999 or early 2000. 'The investigators knew this was impossible, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000."

"There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report."

Forget Jamie Gorelick. Forget trumped-up allegations that former Clinton Administration officials were weak on terror...

Al Felzenberg is lying. So is the FBI. 

The Big Question Nobody's Asked

911 Commission did no independent investigation of their own. Instead they relied entirely on the much criticized and beleaguered FBI... an Agency whose competence has been questioned by prominent individuals across all party lines... An Agency which has never managed to offer a coherent account of such investigative niceties as an accurate chronology of when Atta arrived in the United States, and what he did (and with whom) when he got here.

Here’s the big question nobody seems to be ready to ask: Upon what basis did the 9.11 Commission conclude that the FBI’s timeline was correct and that an elite Army Intel unit was mistaken in saying they were tracking Mohamed Atta roaming freely across America during 1999 and 2000?

We’d love to hear Felzenberg hem and haw his way around that.

So too, we suspect, would relatives of the innocent murdered victims. 

What's at Stake: The Fate of what's left of what used to be called The Free World.

The controversy over news that an Army intelligence unit was tracking the movements in the U.S. of Mohamed Atta’s terrorist cadre during 1999 and 2000 offers the last best hope for Americans to take a close look at the FBI’s timeline of Mohamed Atta’s time in the U.S.

What they will see is a tissue of lies comprising a deliberate cover-up.

Calling unwelcome attention to the massive inaccuracies in the FBI’s timeline was probably not Republican Curt Weldon’s purpose when he brought the story to light... But if his efforts to implicate Clinton Administration officials results in highlighting the FBI's incomplete and corrupt investigation, we think he get some kind of medal, maybe called the Inadvertent 'Dumb-Ass' Hero Award.

We suspect his Republican friends would much prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. Because it isn’t just one elite Army Intel unit that’s saying it... In the aftermath of the 9.11 attack numerous eyewitnesses came forward to attest to Atta’s presence in the U.S. before June of 2000.

Their number even includes a U.S. Government official with a signed and dated loan application from Mohamed Atta his-ownself.

In interviews with major news organizations Johnelle Bryant, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, revealed that Atta and three other September 11th terrorists visited her Florida office seeking a government loan.

ABC’s Brian Ross reported: "Johnelle Bryant is the USDA loan officer in Homestead, Florida, who Atta approached in May of 2000, long before al-Qaeda and bin Laden were household words."

Mr. Atta swung by in May, 2000, and Ms. Bryant remembers quite a bit about it.

"At first," she says, "he refused to speak with me," on the grounds that she was, in his words, "but a female."

"I told him that if he was interested in getting a farm-service agency loan in my servicing area, then he would need to deal with me."

Ms. Bryant says the applicant was asking for $650,000 to start a crop-dusting business. His plan was to buy a six-seater twin-prop and then remove the seats. "He wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."

Here’s the kicker, or rather, the smoking gun: Before Atta left her office he filled out a loan application.

Loan applications are dated, aren’t they? That’s why Johnelle Bryant knows exactly when Atta was in her office. so, without even referencing any of the other numerous indicators of Atta’s presence in the U.S., one thing that can be said with absolute certainty:

The FBI’s timeline, their chronology of events, the essential tool of any homicide investigation, is wrong. And not wrong by accident, either.

Wrong on purpose. Wrong by design.

By the way: don’t try dropping by Bryant’s Homestead office to confirm the details with her, as we did...She’s no longer there.

She’s (presumably) been airlifted to the Island of Lost Witnesses. 

Another Question We Bet You Thought Has Already Been Answered

Where did Atta and Marwan first go to flight school in the US.?

If you answered "Huffman Aviation" you’d be wrong That’s because the flight school Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi first attended in the U.S. has never been named.

It is unknown. It is The Mystery Flight School.

The name of the first school Atta attended would seem to be one of the first facts uncovered in the 9/11 investigation. But it hasn’t been... After first visiting a flight school in Norman Oklahoma, the FBI said Huffman Aviation was the first flight school Atta attend

ed. But the owner of Huffman Aviation, Rudi Dekkers, denied it, declaiming responsibility for the terrorists having been allowed into the U.S.

On the morning after the disaster anchor Jane Clayton of the CBS Morning News asked Dekkers: "How was it that they (Atta and Marwan) could gain access and admittance to your school?

"Well, they didn’t came through our paperwork," Dekkers replied.

In interviews as well as sworn testimony before Congress, Dekkers passed any blame onto the first flight school the terrorists first attended.

It was this school, Dekkers said, which held responsibility for Atta’s INS paperwork and visas, not his.

"Like if they were calling from Europe and we know two months ahead and we know they are showing up. As I say, they came from another flight school out of Florida. Probably that flight school did all the INS paperwork with them in their country." 

"Another flight school out of Florida."

He was equally vague later that day on ABC’s Good Morning America. Only now he changed the location of the unnamed first school. Correspondent Jim Mora asked Dekkers: "Now, how did they get to you? Did they apply to the school? Did they just show up?"

"No, they just walked up into the front door," Dekkers replied. "Apparently they were flying at another school—I’ve heard Tampa; I can’t confirm that."

This is a really obscure flight school. It has no name. Its located somewhere out of Florida, but near Tampa.

Dekkers’ reference to Atta’s first flight school—attended before he came to Huffman Aviation—went completely un-remarked upon in the national media. And Dekkers didn’t just mention the mystery flight school once or twice...

He did it numerous times. "The two men were clearly from the Middle East," he told the New York Times on September 13. "They complained that they had begun instruction elsewhere but didn’t like the school."

Did the New York Times ask Dekkers where "elsewhere" had been? They did not.

The Washington Post reported a similar story on Sept. 19,2001 quoting Dekkers saying Atta and Al-Shehhi showed up complaining about the experience at "another school." "Another school." Located where?

Did the Post ask for the name of this flight school located elsewhere? They did not. Or if they did, they’re not telling us.

Making this omission seem even more sinister is the Post’s own headline. A headline like "Hijack Suspects Tried Many Flight Schools" promises, at a bare minimum, a story containing a list of the flight schools "tried."

When two of the largest and most respected newspapers in America are both guilty of an omission this glaring, what other conclusion is there than that a massive cover-up is in progress? 

"I said up North somewhere. Why do you want to know?"

Even in his sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on March 19, 2002, Dekkers is vague about the earlier flight school attended by Atta and Al-Shehhi. This time he places it ‘up North.’ "They had stated they were unhappy with a flying school they attended up North," Dekkers told the Committee.

Maybe they just weren't all that interested. Maybe not. Maybe the reason officials insist with a straight face that Atta did not arrive before June of 2000 is that telling the truth will open up a big ‘can of worms.’

During April and May of 1999, for example, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Ft. Myers, FL. has accused Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers of using three separate Lear jets to take 26 unsupervised and unauthorized passenger flights from Naples, Florida to numerous locations around the country. Reportedly, they were flying rich Saudi Princes around.

But whatever it was Hilliard and Dekkers were up to in 1999 proved more than a little dangerous to one man, Robert Michael Johnson. A six-passenger Cessna 210 belonging to Hilliard crashed in the Gulf two miles off the Naples Pier in early February, resulting in the death of the pilot. The cause of the deadly crash remains unclear.

Not by accident, either... "A federal investigation into a fatal plane crash offshore from Naples may be hampered because the aircraft's owner has suspended salvage operations," reported the Feb 9, 1999 Fort Myers News-Press. "AeroJet Service Center called off the salvage operation, apparently because it was costing more than the aircraft was worth."

This news may not have helped the dead pilot’s mom gain closure. But hey... you have to break a few eggs, right?

One last example will have to suffice. We can feel a queasiness coming on, a need to excuse ourselves and go throw up.

Regular readers of the MadCowMorningNews are already well aware of Atta’s presence in Venice in April and May of 2001, where he lived right across from Rudi Dekker’s Huffman Aviation at the Venice Airport. 

"Somebody didn't get the memo, okay? It was an honest mistake."

But that’s too easy. Poetic justice would be to let the FBI hoist itself with its own petard:

Mohamed Atta’s sojourn in Charlotte County is not even in the official story, which is really strange, because the FBI itself wrote a memo to the INS which was introduced in court during the deportation hearing of a Tunisian flight student at the Charlotte County Airport who was suspected of espionage.

If they had known anybody would be paying attention, they’d have probably remanded her to a military tribunal.

Professional Aviation at the Charlotte County Airport catered to a student body consisting mainly of foreign nationals from the small Mediterranean country of Tunisia, considered a moderate Arab state. There were so many Tunisians at the school that it made the news well before the 9/11 attack...

"From the steady hand on the throttle to the aviator sunglasses, Mariem Ezzahi looked every bit like the experienced pilot she hopes to be back in her native country of Tunisia," reported the Charlotte Sun-Herald. "Mariem’s goal is to become a commercial pilot like her late father, who flew jets for Tunis Air, the country’s national airline."

Alas, Mariem got stiffed by the owners of the school, who, come to think of it, just might get their paychecks from the same place as Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard. Dozens of Tunisian students were left stranded by the bankrupting of the flight school at the Charlotte County Airport. Wally Hilliard, who knew Mohamed Atta personally while he was "attending" his flight school, pulled the same scam in Orlando.

Many student pilots lost their life savings. The story received a flurry of local media attention. Students picketed the company’s offices and staged a sit-in. Television news crews from Charlotte County and Fort Myers broadcast their plight.

Then three of the Tunisian students attending Professional Aviation were taken into custody during the week after the attack...

One of them was 21 year-old Maryem Bedoui.

When Professional Aviation went under, Bedoui moved to Venice and took lessons from the "Quiet" Magic Dutch Boy, Arne Kruithof, located two doors down from the loudmouth Magic Dutch Boy’s school, Huffman Aviation.

During a deportation hearing in Bradenton, Florida Bedoui told the Judge that she had been friends with one of Atta’s roommates, but she denied knowing Atta, and denied involvement or knowledge of the 9/11 plot.

But the FBI wrote a letter to the immigration judge presenting evidence for why Bedoui should be deported. The letter said Bedoui attended flight schools in Punta Gorda at the Charlotte County Airport and in Venice at the same time hijackers Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi were there.

And this is where the FBI get caught telling a Big Lie. Because according to the FBI’s chronology Atta and Al-Shehhi were only at Huffman Aviation from July to December 2000.

And Maryem Bedoui didn’t enter the U.S. until 2001.

The revelation that this nations chief investigative agency has knowingly fabricated their chronology of Atta’s time in the U.S. might be cause for nothing but a shrug. After all, Democratic Republics have had trouble with their own Praetorian Guards since Roman times.

But looking at the "Big Picture" may provide little solace to anyone who saw a loved one hanging half-in and half-out of a window 100 stories above the earth on the morning of September 11, 2001.

If some find it difficult to stomach taking the long view, who can blame them?

Maybe what the FBI is really trying to say is: "It just can’t be helped."

We'll see...

Copyright 2005 Daniel Hopsicker.

Original http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/enabling-danger-part-one_b_5951.html

K. Breitweiser Blog: Enabling Danger (part 1)

Saturday, August 20, 2005

by: Kristen Breitweiser – HuffingtonPost.com – August 20, 2005 

The press has recently been reporting on the issue of surveillance pertaining to four "key" 9/11 hijackers.

Specifically, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) has gone public with accusations that the Pentagon had four of the 9/11 hijackers under its surveillance in December of 2000. Initial press accounts detailed that four of the 9/11 hijackers -- al Mihdhar, al Hazmi, al Shehi, and Atta -- were identified by a data mining operation (Project Able Danger) run out of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The revelation of this new information is astounding for two reasons. First, if true, this would mean that four of the key hijackers in the 9/11 plot were in the cross-hairs of our Pentagon one year prior to the attacks during the summer of 2000. Second, it raises credibility issues surrounding the 9/11 Commission since the Commission’s Final Report does not mention—let alone report upon—the Able Danger operation.

Let’s address the concept that DIA had four 9/11 hijackers identified as al Qaeda operatives in 2000. First, why was this information withheld from the FBI when it was allegedly collected by DIA back in the summer of 2000? Second, if this information was not passed to the FBI, was any of this information passed on to the CIA? Third, what difference would it have made if DIA had informed the FBI about these four al Qaeda targets? Fourth, if it indeed exists, where is the Able Danger chart that allegedly contains Atta’s name, and most importantly, have we capitalized on any other information or names contained in that chart?

Withholding from the FBI:

News reports state that the information regarding the 9/11 hijackers was not passed onto the FBI because Pentagon attorneys believed that the targets of the data-mining operation (the four 9/11 hijackers) were green card holders thereby banning the passage of this information to the FBI since laws were in place during the summer of 2000 that banned domestic surveillance of Americans by the FBI. Of course, the DOD attorneys were patently wrong in their interpretation since the four 9/11 hijackers that were identified were merely U.S. visa holders (some of which had already expired and/or were illegal). These men were not U.S. citizens—therefore, the information could have been readily passed to the FBI with no worry of breaking any rules or laws. Nevertheless, the Able Danger information did not get shared with the FBI. (The identities and whereabouts of the DOD attorneys who provided such wrong legal counsel remains unknown—which raises the obvious question as to whether these individuals are still working at DOD and making the same erroneous and deadly decisions.)

It should be mentioned that two of the men mentioned in the Able Danger operation—al Mihdhar and al Hazmi—were already known by the CIA as al Qaeda operatives by late December 1999. Much like DIA and their failure to share information with the FBI, the CIA also failed to share their information about these two men being inside the United States and planning terrorist activities.

In December 1999, CIA was actively investigating and tracking al Mihdhar and al Hazmi as they traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. While in Kuala Lumpur in early January 2000, al Mihdhar and al Hazmi attended a meeting with other known al Qaeda operatives. The meeting was a planning session for the U.S.S. Cole bombing that occurred in October 2000 and for the 9/11 attacks. Our CIA conducted surveillance on this meeting.

After the meeting in Malaysia, Al Mihdhar and al Hazmi arrived in the United States in January 2000. The CIA knew about the two men coming to America, but chose not to tell the FBI about their presence inside the United States on a number of occasions for the 18 months preceding 9/11. Why? Most likely, because the CIA did not want the FBI stepping on their toes while they were conducting an ongoing surveillance operation on these known al Qaeda operatives. At any rate, the record shows that for 18 months prior to 9/11, the CIA conducted surveillance on these two targets while they were in the United States and failed to tell the FBI about it. The question remains whether DIA and CIA were collaborating on their surveillance operations of these al Qaeda operatives or acting independently.

Why does it matter that the FBI was not given the information?

The four men allegedly under surveillance by Project Able Danger, were four key players in the 9/11 plot. They spent from the spring of 2000 through the summer of 2001 coming into regular contact with the other 9/11 hijackers—namely and most importantly, Hani Hanjour and Ziad Jarrah. Additionally, all four of the identified hijackers had contacts at the same flight school that Zaccarias Moussaoui was arrested at by the FBI in August 2001. The hijackers received numerous wire transfers from known al Qaeda operatives—such as Ramzi Binalshibh. They had ongoing contacts with other known al Qaeda operatives including Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They trained in U.S. flight schools. They participated in numerous cross-country practice flights during the summer of 2001. They bought flight control manuals and global positioning equipment, knives and pepper spray. They traveled in and out of this country (sometimes to meet with other al Qaeda operatives) on a number of occasions from the spring of 2000 until the summer of 2001. Had the FBI been told about their presence in the United States, most certainly, the 9/11 attacks would have been prevented. How can I say this with such conviction?

Mohammed Atta was the pilot for Flight 11, the plane that hit WTC 1. Marwan al Shehhi was the pilot of Flight 175, the plane that hit WTC 2. Hani Hanjour was the pilot of Flight 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon. And, Ziad Jarrah was the pilot of Flight 93, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Let’s look at the details.

Flight 77—al Mihdhar, al Hazmi, and Hanjour

It should be noted that Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, lived with al Hazmi for the 9 months preceding the 9/11 attacks. Recall, that al Hazmi was targeted and identified by CIA and allegedly also DIA by the summer of 2000. Thus, when Hazmi and Hanjour met in December of 2000, surveillance would have been active on Hazmi for approximately 4 months. Both Hazmi and Hanjour attended flight school together in the Phoenix area of Arizona (the same Phoenix that was the subject of the "Phoenix Memo" penned by FBI agent Kenneth Williams in the summer of 2001. Williams’ memo discussed strange patterns of middle-eastern men taking flying lessons in U.S. flight schools but the memo was ignored by FBI Headquarters). In the spring of 2001, both Hazmi and Hanjour moved to the East Coast settling in Virginia and then New Jersey. While on the East Coast, Hazmi and Hanjour came into regular contact with the remaining hijackers—the muscle hijackers--that would help them commandeer Flight 77. From December 2000 until the 9/11 attacks, Al Hazmi and Hanjour were inseparable. Thus, had al Hazmi been under surveillance and identified, it goes without saying that Hanjour would have been likewise identified as an al Qaeda operative.

Once identified, the FBI would have learned that Hanjour did not attend school after entering this country on a student visa in December 2000, thereby violating his immigration status and making him deportable under 8 USC 1227 (a)(1)(B). Necessarily, if deported, Hanjour would have been unable to pilot Flight 77 into the Pentagon. As an aside, al Hazmi would have also been deported since he overstayed the terms of his admission, a violation of immigration laws rendering him deportable under 8 USC 1227 (a)(1)(B).

Flight 93—Ziad Jarrah

Ziad Jarrah, the pilot of Flight 93, was a roommate with Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi while they lived in Hamburg, Germany. Once in the United States, Jarrah attended flight school in Venice, Florida from the summer of 2000 until the summer of 2001. Likewise, during the summer of 2000, Atta and al Shehhi arrived in Florida to take their flight lessons in Venice, Florida. All three had ongoing and continued contacts with one another for the year preceding the 9/11 attacks, and during the summer of 2001 they came into regular contact with the other muscle hijackers that would help them commandeer each of the flights they piloted on the day of 9/11.

It seems likely that if our CIA and DIA had identified both Atta and al Shehhi, they would have likewise identified Jarrah as an al Qaeda operative. Notably, Jarrah left and returned to the United States six times between the summer of 2000 and the 9/11 attacks. Jarrah also made hundreds of phone calls to his girlfriend who remained overseas in Germany during this time period and he also communicated frequently by email. Thus, there were ample opportunities to gather the kinds of information that both DIA and CIA could capitalize upon while Jarrah was living inside the United States.

Jarrah attended flight school in June 2000 without properly adjusting his immigration status, thereby violating his immigration status and rendering him inadmissible under 8 USC 1182 (a)(7)(B) each of the subsequent six times he re-entered the United States between June 2000 and August 5, 2001. Thus, Jarrah could have been either denied entry or deported had our FBI been aware of his identification as an al Qaeda operative. Whether arrested and deported or barred entry into the country, Jarrah clearly would have been unable to pilot Flight 93 on the morning of 9/11.

Flight 11—Mohammed Atta

Mohammed Atta was the pilot of Flight 11—the plane that flew into the first Tower of the World Trade Center. Atta is widely considered the ringleader of the 9/11 plot. He had ongoing contacts with Ramsi Binalshibh. He received regular wire transfers from known al Qaeda sources like Binalshibh. He traveled abroad at least twice and met with other known al Qaeda operatives throughout the time period of the summer of 2000 until the summer of 2001. He took flight lessons in Venice, Florida along with Marwan al Shehhi (another hijacker allegedly identified by Able Danger). Atta visited and made inquiries to the same flight school that Zaccarias Moussaoui was arrested at by the FBI in August 2001. Had lead-hijacker Atta been under surveillance by the FBI, there is absolutely no plausible way the 9/11 attacks could have been carried out.

Atta failed to present a proper M-1 visa when he entered the United States in January 2001. He had previously overstayed his tourist visa and therefore was inadmissible under 8 USC 1182(a)(7)(B). If he had been arrested and deported, Atta would not have been able to pilot Flight 11 into WTC 1 on the morning of 9/11.

Flight 175—Marwan al Shehhi

The final person allegedly identified by DIA was Marwan al Shehhi. As it turns out, DIA was not the only agency in the U.S. intelligence community that was aware of "Marwan" because in 1999, the German government had provided CIA with the name "Marwan" along with his telephone number. German intelligence had received his name and number as a result of their own surveillance of the Hamburg cell—the same cell that Atta and Jarrah were members.

From the summer of 2000 until the summer of 2001, Al Shehhi took his flight lessons in Florida alongside of Atta. They were inseparable. They opened joint bank accounts and received wire transfers from Binalshibh--a known al Qaeda operative. Together, they came into regular contact with the other hijackers particularly throughout the summer of 2001 when they all were located on the East Coast and making final plans for the 9/11 attacks.

The legality of al Shehhi’s presence in the United States remains questionable. The discrepancy surrounds whether al Shehhi was considered a "student pilot" or a full-blown pilot. If he was considered a "student pilot", his admission as a business visitor was erroneous, and he therefore, could have been barred entry to the country when he re-entered from a trip abroad in January 2001. If barred entry, clearly al Shehhi would have been unable to pilot flight 175 that flew into WTC 2 on the morning of 9/11.

Did Able Danger exist? And, if so, where is the chart that supposedly identifies Atta?

If the Able Danger chart exists, I think our government and its intelligence agencies had best locate it. It would seem that the chart might hold the names of other terrorists bent on murdering Americans. Why would such a chart go missing? Why wouldn’t our intelligence agencies want to utilize the wealth of information contained in that chart? In other words, shouldn’t we want to follow up on the other names listed on the chart? I know I would feel a lot better if I knew as a fact that every name on the chart was investigated, wouldn’t you? Or, if we do have the chart, I wonder if any of the other names on the Able Danger chart match any of the individuals’ identities in Gitmo? Why hasn’t anyone in our government given an accounting of where this chart is and whether the information held within the chart has been properly capitalized upon? Where is the urgency to locate this valuable document that contains another approximately 200 terrorists’ names? (As an aside, I find our entire government’s handling of this issue extremely uncomfortable. If the chart did not exist, then a clear, emphatic statement should have been issued by each entity: the Pentagon, the 9/11 Commission, and the Administration. Think about it. If you genuinely know that something never existed, then you can flatly deny its existence. Unless, it turns up, and then you're on the record denying its existence. It seems to me, that the deafening silence and hedging comments made by all those involved—comments along the lines of "well, if it turns out the chart exists, then…"— are very suspicious and quite disturbing. Its like nobody wants to get caught lying to the American public, but yet, nobody wants to confirm the Able Danger chart’s existence because the implications of the existence of such a chart is so damning. So now we have all of our government leaders and experts clamming up and acting like a bunch of potential criminal teenage boys in Aruba.)

Additionally, some questions have been raised about the ability of DIA to label or "identify" Atta as an al Qaeda operative as early as 2000. To me, it would seem logical that DIA was able to do so, after all, in 2000 Atta was living in Hamburg, Germany and having regular contacts with other known al Qaeda operatives namely Ramzi Binalshibh, Said Bahaji, Zakariya Essabar, Muhammed Zammar, Mounir Motassadeq, Abdelghani Mzoudi, and Mamoun Darkazanli. We know that the German government had Atta’s cell—the Hamburg cell—under surveillance and we also know that our CIA was conducting parallel surveillance during the same time period. Information surrounding the Hamburg cell and the surveillance is documented throughout the German trials of Mzoudi and Mottasedeq—two of the al Qaeda operatives that were prosecuted for their ties to the 9/11 attacks but eventually released after the United States refused to cooperate with the German courts by sharing intelligence evidence linking the men to the 9/11 plot. (Both men are walking the streets of Germany today as free men because our government refused to share evidence linking them to the 9/11 plot—something that frustrates many of the 9/11 families since we have yet to hold one terrorist accountable for the 9/11 attacks.) The surveillance of the Hamburg cell is also mentioned in overseas news reports from both London and Germany. One account even goes so far as to say that the CIA attempted to "flip" one of Atta’s comrades (Darkazanli) into being an informant for the CIA. Clearly, by December 2000, the CIA knew at least that Atta was a person of interest, so why should it seem so hard for the agency and others in our government to understand how DIA was able to do so, too?

Surveillance of the Hijackers—the proof.

The speed by which our government was able to accumulate such a vast amount of information immediately following the 9/11 attacks (in less than 24 hours) is the most persuasive proof that our government had the hijackers under its surveillance. FBI agents descended upon the very flight schools (out of the thousands of flight schools in our country) that the hijackers attended within two hours of the attacks. They were seen removing files from the flight schools buildings. Furthermore, photos of the hijackers and details about their activities in the final days before the attacks were also immediately presented to the American people. I mean you are talking about an intelligence apparatus that according to official accounts was completely in the dark about the plotting and planning of the 9/11 attacks. They — our intelligence agencies — knew nothing about the operatives living in this country—the operatives that were fully imbedded and openly training in our flight schools, partaking in practice flights across this country, receiving wire transfers from al Qaeda sources, and repeatedly traveling in and out of this country to visit other terrorists and terrorist facilities. Yet, for a group of agencies caught completely flat-footed on the day of 9/11, they certainly were able to get their act together at a time when most—if not all-- of this nation’s citizens were brought to their knees.

Additionally, when one carefully reads the 9/11 chronology and information provided in the public record, it becomes increasingly clear that the CIA’s repeated failure to share information with the FBI about two of the 9/11 hijackers—al Mihdhar and al Hazmi-- was purposeful. There exists at least seven instances between January 2000 and September 11th, 2001, that the CIA withheld vital information from the FBI about these two hijackers who were inside this country training for the attacks. Once, twice, maybe even three times could be considered merely careless oversights. But at least seven documented times? To me, that suggests something else. (To read about these instances, I suggest you read 9/11 materials relating to the "watchlisting issue" involving al Mihdhar and al Hazmi which is a story so detailed, that it deserves its own lengthy blog.)

The 9/11 Commission

At a bare minimum, the 9/11 Commission is not being honest with the American people. First, the Commission feigned total ignorance about Able Danger. Then, they admitted that they remembered hearing something about it. Next, they acknowledged that they were briefed about the program but found a discrepancy in the dates provided by the Able Danger informant, and therefore decided that the information was irrelevant to their investigation. Convenient excuses. But, wrong. Because, I happen to be one of the 9/11 widows that received personal commitments from each of the 9/11 Commissioners that they would track down every lead, and turn over every rock so as to provide the most thorough and definitive account of the 9/11 attacks to the American people. Last week’s revelations about Able Danger prove that the Commission has not been above-board with their investigation. Nor has their investigation been anywhere near exhaustive.

Now, legally speaking, the 9/11 Commissioners were mandated to provide a full accounting of the 9/11 attacks to the American people. If the Able Danger operation and its accompanying information turn out to be true, then necessarily each Commissioner has broken the law in that they failed to fulfill their legislative mandate in providing a full and just accounting of the 9/11 attacks to the American people. However, if we also come to learn that Atta’s or any of the other hijackers names were mentioned in the Able Danger chart, I think this nation will have bigger problems to deal with than accusing the 9/11 Commission of not following their mandate in providing a full accounting to the American people. As with most things in life, only time will tell.

Stay tuned for Part II. Kristen Breitweiser, a co-founder of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee which was responsible for forcing the Government to launch a broad investigation into the attacks of 9/11. She lost her husband Kenneth on September 11, 2001.

Copyright 2005 Kristen Breitweiser.

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