According to today’s New York Times, a top secret unit of military intelligence identified four of the 9/11 hijackers as Al-Qaeda members in the summer of 2000.
In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military’s Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.
This is a huge story. It’s mind-boggling, and I can’t even begin to describe the implications in a diary. Before I even try, I am going to skip ahead in the article and then give you a segment of my Mohammed Atta timeline, for your consideration. Pay special attention to the word ‘Brooklyn’.
:::flip:::
He said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photographs of Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi, who were identified as members of what was described as an American-based “Brooklyn” cell, as one of five such Al Qaeda cells around the world.
The official said the link to Brooklyn was meant as a term of art rather than to be interpreted literally, saying that the unit had produced no firm evidence linking the men to the borough of New York City but that a computer analysis seeking to establish patterns in links between the four men had found that “the software put them all together in Brooklyn.”
Okay. This top secret Pentagon unit used ‘data mining’ to establish the presence of all four hijackers in Brooklyn at the same time. We know this was sometime during, or before, the summer of 2000. Now, look at my Mohammed Atta timeline. Scan down to June 6th, 2000. This is three days after Mohammed Atta officially arrived in the United States for the first time.
6/1/1999 finishes thesis
6/15/1999 Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, plus would-be hijacker Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and associate Mounir El Motassadeq, hold a meeting in Amsterdam, Netherlands
9/1/1999 BJ’s Wholesale Club, a store in Hollywood, Florida, later tells the FBI that Atta may have held a BJ’s membership card since at least this time.
9/21/1999 German intelligence hears Atta’s full name on a phone call from Zammar to Al-shehhi
10/12/1999 Gen. Musharraf takes over Pakistan in a coup
11/27/1999 Atta, Marwan Alshehhi and Ziad Jarrah and associates Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Said Bahaji (all members of the same Hamburg, Germany cell) arrive separately in Afghanistan around this time
11/28/1999
11/29/1999
11/30/1999 Jordan uncovers plot to bomb Radisson Hotel in Amman
12/14/1999 Millenium bomber is arrested in Washington State
12/15/1999 late Dec. reports passport missing
1/1/2000 AFP, Beliner Zeitung report Atta is under CIA surveillance this year in Germany
1/2/2000
1/3/2000 failed attack on the USS Sullivans in Yemen
3/1/2000 emails unidentifed flight school in Lakeland, Fl
3/22/2000 e-mails Airman Flight School in Norman, OK
3/23/2000
3/24/2000
3/25/2000
3/26/2000
3/27/2000
3/28/2000
3/29/2000
3/30/2000
3/31/2000
4/1/2000 reportedly seen frequently at Portland Me. Library this spring
4/2/2000
4/16/2000
4/17/2000 FBI Agent Ken Williams’ memo on Arizona flight schools
4/18/2000
4/19/2000
4/20/2000
4/21/2000
4/22/2000
4/23/2000
4/24/2000
4/25/2000
4/26/2000
4/27/2000 Late April to mid-May Atta reportedly has a very strange meeting with Johnelle Bryant of the US Department of Agriculture
4/28/2000
4/29/2000
4/30/2000
5/1/2000 issued an Egyptian passport in Hamburg for one he claimed he lost
5/2/2000
5/3/2000
5/4/2000
5/5/2000
5/6/2000
5/7/2000
5/8/2000
5/9/2000
5/10/2000
5/11/2000
5/12/2000
5/13/2000
5/14/2000
5/15/2000
5/16/2000
5/17/2000
5/18/2000 US Berlin Embassy issues him visa
5/19/2000
5/20/2000
5/21/2000
5/22/2000
5/23/2000
5/24/2000
5/25/2000
5/26/2000
5/27/2000
5/28/2000
5/29/2000
5/30/2000 flies to Prague, denied entry, flies back to Germany
5/31/2000
6/1/2000 Atta goes to Czech consulate and obtains proper visa
6/2/2000 arrives in Prague by bus (allegedly meets with Iraqi spy)
6/3/2000 Atta supposedly arrives in the US for the first time, flying from Prague to Newark on a tourist visa issued May 18 in Berlin
6/4/2000 In June, Atta and other hijackers begin to open bank accounts in Florida. At least 35 accounts are opened, 14 of them at SunTrust Bank. All are opened with fake social security numbers (some with randomly made up numbers), yet none of the accounts are checked or questioned by the banks
6/5/2000
6/6/2000 moves with Al Shehhi to Brooklyn, his rental car gets parking ticket
6/7/2000
6/8/2000
6/9/2000
6/10/2000
6/11/2000
6/12/2000
6/13/2000
6/14/2000
6/15/2000
6/16/2000
6/17/2000
6/18/2000
6/19/2000
6/20/2000
6/21/2000
6/22/2000
6/23/2000
6/24/2000
6/25/2000
6/26/2000
6/27/2000
6/28/2000
6/29/2000 begins receiving large money transfers from UAE
6/30/2000
7/1/2000 moves to Venice and starts flight school at Huffman this month…name registed at 4890 Pompano Road on this day in Nexis.
7/2/2000 leaves NYC area, goes to Norman, OK with al-Shehhi. Flight School pays for hotel but they did not enrol.
7/3/2000 (9/27/01 St. Pete Times) they moves with Voss on this day.
7/4/2000
7/5/2000
7/6/2000 flies at Huffman
7/7/2000 flies at Huffman
7/8/2000 flies at Huffman
7/9/2000
7/10/2000
7/11/2000 flies at Huffman
7/12/2000 flies at Huffman
7/13/2000 flies at Huffman
7/14/2000 flies at Huffman
7/15/2000 moved (around this day) into Charles Voss’ home at 4890 Pompano Road, Venice, Fl.
7/16/2000
7/17/2000 flies at Huffman..registers 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix at Voss address, car is left at Logan Airport
7/18/2000 flies at Huffman…between this day and 9/18/00 receives $109,500 in SunTrust Bank joint account with al Shehhi
7/19/2000 flies at Huffman
7/20/2000 flies at Huffman
7/21/2000 flies at Huffman
7/22/2000 flies at Huffman
7/23/2000
7/24/2000 flies at Huffman
7/25/2000 DEA in Orlando discovered more than 30 pounds of heroin inside a Learjet owned by Wally Hilliard, owner of Huffman Aviation…flies at Huffman
7/26/2000 flies at Huffman
7/27/2000 flies at Huffman
7/28/2000 flies at Huffman
7/29/2000
7/30/2000 flies at Huffman
7/31/2000 flies at Huffman
8/1/2000 flies at Huffman
8/2/2000 flies at Huffman
8/3/2000 flies at Huffman
8/4/2000
8/5/2000
8/6/2000 flies at Huffman
8/7/2000 flies at Huffman
8/8/2000 flies at Huffman
8/9/2000
8/10/2000
8/11/2000
8/12/2000
8/13/2000 Boston Globe, 8/4/02
8/14/2000 In a wiretapped conversation from this day, suspected Yemeni terrorist Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman tells wanted Egyptian terrorist Es Sayed about a massive strike against the enemies of Islam involving aircraft and the sky, a blow that “will be written about in all the newspapers of the world. This will be one of those strikes that will never be forgotten…. This is a terrifying thing. This is a thing that will spread from south to north, from east to west: The person who came up with this program is a madman from a madhouse, a madman but a genius.”
8/15/2000
8/16/2000
8/17/2000
8/18/2000
8/19/2000
8/20/2000
8/21/2000
8/22/2000
8/23/2000
8/24/2000
8/25/2000
8/26/2000
8/27/2000
8/28/2000
8/29/2000 Huffman put in for student visa
8/30/2000
8/31/2000
9/1/2000
9/2/2000
9/3/2000
9/4/2000
9/5/2000
9/6/2000
9/7/2000
9/8/2000
9/9/2000
9/10/2000
9/11/2000
9/12/2000
9/13/2000
9/14/2000
9/15/2000
9/16/2000
9/17/2000
9/18/2000 $69,985 is wired from the UAE into the ATTA-AL-SHEHHI joint account.
9/19/2000
9/20/2000
9/21/2000
9/22/2000
9/23/2000
9/24/2000 late September Atta and al-Shehhi enrol in Jones Aviation in Sarasota.
9/25/2000
9/26/2000
9/27/2000
9/28/2000
9/29/2000
9/30/2000
10/1/2000
10/2/2000
10/3/2000 early October, takes and fails Stage One exam at Jones Aviation, and returns to Huffman
10/4/2000
10/5/2000
10/6/2000
10/7/2000
10/8/2000
10/9/2000
10/10/2000
10/11/2000
10/12/2000 USS Cole bombing
10/13/2000
10/14/2000
10/15/2000
10/16/2000
10/17/2000
10/18/2000
10/19/2000
10/20/2000
10/21/2000
10/22/2000
10/23/2000
10/24/2000
10/25/2000
10/26/2000
10/27/2000
10/28/2000 landed and refueled at Glynco-Manning Aviation Inc., buying 28 gallons of fuel for $ 73 for the Warrior, single-engine plane. (Southern Ga.)
10/29/2000
10/30/2000
10/31/2000
11/1/2000
11/2/2000
11/3/2000 Atta bought 29.5 gallons of fuel at 7:40 p.m. for a little more than $ 77, company owner Frank Manning said. (Southern Ga.)
11/4/2000
11/5/2000 buys flight deck videos from Ohio
store
11/6/2000
11/7/2000
11/8/2000
11/9/2000
11/10/2000
11/11/2000
11/12/2000
11/13/2000
11/14/2000
11/15/2000
11/16/2000
11/17/2000
11/18/2000
11/19/2000
11/20/2000
11/21/2000
11/22/2000
11/23/2000
11/24/2000
11/25/2000
11/26/2000
11/27/2000
11/28/2000
11/29/2000
11/30/2000
12/1/2000 receives pilot’s license
12/2/2000
12/3/2000 tourist visa expired (Time Mag)
12/4/2000
12/5/2000
12/6/2000
12/7/2000
12/8/2000
12/9/2000
12/10/2000
12/11/2000
12/12/2000
12/13/2000
12/14/2000
12/15/2000
12/16/2000
12/17/2000 On Dec. 17, Atta bought 53 gallons of fuel for just under $ 120 and charged it on his Visa card, said Keith Thompson, who works in field base operations at the Waycross airport.
12/18/2000 Looking at the airport’s records, Thompson knew Atta was in a Seneca, twin-engine plane made by Piper. He knew the tail number on the plane — 769HA.
12/19/2000
12/20/2000
12/21/2000
12/22/2000
12/23/2000
12/24/2000
12/25/2000
12/26/2000 stalls Huffman airplane on Miami Intl runway and abandons it.
12/27/2000
12/28/2000
12/29/2000 Atta and Al-Shehhi take flight sim lessons at Sim Center and Pan Am International for 3 days.
12/30/2000 sim lessons
12/31/2000 sim lessons
Now, let’s continue with the article. The top secret unit informed the Special Operations Command about four of the hijackers and recommended the FBI be informed of their presence in the United States.
This is grasping at straws. The law did not apply to mere visa holders. The bottom line is that there is no good reason for such a request to be rejected. But it goes further than that. A lot further. First of all, the 9/11 Commission was given this information and they covered it up. In fact, it appears the information was concealed from the full panel.
The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.[snip]
The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the team had been established by the Special Operations Command in 1999, under a classified directive issued by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about Al Qaeda networks around the world.
“Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision makers options for taking out Al Qaeda targets,” the former defense intelligence official said.
He said that he delivered the chart in summer 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and said that it had been based on information from unclassified sources and government records, including those of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
“We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them,” the former intelligence official said. [snip]
Neither Mr. Shehhi nor Mr. Atta was identified by the American intelligence agencies as a potential threat, the commission report said. Mr. Shehhi arrived in Newark on a flight from Brussels on May 29, 2000, and Mr. Atta arrived in Newark from Prague on June 3 that year.
The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a “Brooklyn” cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003.
The official said 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.
Mr. Felzenberg, the former Sept. 11 commission spokesman, said on Monday that he had talked with some of the former staff members who participated in the briefing.
“They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell,” Mr. Felzenberg said. “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.”
As a result of the briefing, he said, the commission staff filed document requests with the Pentagon for information about the program. The Pentagon complied, he said, adding that the staff had not hidden anything from the commissioners.
“The commissioners were certainly told of the document requests and what the findings were,” Mr. Felzenberg said.
Someone is lying, and I doubt it is the former military intelligence officer. So, we have a cover-up. But even more important than the revelation that our Special Operations Command in TAMPA, was aware of al-Qaeda terrorists (living 45 minutes down the road in Venice) during the time of their flight training, and that they refused to inform the FBI about them, is the realization that they had connected the two San Diego hijackers, to the two WTC pilots.
That’s right. Think back. Only two of the hijackers were EVER put on a FBI watch list. Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were wanted for their connection to the Cole Bombing through a planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur. Even though one of their names was in the San Diego phonebook, and even though they had lived briefly with an FBI informant, the FBI was unable to find them before 9/11.
Much was made of the CIA’s failure to inform the FBI that these men had arrived at Los Angeles Airport after leaving the meeting in Malaysia. But, it was asserted, that these known al-Qaeda terrorists were never connected to the guys from Hamburg by our intelligence services.
Now, we know they were linked up using open-source data-mining and reported AS A CELL, within two months of Atta and al-Shehhi arriving in the country.
This is unbelieveable.
So it’s all Clinton’s fault then?
Either way, it’s disgusting to think that if Atta and Co had been watched, their plans might have been uncovered and prevented before they were carried out. (Of course, I’m not so sure they would have been stopped; seems likely that Bu$hCo would have been even more prepared to exploit the events of 9/11).
on Clinton. We have a Pentagon intelligence unit that links up four individuals (one Egyptian, one from the United Arab Emirates, and two from Saudi Arabia) as belonging to an al-qaeda cell. They are all identified as being in Brooklyn at the same time. The Special Operations Command (which the unit reports to) is made aware of the suspicion of this cell in the United States, and yet they refuse to pass the information on to the FBI.
Clinton never would have even known about this.
Remember how many times they said Atta never did anything suspicious? Bullshit. They had him pegged within two months. But someone called off the dogs.
More importantly, this information was somehow quashed by the 9/11 staff, and not shared with the full panel.
I was being facetious about Clinton while anticipating what the official BS from the current administration would be on this. :^)
I wonder how much other information was quashed and kept from the public; it wouldn’t surprise me to find this was the tip of the iceberg.
Why is this coming out now?
some think Weldon is nuts and is trying to promote his book. Could be. But this story rings true to me.
Interesting that every breed of dog was called off. That’s a pretty big trainer or a pretty big stick. I can’t figure out exactly who was running Atta,a lap dancing, hard drinking, cocaine sniffing Islamic extremist? All of those things? None of those things?
His behavior is a little too Oswaldesque for me. He left a trail, a big trail for what purpose? Since he has been described as mission leader, the linchpin, why would he risk arrest or exposing the mission? Why would he risk pissing off his handler(s) and/or protector(s)?
I can only think of four possible explanations: 1) he knew he would be protected, 2)he didn’t care, 3)his odd behavior was part of his mission, 4) he was a patsy.
Was he the leader or was he the patsy?
the blame falls on rice
its her freaking job to coordinate these different agencies to protect the national security
but the bigger isue here is if this was covered up by the 9/11 commission what else is?
we need another inquiry….we should be demanding another inquiry.
Maybe I’m mis-reading but it appears this intelligence unit was following the law and it was someplace above them that prevented info from being shared…
“The top secret unit informed the Special Operations Unit about four of the hijackers and recommended the FBI be informed of their presence in the United States.”
Seems someone/somewhere said No. Is this an example of bureaucratic stagnation and unwillingness to do much and CYA or did the info ever make it to the WH?
they (correctly) identified a cell. The cell was already in the United States. They reported to their command, and recommended telling the FBI, because only the FBI can conduct domestic investigations. The command decided not to tell the FBI, but they had no legal reason not to. So, there must have been some other reason. The article speculates that they were just institutionally reluctant to share info. But that is a pretty weak explanation under the circumstances.
However, it is very true that military intelligence doesn’t play well with the FBI or CIA. They protect their turf, even today. I’m not saying it is right, but it is such an institutionalized mindset that it will take years, if not decades to break down those barriers.
feel unsatisfied with that explanation is the fact that this crucial information was withheld from three seperate investigative bodies. The two 9/11 commissions and the commission on intelligence reform.
In fact, they built an entire narrative about how how the San Diego and Hamburg cells were seperate and could not have been connected.
Of course they covered it up. What were they going to say “Ooopsie, we identified the cell a year earlier and said nothing to no one – our bad”? You bet they (probably some very senior pentagon officials) covered their asses. I’m not defending that at all. I think it is shitty, but it doesn’t surprise me that these people would lie and prevaricate to get their asses out of sling.
but if this story is accurate, it was the 9/11 staff investigators that covered it up. That indicates something more sinister than the Pentagon covering their ass.
I wouldn’t go that far. This is the same staff that pushed hard for release/inclusion of information, and who more than once published their own separate monographs. Also true that the commission had to unanimously agree to the final report contents. Rock and a hard case.
in some of the commissioners, I have little to no faith in the staff investigators. I knew more about 9/11 than was revealed in the report. And almost none of my questions were answered.
The commission was a whitewash. Now, I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know reading the report is not very helpful in figuring it out.
This is an example of the tightrope that the commissioners were walking. The reader is expected to read between the lines and from this example above, I believe the reader is expected to receive the entire report with a good deal of skepticism.
Perfect.
The question is then, “Why not say the Prez and VP lied to us, if they indeed did?”
The answer to that complete removes any air of objectivity or completeness from their product documents.
The Harper’s article explains that the commissioners all knew that Bush and Cheney were liars because of the overwhelming evidence given by the other people who were questioned about 9/11.
For example Bush claims ‘nobody told me’ and there is proof of mutliple WH meetings where he was told.
The commissioners were afraid to shatter the investigation and the government.
This is a fascinating article:
http://www.harpers.org/WhitewashAsPublicService.html
with footnotes.
Is there any way to trace the chain of command within the Special Ops or to find out who the Commander was? I suppose not… that info would probably be classified. Was the Commander a political appointee or the minion of one? Seems unlikely, but then why did the 9/11 commission staff hide this explosive info from the panel? What a mystery we have here. Wow. This is really a mind blower. I need to go slug some more coffee, this is making very little sense to me. Another excellent report, Booman.
That part makes me wonder if there is a piece, or name(s), we still don’t know about this yet.
Go back to the Nixon era and sift through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer and the “Moorer–Radford affair” and Watergate. Then review the Reagan/Bush’s NSA, DoD, CIA Iran/Contra joint op. Then review what we know about Tenant, Mueller, Condi, Bolton, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, from 9/11 and Iraq.
If anything, we see the same cast of characters again and again in different roles. The barriers, the walls are fiction. In light of the history, you may want to refresh your definition of institutionalized mindset.
And Philip D. Zelikow–friend of Condi, transition team member for Bush the Elder, member of both the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the National Commission on Federal Election Reform for Bush the Lesser, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Acts Upon the United States (can you say “conflict of interest”?), whose area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of what he has called “public myths”–is now doing what?
Yes, boys and girls, he is back at the University of Virginia, where he is director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs for the study of the presidency, a think tank whose organization the Bush White House opposed.
Probably in line for a Medal of Freedom one of these days.
Seemingly slipping the commission investigations,
This information was hidden?!?
We must find at whose biddin’,
And put a stop to bureaucratic assignations.
you’ve been doing some great work. well done.
Brian
I second that, good sleuthing.
From the 9/11 Commission report, Ch. 8, p. 259:
30.George Tenet interview (Jan.28,2004).
Special Ops also failed to notify FAA and Immigration.
Everytime I see that security photo of Atta entering the airport I wonder how he could have got through based on the fact he was under surveillance.
.
BBC News – US ‘planned attack on Taleban’ by the BBC’s George Arney
The wider objective was to oust the Taleban
A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week’s attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials mid-July, that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.
Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin. At the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.
The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place – possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.
Mr Naik was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.
Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI]
Anti-Taliban warrior Ahmad Shah Massoud
.
~ Recently posted in diary Afghanistan going down the tubes ◊ by Athenian ~
Lion of Panjshir
Sebastian Junger on Afghanistan’s Slain Rebel Leader ◊
[National Geographic Adventure]
The Perfect Storm author spent a month with anti-Taliban warrior Ahmad Shah Massoud in 2000. Now he offers his reaction to the recent murder of the Northern Alliance leader–and the subsequent attacks on the U.S.
In November 2000 Adventure sent contributing editor Sebastian Junger and photojournalist Reza to profile Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. The resulting article appeared in our March/April 2001 issue and has just been reprinted in Fire, a collection of Junger’s journalistic work.
On September 9, 2001, suicide bombers killed Massoud. Two days later the U.S. was under attack. Here Junger offers his thoughts on those two days of terror and their implications.
~~~
Sebastion Junger video
is available at Amazon.com
http://tinyurl.com/bycag
congrats on a great story. My own suspicions take bushco beyond benign neglect regarding 9/11.
I know this will get me fitted for a tin-foil hat, but I’ve always had the suspicion that the military let 9/11 happen. Why? All the shiny new toys produced by the military-industrial-political complex.
Faced with obsolescence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, these folks needed a reason to sell a bloated military budget to the general public. The only way to do this was to be able to say “I told you so.” Now, our military budget, at $441 billion dollars, is more than the rest of the world combined, and it dwarfs the budget during the Cold War.
What are we doing with the money? Buying weapons systems designed to fight the last war, the one that never happened, thank god.
They are looting the national treasury, enriching corporations which have zero loyalty to this country, by creating a “boogie man” to keep the public in a perpetual state of fear.
You don’t need a conspiracy when you have a group of people who all think the same way.
“the military let 9/11 happen”
That’s not so tin-foil-hat-worthy anymore. Say you change it to ‘the military allowed 9/11 to happen by not informing the US security agencies of what they knew.’
The question of ‘how’ is described in the diary but the question of ‘why’ – is there a why?
As the character Deep Throat said in the film, All the President’s Men, “follow the money.”
The revolving door between the Pentagon, the Congress, and military contractors allows for a procurement officer to to leave the military to become a lobbyist and then move into the private sector overseeing the project he or she was instrumental in getting approved. Kick-backs in the form of cushy civilian jobs and stock options are the grease with which the treads are lubricated.
And we’re talking about a lot of money here. Motive, means and opportunity are the triumvirate of detective work. All are present in this scenario.
What we do about it, however, is another story, altogether. How do you stop people who themselves will stop at nothing? I wish I had an answer.
Don’t you mean to ask, “how do I promote destruction of the world’s leadership without losing my job and my family’s safety?” The answer is You don’t. How do you stop those who stop at nothing? Kill them or otherwise present them with the ‘nothing’ that will stop them: Turn Fear, their favorite weapon, against them.
Sometimes you’ve gotta throw yourself into the gears to stop the machine. Y’know break a few eggs to make an omelet. Specifically, a domestic, revolutionary threat, real or otherwise would do much more to bring an end to this BS. Not a war of secession, but one to undo the Coups of 2000 and 2004. American Revolution II, baby. Down with King George.
You don’t think that violence would work? There must be a reason it is the preferred method of policy change everywhere else. Letters to the Editor are indeed highly persuasive to the literate, but even the best of them don’t mean shit in the real world.
We can agree on the need serious systemic reform. I simply think we should all give up on doing it the traditional route: using government to regulate government. It is the Dem’s frail belief that the system can always be righted. This is not true. There will always be people like this in power over our system, as it is the nature of the power we give them that corrupts this way. If you remove these folks without destroying the ruling culture itself along the way, you’ll just get another scheming cabal in it’s stead.
It is possible to so sicken a state that it’s very systems of governance are perverted to the point of irrevocable dysfunction. I say we’ve been there since the development of the “Domino Theory” continued the massive spending of WWII, giving those who labor and profit from war the sense of permanent entitlement. As long as there is a credible “Them”, “Us” can muddy the water with all the morally questionable behavior that has reduced every conflict we’ve dabbled lately (50 years) in from “Good vs. Evil” simply to “Us vs. Them”.
The right complains of Social Entitlement but hands out cash to anyone with a better slingshot. The left can’t complain about this or else they could be accused of handing over our grandchildren to the Arab hordes. This has evolved into a permanent state, regardless of the Party in power. As long as you can rotate new folks into the “Them”, “Us” in it’s hyper-militarized form will always be have it’s reason for being, and likely continue to have very few folks rotating in and out of power. A meta-enemy, known as “The Terrorists”, is the perfect “Them”: eternal and undefeatable, yet never a real threat to dominance.
It will remain as such short nothing but Revolution and about a generation of chaos and probable suffering for people you love.
Now ask yourself this Q again, but corrected: “Do YOU really want to do what is necessary to stop people who stop at nothing?” The real answer for most people, in their hearts is unfortunately “no, but for really good reasons like my old granny in NYC.”
I say, “Granny, git yer gun.”
We have a Constitution to defend.
2003: the calls were not returned.
The commission did not return his calls. We knew it was a cover up. There were comprehensive articles in Vanity Fair NOV 2004 and New York Review of Books both calling the 9/11 Commission Report a whitewash.
From Vanity Fair’s Nov. 04 description of the article:
Could the attacks have been prevented?
Even at 567 densely worded, sometimes electrifying pages, the published report of the 9/11 commission studiously avoids answering that question.
I read the article amost a year ago and I do not remember any mention of the military’s role in the lead up to 9/11. Vanity Fair is available at most libraries if anyone wants to read the article. Not sure if it is online.
Here’s a site with transcribed sections of the article.
I wish Vanity Fair and The New Yorker weren’t so precious about their articles.
I could scan the Vanity Fair article and email it to you. I have given away my copies of
New York Review of Books.
Archives are here,
http://www.nybooks.com/archives/
(Membership + $3.00 may be required, some articles are free.)
BooMan’s diary is #1 at DKos. … and I love the quip he added at the beginning.
they seem to want the answer to the question:
Could 9/11 have been prevented?
to be NO and that’s the end of it.
One comment defended the 9/11 Commission Report because it was hard work. It was a whitewash.
At this point
seems like a good source to me.
Yeah, but these are the same people who claimed that election fraud in 2000, 2002, and 2004 was simply straight-out impossible. They’re debunkaholics at this point. They claim to dislike Bush, but immediately, compulsively attempt to “debunk” anything that paints him in a bad light.
The “next hurrah” people always go out debunking all “conspiracy” postings a little too vigorously. Im for taking out the “pod people”, but they are far too quick to ridicule anything that dosen’t adhere to “remain calm, all is well!”
Wonder what is up at the NYT — are they trying to redeem themselves with some real investigative reporting?
As for the bit about protections for citizens and green card holders, but then saying the protection does not apply to visa holders, why such a convoluted explanation? Looks like more spin to me — perhaps laying the groundwork for convincing people we need to furhter invade privacy rights and beef up surveillance because these “liberal” policies let the terrorists get away.
And to think there are people out there who know the whole story, it is so frustrating.
my new diary about all the paranoia at Daily Kos in my earlier diary’s thread.
I was getting really frustrated in that thread of everyone’s focus on Weldon. Isn’t that what we accuse the Republicans of doing? Attacking the messenger in an attempt to discredit and draw attention away from the facts?
BTW Boo it’s “unbelievable” not “unbelieveable” 😉
Pax
funny thing, when I use a scrollbar the spellcheck doesn’t work on any text below the scrollbar.
I am so tired of DKos and the DKos loyalist diary police. Anything that is veers even slightly from the DKos Catechism is trolled and ratings-abused out of existence.
It just fine to break the posted DKos rules as long as you do it to crush out those whole refuse to blinding accept without question conforming to DKos dogma.
I’m moving over to DailyKos for precisely the reasons everyone is complaining about!
If everyone with an outside the box brain moves in together, the people left inside the box will never get it right. It is important that box-people do get it right eventually, as the vast majority of people live firmly in the box.
I’ve got something for them to ‘debunk’ right here..
Boo because you asked me for some 411 this morning, I’ve been looking into this all day.
That group “Able Danger” was mentioned in Weldon’s book and my buddies over at SOCNET seemed to have never heard of it.
Based on my analysis of Weldon’s speeches on the House floor, including from May 21, 2002, it seems he’s in love with the boys down at LIWA/IDC and Able Danger sounds like one of their projects.
LIWA/IDC is a result of the JTF-CND, which was only created in 1998. And Weldon and his LIWAC buddies were pushing something called NOAH, which is now what Weldon is basically saying could’ve prevented 9/11. I saw an article via the Qatari press along these lines (of creating an IDC for the CIA) just a few days ago.
So let’s connect the dots. In 1998, the Pentagon created the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense (JTF-CND) which was like the first time the DOD had all its network coordinated and monitored. I should also mention that the JTF-CND liaisoned with the NSA, NRO, DIA and all those alphabet brethren.
After that overarching organization was created, someone decided to start sorting through the information and this fell under the LIWAC (Land Information Warfare Information Center) slash IDC (Information Dominance Center) (although LIWAC/IDC was created slightly before the JTF-CND). I should mention this is located at Ft. Belvoir, where I used to spend an inordinate amount of time (unrelated to this agency though).
The LIWAC not only “data mines” the DOD websites but also open-source websites, which as unbelievable as it sounds, is something the U.S. gov’t spends very little time doing. Me sitting at a computer in Romania probably does more of this than the entire federal government in a single day. Anyway, not to get off the topic…
Weldon is a big fan of the boys down at LIWAC and he bragged on the House floor on May 27, 2002 of having procured more information on a Serbian man named Dragomir Kric than the FBI or CIA could (Weldon even personally asked George Tenet to get a profile on Kric and received only “2 or 3 sentences”). Weldon then told CIA and FBI officials that he had 60 pages of info on Kric, right down to his family life and financial dealings. The FBI and CIA then asked him if he got the info from the Russians and Weldon says “no, the LIWAC” and the FBI and CIA then say “what is that?”.
I should mention that Kric was some kind of associate of Milosevic and helped persuade him to sign the treaty that ended the civil war in Bosnia.
So if what Weldon is saying about Kric is true, that definitely means that LIWAC knows lots of information that the CIA (and FBI) don’t know, or at least that was the case in 1997.
In 2002, Weldon used this story to push for the creation of something called NOAH, which is the acronymn for the National Operations and Analysis Hub, essentially being all intelligence agencies’ computers being networked together where their collective data could be mined (ala SPIRES) but without compromising integrity.
Weldon is still pushing for the creation of NOAH today. And in his midnight speech of June 27, 2005 Weldon says that he took a LIWAC produced Al-Qaeda “flow chart” to Stephen Hadley in late 2001 (who was chatting with Cindy Sheehan in Crawford this week) and Hadley was amazed at its thoroughness and said “where did you get it”.
According to Weldon, that flowchart from October 2001 showed Atta’s name right there in the middle of it:
So what Weldon is saying is that ATTA was identified by him and his buddies at LIWAC as being Al-Qaeda no later than October 2001.
What’s new this week is that Weldon is saying the military recommended rolling up Atta in September 2000 but someone countermanded this recommendation, for the above-stated reasons in your article.
Hope this helps…
Pax
.
G. Gordon Liddy Interviews Bibi Netanyahu [WMP]
22 October 2001 — The G Man in Israel
PS I found this interview this week, tells all about US policy equated to Likud proposals. Listen to the rhetoric of these two criminals. A must to listen for all!
~~~
Wow! Imagine if he had been given a memo saying that hijackers would fly planes into buildings, and the response to hijackers needed to be immediately changed. Then imagine he watched his dog dig under bushes and laughed at reporters, because the memo was no interesting.
Ow. wait. That’s what happened.
So it turns out, with the passenger list he could have had the exact flight numbers. SO he knew
And now he has exact names and could get flight numbers?
Could someone PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME why Kerry gave him a TOTAL PASS ON THIS FAILURE?
redwagon
Well, it could be because Kerry is part of the problem.
sOOOOO obvious that 9-11 was an inside job, to anyone that will research this subject with an open mind. Before, during and after, the actions scream INSIDE JOB. Kerry as well as clinton are part of the corruption, they do not want to lose the money tree, that the politicans have created. There are no longer honest democrats or republicans left in true power. They are fascists in their methods. They are blood thirsty war mongrals, making big bucks off of their bloody ways. Their actions speak, both parties GUILTY.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Is it possible that by controlling the “opposition” the debate can be steered away from the obviously heinous to the digestible and controllable?Probably chapter 1 in Professor CoverUp’s textbook on the creation and maintenance of ‘public myths’.
Paradigm control is paramount to populace control. The key is the map we are given, not the directions. People are much quicker to think the directions are wrong and the map right.. You see? you can only go North-South here..
I agree that it’s a revelation. But “Shocking”? Nah. I wouldn’t even call it a surprise.
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