Weldon and the 9/11 Commission

Below the fold, I will try to explain the significance of Representative Curt Weldon’s recent allegations. But first, a visual representation of the 19 hijackers, and their roles will be helpful. Weldon alleges that four of the hijackers were identified as members of al-Qaeda by a secretive military intelligence unit called ‘Able Danger’, in the summer of 2000. These four hijackers were dubbed the ‘Brooklyn Cell’. The members of this alleged cell actually come from two different cells: the Hamburg, Germany cell, and the San Diego Cell.

For each flight, I have listed the alleged pilot first.

The Hamburg cell was made up of three of the four pilots. All three of the pilots trained in Venice, Florida. They also trained in other places around Florida and Georgia. Ramzi bin al-Shibh was also a member of the Hamburg cell, but as a Yemeni he was repeatedly denied a visa to enter the United States. Al-Shibh was later captured in Pakistan.

The San Diego cell was made up three members. One was Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of Flight 77. The other two men were fugitives from justice on 9/11.

The Brooklyn Cell is alleged to have been made up of two members of the Hamburg Cell and two members of the San Diego cell. If true, this is incredibly significant. And I’ll explain why.

First, let’s look at how the U.S. Government first learned the identities of Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf al Hamzi:

All three of these men would later die when Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. But first, they would travel to Malaysia and be filmed at a meeting with other known terrorists. It is now believed that the meeting in Kuala Lumpur was for the purpose of planning the bombing of the USS Cole.

Al Hamzi and Almihdhar left Kuala Lumpur on a flight to Bangkok. The CIA station in Bangkok was informed of their movements, but they were too late arriving at the airport and lost their trail.

A couple of months later the CIA learned that the two men had left Bangkok on Janurary 15th, 2000, and flown to Los Angeles. Soon thereafter, they moved to San Diego and settled in.

Why is this so significant? Weldon claims that a military intelligence unit identified these two gentlemen as potential terrorists in a part of a cell with Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi (the Brooklyn Cell). The unit allegedly made this identification within two months of Atta and Alshehhi’s arrival in this country (in late May/early June 2000).

Now, we have to keep in mind three different government agencies: the CIA, a unit of military intelligence, and the FBI. These groups do not automatically share information. The CIA didn’t tell the FBI about Al Hamzi and Almihdhar’s presence in this country until August 24th, 2001. The ‘Able Danger’ group forwarded their information about Al Hamzi and Almihdhar (as well as Atta and Alshehhi) to the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, sometime before October, 2000. They recommended that the information be passed on to the FBI. Apparently, the Special Operations Command declined to do so.

If the Special Command had passed the information on to the FBI in September of 2000, the FBI would have discovered that Atta and Alshehhi were training at Huffman Aviation in July and August. They would have discovered that $69,985 was wired from the UAE into the their joint bank account on September 18th. They would have noticed them enrolling at Jones Aviation in Sarasota on the 24th. They might have taken an interest, when on December 24th, they stalled a Huffman airplane on Miami International runway and abandoned it.

But more importantly, the FBI would have quickly added Atta and Alshehhi to the TIPOFF list (if they hadn’t already) on August 24th, 2001, when the CIA finally told them that Alhamzi and Almidhar were in the country.

The administration and the FBI have been very insistent that we could not have stopped 9/11, even if we had caught Alhamzi and Almidhar, because we had no intelligence to link the San Diego cell to the Hamburg cell. The 9/11 Commission was less sure:

Despite the 9/11 Commission’s reservations, the idea that the attacks could not have been prevented was successfully implanted in the public mind.

Here is an excerpt from Time Magazine piece from August 4th, 2002:

First of all, you can use Lexis to see several leases the hijackers signed. Some examples, below:

Do yourself a favor, and don’t compare the dates of those leases with the 9/11 Commission’s timelines for the hijackers’ first entry into this country. It will turn you into a tin-foil hatter.

And don’t question the FAA certifications either, because they raise troubling questions about who the actual pilots were. Instead, let’s leave crazy stuff like that aside on focus on the government’s main story line.

The 9/11 Commission was operating on the premise that only three of the hijackers were known to be terrorists prior to 9/11. These three were Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhamzi, and Nawaf’s little brother, Salem al Hazmi. All three were identified as al-Qaeda operatives back in 1999. The commission noted that the plot might have been averted if they had been watchlisted. They might have been averted if two of them had been caught in August or early September. But they never contemplated that two of these hijackers had been linked to Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi by a military intelligence unit, a full year before the attacks.

If they had known that, they would have had to take an entirely different angle. The information that members of our intelligence community had pegged Atta and Alshehhi as bad guys was withheld from the full commission, even though the Pentagon seems to be insisting that they supplied the information to the investagotory staff. The staff is denying they received the information.

If the 9/11 Commission members had known about the suspicion surrounding Atta and Alshehhi they would have investigated what is was that aroused that suspicion. And who knows where that line of investigation might have led.

In summary: if Weldon’s information is correct is raises serious concerns. Was the fact that Atta was under suspicion covered up and, if so, why?

And, what different conclusions and recommendations would the Commission have come up with if they had been privy to this information?

Finally, for you tin-foilers, spoiling for some way to make sense of those FAA licenses (above), don’t forget this Newsweek article from 9/15/01:

If you can make this Newsweek jive with the 9/11 Commission’s report, you are a better person than me.