Sometime on September 11th, 2001, some very important pieces of paper began circulating at the highest levels of government. These were the the passenger manifests for Flights 11, 77, 93, and 175 that had crashed earlier that day, killing everyone on board.
The FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, INS, and other government agencies were tasked with running all the names through their computers, and searching through all their files, for any mention of anyone that was aboard the flights.
But the vast electronic “take” on bin Laden, said officials who requested anonymity, contained no hints of a pending terror campaign in the United States itself, no orders to subordinates, no electronic fund transfers, no reports from underlings on their surveillance of the airports in Boston, Newark and Washington.
Instead, the officials said, bin Laden appeared to have used the communications systems that the United States monitored to throw America’s spies off his trail.
Miami Herald 9/12/01
We had some other clues as well. We had the recordings of some cockpit transmissions, and we had anecdotal information coming in from last-second phone calls from the planes to representatives of United and American airlines. Some of the flight attendants had given seat assignments for some of the hijackers.
:::flip:::
On September 13th, the government identified eighteen of the hijackers. On the 14th, they identified Hani Hanjour as the 19th hijacker.
Once the hikackers were identified, it stands to reason that all government agencies were tasked to accumulate any and all intelligence or information they had on the men. So far, there has only been one government agency that is known to have identified Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi as threats. That agency is the Pentagon, and more specifically, a unit of Military Intelligence called Able Danger. How much did Able Danger know?
The 11-person group called itself “Project Able Danger.” Think of them as a super-secret Delta Force or SEAL team. But instead of guns, they relied on advanced math training as their key weapons. And instead of traditional spying methods or bust-down-the-door commando tactics, the Able Danger group booted up a set of high-speed, super-computers and collected vast amounts of data.
The technique is called “data mining.” The Able Danger team swept together information from al-Qaida chat rooms, news accounts, Web sites and financial records. Then they connected the dots, comparing the information with visa applications by foreign tourists and other government records.
From there, the computer sleuths noticed four names – Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.The connect-the-dots tracking by the team was so good that it even knew Atta conducted meetings with the three future hijackers. One of those meetings took place at the Wayne Inn…
Atta and al-Shehhi took a room at the Wayne Inn. They rented a Wayne mail drop, too, and even went to Willowbrook Mall. Al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi took rooms at a motel on Route 46 in South Hackensack.
link
Now the government is asking you and me to believe that the members of Able Danger never shared the information they had with anyone in those first few days. In fact, they totally withheld the information from the Congressional investigation, and they only gave the 9/11 Commission generalized information in 2003. It wasn’t until a couple weeks before the Commission printed their report that a uniformed officer told the Commission about Able Danger’s identification of Mohammed Atta, and the Commission chose to leave that revelation out of the report.
Even Rumsfeld had no clue:
Fox News
Taking all of this into consideration, we have to conclude that something is terribly amiss. If Able Danger withheld this information from Rumsfeld and from Congress, wouldn’t they be afraid to come forward now and admit as much?
Wouldn’t Rumsfeld be outraged and be calling for people’s heads?
If Representative Curt Weldon is lying or exaggerating, why doesn’t someone accuse him of lying or exaggerating?
The 9/11 Commission admits that they were told about Able Danger, albeit at the last minute. Yet, that information was not shared with the full commission, and that information was not included in the report.
Why?
That Miami Herald piece (cited above) may hold the clue. The administration immediately claimed that we had no warning, no inkling, that such an attack was coming.
And yet, the 9/11 Commission report is filled with reports of wire transfers in the tens of thousands of dollars, it is filled with warnings of varying specificity (including the August 6th, 2001 PDB, which warned of hijacking and attacks IN THIS COUNTRY).
If nothing else is clear, it’s clear that Bush and Cheney started the cover up on the night of the eleventh. It’s time for a third 9/11 Commission. This time, the administration should have no say over the membership of the committee, the investigators on the committee, and they should all take an oath to tell the truth, under penalty of perjury.
ya betcya..and please look at lanorder of on the sidebar too. it is coming together now, isnt it???!!!!
So we have – at bare minimum – gross, gross incompetence. Not that we are surprised by that with how well these numbskulls plan for everything (“a wing and a prayer” must be their motto). But a coverup, as it appears happened in any scenario, sure makes one suspicious.
I seriously think that this whole administration and the time they have been in our WH, it has been a cover up
to keep things in perspective:
Able Danger had information that concerned them about 4 people that turned out to be hijackers. But they didn’t know they were hijackers. They merely suspected them of being bad guys with ties to al-Qaeda.
Able Danger did not have advance knowledge of 9/11.
So, even though they (allegedly) warned their superiors and recommended the FBI keep an eye on them, there is nothing altogether sinister in the failure of their superiors’ decision not to share the information with the FBI.
What is sinister is the cover-up of this information for 4 years.
exactly!!!! that is making ppl think very suspicious thing….not good!!!!!
I do agree with you on this, but given what Syble Edman and what she had to say as well, the FBI knew something was gonna happen..So did condi with the DPB..it was spelled out in plain language for them, they just chose to ignore this and other things..That makes them cupable…
If I were President of the United States and realized my entire intelligence establishment was a keystone kops operation, I’d try to keep that as quiet as possible too. And if I was a member of the Congressional oversight committees – also aware of the problem – I’d also be keeping my mouth shut.
Culpability runs deep on this one. But I see the issue as one of institutional ossification, and a bureaucracy more intent on job security than performance. Maybe that is worth trying to keep a lid on.
In any case we don’t have the necessary leadership in either branch to significantly change – correct – the system.
Mohamed Atta DID NOT have a green card. Not one of the hijackers had one!
lawnorder: 9/11 commission statement: Atta and his cohorts Visas (pdf)
Hate the darn thing (pdf) so here’s the “meat” on their visas: All of them but 1 had tourist visas. Atta often violated rules on hos tourist visa (extended stay, entering with wrong visa). The commission’s official PDF file link is at the end of the post — law
—————-
Most important quote:
Marwan al Shehhi came in through Newark in late May 2000, followed a week later by Mohamed Atta. Both were admitted as tourists and soon entered flight school in Florida. In September they did file applications to change their status. Before 9/11, regulations allowed tourists to change their status at any time, so they were in compliance. But both overstayed their periods of admission and completed flight school to obtain commercial pilot licenses. Atta and al Shehhi then left within a few days of one another and returned within a few days of one another in January 2001, while their change in visa status from tourist to student was still pending Atta and al Shehhi did get some attention when both said they were coming back to finish flight school. Primary inspectors noticed with each that their story clashed with their attempt to reenter on tourist visas. The rules required them to get proper student visas while they had been overseas, since their earlier pending applications for a change of status were considered abandoned once they left the United States. Atta and al Shehhi were each referred by the primary inspectors to secondary inspection. At secondary, more experienced inspectors could conduct longer interviews, check more databases, take fingerprints, examine personal property, and call on other agencies for help. The inspectors involved have stated they do not remember these encounters. The reports indicate that both men repeated their story about still going to flight school and their pending applications for a change of status. The secondary inspectors admitted Atta and al Shehhi as tourists
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/staff_statement_1.pdf
Weldon is lying and he’s an idiot.
But everything in my diary has been admitted by the 9/11 committee spokesman. They were told about Able Danger and that Able Danger had identified the 4 hikackers. Don’t worry about why Weldon spilled the beans. He’s a moron.
For not pursuing it ?
Wasn’t it the Able Danger guys ? If not what was their excuse for not acting ?
I have worked with data mining. It’s not a cristal ball.
It gives out a lot of false positives, particularly with the volume of data the Able Danger guys were dealing.
Why are you obsessing on the green card excuse? Jehl rejected it, and its over.
Weldon is not the point here. The cover-up is the point. They lied last Monday is the point. They fessed up on Wednesday is the point.
Weldon opened a can of worms because he is an idiot.
But why now ? Very simple: Bush’s poll numbers are in the tank and if they stay that way past September your are going to hear an stampeded in Congress. A stampede of elephants trying to put distance between them and Bush.
So changing the subject from Iraq and Rove to 9/11 is a perfectly predictable move in their part to raise Bush’s approval numbers.
Smearing Clinton is a favorite GOP pastime and smearing him and the dems on the 9/11 comission may help the GOP in 2006.
But as you said, they opened a can of worms… And they won’t like what comes out of there.
Maybe a moron, but he called for the return of the troops “as soon as possible” at the start of this thing. He reads like a pissed off individual (on his cong. website). Strange bedfellows are those in congress who feel betrayed by the administration – both sides of the aisle.
We have to establish common ground with whoever understands we’ve been lied to, even if it’s just one issue.
[ok. end side trip.]
Why shoould we believe the rest of their story ?
Curt Weldon and Phil Zelikov are Bush faithful.
There are a lot of loose ends on the 9/11 investigation, yet the comission only gets reopened, by Zelikov’s request, over a “It’s Clinton fault” story ?
Something smells rotten in this story.
Booman Tribune ~ Curt Weldon’s ‘Able Danger’ lie: 9/11 Revisionism, Revisited
the 9/11 commission spokeman has admitted it.
He admitted being told about it or admitted it being true ?
Read the PDF link I posted above. It is the 9/11 comission statement on the hijacker’s visas and passports. It shows without a shadow of a doubt that:
Anyone on the 9/11 comission should know that the “lawyers vetoed any action on Atta because he had a green card” is bogus. Has he evn mentioned this juicy little detail ?
To forecast product sales. It is a wonderful tool but it gives A LOT of false positives.
A tale of success we often told management to sell data mining (and get our budget for it increased) is how it tied diaper purchases with beer purchases. It correctly discovered the new demographic of diaper buyers: Young dads who had to run to the store for diapers and took the opportunity to buy a 6-pack (it’s the reason some stores place them in isles close to each other).
But data mining also picked up a lot of false correlations. Each correlation had to be triple checked by a person to make it usable. I’m sure the Atta / Brooklyn was only one in hundreds of equally probable correlations the data mining at Able Danger picked up.
I doubt it was this magic silver bullet they are trying to sell now. IMHO the research group itself discarded the Atta correlation as a false positive, then did a Homer Simpson’s DUH on 9/12 and concocted the “green card” story.
clear to me that they want to use this information to try to argue that Clinton is to blame, insinuate that Sandy Berger was trying to steal information related to Able Danger from the Archives, and that Atta really was in Prague.
But they HAVE MISCALCULATED. And they have exposed a cover up by Bush and the commission investigators and the Pentagon.
Starting with Rice’s lies.
I know this does not have as much to do with the topic… But the part in bold does.
Taken from antiwar.com’s interview of Sibel Edmonds:
One can only hope that if what Sibel Edmonds is saying is true about Aipac, outing plame, and her case… That the dominoe effect will start to speed up the Rove/Libby/etc. prosecutions, and likely lead to even more truth coming out.
Heroin and Richard Armitage. Google Azerbaijan and Richard Armitage. Google Sibel Edmonds and Azerbaijan. You’ll be on track.
I have already been digging into that for the last couple of days… A lot of interesting stuff.
You can pretty much put Edmonds or Armitage with any country ending in “STAN” into Google and come up with similar stories.
I just find it interesting that you are showing some serious breakdowns in intel sharing, BUT acccording to Edmonds it isn’t a breakdown… It is more of a “purposeful disconnect” choreographed and designed to misinform everyone but the criminals.
It seems more like the conspiracy nuts are closer to the truth than what the reality based world is ready to understand the more these stories break and unfold.
Yes, I know… I am crossing into tin-foil territory here a bit. lol
One huge problem I have with Edmonds story:
If what she says is really as big as she implies, why is she still alive to speak about it at all?
That is my biggest problem with her story. Loose ends never live that long when it comes to drugs and arms dealers, nevermind government involvement in propping up foreign puppet regimes and wanting new bases.
she is alive is that if she is killed all her info will be leaked anonymously to the press, and then the killers will have an an even worse time dealing with her accusations.
Always make multiple copies and have people store them in places you don’t know about and can’t reveal under pressure.
Sibel did that, so she is alive.
makes sense…
also about the Ronkonkoma Air Traffic Control audiotape — destroyed and cut into pieces (AP, WaPo and more).
It’s a diary I posted here at BoomanTribune and also at dailykos (link above). Please consider recommending.
If the time-line of the Able Danger group is correct then this information should have been available to Richard Clarke. He was at that time Chairman of the Counter Terrorism Security Group of the National Security Council (1992-2003). He was a long time DOD insider, dating back to 1973, as well as Asst. Sec of State for Intel for the same period, 1992-2003, his speciality was Cyber Security.
I find it puzzling that he has remained silent throughout this and previous intel disclosures, especially given his blunt assessment of the situation in his book and his testimony, publicly, to the 9-11 Commission.
Given that Weldon is a fool and has proven it many times over;
that there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that the published portions of the 9-11 Commission Report are any thing but a poorly constructed cover-up; that Mike Kelly’s Able Danger”sleuth” was arranged and his phone interview monitored by a Congressional Staffer (presumably Weldon’s); there is a distinctive odor about all this. It may be many things and perhaps there is a kernal here that may move someone more credible to step forward with some truly damaging information…but I am too cynical to believe this is anything more than a distraction.
If, or when, some one like Clark, Tenet, Cohen, Freech or any one else who was in a position to know, and should have known, comes forward I will be the first to embrace it as consequential. Until that happens it remains “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Macbeth.
Peace