Looks like there are some holes in the Able-Danger story. You may remember me saying at the start that I was waiting for more. I may have jumped on the bandwagon too soon. NRO has several posts on it Sunday.
NO APOLOGY, BUT A DEMAND FOR FACTS [Andy McCarthy]
I don’t think an apology is or will be owed to the 9/11 Commission. Most of us who have asked questions about the Able Danger controversy were careful to note that nothing untoward had been proved yet. But the Commission has a dubious track record, having closed ranks around Jamie Gorelick when it was obvious that she had a blatant conflict of interest, having whitewashed the significance of “the wall” to pre-9/11 intelligence failure, and having gone out of its way – in the absence of any meaningful investigation – to deny Iraq/Qaeda ties. It was – and it remains – sensible to ask questions here, and the Commission’s initial reaction last week only gave more cause for concern.
Remember, the Commissioners who spoke out said initially that there was no way the Commission had been told about U.S. officials making an Atta identification prior to 9/11, and acknowledged that if the Commission had been told such a thing it would have been a big deal, requiring further inquiry. Within 72 hours, they had changed their tune, saying: what do you know, we did hear such a thing, but we decided the U.S. naval intelligence officer who told us about it was not reliable, and that the program he cited to us was not historically significant.
The Commission’s new memo is indeed an impressive piece of rebuttal, but it’s not a show-stopper. Two things – if only two things – are clear. First, Rep. Weldon has some answering to do. If he has answers, he should provide them promptly.
On this score, it is noteworthy that he is not on his own in these startling allegations. He has said he is in contact with knowledgeable witnesses who are in a position to testify. Further, the New York Times’ account last Thursday reported that both Weldon “and a former defense intelligence official who was interviewed on Monday have said that the Able Danger team sought but failed in the summer of 2000 to persuade the military's Special Operations Command, in Tampa, Fla., to pass on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation the information they had gathered about Mr. Atta and the three other men.” (Emphasis added.) It’s high time for these sources to come forward and explain themselves.
Second, as noted above, in their initial public denials last week, Commission members opined that evidence of an Atta identification would have been significant if the Commission had learned about it. It turns out the Commission did learn about such evidence (viz., the naval intelligence officer’s account) but was not persuaded by it. Well, that’s why God made footnotes. If, as the Commissioners concede, government awareness of Atta was a highly important topic, and if, as the new memo indicates, there were good reasons to be skeptical about the naval officer’s version of events, the simple solution was to mention his allegation in a footnote and knock it down with the rebutting information.
The Commission's task, as the first sentence of its final report reflects, was to submit a report for the government and the country's consideration. It was fine for the Commission to make judgments about the weight of the evidence as long as it was comprehensively reporting what the evidence was. It was not fine to withhold conflicting evidence on significant topics so that others would not know there was an alternative to be considered. There are hundreds of footnotes in the report, some of which are, in fact, efforts to explain how the Commission resolved conflicting evidence on various topics. There is no good reason not to have handled the naval officer’s claims this way – so that Congress could have asked follow-up questions and Weldon and others could have come forward with their conflicting contentions a year ago.
corner.nationalreview.com
THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT, CONGRESSMAN WELDON
TKS [ jim geraghty reporting ]
I agree with JustOneMinute - the 9/11 Commission’s statement on Able Danger looks pretty comprehensive. From the way these guys describe it, there was only one person who told the Commission that Able Danger had identified Atta, and they couldn’t find anything on paper at the Department of Defense to confirm that.
Of course, everything they’re saying completely contradicts what Rep. Curt Weldon and the unnamed military intelligence officer said. As for the Navy officer who told them about Able Danger finding Atta in 2000, the commission’s statement kind of makes him sound like a fruitcake.
We’re in an ugly spot. We’ve got Curt Weldon and bunch of anonymous sources making one of the biggest, most shocking allegations ever, and we’ve got the 9/11 Commission saying, ‘nope, not true, and no evidence to back it up.’
The worst scenario would be for the public to not get any further information out of this. One could see “Able Danger” reaching the phenomenon of urban legend quickly. Those who would be inclined to believe it would believe it; those who would not be inclined would not, and it would just be one more divisive prism through which to view the worst day of our lives. Either Weldon and his sources have run around spreading lies and crazy stories (and managed to get them on the front page of the New York Times) or the 9/11 Commission completely dropped the ball on this, and is attempting to cover up a glaring omission.
Clearly, the Commission feels that their statement is the last word on this subject.
Weldon said he had discussed this with four people involved with the program. Unless we hear from one of these anonymous sources, and/or the unnamed Naval officer, or Weldon can show us some sort of paper trail, then I think we’re stuck with this “he said, they said” situation. And this entire controversy – which once loomed as huge news, fundamentally altering the way we saw the 9/11 commission and the attacks themselves, will fade from the public consciousness. “Hey, isn’t that a missing blonde on a Caribbean island?”
There is a part of me that hopes Weldon is right. Not because I like pointing fingers and saying, “this person or this policy is what blew our chances of preventing 9/11” but because if the Able Danger information is true, the world makes a little more sense.
Let me explain. After everyone had cried, hugged their loved ones, and gotten over the immediate shock of 9/11, every American asked, “how could this happen? We spend billions on intelligence, have the best technology, enormous resources at the FBI, the best armed forces on the planet, and yet somehow, out of the blue, 19 guys manage to kill 3,000 of us?”
(Aside: There was much shrieking last summer that Bush could have prevented the attacks had he acted after hearing the summer 2001 PDB that said “bin Laden may be planning attacks with hijacked airplanes.” Well, thanks a ton for all those specifics, Jack Ryan. We’ll just shut down all air traffic nationwide as a precaution until you guys can narrow it down a bit. )
And of course, the natural following thought, “what is tomorrow going to bring?”
And yet – knocking on wood, thanking heaven – we haven’t been hit in the homeland again. If you had said to me on September 12, 2001 that there would be no successful attacks in the U.S. beyond a short spurt of mysterious anthrax mailings between now and August 2005, I wouldn’t have believed we could be so lucky.
If Able Danger spotted Atta and three other hijackers a year before the attacks, it is – bizarrely – reassuring. If it’s true, it means part of the system was working. This secret little group of guys, doing data-mining and number crunching, spotted the threat and recommended something be done. The threat wasn’t removed, because of a stupid rule that put excessive limits on cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement.
And with that wall down, we’re safer. That explains why we haven’t been hit again. If you’re an al-Qaeda operative, before 9/11 you had to evade the INS (hahahaha) and the FBI in order to attack the country. Hijacking a plane required a boxcutter and telling the woman behind the counter that yes, you packed your own bags. After 9/11, you have to evade immigration and border patrol (okay, still hahahaha), the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, various military branch intelligence agencies, NRO, a slightly more on the ball TSA, various joint task forces, the local beat cop, and a largely armed citizenry suspicious of guys trying to light up their sneakers or asking a lot of questions about crop dusters. There are too many eyes watching, too many opportunities to screw up and attract suspicions.
Maybe Weldon and his sources are wrong. Maybe Atta wasn’t spotted. Maybe this Navy guy is misremembering what he saw, and the military intelligence guy is lying, and the other guys Weldon spoke to are lying, and all of us have been taken in by a fabulous tale designed to get more funding for data-mining initiatives.
Or maybe the 9/11 Commission set out from the beginning to tell us that the wall was only one small factor out of many, and maybe they felt sheepish about looking too closely at the actions of a fellow Commission member.
That latter option sounds plausible. But I need to see more from Weldon and his sources before I completely believe it."
tks.nationalreview.com |
