What's in the News?
The 9/11 Commission Timeline & Able Danger
whatsinthenews.com
An alarm went off when I read that the 9/11 Commission rejected information that Mohammed Atta had been identified as an Al Qaeda terrorist in the United States a year before 9/11. They rejected the information because of his travel timeline. Hadn?t we heard that reasoning before? And then I remembered: a reported meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer had been rejected by the commission because their travel timeline didn?t support it.
For those of you who haven't been on the internet for a few days, a secret (and apparently disbanded) Army intelligence unit called Able Danger reportedly identified Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of an Al-Qaeda terror cell in the United States in mid 2000. According to Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon, officers involved in the project wanted to turn the information over to the F.B.I., but were told not to by government lawyers.
Keep in mind that this was during the Clinton administration, when former Clinton Justice Department and Department of Defense official (and 9/11 Commission member) Jamie Gorelick had insisted that the government go beyond what the law required in enforcing a wall between surveillance and law enforcement activities.
Not only were these Able Danger officers rejected when they tried to get their crucial information to the F.B.I., but they were also ignored when they met with 9/11 Commission staffers. The reason? Their timeline of Atta?s movements did not mesh with the 9/11 Commission's timeline.
That timeline was one key reason cited by the commission in overlooking Czech intelligence reports that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official on April 9, 2001. Their reasoning is contained in the 9?11 Commission Report:
"The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he and [fellow hijacker Marwan al-] Shehhi leased an apartment. On April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida."
So Atta was seen at a bank, where he withdrew $8,000, and not seen again until April 11th: plenty of time to buy a ticket to Prague using a fake passport and return a week later. So the Commission apparently decided Atta could not be in Prague on April 9th because his cell phone was used. However, it is likely that if traveling to Europe Atta would have left his cell phone behind because in 2001 a cellphone that would work with U.S. technology almost certainly wouldn't work with European technology. It would have been dead weight to carry around. Even now, there are still very few cell phones on the market compatible with both European and U.S. technologies. And isn't it possible, some might even say likely, that al-Shehhi, whom Able Danger also identified as a member of the same Al Qaeda cell to which Atta belonged, or someone else could have used the cell phone ... perhaps even to line up the apartment that Atta and al-Shehhi rented on April 11th? Indeed the report concedes, "We cannot confirm that he placed those calls."
Another primary reason listed by the 9/11 Commission for rejecting the Prague meeting was, "there are no U.S. records indicating that Atta departed the country during this period. The report continues: "He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias, but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling.... Yet, the Able Danger timeline has Atta traveling to the U.S. months before the 9/11 Commission?s timeline. It is likely that he did use false names/passports-as is common with terrorists-and the 9/11 Commission didn?t find it.
Even the 9/11 Commission Report concedes, "These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001. Why then did some of its members, and the Main Stream Media, act like they did?
A pattern has emerged of the 9/11 Commission?s efforts, and it isn't comforting. Evidence that didn't fit an apparently pre-determined view-such as Atta?s travels, that he had no ties to Iraqi intelligence and that the Prague meeting never took place-was ignored. Assumptions took precedence over evidence that ran contrary to those assumptions. It is telling that the result of those assumptions were conclusions that were damaging to the Bush Administration and that the facts that were ignored, including that the ringleader of the 9/11 plot had been identified but that government lawyers prevented law enforcement from being notified, would have been damaging to the Clinton Administration. Maybe President Bush was right in his original opposition to the creation of this increasingly discredited process.
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No Apologies to the 9/11 Ommission
Maybe they should apologize to us.
Denials by the 9/11 Commission that it was given the name of the lead hijacker by a military intelligence program have led some to suggest that critics of the commission have over-reacted and that the commission might even be owed an apology.
Hardly.
The commission claims that the names of Mohammed Atta or other hijackers were not brought up in early meetings with officers from the military's Able Danger project. They say that Atta's name was not mentioned to them by an officer with Able Danger until shortly before their final report was issued and that, even then, the officer provided no documentation to back it up.
They say that the officer made his claim based upon a chart with 60 pictures on it and that he remembered seeing Mohammed Atta's photograph on it. Copies of the chart are apparently no longer available. It has been asked, How could the officer have remembered Atta's name and face out of these 60? A response could well be, Can you forget Atta's face? Some people's faces are easily forgotten. Atta's face-the hard eyes, the sharp lines, the brooding countenance-sticks in the memory.
You can test the credibility of the officer's claim yourself. Go to pages 238 & 239 of the 9/11 Commission Report, which contain head shots of the 19 hijackers. Now, close the book. Which face do you remember?
Atta's countenance, the personification of cold, hard evil, was nevertheless photogenic and practically jumps off the page. When we, as untrained observers remember his photograph so clearly, wouldn't a trained intelligence officer be even more likely to remember him?
For the sake of argument, let's say the commission is right and Able Danger did not provide documentation they had identified Atta. The information that they had discovered an Al Qaeda cell in the U.S. of which four 9/11 hijackers were eventually found to be members still warranted further investigation. If data about this cell had been provided to the FBI, as Congressman Curt Weldon claims the Able Danger officers wanted to do, Atta and three other hijackers could have been dealt with when the cell was rolled up.
The commission is trying to sell us the sizzle-Atta's name-and not the steak: whether Able Danger presented evidence that they had identified a terrorist cell which included four of the eventual hijackers.
So, no apologies here to the 9/11 Commission. Maybe they should apologize to us for not doing their job.
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The Smoking Gun?
The Link Between Gorelick's Wall
& the Department of Defense
The link connecting the Clinton Administration wall separating intelligence gathering from enforcement to the failure to follow up on information that could have prevented 9/11 runs through a little know federal office called The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. Much of the attention paid to then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick's 1995 memo extending the wall past what was legally required has focused on the content of that memo. Even more telling in this instance is to whom the memo was directed.
The memo was sent to the director of the FBI, the Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, the U.S. Attorney overseeing the investigation into the first World Trade Center bombing each of whom would have had some involvement in the investigation into the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993: the pretext used to justify the new policy. But the memo was also addressed to a fourth person, the Counsel of Intelligence Policy and Review.
According to the Department of Justice web site:
"The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, under the direction of the Counsel for Intelligence Policy, is responsible for advising the Attorney General on all matters relating to the national security activities of the United States. The Office prepares and files all applications for electronic surveillance and physical search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, assists Government agencies by providing legal advice on matters of national security law and policy, and represents the Department of Justice on variety of interagency committees such as the National Counterintelligence Policy Board. The Office also comments on and coordinates other agencies' views regarding proposed legislation affecting intelligence matters.
The Office serves as adviser to the Attorney General and various client agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense and State Departments, concerning questions of law, regulation, and guidelines as well as the legality of domestic and overseas intelligence operations." (Emphasis added.)
Gorelick's Wall memo was directed to the Department of Justice official responsible for directing other federal agencies' intelligence procedures. Thus, it becomes immaterial if Operation Able Danger's information was rejected by Department of Justice attorneys or by attorneys at the Pentagon. In either case, they were operating under the parameters of Gorelick's Wall memo because she had specifically addressed the document containing the new procedures to the one individual who would insure that other Clinton Administration agencies adhere to the fatal policies set out in it.
In the memo, Gorelick laid out the new policy: "These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted rick of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA (The Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act)is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."' (Emphasis added.)
According to Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon and at least one officer with Operation Able Danger, the military intelligence unit had identified 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers a year before the attacks and they wanted to take that information to the FBI. They say the officers were prevented from doing so by attorneys, apparently with the Department of Defense.
The Wall memo, though, was addressed to the Clinton Administration official responsible for making sure that the Defense Department adhered to the memo's guidelines, making it irrelevant which Clinton Administration lawyers instructed the officers not to take to the information to the FBI information. Either way, that decision was a direct result of the new procedures set in place by Gorelick, Attorney General Janet Reno, and -ultimately- Bill Clinton: putting responsibility squarely in their hands.
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Former head of CIA Al Aqaeda bureau blames Clarke, Tenet for 9/11
GORELICK MISLED ABOUT
HER ROLE IN 'THE WALL'
With the revelation that the 9/11 Commission ignored the work of Operation Able Danger, criticism of flaws in the commission's work have grown, like a leak in a dam, from a trickle to a gushing torrent that threatens to sweep away what little legitimacy remains of the commission's work. Much of the criticism has centered on commission member Jamie Gorelick. Gorelick was placed on the panel by Democrat congressional leaders even though-or perhaps because-she had been a major architect of Clinton Administration policies that eventually made the attacks of 9/11 possible. In 1995, Gorelick , then Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, wrote a memo that extended the wall between intelligence gathering and enforcement "beyond what the law requires."
Attorney General John Ashcroft surprised the commission by releasing that memo during his appearance before the panel in April, 2004. Calls for Gorelick's removal from the panel followed immediately, including from the above quoted Sensenbrenner. However other commission members were quick to come to Gorelick's defense. Not only did Gorelick refuse to remove herself from the panel, she also made an aggressive defense in the media of her continued participation. In doing so, she misled others about her involvement in the wall memo. When asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if the had written a memo helping establish the wall, Gorelick replied: "No, and again, I would refer you back to what others on the commission have said. The wall was a creature of statute...basically the policy that was put out in the mid-'90s, which I didn't sign, wasn't my policy by the way, it was the attorney general's policy." (It is, technically at least, true that Gorelick didn't sign the wall memo. While the memo bore her name, she only initialed it.)
In other words, according to Gorelick, her role in developing policies affecting the intelligence community was, more or less, that of a spectator. But her attempt in 2004 to distance herself from the wall she helped erect stands in stark contrast to her what she told the Senate Intelligence Committee in an October, 1995 appearance. Then, minus the harsh glare of an inquiry looking into the flawed policies the Clinton Administration adopted, she had described a much more active role for herself. According to a release by Senators opposed to Gorelick's participation on the 9/11 commission, Gorelick testified that she had taken on the interaction between law enforcement and intelligence as a "special project." The Senators continued: "At the time of the hearing, Ms. Gorelick stated she had been working for many months on a number of initiatives to address the inevitable intersection between the activities of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the difficult issue of sharing of information between the two." In other words, Gorelick had become the Justice Department's point person on the issue.
Further, Justice Department documents show that Gorelick defended the wall memo after it was distributed. When a Justice Department official overruled objections to provisions of the memo from then U.S. attorney for New York Mary Jo White, Gorelick said in a handwritten note to Attorney General Janet Reno, "I have reviewed and concur."
So, Gorelick misled the media in downplaying her role in the wall. Did she also mislead other commission members? What else did she mislead us about? Did the commission investigate Gorelick's role in developing the Clinton Administration policy of going "beyond what is legally required" in separating intelligence gathering from law enforcement? Even ignoring the recent revelations about the 9/11 Commission ignoring Operation Able Danger's identification of four of the hijackers a year prior to the attacks, these questions alone warrant an independent inquiry into the commission's investigation.
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