Able Danger Round-up from the website, 911Truth.Org
August 2005: An annotated, comprehensive archive of articles on admissions that Mohamed Atta and three of the other alleged 9/11 hijacking ringleaders were under surveillance by military intelligence a year before September 2001. More proof that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash; and why there is far more to the story than The New York Times has reported...†
Mohamed Atta and three other alleged ringleaders of the 9/11 hijacking team were under surveillance by an elite US military intelligence program in the summer of 2000, a New York Times story of Aug. 9, 2005 revealed.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) broke the story to the Times after officers with knowledge of the Able Danger program contacted him. Two officers have since gone on record to say they once had Mohamed Atta in their sights. They claim a recommendation to round up Atta and what they termed his "Brooklyn Cell" (!) was rejected in the fall of 2000 by commanders at MacDill Air Force Base, supposedly on the advice of Defense Department lawyers. As of Sept. 2, the Pentagon says three additional people with knowledge of Able Danger have corroborated the story.
This dossier by Nicholas Levis rounds up Able Danger news reports to date, as well as analyses by various authors. The views expressed herein are the writers'' own and do not necessarily reflect those of 911Truth.org.
Contents
Archived Articles:
New York Times articles on "Able Danger"
Reactions: The Families & The Commission
Commentaries and Analysis Around the Web
Analysis
The corporate media''s Able Danger stories have the character of a "limited hangout," meaning that certain facts apparently embarrassing to the US government are promoted to create the appearance of disclosure--even as other, far more important and damaging matters are obscured or ignored. Chief among these is that Atta and his friends were known to the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of several countries, including the United States, long before Able Danger. Furthermore, the revelations make mincemeat of both the official FBI timeline of Atta''s movements and of the 9/11 Commission''s already spotty credibility.
10 Salient Points About Able Danger
1) In early 2000 the secret Able Danger program under the US Special Operations Command supposedly identified four men as Al-Qaeda operatives working in the United States. Their names were Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The US government has named Atta as the overall ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers. Atta and al-Shehhi came to the United States from Germany in 2000 and at times lived together in Florida, where they attended the same flight schools. They have been named as the pilots of the two World Trade Center crash planes. They were members of the al-Qaeda "Hamburg Cell," which the government says also provided the alleged suicide pilot of Flight 93, Ziad Jarrah. Almidhar and Alhazmi are considered to have played an important role in organizing personnel for the attack, and are said to have been among the Flight 77 hijackers.
2) Able Danger used sophisticated electronic "data-mining" or "matrix" techniques to locate potential terrorists. But according to a former Pentagon contractor who worked on the program, James D. Smith, Able Danger obtained Atta''s name and photograph from "a private researcher in California, who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East." (NYT, 8/23/2005) Who was this private reasearcher?
Atta''s photo was added to a wall chart plotting "Brooklyn Cell" connections, which included the other three suspects so far named. The chart was ordered destroyed after objections from Defense Department lawyers, according to the officers who have come forward (Col. Anthony Shaffer and Capt. Scott Phillpott). But a spokesman for the Special Operations Command, of which Able Danger was a part, says "that ''we have negative indications'' that destruction of such a chart was advised by military lawyers." (Reuters, 9/1/01) In that case, who did advise it, and why?
3) The original Times story contains a blanket statement that hides the most important facts of all: "The account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks."
This is the heart of the "limited hangout." The Times statement is false for at least two reasons:
- Already in September 2001, German authorities told their own press that the CIA had Atta and the Hamburg Cell under observation from Jan. to June 2000, while they were still in Germany. (This counts as an "assertion.") The German authorities say the CIA did not inform them of its activities, and that they only found out after the attacks. (See Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01, archived as third article here, among many other German reports at that time.) According to the German authorities and the FBI, Atta received a travel visa from the US Consulate in Berlin in May, and first left for the United States via Prague in June 2000.
- How did the CIA get on Atta''s tail in the first place? It could be because in March 1999, "German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him." And that is how the New York Times itself reported it ("C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11," NYT Feb. 24, 2004). In late 1999, the CIA attempted to recruit Mamoun Darkazanli, an associate of the "Hamburg Cell" members. (Chicago Tribune, 11/16/2002, archived here.)
4) The exact same four names reportedly uncovered by Able Danger--Atta, al-Shehhi, Almidhar and Alhazmi--were also provided to the CIA on Aug. 23, 2001 by the Mossad, as part of a list of nineteen men the Israelis said were planning a terror attack in the United States (as reported in Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, Oct. 2002). Note that Israeli intelligence is known to have maintained a large spy ring in the United States, many of whom posed as art students in attempts to enter federal facilities. About 60 suspected "art students" were rounded up by US authorities before 9/11, and a similar number were arrested in the post-Sept. 11 crackdown. All were ultimately deported or released. (See Forward 3/15/02, Haaretz and Wayne Madsen''s Israeli "art students" dossier, which includes the 60-page text of a suppressed DEA report on the spy ring.) Forward presents claims that the "Israelis in the United States [were] spying on a common enemy, radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism."
In particular, a group of five Israelis arrested in New Jersey shortly after the September 11 attacks and held for more than two months was subjected to an unusual number of polygraph tests and interrogated by a series of government agencies including the FBI''s counterintelligence division, which by some reports remains convinced that Israel was conducting an intelligence operation. The five Israelis worked for a moving company with few discernable assets that closed up shop immediately afterward and whose owner fled to Israel. (link)
A couple of the "art students" held Florida addresses just blocks away from Atta and al-Shehhi. Whether or not they were spying on the pair, the list provided to the CIA on Aug. 23, 2001 indicates Mossad was on the trail of the alleged 9/11 hijackers in advance of Sept. 11.
5) The Mossad''s list may have been what finally prompted the CIA for the first time to place Almidhar and Alhazmi (but not Atta or al-Shehhi) on a general watch-list available to the FBI, in late August 2001. However, Almidhar and Alhazmi were under CIA surveillance no later than January 2000, when CIA asked Malaysian intelligence to spy on a purported al-Qaeda conference in Kuala Lumpur. (The official mythology long ago incorporated this as fact, e.g., see Frontline). The official story holds that "Hamburg Cell" member Ramzi Binalshibh also attended the Kuala Lumpur conference. He traveled from there back to Hamburg, where he supposedly convinced Atta & co. to tackle the operation codenamed "Big Wedding," i.e. 9/11. (The US government says purported 9/11 co-mastermind Binalshibh has been held in custody at undisclosed locations since Sept. 2002.)
6) Meanwhile, Almidhar and Alhazmi left the Malaysia conference via Thailand on their way to San Diego. There, they were met and helped out financially by Omar al-Bayoumi, a recipient of much largesse from the Saudi state and from the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the US. They spent two months living under the roof of long-time FBI informant Abdusattar Shaikh (whose name has been all over the press, although The 9/11 Commission Report pretends it''s still a secret). Another coincidence, according to the official story. Though the CIA identified Almidhar and Alhazmi as al-Qaeda operatives involved previously in the bombing of the USS Cole, it did not place them on the watch-list until Aug 2001. Recently we''ve learned (from Newsweek, 6/20/2005) that a Jan. 2000 CIA directive to place them on the watch-list was intentionally blocked by an unnamed person at the CIA Counterterrorist Center. The current story on that is an operative told George Tenet and others at the CIA she had forwarded the alert as agreed to the FBI, without actually doing so.
7) The official FBI timeline of the alleged hijackers'' movements holds that Atta entered the United States for the first time in June 2000. Yet many witnesses have said they dealt with him in the period from April to June 2000 (for one example, consider Johnelle Bryant''s incredible story of Atta''s attempt to get a loan from the Agriculture Department). Daniel Hopsicker uncovered much about Atta''s early months in Florida indicating shady dealings, including many press accounts of witness statements verifying his presence in Florida before June 2000. Now we hear that Able Danger also tagged him as being in the United States months before June 2000. It''s almost as though there were two Attas in the spring of 2000--an urban planning student finishing up the semester in Hamburg, and a party animal with drug connections in Florida.
8) The Kean-Hamilton 9/11 Commission received a briefing on Able Danger in advance of their report''s July 2004 publication. This included the information that Atta & co. were specifically identified, which the ever-affable Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg at first denied and then admitted. (NYT, 8/11/2005) Able Danger was kept out of The 9/11 Commission Report, and the former Commissioners have been forced into a series of damage-control statements. Any credibility they had left is now a dead letter. (Interestingly, the Commission members on Aug. 30 summarily canceled two sessions of their laughable "9/11 Public Discourse Project," scheduled for Sept. 1 and 12, 2005.)
9) Curt Weldon is a hardline war supporter whose just-published book advocates an immediate attack on Iran. As the initial channel for the Able Danger revelations, he has attempted to give it all an anti-Clinton spin. This in turn is prompting Democrats to back away from the material. In fact, the Able Danger leakers may have approached other politicians before Weldon took up their cause. The facts they have revealed about a military intelligence program allow no simple anti-Clinton or anti-Bush interpretration. Able Danger was originally approved in 1998 by Clinton''s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hugh Shelton, and "unceremoniously axed" in February 2001, at the beginning of the Bush administration. (PA Times Herald, 8/13/2005)
A Tommy Franks Detour
We''ll detour here briefly to note that after Sept. 11, Gen. Franks oversaw both of the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the same Tommy Franks who raised the prospect of military rule in the United States in his notorious Dec. 2003 interview by Cigar Aficianado. After an oily paean to 200-plus years of constitutional democracy that sounds suspiciously like an obituary, Franks informed cigar consumers about
the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the western world--it may be in the United States of America--that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.
Of his activities on Sept. 11, Franks told Cigar Aficianado:
Kathy [Mrs. Franks] was with me. And we were headed to Pakistan for a visit with President [Pervez] Musharraf. We had stopped in Souda Bay, Crete, to get gas for the jet. Kathy and I had walked into a small market in this little town, because that''s where one buys the best olives in the world. We went back to this little hotel. I was about to take a nap. There was a rap on the door. And I opened the door and one of my assistants said, "Turn on the television." I turned on the TV just in time to see the second tower strike. My wife would tell you that the first words out of my mouth were "Osama bin Laden." That''s the first thing that I said. I got on the telephone, called back, talked to people in my headquarters, raced off to the jet, got back here on the 12th of September, talked to [Secretary of Defense] Don Rumsfeld, and we started planning for operations in Afghanistan.
Article
Yes, someone at his base had blocked the investigation of Atta in 2000, but at least the first words out of his mouth on Sept. 11 were "Osama Bin Laden." And why was Franks on his way to see the Pakistani president? When did he and Rumsfeld really start planning for operations in Afghanistan? Let us recall that on Sept. 9, 2001 the National Security Council placed on Bush''s desk a worldwide "gameplan to remove al-Qaeda off the face of the earth." This included a strategy to force the Taliban to hand over Bin Ladin under threat of military invasion. The US military deployments underway to South and Central Asia at the time were consistent with an operation against Afghanistan.
During the first few months of 2001, the US provided $125 million in aid to Afghanistan, while also pursuing covert diplomacy designed to get the Taliban to make peace with the Northern Alliance, stabilize the country, and allow the building of an oil pipeline. When the back-channel talks broke down in May, the negotiators delivered threats that the Taliban faced "a carpet of gold, or a carpet of bombs" by mid-October--exactly when the invasion occurred. As of September 9, all that was missing for a war in Afghanistan was a casus belli that the American people could unequivocally support. (See timeline of US preparations for the Afghanistan invasion prior to September 11.)
Conclusion
To review: German authorities fed the CIA information about the Hamburg cell. Without telling the Germans, the CIA independently observed the Hamburg cell in Germany, at least until Atta and al-Shehhi left for the United States. Once they were in the United States, Able Danger identified Atta and al-Shehhi and was blocked from passing their names to other agencies. The Mossad knew about them, and passed their names to the CIA. The CIA was on the tail of Almidhar and Alhazmi before they came to the US, and spied on them at the Kuala Lumpur conference that supposedly initiated the 9/11 attacks. That pair stayed in San Diego with an FBI informant, but the FBI says it didn''t know. They were only put on the general watch-list in August 2001. On Sept. 11, the FBI immediately knew which flight schools to visit to pick up the trail of Atta & co. Finally, the FBI timeline suggests Atta was in two places at once in the spring of 2000.
No matter where Mohamed Atta went, someone was spying on him. But the official story would have us believe each of these surveillances was an isolated incident, and that the failure to stop 9/11 was due to a series of oddities, coincidences and close calls, with no pattern behind it all except for bureaucratic intransigence.
Now recall the long-known accounts of how FBI officials at the Islamic Radicals Unit prior to Sept. 11 actively obstructed and killed field investigations that could have led to the alleged 9/11 perpetrators. (See links to stories here.) Add in the stories of high-level foreign intelligence warnings from various countries, including specific information that the United States would be attacked using hijacked planes directed against prominent targets. Add the widespread knowledge that 9/11 was imminent among individuals who tried to warn the United States, and the reports of insider trading based on prior knowledge of the 9/11 events.
There is an explanation for these facts that is simpler than the official theory of luck for the hijackers and stupidity in government. The alternative hypothesis holds that a network ensconced within multiple US and allied foreign agencies was aware of the alleged 9/11 plotters'' movements, and acted to protect them by blocking information flows and suspending investigations.
The motive may have been to shield a covert operation that was using the men, whether they knew about it or not. (A military spokesperson once said that five of the alleged 9/11 hijackers including Atta shared names with men who trained at US military bases, and in its subsequent denials the Pentagon provided no further clarification on who the trainees might have otherwise been.)
Or else the motive may have been to allow the 9/11 plot to succeed, as a necessary sacrifice to launch "The New American Century." Or else the motive was to protect the patsies and dupes who would later be blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks, if in fact the entire plot was orchestrated by elements within the US and allied government from the go.
The obvious possibility that the failures were intentional, and that the alleged hijackers were not just lucky but living under a protective veil, has never been raised by official investigations, the 9/11 Commission, or the corporate media. Why not?
ARCHIVE
New York Times articles on "Able Danger"
(6 out of 16
search results as of Sep 2)
Four in
9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in ''00 (NYT, 8/9/2005)
... 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
account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the
lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government
agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks.
9/11
Commission''s Staff Rejected Report on Early Identification of Chief
Hijacker (NYT, 8/11/2005)
... Al Felzenberg, who served as the commission''s chief spokesman, said
earlier this week that staff members who were briefed about Able Danger
at a first meeting, in October 2003, did not remember hearing anything
about Mr. Atta or an American terrorist cell. On Wednesday, however, Mr.
Felzenberg said the uniformed officer who briefed two staff members in
July 2004 had indeed mentioned Mr. Atta...
Officer Says Pentagon Barred Sharing Pre-9/11 Qaeda Data With F.B.I.
(NYT, 8/16/2005)
... Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small,
highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had
identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other
future hijackers by name by mid-2000... But he said military lawyers
forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled
meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau
without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta
and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being
planned... Colonel Shaffer said he assumed that by speaking out
publicly this week about Able Danger, he might effectively be ending his
military career and limiting his ability to participate in
intelligence work in the government. "I''m proud of my operational
record and I love what I do," he said. "But there comes a time - and I
believe the time for me is now -- to stand for something, to stand for
what is right."...
Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader Was Named Before Attacks
(NYT, 8/23/2005)
... "My story is consistent," said Captain Phillpott, who managed the
program for the Pentagon''s Special Operations Command. "Atta was
identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000." ...
Representative Weldon also arranged an interview on Monday with a former
employee of a defense contractor who said he had helped create a chart
in 2000 for the intelligence program that included Mr. Atta''s
photograph and name. The former contractor, James D. Smith, said that
Mr. Atta''s name and photograph were obtained through a private
researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from
contacts in the Middle East...
Senate Panel Plans Hearing Into Reports on Terrorist
(NYT, 9/1/2005)
... The committee''s chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of
Pennsylvania, said in an interview that he was scheduling a public
hearing on Sept. 14 "to get to the bottom of this" and that the military
officers "appear to have credibility." ...
Pentagon Finds More Who Recall Atta Intel (Associated Press
in NYT, 9/2/2005)
... Four intelligence officials provided the first extensive briefing
for reporters on the outcome of their interviews with people associated
with Able Danger and their review of documents... They said they
interviewed at least 80 people over a three-week period and found three,
besides Philpott and Shaffer, who said they remember seeing a chart that
either mentioned Atta by name as an al-Qaida operative or showed his
photograph. Four of the five recalled a chart with a pre-9/11 photo of
Atta... Downs and the other officials said they could not rule out that
the chart recalled by Shaffer, Philpott and three others had been
destroyed in compliance with regulations pertaining to intelligence
information about people inside the United States. They also did not
rule out that the five simply had faulty recollections. ...
Other News Reports, Aug 13-Sep 2:
Congressman:
Defense Knew 9/11 Hijackers (San Francisco Chronicle/Associated
Press, 8/9/2005)
The Sept. 11 commission will investigate a claim
that U.S.
defense intelligence officials identified ringleader Mohammed Atta and
three other hijackers as a likely part of an al-Qaida cell more than a
year before the hijackings but didn''t forward the information to law
enforcement... [NOTE: This is bizarre. There is no 9/11 Commission,
it was disbanded in July 2004. Or did they get a lifetime appointment?]
... Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he was unaware of the
intelligence until the latest reports surfaced. But Pentagon spokesman
Bryan Whitman said the 9/11 Commission looked into the matter during its
investigation into government missteps leading to the attacks and chose
not to include it in the final report. [9/11 Commission co-chair Lee]
Hamilton said 9/11 Commission staff members learned of Able Danger
during a meeting with military personnel in October 2003 in Afghanistan,
but the staff members do not recall learning of a connection between
Able Danger and any of the four terrorists Weldon mentioned. ...
Reports: 9/11 clue hid in Tampa (St. Petersburg Times,
8/10/2005)
... In fall 2000, the unit recommended SOCom share the information with
the FBI, [PA Rep. Curt] Weldon said in an interview Tuesday. But lawyers
at either the Pentagon or SOCom determined the men were in the country
legally, Weldon said. He said he based his information on intelligence
sources. When members of Able Danger made their presentation at command
headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Weldon said,
the legal team
"put stickies on the faces of Mohammed Atta on the chart," to reinforce
that he was off-limits. "They said, "You can''t talk to Atta because
he''s here on a green card,"'' Weldon said. ...
[Who is this legal
team? Who dispatched them? What''s this about a green card? None of the
alleged hijackers had green cards.]
Weldon
wants answers on Atta (Pennsylvania
Times Herald,
8/13/2005)
... The Times Herald broke the Able Danger story in its June 19
edition. The story eluded the national media until early last week. A
small group of Defense Intelligence Agency employees ran the Able Danger
operation from fall 1999 to February 2001 - just seven months before the
terrorist attacks - when the operation was unceremoniously axed,
according to a former defense intelligence official familiar with the
program. The former official asked not to be identified.
In their efforts to locate terrorists, the operation''s technology
analysts used data mining and fusion techniques to search terabyte-sized
data sets from open source material - such as travel manifests, bank
transactions, hotel records, credit applications - and compared this
material with classified information. ... By charting the movements and
transactions of suspected terrorists, the operation linked Atta to
al-Qaida. Between fall 1999 and early 2000, the intelligence team
concluded that Atta, and two others, were likely part of a terrorist
cell in Brooklyn. ... At that point, Able Danger wanted the FBI,
assisted by Special Operations Command, to track the group. But to the
team''s surprise, SOCOM''s legal counsel shot down the idea. ...
US
officer says Pentagon prevented al-Qaida reports reaching the FBI
(The Guardian, 8/18/2005)
... The commissioners issued a statement last week saying the claim that
Mohammed Atta and other plotters had been identified before 2001 was not
supported by official documents the commission had requested. They said
Atta had not been mentioned in the 2003 briefing on Able Danger in
Afghanistan, and the allegation made by the naval officer in 2004, that
Atta was attached to an al-Qaida cell in Brooklyn, was incompatible with
official records of his movements.
Col Shaffer countered that the commission was never given all the
relevant documentation by the Pentagon. "I''m told confidently by the
person who moved the material over, that the 9/11 commission received
two briefcase-sized containers of documents. I can tell you for a fact
that would not be one-twentieth of the information that Able Danger
consisted of during the time we spent investigating," the intelligence
officer told Fox News. ...
Errors of
Commission. The hijacking of the probe into the 9-11 hijackers (Village
Voice, 8/23/2005)
... By 1998, Atta was living in a Hamburg apartment (later found to be
an Al Qaeda cell) and under surveillance by German intelligence. The
Germans were passing along what they knew to the CIA. There are
suggestions that Atta may have been known to U.S. intelligence as far
back as 1993 and, according to the German press, the CIA itself had
other people in the apartment under surveillance... In 2004, the German
prosecutor who was in charge of the investigation was scheduled to
testify about this Hamburg cell to the 9-11 Commission. But his
testimony was unexpectedly canceled. The documents from the
investigation are reported to be missing. ...
What Weldon and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer are claiming is that
the Army Intelligence and Special Operations Command in 1998-1999
launched a secret program, Able Danger, to map out the international Al
Qaeda network. One Defense official has said the project was approved by
General Henry H. Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Shelton said recently that he does not remember the project but that "we
had lots of initiatives to find out where Al Qaeda was." ...
The 9-11 Commission was established to get to the bottom of the attacks
that day. However, it often skipped over key issues:
*Bush and Cheney were interviewed together, in secret, with no record of
the meeting.
*Florida senator Bob Graham''s joint congressional inquiry had unearthed
the outlines of what may have been a Saudi spy operation linked to Al
Qaeda and operating in the U.S. But the commission dismissed Saudi
involvement and cleared the royal family.
*The commission never seriously inquired into the activities of
Pakistan, whose secret intelligence agency had created the Taliban and
subsequently backed Al Qaeda.
*The commission had no time for FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who came
up with one tale after another of fishy operations in the FBI
translations section, including the mind-boggling information that FBI
interpreters were being sent to Guant·namo to translate languages they
could not speak.
*The congressional joint inquiry discovered that an FBI informant on the
West Coast, unbeknownst to the Bureau, rented an apartment to two
hijackers. When Graham tried to interview the landlord, the FBI refused.
Later a top FBI official told Graham that the White House had blocked
the informant''s testimony. The commission dismissed all this.
*The commission skipped over the scandalous mess at the FAA, suppressing
a staff study saying that the agency had ignored numerous warnings
issued in the months before the attack. After the election, the
commission released parts of this study, leaving some of it classified.
*The commission never seriously inquired into intelligence failures at
the Hamburg cell where Atta lived off and on and which was a key center
for planning the attacks.
Every day it looks as if the government''s main probe of 9-11 has
turned into a political fix.
Three
more assert Pentagon knew of 9/11 ringleader (Reuters,
September 1, 2005)
... Pat Downs, a senior policy analyst in the office of the
undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told reporters that as part
of the review, the Pentagon interviewed 80 people. Downs said that three
more people, as well as Phillpott and Shaffer, recalled the existence of
an intelligence chart identifying Atta by name. Four of the five
recalled a photo of Atta accompanying the chart, Downs said. Pentagon
officials declined to identify the three by name, but said they were an
analyst with the military''s Special Operations Command, an analyst with
the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center and a contractor who
supported the center. Downs said all five were considered "credible
people." But officials said an exhaustive search of tens of thousands of
documents and electronic files related to Able Danger failed to find the
chart or other documents corroborating the identification of Atta.
Phillpott has said Atta was identified by Able Danger by January or
February of 2000. ...
Reactions: The Families & The Commission
Statement of
September 11th Advocates Regarding Surveillance of Mohammed Atta
(8/10/2005)
... By legislative mandate, Public Law 107-306, November 27, 2002, the
9/11 Independent Commission was charged with providing a full accounting
of the 9/11 attacks to the American people. As has been indicated
repeatedly since the release of the Commission''s Final Report and via
the NY Times article published yesterday, the 9/11 Commission failed to
provide said full accounting. As a result, each Commissioner and Staff
Member should be held accountable. ...
Kean-Hamilton
9/11 Commission Co-Chairs Statement on ABLE DANGER (8/12/2005)
[Passing the buck to Dieter Snell]
... On July 12, 2004, as the
drafting and editing process for the Report was coming to an end (the
Report was released on July 22, and editing continued to occur through
July 17), a senior staff member, Dieter Snell, accompanied by another
staff member, met with the officer at one of the Commission''s
Washington, D.C. offices. A representative of the DOD also attended the
interview. ...
September
11th Advocates: We
would like to thank Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer
(8/17/2005)
... It is our fervent wish that any other individuals who have
information find the strength and courage, as exhibited by Lt. Colonel
Shaffer, to come forward and that in doing so they suffer no
consequences but instead are properly rewarded for their patriotism.
Commentaries and Analysis Around the Web
How Bin Laden and
Mohamed Atta Escaped Gen. Franks (Mark G. Levey, Daily Kos)
... Tommy Franks, retired U.S. Army four star General, and long-time
Texas friend of President George W. Bush, was in command of two of the
worst ever counter-terrorism failures of U.S. military intelligence.
Under Frank''s command, Army intelligence released Mohamed Atta along
with the main 9/11 hijackers from surveillance in 2000. Then, in early
2002, Usama bin Laden slipped past U.S. forces under Franks and escaped
into Pakistan. ...
Legal Aspects
of Data Mining and Able Danger (Jon Holdaway, Intel Dump)
... First, the "law" cited [as a justification for dropping the Able
Danger surveillance of Atta and co.] is Executive Order 12333, which
defines the Intelligence Community and its authority to conduct
operations.... The general rule for EO 12333 is basically, "thou shalt
not collect information (that is, spy on) US Persons, except . . ."
The "except" portion is critical. There are 13 exceptions under which an
intelligence agency can collect information on US Persons. These
include for personnel security investigations, for administrative
purposes, when the subject gives consent to collect. The two most
important categories are for Foreign Intelligence purposes (that is,
collecting information on US Persons who are agents of a foreign power)
and for Counterintelligence purposes...
Army Intel Unit
Exposes Massive FBI 9.11 Cover-Up (Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Morning
News)
... 9.11 Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg ... cited the fact that the
information provided to them by military officers in the unit did not
agree with the FBI''s timeline concerning Atta''s arrival in the U.S.
Information provided by a military officer from Able Danger did not make
it into the final report, "because it was not consistent with what the
commission knew about Atta''s whereabouts before the attacks," ...
Felzenberg said. ... Staff investigators became wary of the officer,
Felzenberg stated, after he stated that the military unit had identified
Atta as having been in the United States by late 1999 or early 2000.
''The investigators knew this was impossible, since travel records
confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000."
...
The 911 Commission did no independent investigation of their own. Instead they relied entirely on the much criticized and beleaguered FBI... an Agency whose competence has been questioned by prominent individuals across all party lines... An Agency which has never managed to offer a coherent account of such investigative niceties as an accurate chronology of when Atta arrived in the United States, and what he did (and with whom) when he got here. Here''s the big question nobody seems to be ready to ask: Upon what basis did the 9.11 Commission conclude that the FBI''s timeline was correct and that an elite Army Intel unit was mistaken in saying they were tracking Mohamed Atta roaming freely across America during 1999 and 2000? We''d love to hear Felzenberg hem and haw his way around that. So too, we suspect, would relatives of the innocent murdered victims...
Calling unwelcome attention to the massive inaccuracies in the FBI''s
timeline was probably not Republican Curt Weldon''s purpose when he
brought the story to light... But if his efforts to implicate Clinton
Administration officials results in highlighting the FBI''s incomplete
and corrupt investigation, we think he get some kind of medal, maybe
called the Inadvertent ''Dumb-Ass'' Hero Award...
... ABC''s Brian Ross reported: "Johnelle Bryant is the USDA loan
officer in Homestead, Florida, who Atta approached in May of 2000, long
before al-Qaeda and bin Laden were household words." Mr. Atta swung by
in May, 2000, and Ms. Bryant remembers quite a bit about it. "At first,"
she says, "he refused to speak with me," on the grounds that she was, in
his words, "but a female." "I told him that if he was interested in
getting a farm-service agency loan in my servicing area, then he would
need to deal with me."
Ms. Bryant says the applicant was asking for $650,000 to start a
crop-dusting business. His plan was to buy a six-seater twin-prop and
then remove the seats. "He wanted to build a chemical tank that would
fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the
aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."
Here''s the kicker, or rather, the smoking gun: Before Atta left her
office he filled out a loan application. Loan applications are dated,
aren''t they? That''s why Johnelle Bryant knows exactly when Atta was in
her office. so, without even referencing any of the other numerous
indicators of Atta''s presence in the U.S., one thing that can be said
with absolute certainty:
The FBI''s timeline, their chronology of events, the essential tool of
any homicide investigation, is wrong. And not wrong by accident, either.
Wrong on purpose. Wrong by design.
By the way: don''t try dropping by Bryant''s Homestead office to confirm
the details with her, as we did...She''s no longer there.
Cong.
Weldon''s Preemptive Strike Against the CIA (Mark G. Levey,
Daily Kos)
...Weldon''s widely-publicized campaign of disinformation has spun the
story so that blame is laid at the feet of the Clinton Administration
for the 9/11 attacks after the CIA and DoD failed to notify the FBI
about the presence inside the U.S. of terrorists known to have entered
the country in late 1999 and early 2000... 9/11 could have been avoided.
The al-Qaeda cells could have been rolled up, if the order had been
given by President Bush. Without that order, nobody was going to be
arrested. ...
Why is the
media burying new revelations about 9/11?
(Joseph Kay and Barry Grey, World Socialist Web Site)
... What has been said or reported in response to the Able Danger
revelations consists largely of evasions and obfuscations. It seems that
in the scramble to cover up their past omissions and lies, Bush
administration officials and 9/11 commission members have failed to get
their story straight. They are tripping over themselves with
contradictory statements and inane disclaimers. At a press briefing on
Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared he had no
knowledge of Able Danger. "I have no idea," he said. "I''ve never heard
of it until this morning. I understand our folks are trying to look into
it."...
9/11
Revisionism, Revisited: The mystery of ''Able Danger'' (Justin
Raimondo, Antiwar.com)
... The list of "mistakes," glitches, and tales of staggering
incompetence that preceded the worst "intelligence failure" since a
certain wooden horse was brought behind the walls of Troy, is getting
rather suspiciously long.... It is interesting to note that the
Commission staffer who received - and discounted - the "Able Danger"
information, Dietrich L. Snell, is the prosecutor who convicted Abdul
Hakim Murad in the "Bojinka" terrorist conspiracy case, a 1995 plot to
crash airplanes into several U.S. landmark buildings, including the
Pentagon and the World Trade Center - a scheme that later morphed into
the 9/11 conspiracy. Murad offered to cooperate with investigators
in return for a sentence reduction, but prosecutors, led by Snell,
turned him down. [Note: Snell now works for Eliot Spitzer in New
York!] ... In retrospect, it appears as if Atta and his fellow mass
murderers had a guardian angel - or rather, a guardian devil - watching
over them. At every turn, just when it seemed they would be apprehended,
fate - or whomever - intervened, obstructing the normal means of
interception and keeping the conspiracy on track. It''s almost as if
they traveled in a security bubble, protected by - what? By whom? ...
Enabling Danger
(Kristen Breitweiser weblog, HuffingtonPost.com, 8/20/2005)
... Additionally, some questions have been raised about the ability of
DIA to label or "identify" Atta as an al Qaeda operative as early as
2000. To me, it would seem logical that DIA was able to do so, after
all, in 2000 Atta was living in Hamburg, Germany and having regular
contacts with other known al Qaeda operatives namely Ramzi Binalshibh,
Said Bahaji, Zakariya Essabar, Muhammed Zammar, Mounir Motassadeq,
Abdelghani Mzoudi, and Mamoun Darkazanli. We know that the German
government had Atta''s cell - the Hamburg cell - under surveillance and
we also know that our CIA was conducting parallel surveillance during
the same time period. Information surrounding the Hamburg cell and the
surveillance is documented throughout the German trials of Mzoudi and
Mottasedeq--two of the al Qaeda operatives that were prosecuted for
their ties to the 9/11 attacks but eventually released after the United
States refused to cooperate with the German courts by sharing
intelligence evidence linking the men to the 9/11 plot...
The speed by which our government was able to accumulate such a vast
amount of information immediately following the 9/11 attacks (in less
than 24 hours) is the most persuasive proof that our government had the
hijackers under its surveillance. FBI agents descended upon the very
flight schools (out of the thousands of flight schools in our country)
that the hijackers attended within two hours of the attacks. They were
seen removing files from the flight schools buildings. Furthermore,
photos of the hijackers and details about their activities in the final
days before the attacks were also immediately presented to the American
people. I mean you are talking about an intelligence apparatus that
according to official accounts was completely in the dark about the
plotting and planning of the 9/11 attacks...
Additionally, when one carefully reads the 9/11 chronology and
information provided in the public record, it becomes increasingly clear
that the CIA''s repeated failure to share information with the FBI about
two of the 9/11 hijackers--al Mihdhar and al Hazmi--was purposeful.
There exist at least seven instances between January 2000 and September
11th, 2001, that the CIA withheld vital information from the FBI about
these two hijackers who were inside this country training for the
attacks. Once, twice, maybe even three times could be considered merely
careless oversights. But at least seven documented times? To me, that
suggests something else....
The spinning of
the smoking guns. More pre-9/11 US intelligence connections to
al-Qaeda exposed and spun (Larry Chin, Online Journal)
... The furor over new stories involving alleged 9/11 hijacker Mohammed
Atta and US-bin Laden go-between Tarik Hamdi pits spinmasters against
other spinmasters--Kean 9/11 Commission supporters versus hawkish
Bush-linked 9/11 Commission attackers, neocons versus neoliberals, and
intelligence and law enforcement agencies are at each other''s throats
again over "intelligence failures." ...
While the spin has dwelled exclusively around "anti-terrorism" and
various red herrings, and the supposed frustration over the tracking and
arrest of al-Qaeda members, the true evidence trail continues to be
purposely ignored. This trail leads directly to high-level US government
officials and US intelligence agencies themselves (and US intelligence
branches such as Pakistan''s ISI), for their nurturing, guiding and
placement of "Islamic terrorist" intelligence assets (including Atta,
Hamdi, bin Laden and al-Qaeda), and US complicity in 9/11...
Newly unsealed court papers charge that Tarik A. Hamdi, an Iraqi-born
American citizen and a former resident of Herndon, Virginia (a suburb of
Washington, DC, and a hotbed of intelligence-connected groups), and a
direct and key American contact for Osama bin Laden, is now a member of
the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Ankara, Turkey. According to the affadavit
from Customs Agent David Kane, and facts confirmed by US authorities
(including the FBI), Hamdi supplied a satellite telephone battery to bin
Laden, who was in Afghanistan in 1998.
Hamdi, former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, and
Pakistani journalist (and ISI "favorite") Rahimullah Yusufszai were
among the few go-betweens with bin Laden who set up interviews with bin
Laden for American journalists, such as John Miller (now a Commanding
Officer in the Los Angeles Police Department''s Counter-Terrorism
Bureau). During this period, Cannistraro, Miller and Yusufszai worked
for ABC News. Hamdi also had a working relationship with recently
deceased ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, who tapped Hamdi as a Middle East
expert more than once.
As noted by Chaim Kupferberg, "Cannistraro, a former CIA
counterterrorism chief, provided covert aid to the Afghani mujahadeen in
the late 80s, as well as supervised CIA operations with the contras. He
was also a point man in the notoriously circumspect investigation at
Lockerbie." ...
The relationship Hamdi enjoyed with ABC, Miller, and Cannistraro leads
to deeper issues that go to the heart of the 9/11 operation, as detailed
by Kupferberg in "The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11". Kupferberg
points out that " . . . if the bin Laden threat was, pre-9/11, a
close-knit propaganda campaign, one would expect to find the same names
showing up repeatedly in combination with one another." Among the short
list of "same names" who managed the flow of available information on
bin Laden, we find Miller and Cannistraro. ... " . . . it is my
contention that al-Qaida and bin Laden are elaborate ''legends'' set up
to promote a plausibly sophisticated and ferocious enemy to stand
against American interests. I am not, however, implying that bin Laden
himself is a total fabrication. Rather, it is my contention that
confederates, believing themselves to act on behalf of bin Laden, are
being set up in a ''false flag operation'' to perform operations as
their controllers see fit."
PROJECT "ABLE
DANGER"
(Dennis L. Cuddy, NewsWithViews.com, 8/23/2005)
... Christian Elflein and others wrote in the FOCUS article that
"U.S. agents followed him (Atta) mainly in the area around Frankfurt am
Main and noted that Atta bought large quantities of chemicals for the
possible production of explosives....On May 18, 2000 the U.S. Embassy in
Berlin gave (Atta) a visa....Strange that the visa application and
granting it happened in the period when the (CIA) was still observing
the suspicious buying of chemicals by the person (Atta)
concerned....Someone from the (German) intelligence service (told)
FOCUS: ''We can no longer exclude the possibility that the Americans
wanted to keep an eye on Atta after his entry in the USA.''...German
security experts are still stunned about the speed with which the FBI
could present the conspirative ties of Atta and his presumed Hamburg
accomplices. ''As (if all it needed was) a push on a button,'' an
insider says, ''As if the Americans for a long time already had loads of
info on their computers about the culprits.''"
At this point, it is worth mentioning that Yossef Bodansky (director of
the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare) in TARGET AMERICA: TERRORISM IN THE U.S. TODAY
(1993) referred to a large Islamist network spanning the U.S. including
"all the components of a mature terrorist support system (with) safe
houses in major cities, weapons, ammunition, money, systems to provide
medical and legal aid, false identity papers, and intelligence for the
operative." The point in including this here is to ask how Bodansky
would know about all this unless the terrorist network were already
being monitored by the federal government? ...
Weldon Says Records
Were Ordered Destroyed (Dom Giordano Show, Philadelphia,
8/29/2005)
... Congressman Curt Weldon (R - Pennsylvania) gave another exclusive
interview to Dom Giordano this evening (Monday) and broke the news that
he will be giving a speech on September 8th (next Monday) during which
he will present yet another ''Able Danger'' witness. This new witness
will attest (and will swear under oath when called) that he was "ordered
to destroy records" relating to the ''Able Danger'' program. ...
###
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