Conservatives baselessly linked Sandy Berger to Atta investigation [View All]

[struggle4progress]

Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, Fox News host John Gibson, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette national security writer Jack Kelly speculated -- citing no evidence -- that former national security adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger sought to remove or replace documents from the National Archives that would have exposed the Clinton administration's purported failure in 1999 to act on intelligence regarding lead September 11, 2001, hijacker Mohammed Atta. Their baseless speculation came amid allegations, which have been called into serious question, that the 9-11 Commission omitted from its report intelligence documents from 1999 that identified Atta as a potential threat.

The Washington Times reprinted Kelly's column on August 15, despite an August 14 Time magazine article that called into question the veracity of the column's allegations that a military intelligence unit known as Able Danger had identified Atta as a suspected terrorist more than a year before the 9-11 attacks. Time noted that Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), who claimed to have handed an Able Danger chart with Atta's name and photo on it to then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley just after the September 11 attacks, admitted that "he's no longer certain Atta's name was on that original document." According to Time: "The congressman says he handed Hadley his only copy. Still, last week he referred reporters to a recently reconstructed version of the chart in his office where, among dozens of names and photos of terrorists from around the world, there was a color mug shot of Mohammad Atta, circled in black marker." Further, Time reported that Pentagon officials "say they can find nothing produced by the Able Danger program ... mentioning Atta's name."

Wholly apart from the increasing dubiousness of the Atta allegations, the Berger connection appears to be complete speculation. There is no evidence that Berger removed any original documents from the archives; he admitted only to taking copies of a classified assessment of counterterrorism measures enacted prior to the millennium celebrations. <snip>

http://mediamatters.org/items/200508160002