... existence of the intelligence operation known as ABLE DANGER. It's whether or not the Clinton administration was aware of Atta's existence and blocked the FBI from receiving that information.
That's why Weldon is pushing this so hard.
It's immaterial, because the FBI, on its own, was aware of Atta's existence well prior to 9/11--that's how Cheney's claim that Atta met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague was debunked. The FBI was tracking him--in the US--at the time that meeting supposedly took place.
To give credence to Weldon's claims (for which he has no evidence whatsoever) is to buy into his agenda.
Here's what the commission has said about the matter:
At the time of the officer’s interview, the Commission knew that, according to travel and immigration records, Atta first obtained a U.S. visa on May 18, 2000, and first arrived in the United States (at Newark) on June 3, 2000. Atta joined up with Marwan al-Shehhi. They spent little time in the New York area, traveling later in June to Oklahoma and then to Florida, where they were enrolled in flight school by early July.
The interviewee had no documentary evidence and said he had only seen the document briefly some years earlier. He could not describe what information had led to this supposed Atta identification. Nor could the interviewee recall, when questioned, any details about how he thought a link to Atta could have been made by this DOD program in 2000 or any time before 9/11. The Department of Defense documents had mentioned nothing about Atta, nor had anyone come forward between September 2001 and July 2004 with any similar information. Weighing this with the information about Atta’s actual activities, the negligible information available about Atta to other U.S. government agencies and the German government before 9/11, and the interviewer’s assessment of the interviewee’s knowledge and credibility, the Commission staff concluded that the officer’s account was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation.
We have seen press accounts alleging that a DOD link analysis had tied Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi (who had arrived in the U.S. shortly before Atta on May 29) to two other future hijackers, Hazmi al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, in 1999-2000. No such claim was made to the Commission by any witness. Moreover, all evidence that was available to the Commission indicates that Hazmi and Mihdhar were never on the East coast until 2001 and that these two pairs of future hijackers had no direct contact with each other until June 2001.
The Commission did not mention ABLE DANGER in its report. The name and character of this classified operation had not, at that time, been publicly disclosed. The operation itself did not turn out to be historically significant, set against the larger context of U.S. policy and intelligence efforts that involved Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. The Report’s description of military planning against al Qaeda prior to 9/11 encompassed this and other military plans. The information we received about this program also contributed to the Commission’s depiction of intelligence efforts against al Qaeda before 9/11.
Now, there are a number of other questions which the commission did not address which are important, but this is not, for the reasons I've suggested. Weldon has a
very long history of wild, unsubstantiated claims. I've just offered a couple of examples. Here's yet another:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9836I am simply trying to get people to think more clearly about this, because it's a red herring promoted by a wacko with an agenda. It doesn't meaningfully fit into a government cover-up of the events. It is not as if Atta was unknown to the FBI prior to 9/11, despite Weldon's attempt to portray events in that way.
And, as the latest from FAS suggests, Weldon is now backing off from his earlier claims.
Cheers.
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