Caught in their own lies

9/11 Commission admits excluding intelligence on lead hijacker, Atta
By Joseph Kay and Barry Grey
12 August 2005

A spokesman for the September 11 commission acknowledged on Wednesday that members of its staff met with a uniformed military officer on July 12, 2004 and that the officer informed them that a military intelligence group had, as early as the summer of 2000, identified Mohammad Atta as part of an Al Qaeda cell operating in the US. Atta is thought to have been the lead hijacker in the September 11 attacks.

This admission flatly contradicts statements made earlier this week by 9/11 Chairman Thomas Kean and Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton that the commission staff was never told of the military intelligence on Atta.

According to an August 11 New York Times article, the officer warned the commission staff “that the [commission’s] account would be incomplete” without reference to the military intelligence group and its findings.

In the commission’s report, issued on July 22, 2004—10 days after the meeting where staff members were briefed on the Atta intelligence—no mention was made of the information gathered by Able Danger, the name of the military intelligence group.

According to Republican Congressman Curt Weldon and an unidentified former military intelligence officer, in the summer of 2000 members of Able Danger were prevented by the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command from relaying to the FBI the information they had gathered on Atta and three others future hijackers. At the time, Atta and the others were in the United States and were taking flying lessons.

The commission spokesman, Al Felzenberg, acknowledged that the July 12, 2004 briefing had taken place only after Weldon sent the commission members a letter indicating he had information about the meeting. Weldon had previously revealed that the commission staff met with officers connected to Able Danger in October 2003.

On Tuesday, Kean and Hamilton admitted that commission staff members had been told of Able Danger at the 2003 meeting, but said the staff did not recall being told the names of the individuals, including Atta, whom the military group had identified in 2000. Now, only one day later, Felzenberg has been forced to backtrack, saying that the staff was told in July 2004 of the pre-9/11 military intelligence on Atta, but that the commission decided not to include this information in its final report.

Weldon’s letter to Kean, Hamilton and the eight other commission members expressed “extreme disappointment in the recent, and false, claim of the 9-11 Commission staff that the Commission was never given access to any information on Able Danger. The 9-11 Commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter. Furthermore, commissioners never returned calls from a defense intelligence official that had made contact with them to discuss this issue as a follow on to a previous meeting.”

Weldon is a right-wing congressman who has become a champion of “data mining” operations such as Able Danger, and who advocates a greater expansion of the powers of the intelligence apparatus. Nevertheless, the information regarding Able Danger supports previous evidence that US intelligence and security agencies were following the September 11 hijackers, but did nothing to disrupt their operations.

While admitting Wednesday that the commission staff was informed of the Atta intelligence, commission spokesman Felzenberg attempted to belittle its significance and cast the commission’s decision to exclude any mention of it as a minor and routine matter bound up with the pressures of preparing to publish the commission’s findings.

The truth is precisely the opposite. "
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