9/11 Report and Atta

Here's an interesting item from the NY Times concerning evidence that the 9/11 Commission chose not to include in their final report. It concerns a anti-terrorism task force of the military that identified the whereabouts of Mohomad Atta, leader of the 9/11 terrorists, long before the attack, but that chose not to disclose their information to the FBI.

The significance is not, however, that there was a communication breakdown -- everyone knows that many occurred -- but as the key paragraph in the article notes,

"The information 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..."

In typical NY Times fashion, the phrase is obscure to the point that it ignores the significance. But as John Podhoretz in The Corner explains,

"In a story filed at 7:10 PM, the Associated Press is now confirming all the particulars of what will now forever be called the Able Danger disaster. The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.

And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.

And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies.

I was very skeptical of this Able Danger stuff about Atta, thought it was just sme way Rep. Curt Weldon was trying to sell a book. No longer. This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.

So was the staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?

More important, what will co-chairmen Tom (pound his fist on the table) Kean and Lee (look sorrowful) Hamilton do and say in the next 36 hours about this calamity?"

In other words, Lo and behold! There is evidence that indicates Atta very well would've been geographically able to meet with Iraqis. The 9/11 commission explicitly argued that Czech Intelligence claims that Atta did meet with them was wrong because they claim that no evidence indicates Atta was even in Prague.

The problem? The 9/11 commission HAD evidence indicating that Atta was in Prague. And chose to pretend it didn't exist...

Naturally, the NY Times chose not to explain that inconvenient set of information...wouldn't want to disturb their daily screeds about "Bush lied..." Talk about dereliction of duty.

We'll see if any major media chooses to cover the story, but I'm not holding my breathe...