TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Funny the New York Times didn't mention that Atta was trained at Montgomery Air Force Base...

NY Times August 9, 2005:

More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

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 congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.

The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared...

A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including Philip Zelikow, the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Mr. Atta's name.

The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode. ..

He said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photographs of Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi...

Neither Mr. Shehhi nor Mr. Atta was identified by the American intelligence agencies as a potential threat, the commission report said...

The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003.

The official said he had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta as a member of a Qaeda cell in the United States. He said the staff encouraged him to call the commission when he returned to Washington at the end of the year. When he did so, the ex-official said, the calls were not returned.

[...]

There seems to be some attempt to spin this into a reason for more military "datamining" on civilians -- what with the alleged "highjackers" living at Montgomery Air Base, Pensecola Air Station and Monterey Defense Language Institute; it's the civilians who should be datamining the military's records.

| Posted at 23:41 | PERMA-LINK |

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