Able Danger: Just Another 9/11 Commission Omission

August 17, 2005
Able Danger: Just Another 9/11 Commission Omission
Joe Mariani

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The biggest unreported story of the year -- at least, unreported by the "mainstream" media -- may be the story of Able Danger. A top secret Pentagon task force identified three of the 9/11 hijackers as terrorists in advance, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, but was told it couldn't touch them by government bureaucrats. This should be above-the-fold news in every paper in America, right? The problem is, this happened during the Clinton administration, so don't expect too much from the Liberal press, even though "Able Danger" is a cool-sounding name for a counter-terrorism operation.

Remember the 9/11 Commission, with their supposedly full and complete final report on exactly what allowed 9/11 to happen, and their recommendations for preventing another such attack? Nowhere in their list of suggestions was, "pay attention when the Pentagon identifies al-Qaeda terrorists plotting something." One might think the Commission had never heard of Able Danger. It turns out that some members were briefed on Able Danger on two separate occasions, but declined to look into it further, because what they were told didn't work with the 9/11 timeline they'd already decided upon. Former commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said, "The information that he provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing." Is that how an investigation is supposed to proceed -- decide the outcome, then ignore any facts that contradict it? I'd be shocked at this failure of the 9/11 Commission to include all the relevant facts in its "comprehensive" report... if only this weren't the only time they ignored something that would reflect badly on the Clinton administration.

The 9/11 Commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was put together to answer two questions: how did this happen, and how can we prevent it from happening again? Most Conservatives saw the true purpose of the Commission as similarly twofold. Not only was it seeking to blame President Bush for 9/11, which took place only eight months after his inauguration, but it was also pursuing ways to exonerate the Clinton administration for ignoring the growing threat of al-Qaeda for eight years prior to 9/11. People on all sides of the political spectrum were surprised when they issued a final report which, if boiled down to a single sentence, would say, "everyone and no one was to blame."

Most Americans seemed to accept that judgment, despite all the omissions in the report that were pointed out (though, of course, not in the "mainstream" media). For one thing, the report did not mention that Bill Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden by the Sudanese government but refused to take him, as confirmed by his own words. On 15 February 2002, the former President was asked about terrorism while speaking in Woodbury, NY. He said, "At the time, 1996, [bin Laden] had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."

By 1996, bin Laden and al-Qaeda were at least suspected of involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing, the attack on American Rangers in Mogadishu, Somalia and a car bombing at US military headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, intelligence analysts warned Clinton that letting bin Laden move to Afghanistan could prove dangerous to US interests. If the Commission was interested in mistakes that led to 9/11 and should not be repeated, wouldn't "letting Osama bin Laden run around free" fit the description? Yet the report only mentioned that the US was aware of the discussion between Sudanese and Saudi Arabian officials.

The Commission also ignored the story of Brian Sullivan, the former FAA special agent who tried to draw John Kerry's attention to lax security at Logan Airport, the very airport from which both planes used in the 9/11 New York City attacks took off. Sullivan and another retired FAA agent, with the help of a local news crew, filmed themselves walking through security carrying all manner of weapons and suspicious equipment. He sent the videotape to John Kerry's office in May 2001, and two months later received a reply that it had been forwarded to the Department of Transportation. In a letter, Sullivan asked Kerry to consider the ramifications of "a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day." Brian Sullivan's almost prescient attempt to prevent a disaster like 9/11 received no attention from the 9/11 Commission.

Another person whose work should have been at least mentioned by the 9/11 Commission was FBI agent John O'Neill. O'Neill was responsible for the capture of Ramzi Yousef, the al-Qaeda operative responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who may also have been an Iraqi agent. O'Neill led the investigation into the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi, and the 2000 USS Cole bombing. His conviction that al-Qaeda was not independent, but sponsored by rogue nations -- Iraq among them -- earned him the disapproval of his superiors. He finally quit the Bureau to become Chief of Security for the World Trade Center... and died on 9/11, when he re-entered Tower 2 to rescue survivors of the plane strike. Shouldn't his files and documents, containing the sum of his expertise on al-Qaeda and the evidence he had of Iraq's sponsorship, have been invaluable to the 9/11 Commission? O'Neill's investigative work did not merit so much as a footnote in the report.

Perhaps the first indication that the 9/11 Commission was not all it pretended to be was the presence of Jamie Gorelick on the wrong side of the witness table. Gorelick, during her time as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration, was responsible for creating the "wall of separation" that prevented law enforcement agencies from sharing information about investigations. The Commission determined that the lack of inter-agency cooperation, mostly removed now by the PATRIOT Act, was in part responsible for the failure to prevent 9/11. Coordination and cooperation are essential in preventing terror attacks. It was the "Gorelick wall" that prevented the Pentagon from directly contacting the FBI with Able Danger's information about Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers.

Why did so few people seem to notice that the creator of that wall sat on, instead of being questioned by, the 9/11 Commission? Attorney General John Ashcroft noted that there might be a conflict of interest, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) even called for her to step down. Aside from that, her presence seemed to be largely accepted. That's somewhat akin to letting the guy who sold Lee Boyd Malvo a sniper rifle (though he was on the banned list) sit on the jury for his murder trial.

Some people may be surprised by Rep. Curt Weldon's (R-PA) revelation that the 9/11 Commission declined to include information that could be useful in preventing future terrorist attacks. After all, isn't it just as important to discover what went right as what went wrong? I'm not surprised at the omission of information from Able Danger, John O'Neill and Brian Sullivan from the 9/11 report, however. It fits in with the pattern of partisan politics the Left has displayed all along.

From the first anti-war protest in NYC just days after 9/11 to the attempt to turn Ground Zero into a showcase for America-bashing, Liberals and their political allies in the Democratic party have worked to discredit President Bush, victimise America and exonerate former President Clinton, while scheming to regain the power they've lost at the voting booth. It's no longer possible to be shocked... all we can do is watch and wonder how much lower they can go, like watching a game of Liberal Limbo.

http://guardian.blogdrive.com/archive/cm-08_cy-2005_m-08_d-16_y-2005_o-0.html