Two officers with the secret intel operation "Able Danger" have now come forward saying their team identified Mohamed Atta (left) and three other 9/11 hijackers in 2000.But the Pentagon says they can find no evidence that Atta was in fact IDed before the attacks the following year.
Rep Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Able Danger member Lt Col Anthony Shaffer claim the unit had a chart with Mohamed Atta's name and links to al Qaeda operatives nearly a year before the attacks. Lt Col Schaffer says the Pentagon blocked Able Danger from sharing the information with the FBI three times in 2000 and 2001.
Navy Captain Scott Phillpott also told the Presidential 9/11 Commission investigating the September 11 attacks in July of last year that he remembered seeing Atta's name on an Able Danger chart in the spring of 2000.
But no one can produce the chart. And the Pentagon says they can't find it either.
"What we have found are mostly sort of general reference to terrorist cells that people were generally aware of....
"But nothing that would seem to corroborate specifically what Congressman Weldon and Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer recall, although as you know they don't have what they said they saw. That makes it a little more difficult."
--Larry DiRita, Pentagon Spokesman
Lt Col Shaffer has also said that the 9/11 Commission was given less than 5% of Able Danger's findings for their investigation last year. (AFP via Yahoo!)
1 comment:
They'd have had a lot more credibility if Weldon wasn't their front man.
Weldon has said some bat shit crazy stuff about the GWOT.
That said, DiRita has zero credibility in my eyes. The Bush administration treats spokespeople like the worst administration do. It goes along with my perception of GW Bush as a very honest person... He tells you exactly what he wants you to think, in clear, easy to understand terms.
Well, if not honest, then straightforward.
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