No Evidence of Atta Claims, Pentagon Says

[jbfam4]

No Evidence of Atta Claims, Pentagon Says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/22/AR2005082201299.html?nav=hcmodule
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Page A02

The Pentagon said yesterday that Defense Department investigators have found no evidence to support allegations by a GOP congressman and others that a secret program had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta more than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The findings by the Pentagon further challenge assertions by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and two military officers that a small data analysis program called "Able Danger" had identified Atta and three other hijackers as early as 1999, but that Defense Department lawyers prevented the information from being shared with the FBI.



Shaffer, whose security clearance has been suspended since March 2004, acknowledged last week that his central allegation -- the identification of Atta -- was based on other people's recollections rather than his own. In the accounts given by Shaffer and Weldon, other details have varied.


Kean focused specifically on an assertion in Weldon's book about Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy director of the National Security Council. Weldon wrote that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, he gave Hadley a 1999 Able Danger chart that "diagrammed the affiliations of al Qaeda and showed Mohammed Atta and the infamous Brooklyn Cell." Weldon repeated the allegation last week.

[benburch]

1. I nominate Weldon for conservative idiot of the week!

What a fucking LIAR.