Pentagon blocks testimony of Pre-911 intelligence

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

The Department of Defense "ordered five key witnesses not to testify" about a secret Pentagon unit that some claim identified several of the 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attacks, Sentate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said Wednesday.

"That looks to me as it may be obstruction of the committee's activities," Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said at the start of his committee's hearing into the unit code-named "Able Danger".
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/21/abledanger.hearings/index.html

They were expected to testify Wednesday about a link between al-Qaida and four of the Sept. 11 hijackers - including leader Mohamed Atta - that the unit is said to have uncovered more than a year before the 2001 attacks.
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/politics/12706613.htm


"So the big questions become, 'What did the Pentagon know about the 9/11 attacks and when did it know it?' It would be good if the Senate Judiciary got some straight answers to those questions, and even better if those who worked on Able Danger were allowed to talk about it. Otherwise, Sen. Specter is right on the money about the Pentagon's 'obstruction of the committee's activities'.
http://freeinternetpress.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4572

[philb]

1. Congressman Weldon: Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders

Congressman Weldon: Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders
September 15, 2005 By DONNA DE LA CRUZ
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.

Weldon declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" _ as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=050915&cat=news&st=newsd8cl38980&src=ap

more on Able Danger
http://www.team8plus.org/forum_viewtopic.php?6.800

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. is it a red herring?

I just found this

Curt Weldon's 'Able Danger' lie: 9/11 Revisionism, Revisited
by lawnorder
Sat Aug 13th, 2005 at 10:06:59 PDT
Curt Weldom's story
In January of this year, Rep. Curt Weldon made a speech to the House of Representatives in which he made a number of extraordinary assertions:


Federal agencies from had, in fact, identified the major New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11 (via a military special ops group called 'Able Danger' which used data-mining techniques)

in September of 2000, that Federal agency actually was prepared to bring the FBI in and take down the cell

lawyers in the administration at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell because
Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card,

and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident
The 9/11 Commission and Stephen Hadley, at the National Security Council had been notified of this

http://lawnorder.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/13/13659/1288

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

3. I remain highly skeptical of this entire story

and want proof rather than accusations.

Terry McDermott, who has written a great biography of the hijackers (Perfect Soldiers), wrote this recently:

Atta's academic, immigration, credit, transit and telephone records provide a fairly complete account from the time he left his native Egypt in autumn 1992 to his death. This includes the period during which Able Danger is said to have identified him as a terrorist in the United States. The story those records, and corroborating interviews, tell is that Atta was not in the United States and made almost no contact with the U.S. until June 2000.

In November 1999, Atta and three friends traveled from Germany — via Istanbul and Karachi — to Afghanistan, where they intended to receive military training before going to fight the infidels in Chechnya. They were, instead, recruited into Al Qaeda and assigned the Sept. 11 mission. Atta returned to Hamburg in late February, and the next month he made what is thought to be his first contact with someone in the United States. He e-mailed dozens of flight schools inquiring about commercial pilot training for "a small group of Arab men." He also e-mailed a friend from Egypt who was studying at a Florida university and asked about visa requirements. In May, he applied for a visa from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. Six weeks later he landed in Newark, N.J...

Even if Able Danger somehow produced a name, "Mohamed Atta," that might not mean much. Variations of "Mohamed" are overwhelmingly the most common name in the Muslim world. It is James, John and Robert combined. Atta isn't Smith or Jones, but it isn't Einstein either. There are plenty of Mohamed Attas — and plenty of Mohamed el-Amirs too. The likelihood of mistaken identity is enormous.

cited here (original link dead):
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002421.html

there's also the fact that Atta went by the name Mohamed El-Amir for most of his life, as noted by Eric Umansky (who has many Able Danger posts on his blog):
http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/08/attas_visa.html

plus Weldon has previous with making stuff up:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2005/08/081605.html#4

[drummo]

4. Re:

Even if Able Danger somehow produced a name, "Mohamed Atta," that might not mean much. Variations of "Mohamed" are overwhelmingly the most common name in the Muslim world. It is James, John and Robert combined. Atta isn't Smith or Jones, but it isn't Einstein either. There are plenty of Mohamed Attas — and plenty of Mohamed el-Amirs too. The likelihood of mistaken identity is enormous.

I found 12 Mohamed Attas who are now inside the United States. I must be an AD member.
Or maybe I just can use this site:
http://www.zabasearch.com/query1_zaba.php

On edit:
And I found 7 Mohammed Attas here:

http://find.intelius.com/search-summary-out.php?PHPSESSID=fc9b76295c22338c620096c88922c52d&PHPSESSID=fc9b76295c22338c620096c88922c52d