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August 11, 2005
9/11 Comission and Able Danger--Busted Wide Open
From The Corner, John Podhoretz writes on the story the AP released this evening:
In a story filed at 7:10 PM, the Associated Press is now confirming all the particulars of what will now forever be called the Able Danger disaster. The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.
And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.
And revising the timeline would reopen the question of Mohammed Atta's meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Praque--and that in turn would undermine one of the most durable and oft-quoted memes of the anti-war left: the there was no connection between Saddam's regime and the 9/11 murderers. Podhoretz:
This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.
It was always a travesty that Gorelick was allowed to sit on the commission in the first place, and it is a monument to the still potent power of the MSM that her conflict of interest didn't generate the public outrage it deserved. Perhaps it will now. And if this story proceeds as it has been, Gorelick will be just a squashed bug on the windshield.
The conservative blogs swung and missed at the first pitch. We need to capitalize on this second chance.
Update: Captain Ed (hat tip to the Strata-Sphere) has a must read, detailed analysis. His conclusion (emphases mine):
If Able Danger supports Czech intelligence, which at the moment remains just speculation, it will prove tremendously explosive. The ramifications will affect not just the careers of the Commissioners and their staff, but a deliberate attempt to suppress Able Danger might well result in criminal prosecution. It will also force a recalculation of the war in Iraq and its place in the war on terror. The involvement of Jamie Gorelick on the Commission will once again cause people to ask why such a conflict of interest was allowed to occur -- only this time, Congress won't be able to avoid the answers.
Congress needs to hold public hearings to get to the bottom of these questions. The deliberate deceptions of the 9/11 Commission this week has set off alarms about their motives and preconceptions which may have seriously perverted our knowledge of 9/11 and the forces which stood behind the attacks -- by far the most complicated and well-coordinated al-Qaeda operation, before or since.
If this connection holds true, not only will it force a recalculation of the war in Iraq and its place in the GWOT, it should also cause a rethinking of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, passed by the Senate on October 6, 2004--just a few weeks before the election.
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