The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XVI

The Captain writes last night that the book Countdown to Crisis by Kenneth Timmerman is yielding even more nuggets of information about the preconceived opinions of the 9/11 Commission. The biggest preconceived notion being that Iran had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, even with buttloads of proof saying otherwise:

Timmerman writes that the CIA had communicated repeatedly to the Commission what he calls The Concept: Iran had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, and especially 9/11. Nothing would shake them from that belief, not evidence nor intelligence, both of which turned up in spades. It sounds quite familiar to the same meme about al-Qaeda and Iraq; despite the numerous connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda, the official line remained that AQ conducted the attacks entirely on their own, without Iraqi assistance. Any evidence or intel to the contrary got dismissed or completely ignored.

So it was with the fresh documents discovered by Zelikow’s team at the time Phillpott told them about Able Danger. Their team leader on intel, an old CIA hand, spent his Sunday reviewing these explosive documents:

What the team leader found that Sunday morning was nothing less than a complete documented record of operational ties between Iran and al-Qaeda for the critical months just prior to September 11. “The documents showed Iran was facilitating the travel of al-Qaeda operatives, ordering Iranian border inspectors not to put telltale stamps on their passports, thus keeping their travel documents clean,” the team leader told me. “The Iranians were fully aware that they were helping operatives who were part of an organization preparing attacks against the United States.” …

Most troubling among the seventy-five documents the team read that Sunday morning in July were masses of reports on Iranian intelligence operative Imad Mugniyeh, who is described in the 9/11 Commission Report as “a senior Hezbollah operative.” The raw reporting showed that well before 9/11, the United States had hard intelligence that the Tehran regime had appointed Mugniyeh as the point man for operational contacts with Bin Laden’s men. That coincided with the information Zakeri brought to the CIA in Baku four months before the attack.

If anyone had been on the radar screen of U.S. intelligence collectors, it was Imad Mugniyeh. Before 9/11, he had killed more Americans than any other terrorist. Putting Mugniyeh together with bin Laden was like throwing a match onto a pile of oil-soaked rags. And yet no alarm bells seemed to have gone off. Mugniyeh is not even named in he final commission report.

In fact, not much of this material makes it into the report at all. Mugniyeh didn’t make the cut, despite evidence that he facilitated more than half of the muscle hijackers’ entry during the late spring of 2001 into the United States for their 9/11 attacks. This, the CIA rationalized, only proved that the hijackers traveled through Iran, and not to Iran. However, that still leaves an open question about why their passports did not reflect those visits — a question that the Commission never bothers to bring up, let alone answer.

For a great summary of all the evidence piled up linking al-Qaeda to Iran go read Dan Darlings post at Winds Of Change today.

Then there is this amazing info:

Nor does the Commission bring up another story that Timmerman reveals in his book (pages 7-9). On July 26, 2001, an Iranian intelligence agent walked into the American embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, and asked to see the CIA chief. He finally talks to two CIA functionaries: “Joan”, who assesses his story and decides it needs further review, and “George”, a CIA case handler who laughs Zakeri out of the embassy. The story?

There’s going to be a big attack on America on the twentieth of Shahrivar, Zakeri insisted. That’s the date my boss told us to be ready. Six people who have been trained as pilots have just left Iran.

George consulted a calendar that gave the corresponding Western dates. So we’re talking about September 10, right? I’ll mark my date book, he added sarcastically. He paid Zakeri a few hundred dollars for his time and sent him away.

July 26 came just two weeks after Mohammed Atta met with Ramzi Binalshibh in Madrid to finalize the date for the 9/11 attacks. At that meeting, Binalshibh pressed Atta to pick a date, as Osama bin Laden needed to send the information through the network in time for everyone to prepare for the operation. Atta said he needed five or six weeks before he could coordinate well enough for a particular date, and only promised a week’s notice — or so Binalshibh told the FBI (Commission report, page 244)

…However, two weeks later Zakeri had the date for the attacks and a good description of the method to be used. The CIA handler misinterpreted 20 Shahrivar; in fact, that date came out to 11 September. None of this gets any mention in the 9/11 Commission report either, despite the testimony from Zakeri being read out in a German court in January 2004.

As more time goes by it is becoming more and more apparent that this Commission was nothing but a rubberstamp, political backwashing, committee with no other reason for being other then to push through a concept that 9/11 was no one’s fault, and everyone’s fault.

The Captain sum’s it up more succinctly then I could:

We do know one thing after almost three weeks of Able Danger revelations — the Commission report has no credibility as a truthful analysis of the forces behind 9/11 and our information prior to the attacks.

For a somewhat humorous take on this issue along with the MSM bias read Peter Bronson’s latest article: (h/t The Strata-Sphere)

Superman is invulnerable. Star Trek?s Enterprise has invisible shields that stop photon torpedoes. Invisible Woman has a bulletproof force field.

But those things only exist in comic books, science fiction – and the mainstream media, where you can only tell if it?s there by the things that bounce off. For example:

?Thousands of soldiers and their families do not have force fields. They are pounded relentlessly by media mortars targeted at the war in Iraq. Even during the week Iraq passed a constitution – moving from dictatorship to democracy faster than the American Revolution – good news was shut down like one of Scotty?s busted warp drives.

But Cindy Sheehan has powerful shields that block negative publicity. The shrill voice of the anti-war left is back in Crawford, Texas, accusing Bush of ?murdering? her son who died in Iraq on a volunteer rescue mission. She says Bush is a ?terrorist? and, ?This country is not worth dying for? – but criticism of her just bounces off like marshmallows hitting a brick wall.

?Not even the Pentagon budget can buy a force field to protect President Bush from the press-corps lasers. But former President Clinton is still bulletproof.

During his administration in 2000, a top-secret Pentagon project called Able Danger tracked al-Qaida terrorists, and uncovered a cell including Mohamed Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers, according to officers who worked on the project.

But the Clinton administration had put up a wall of rules to keep the FBI from talking to the CIA. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said attempts to alert the FBI were blocked by Clinton lawyers. ?They said, ?He?s here legally. He?s either got a green card or he?s got a visa. So you can?t even touch him – it doesn?t matter what information you have.??

That might be a big story – ?White House kept FBI from stopping 9/11 terrorists? – but it can?t get past the invulnerable Clinton force-field.

Check out A Blog For All, SoCalPundit, & JustOneMinute for more.

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