This is worth reading. Unless something else comes along, I believe that Obama’s attempt to distract from his lack of accomplishments via the release of interrogation memos, the fate of Gitmo detainees past and present will haunt him long and hard.

By DEBRA BURLINGAME
In February I was among a group of USS Cole and 9/11 victims’ families who met with the president at the White House to discuss his policies regarding Guantanamo detainees. Although many of us strongly opposed Barack Obama’s decision to close the detention center and suspend all military commissions, the families of the 17 sailors killed in the 2000 attack in Yemen were particularly outraged.

Over the years, the Cole families have seen justice abandoned by the Clinton administration and overshadowed by the need of the Bush administration to gather intelligence after 9/11. They have watched in frustration as the president of Yemen refused extradition for the Cole bombers.

Now, after more than eight years of waiting, Mr. Obama was stopping the trial of Abu Rahim al-Nashiri, the only individual to be held accountable for the bombing in a U.S. court.

Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

More here.

Earlier this week an article by Jonathan Landay was published by the failing McClatchy Newspapers. The article asserted that innumerable people had been tortured with the intent and purpose of proving a tie between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. The article asserted that there never were any ties between the two, and that the torturing of captured Al Queda terrorists was done largely to create a fictional narrative that would support the case for invading Iraq (let’s ignore that the alleged “torture” happened AFTER the invasion of Iraq-just as was done in the article).

I attempted to contact Jonathan Landay to nicely and politely inform him that the issue of regime ties had never been closed. He responded nicely, pointed me in the direction of a few reports, then categorically declared that no ties existed and that the intelligence community had known this all along, but the Bush Administration “cherry-picked” intelligence to make its case for war.

After that initial email, Jonathon refused to respond to further attempts at educating him. SO, here we go…
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First and foremost, I do not want or like etc torture. I’m not one of those millions of Americans who wanted Osama Bin Laden’s skin peeled on pay per view.

However, the myth that a ticking bomb scenario doesn’t exist is a lie. It DID exist, and it does exist today. Before 911, the US new for months that a big attack was coming. George Tenet told the Joint House/Senate inquiry (as also reported in the 911 Commission and Richard Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies) that he was running around DC like he was on fire. Then, the FBI grabbed Zacarias Moussaoui, and his laptop computer. The investigative process blocked American investigators from looking at the laptop which would have revealed the 911 plot and likely prevented it. Equally, he was not allowed to be tortured. America could have prevented 911 if the investigative process wasn’t hindered, OR if he was tortured.

Months later, Zubaydah and KSM are captured. Intel agencies know another 911 attack is coming, but the process can’t figure it out (again). This time, harsh interrogations were used, and then torture (not all harsh interrogation is torture and vice versa), and a 911 attack was prevented (according to multiple CIA directors, the Vice President, the President, and the new Director of National Intelligence.

Sick and sad as it is to say, torture worked. It was a last resort, and it worked.
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WASHINGTON (AP) – The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is proposing a “truth commission” to investigate abuses of detainees, politically inspired moves at the Justice Department, and whole range of decisions made during the Bush administration. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the primary goal of the commission would be to learn the truth rather than prosecute former officials, but said the inquiry should reach far beyond misdeeds at the Justice Department under Bush to include matters of Iraq prewar intelligence and the Defense Department. Leahy outlined his suggestion for a “truth and reconciliation” commission during a speech at Georgetown University Monday.

“I’m doing this not to humiliate people or punish people but to get the truth out,” he said.
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HOPE
CHANGE
INJUSTICE

Late this week, with the nation and the world distracted by a TRILLION dollar spending bill, President Obama halted the trial of the mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing. For a lot of people the USS Cole is a mere footnote in the history books, but good history books look back 9yrs ago and list the attack as the turning point in America’s war with Al Queda. It was the moment when Al Queda went from world class terrorist group to super-terrorists; to a movement.

The attack on the USS Cole demonstrates absolutely EVERY single one of America’s systemic failures in dealing with Al Queda.

• The attack was detected by multiple US intelligence agencies-including naval intelligence, but no one connected the dots.
• The ship was warned, but didn’t protect itself well enough. The response was limited to law enforcement/FBI efforts that were thwarted by diplomatic nuances.
• There was no military response.
• It was and IS NOW AGAIN an al Queda recruiting tool/demonstration of their success
• There was no demonstration of American resolve, revenge, or justice.
• Most of the USS Cole bombers were arrested by our “allies” in Yemen, then they escaped (sometimes several times).

The US did get the mastermind, but now Barack Obama’s dropped the charges against him. He dropped the charges AND HAD THE AUDACITY and ARROGANCE to ask the families of terror victims to come to the White House for a photo op. That gesture (genuine or not is irrelevant) rang hollow as demonstrated in this letter from the father of one of the USS Cole victims to our President.

Dear Mr. President Obama,

Our son’s name was Gary G. Swenchonis, Jr. He was a Fireman in the US Navy. He was killed in the attack on the USS Cole on 10/12/00. This letter is an appeal to you to take some long overdue action on the behalf of the 17 sailors murdered in that attack. It is an appeal for justice for their families as well.
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Believe it or not, there’s yet ANOTHER (I believe this is the fourth) trail of information that shows the U.S. could have prevented the U.S.S. Cole attack, but didn’t. And again-just as with the 9/11 attacks-had they put it together in 2000 it seems very likely they’d have had a greater ability to prevent those September attacks as well.

There are two simple questions: If the NSA was listening in on the bombers putting everything together before the Cole attack, why was it not prevented? Second, why was the hub not shut down after the Cole attack?

I’ll go one further and ask, “How far up the intelligence chain of command did this information go? Did it stop at the CIA in Malaysia, or did it go all the way to Sandy “Sticky socks” Berger?

disgrace

8 Years ago, on October 12, 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in the port of Aden, Yemen. 17 American sailors were murdered. Eight years after the attack, the father of one of those fallen sailors has written a letter to the President of Yemen expressing his frustration that his son’s murderers have still not been held to account. I am a Flopping Aces reader like you. I could be you. My concerns should not be mine alone. Here is my letter:

President Saleh [Yemen],

It’s that time of year again; yet another anniversary of the attack on the USS Cole in Port Aden, Yemen on October 12th, 2000. In that attack, our son and sixteen of his mates were brutally murdered, and 39 other sailors were wounded.

Since the last time I wrote you a year ago, many changes, some positive and some not, have occurred in relation to the attack on the Cole and the status of your corrupt regime.

First and foremost, we wrote our Texas representative and members of Congress asking for a Congressional Hearing into why our government still supports your dictatorship after you gave the plotters and planners of the Cole attack reduced sentences and pardons for the murders of 17 American Sailors. The rest of the convicted killers conveniently escaped from your prisons. And some remain free to this day, eight years after the attack.

Our Senators have kept us informed as to our requests. We received word recently from them that next year Congress will hold Judiciary Committee hearings. We are extremely grateful to the politicians who have decided that its way past the time to review and hopefully take action against you and your regime. And to put an end to all your worthless and broken promises that you made to two American presidents and our government.
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It’s almost been 8years since the plot to sink either the USS Sullivans or the USS Cole was set in motion.   For many time doesn’t matter.  Families for the USS Cole victims have tried to meet with President Bush to get him to take action, but after 8 years President Bush refuses to take action against the plotters or to even meet with the families of the USS Cole or its survivors.   One would think that if nothing else the photo opportunity would be worthy, but not President Bush.

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After the DoD issued their report in which they rejected the notion that the unit named Able Danger  could of stopped 9/11 this report today should not come as any surprise:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has rejected as untrue one of the most disturbing claims about the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes — a congressman’s contention that a team of military analysts identified Mohamed Atta or other hijackers before the attacks — according to a summary of the panel’s investigation obtained by The Times.

The conclusion contradicts assertions by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and a few military officers that U.S. national security officials ignored startling intelligence available in early 2001 that might have helped to prevent the attacks.

[...]"Able Danger did not identify Mohammed Atta or any other 9/11 hijacker at any time prior to Sept. 11, 2001," the committee determined, according to an eight-page letter sent last week to panel members by the top Republican and Democrat on the committee.

[...]The panel said it found "no evidence" to support claims by military officers connected to Able Danger that Defense Department lawyers prevented the team’s analysts from sharing their findings with FBI counter-terrorism officials before the attacks.

Nor was the alleged chart or any information developed by Able Danger improperly destroyed at the direction of Pentagon lawyers, the panel concluded — a charge that had stoked claims of a cover-up.

Question to the Senate Intelligence Committee….why then was Atta on one of the charts produced by Able Danger?

"One of these individuals depicted on the chart arguably looked like Mohammed Atta," the committee concluded. "In addition, the chart contained names of Al Qaeda associates that sound like Atta, as well as numerous variations of the common Arab name Mohammed."

The committee also suggested that officials’ memories may have been clouded by the flurry of charts and photographs of Atta that surfaced after the attacks. The panel noted that a defense contractor that produced the chart at the center of the controversy subsequently created a follow-up chart, after the attacks, that did include Atta.

Yeah.  Simple case of mistaken identity right?  Too many Mohammed’s to go around.

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A little background refresher.

So here’s the latest update:

[*snipped, trimmed, & slimfasted*] when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he lied by saying he did not take them, the report said.

 Brachfeld’s report included an investigator’s notes, taken during an interview with Berger. The notes dramatically described Berger’s removal of documents during an Oct. 2, 2003, visit to the Archives.

Berger took a break to go outside without an escort while it was dark. He had taken four documents in his pockets.

 "He headed toward a construction area. … Mr. Berger looked up and down the street, up into the windows of the Archives and the DOJ (Department of Justice), and did not see anyone," the interview notes said.

He then slid the documents under a construction trailer, according to the inspector general. Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.

"He was aware of the risk he was taking," the inspector general’s notes said. Berger then returned to the Archives building without fearing the documents would slip out of his pockets or that staff would notice that his pockets were bulging.

The notes said Berger had not been aware that Archives staff had been tracking the documents he was provided because of earlier suspicions from previous visits that he was removing materials. Also, the employees had made copies of some documents.

 In October 2003, the report said, an Archives official called Berger to discuss missing documents from his visit two days earlier. The investigator’s notes said, "Mr. Berger panicked because he realized he was caught."

The notes said that Berger had "destroyed, cut into small pieces, three of the four documents. These were put in the trash."

What was Sandy Berger’s motive in stealing and destroying these documents?   What was so important in them, that he felt the need to commit such a crime?  I feel like he’s gotten away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist;  by stealing and shredding classified records from the National Archives, he’s basically rewritten history.  And without so much as an explanation given.

Mike Kasper at Able Danger Blog updates us about the new book from Peter Lance that finally delves feet first into the 9/11 conspiracy. This time there is no backroom dealing to leave stuff out or gloss over the facts as the 9/11 Commission did:

Able Danger is mentioned throughout the book, but some other chapters which focus on it include Chapter 31, “Operation Able Danger”, Chapter 32, “Obliterating the Dots”, and Chapter 33, “Able Danger Part Two”. Over the past nine months, I was beginning to doubt if anyone would ever give the Able Danger story the treatment it deserves. Peter Lance has gone above and beyond my expectations in “Triple Cross” and anyone who is interested in getting to the bottom of the Able Danger story should read it.

Among other things, he points out flaws in the IG Report on Able Danger:

It’s also clear that, in attempting to impeach Capt. Phillpott, the IG relied heavily on the word of Dietrich Snell, the 9/11 Commission senior counsel, who found Phillpott’s account of the Able Danger findings “not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the [Commission] report or further investigation.” That was Snell’s conclusion following a July 12, 2004, meeting with Phillpott ten days before the Commission’s “final report” was to go to press:

“We considered Mr. Snell’s negative assessment of Capt. Phillpott’s claims particularly persuasive given Mr. Snell’s knowledge and background in antiterrorist efforts involving al Qaeda. Mr. Snell considered Capt. Phillpott’s recollection with respect to Able Danger identification of Mohammed Atta inaccurate because it was ‘one hundred per cent inconsistent with everything we knew about Mohammed Atta and his collegues at the time.’ Mr. Snell went on to describe his knowledge of Mohammed Atta’s overseas travel and associations before 9/11 noting the “utter absense of any information suggesting any kind of a tie between Atta and anyone located in this country during the first half of the year 2000,” when Able Danger had allegedly identified him.”

But in this book we’ve demonstrated that there was massive evidence on the high visibility of 9/11 hijackers al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, who were living openly in San Diego as early as January 2000. We showed how Atta himself entered the United States on June 3 and rented a room in Brooklyn near the Al Farooq Mosque, using his own name. Just how difficult would it have been for the Able Danger analysts to track his movements via airline reservations and immigration sources, since, according to the IG’s report, the Able Danger data harvest was “collecting data from 10,000 websites each day”?

In an interview following release of the report, one operative close to the data-mining operation told me that “we also accessed INS databases in the data harvest, so picking up Atta who had to get airline tickers and a visa prior to his arrival in early June was no big deal.”

Mike also has the press release announcing the book:

In TRIPLE CROSS, five-time Emmy-award winning investigative reporter Peter Lance reveals how U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI’s elite bin Laden squad failed to stop Ali Mohamed, al-Qaeda’s master spy, in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Recruited as an FBI informant as early as 1992, Mohamed — an intimate of Osama bin Laden — was allowed to remain free for years, planning and executing multiple acts of terror, including the 1998 African embassy bombings that killed 224 and injured 4000 — while Fitzgerald and key FBI agents did little to stop him.

Mohamed had been on the FBI’s radar since 1989, when the FBI’s Special Operations Group photographed a cell of his trainees firing AK-47s at a Long Island shooting range. Yet despite their prior knowledge of this New York cell, the Bureau ended its investigation, paving the way for multiple acts of terror in the years that followed.

Of the Islamic radicals trained by Ali Mohamed and photographed by the FBI: one went on to kill Rabbi Meier Kahane in 1990, three were convicted in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and another American Muslim was convicted by Patrick Fitzgerald in 1995 in a plot to blow up the bridge and tunnels into Manhattan. Mohamed himself was opened as a Bureau informant on the West Coast in 1992-a year before the WTC bombing. Worse, he continued to snooker Fitzgerald and other FBI and Justice Department officials for years as he learned the FBI’s playbook on al-Qaeda.

After a five-year investigation into FBI negligence on the road to 9/11, Lance reveals:

How Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was directing the FBI’s elite bin Laden squad (I-49), allowed Ali Mohamed to remain an active al-Qaeda agent despite the fact that the FBI knew he had sworn allegiance to bin Laden as early as 1993. Mohamed moved the Saudi billionaire from Afghanistan to Sudan, trained his personal bodyguard, set up al-Qaeda terror camps in Khartoum, and trained the terrorists responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing and Day of Terror plots.

How Fitzgerald and other top officials buried a treasure trove of al-Qaeda-related evidence in 1996 — including proof of a liquid-based airliner bomb plot that was a precursor to the August 2006 plot revealed by U.K. authorities. The evidence included proof of an active al-Qaeda cell operating in NYC five years before
9/11.

How Mohamed twice smuggled al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, into the U.S. in the 1990s to raise half a million dollars for the Jihad — and left his post at Fort Bragg, against orders, to hunt down Soviet Spetsnaz commandos in Afghanistan in the midst of America’s covert war.

How Mohamed stole TOP SECRET memos and other classified intelligence from Fort Bragg and passed it onto the al-Qaeda leadership, including memos to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the positions of all Special Forces units worldwide. Copies of that intelligence, with Mohamed’s notes in Arabic, are part of more than 30 pages of declassified or formerly SECRET documents included as appendices to the book.

How, after meeting Mohamed face-to-face in 1997, Fitzgerald called him “the most dangerous man I have ever met” and vowed, “We cannot let this man out on the street.” Yet for another ten months he allowed Mohamed to remain free, while the al-Qaeda spy continued to support the African embassy bombing plot he had set in motion in 1993-after being freed from custody on the word of his FBI control agent.

How Mohamed had told Fitzgerald that he had “hundreds” of al-Qaeda sleepers ready to go “operational” at any time — and yet to this day the FBI has failed to detect them. Mohamed, who wasn’t even arrested until a month after the 1998 embassy bombings, remained in U.S. custody for three full years before 9/11. But even after cutting a deal that allowed him to escape the death penalty and enter witness protection, Fitzgerald failed to extract the 9/11 planes-as-missiles plot from Mohamed.

How as early as 1991 the FBI was aware of a New Jersey mail box store directly linked to al-Qaeda, but failed to monitor the location. Fitzgerald himself had named the store owner as an unindicted coconspirator in the 1995 Day of Terror case. Six years later, in July 2001 , the FBI blew an extraordinary chance to interdict the 9/11 plot when two of the 9/11 hijackers got their fake IDS at the very same store. “All the FBI had to do was monitor that location, the way they sat on John Gotti’s Ravenite Social Club,” says Lance, “and they would have been in the middle of the 9/11 plot.”

Just when I thought Able Danger was going to be filed away and forgotten comes a book that will once again show how close we came to stopping Atta.

I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of the book, don’t miss out.

First we had the Senate report on Iraq/Al-Qaeda links so full of holes you could drive a truck through them, now comes this DoD report. Many of us suspected the DoD would whitewash the Able Danger information.

We were not disappointed:

A Pentagon report rejects the idea that intelligence gathered by a secret military unit could have been used to stop the Sept. 11 hijackings.

The Pentagon inspector general’s office said Thursday that a review of records from the unit, known as Able Danger, found no evidence it had identified ringleader Mohamed Atta or any other terrorist who participated in the 2001 attacks.

[...]Weldon questioned the “motives and the content” of the report and rejected its conclusions. “Acting in a sickening bureaucratic manner, the DOD IG cherry-picked testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of the Able Danger effort,” Weldon said in a statement.

“The report trashes the reputations of military officers who had the courage to step forward and put their necks on the line to describe important work they were doing to track al-Qaida prior to 9/11,” Weldon said. He said the investigation did little to answer the questions it was supposed to examine.

The report acknowledged that one Able Danger member alleged he was prohibited from providing a chart to the FBI in 2000 by a senior Special Operations commander. But, the report said, “the senior official did not recall the incident and we are persuaded that the chart would have been of minimal value to the FBI.”

The Pentagon had said some employees recall seeing an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist before the attacks. The report said those accounts “varied significantly” and witnesses were inconsistent at times in their statements.

You can view the report here.

No one can really say they would be surprised by this new report. The DoD has been covering their backside since this whole scandal started. It isn’t even surprising that they release this so close to election day, not that it was done on purpose…./sarcasm.

As you can imagine, Weldon is a bit miffed:

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, today released the following statement about the Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) report on “Alleged Misconduct by Senior DoD Officials Concerning the Able Danger Program and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony A. Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve.”

“The purpose of the DOD IG investigation was to shed light on the pressures and harassment placed on LTC Shaffer and other Able Danger team members. It was also supposed to investigate why Able Danger was glossed over by the Pentagon and why there was such a fight to get information out of the Department of Defense about Able Danger, its findings and the reasoning behind destroying crucial data about linkages and relationship of al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. The IG’s report did little to answer these questions.

“The DOD IG failed to brief LTC Shaffer’s lawyer before releasing the report. The contents and overall tone and scope of the report were leaked to the media before Congress was even briefed of its findings. The DOD IG failed to explain in their briefing to me and my staff how such information got out to the media. They said they would investigate, but I have very little confidence that anything will come of that. Also, the timeliness of this report, just weeks before Congressional elections, also raises serious questions about the IG’s motivations.

“Acting in a sickening bureaucratic manner, the DOD IG cherry picked testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of the Able Danger effort. The IG narrowly focused their investigation on the witnesses recollections of the 9/11 hijackers and a chart. The report trashes the reputations of military officers who had the courage to step forward and put their necks on the line to describe important work they were doing to track al-Qaeda prior to 9/11.

“To further substantiate the Able Danger effort, within the last three months of the DOD IG investigation, another person who recently retired from the military has come forward and corroborated the work of the Able Danger program. Additionally, another official within DOD has conducted data runs of stored pre-9/11 data that has yielded information about the Brooklyn cell.

“They do not explain why LTC Shaffer and other Able Danger principles were harassed by their superiors. Specifically, the report did not address why the Defense Intelligence Agency trumped up phony charges against LTC Shaffer in an effort to revoke his clearance. When the DOD IG briefed me, they could not account for why they failed to interview key witnesses connected to this harassment, except for claiming that these witnesses ‘did not come to us’ – evidence that this was not a proactive investigation.

“The FBI agent that was tasked with setting up meetings between Able Danger and FBI officials – meetings that were block by DOD lawyers – was not interviewed in this report, yet it concluded that ‘Able Danger members were not prohibited from sharing intelligence information with law enforcement authorities.’

“I am appalled that the DOD IG would expect the American people to actually consider this a full and thorough investigation. I question their motives and the content of this report, and I reject the conclusions they have drawn.

While reading the report you cannot help but notice how much credibility they put on commanding officers while reduing the credibility of lower level officers. They basically call Shaffer a liar and cast his whole testimony in a bad light by suggesting he stole a GPS unit. They spend quite a bit of time on this incident, one in which it could easily have been a mix-up, either Shaffer forgot it was in his deployment bag (this one has happened to me personally while I was in the Marines) or some other kind of mix-up. But the time they spend on this incident smells to me. They cast all his testimony and memories away because of it.

How convenient.

This is a whitewash from top to bottom. Please check my other Able Danger posts, and there are many of them, for much of the evidence that this group did indeed identify Atta prior to 9/11….but no one listened to them.

UPDATE

TopDog notices some more wordplay in this report.

From page six of the IG report:

GEN Shelton testified that he had no specific recollection of term “Able Danger” or the Able Danger program, but did recall that while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff he was concerned about al Qaeda and the need to develop a holistic view of al Qaeda. GEN Shelton stated,

the genesis of starting to try to collect on a worldwide basis against terrorists, came about as a result of me looking at all the information that was coming into the Chairman’s office, and seeing that we would get — we were just being inundated with information, and it wasn’t really intelligence, but little snippets.

From James Rosen at McClatchy News Service, December 7, 2005:

While Shelton said he never heard the program referred to as “Able Danger” until news reports on it first emerged in the summer, the retired general said he authorized a computer data-mining effort to target bin Laden and his associates.

“I dealt with a million damn acronyms and different kinds of code names for operations,” Shelton said. “Able Danger was not one that jumped out at me when it first surfaced” in news reports.

But under his direction, Shelton said, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, now Army chief of staff, set up a team of five to seven intelligence officers after Shelton was promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1997 and Schoomaker succeeded him as Special Operations commander.

The program began at Special Operations headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, Shelton said, but it was expanded later and moved to Fort Belvoir, Va., outside Washington. Schoomaker briefed Shelton on the program’s progress in late 1997 when Shelton made a return visit to his old command post in Florida.

In Washington, sometime between 1999 and 2001, Shelton received a more extensive briefing from Defense Intelligence Agency officers involved in the program.

So a year ago he states he didn’t remember the AD name but does recall the program. In this report they state he now had no recollection of even the program.

No whitewash here.

Excellent article yesterday at AIM about Mary McCarthy, the reporter who used the information Mary gave her to tell the world our secrets, and Curt Weldon:

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz has said that it is “absolutely relevant information” that fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy was a major financial contributor to Democratic Party causes. He made the statement because of criticism of a Post profile of McCarthy, which curiously omitted that information.

[...]If politics motivated McCarthy, could politics have motivated Dana Priest? Priest is the Post reporter who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning story on “secret CIA prisons” in Europe but refuses to say whether McCarthy was one of her sources. The Priest story, based completely on anonymous sources, has not been confirmed.

We do know that Priest authored a vicious attack on Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a major critic of the intelligence community who supported CIA director Porter Goss’s effort to reform the agency and fire leakers to the press.

As we noted in our August-B, 2005 AIM Report, Priest authored the attack on Weldon without contacting the congressman and the paper refused to print a letter to the editor from Weldon rebutting the Priest article.

Weldon has called on his congressional opponent, Joe Sestak, to return campaign contributions from McCarthy, the fired CIA officer ($350); Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who pleaded guilty to illegally taking and destroying classified documents ($1,000); and Clinton CIA Director John Deutch, who admitted mishandling classified documents ($500). Berger also hosted a fundraiser for Sestak in the offices of Harold Ickes, a close associate of Hillary Clinton and billionaire George Soros.

Sestak, who is also backed by John Kerry, replies he won’t give the money back to his “friends.” Weldon counters that accepting money from “criminals and convicted felons” raises character and security issues.

Other contributions to Sestak came from Hill PAC, Hillary Clinton’s political action committee; Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick; and Clinton chief of staff John Podesta.

One thing is certain: don’t look for any investigative stories from the Post into the intervention of the intelligence community into the media and politics.

While the media have played a nefarious role, officials of the Bush and Clinton administrations are scrambling to silence those, led by Weldon, who are asking tough questions about the performance of the intelligence community. Weldon, for example, wonders how it could happen that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta was not arrested even though he had been identified as a dangerous terrorist by the Able Danger military intelligence unit well before the terrorist attacks. He and at least three other members of an al-Qaeda cell in Brooklyn, NY were known as dangerous terrorists more than a year before the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field.

With notable exceptions (see below), powerful media outlets are ignoring or ridiculing those who are trying to expose the scandal of what at best can be categorized as incredible incompetence. At the moment, their target is Congressman Weldon, Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the Homeland Security Committee.

Weldon and 248 of his colleagues in both parties are demanding a no-holds-barred investigation. There was one congressional hearing in February–followed by minimal news coverage–with other Capitol Hill investigations possibly in the offing. Congressman Todd Tiahrt, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said he could not comment when AIM asked if that panel planned hearings on Able Danger. Most of the Intel committee’s hearings are behind closed doors.

[...]At the February 15 House hearing, the Pennsylvania congressman announced that Able Danger records had been found showing hundreds of references to Mohammed Atta prior to the 9/11 attacks. Mondics and Goldstein either were unaware of or ignored the fact that Weldon was working to get the documents declassified. The Inquirer reporters write as if they had been on another planet when all this happened.

In fact most of the media in this country acts as if they are from another planet when it comes to the Able Danger story. One interesting note is the next paragraph which tells us there is an upcoming book by Peter Lance that investigates the disgraceful job done by the 9/11 Commission, all to cover up their favorite boss…President Clinton:

Weldon notes that the top 9/11 staffer who steered away from his investigators the information offered by Shaffer and Philpott was Dietrich Snell–identified on the commission’s website as its chief counsel. The congressman tells AIM that an upcoming “blockbuster” book by ABC investigative reporter Peter Lance identifies Snell as “the key link in getting the 9/11 commission to ignore certain information that would have embarrassed the Justice Department during the Clinton administration in the early 1990s.”

Snell was closely allied with 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick. She was a top official in the Justice Department in the Clinton/Reno regime. In that position she took the lead in preventing intelligence-sharing among different agencies over and above what were already restrictive requirements in the law. The commission rejected outraged demands that she walk over to the other side of the witness table and answer (rather than ask) some tough questions under oath.

Congressman Weldon asks “How can they (the 9/11 commission) justify hiring 70 people and spending $15 million and not interview one analyst or any of the people who were doing the work of Able Danger? How could they do that? Unless [they] deliberately did not want to pursue the story?”

The commission staff told the congressman they “looked at it [Able Danger]” and “we decided not to go down that route.” He suspects a bipartisan cover-up to avoid “embarrassment to both sides.”

All this comes on the heels of the recent revelation that up to 10,000 additional pages of Able Danger documents still exist. Even though the DoD has said over and over that they were ALL destroyed: (via Able Danger Blog)

Scott Malone of NavySeals.com and Christopher Law of PublicEdCenter.org have been following the Able Danger story from the beginning. Back in November, Chris submitted a FOIA request for all documents and emails that could be located related to Able Danger. He was routed from the Pentagon to SOCOM, back to the Pentagon, asked to resubmit his request, then told he had submitted duplicate requests. Last week, his request was finally denied. DOD refused to turn over a single document, but admitted there were at least 9,500 pages of data responsive to his request! Considering that DOD has maintained all along they have not been able to find much material on Able Danger, and has been slow to respond to requests for documents on Able Danger from both the Congress and the 9/11 Commission, this is quite a surprise.

This news is actually quite stunning if you have followed this scandal. How in the world was 10,000 documents misplaced?