The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XIII

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UPDATE 8/25 1320hrs

Looks like hearings may actually be in the making:

Aides to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., are actively discussing a hearing on “Able Danger” and the larger issue of information-sharing between the Pentagon and the FBI, FOX News has confirmed.

Plus Weldon is blasting the Pentagon about their media statements:

But Weldon on Thursday urged the Pentagon not to issue any more statements on Able Danger until its findings are complete.

Weldon said in a statement that doing so “might give the unfortunate impression that its results are predetermined.”

The congressman said he spoke to DiRita on Wednesday and that “he was backpedaling left and right,” claiming he was misquoted about the status of the search.

“There’s something very sinister going on here that really troubles me,” Weldon told FOX News on Thursday, blasting the Sept. 11 commission for not taking the claims more seriously. He said some panel members were trying to smear Shaffer and Able Danger.

“What’s the Sept. 11 commission got to hide?” Weldon asked. “The commission is trying to spin this because they’re embarrassed about what’s coming out. In two weeks with two staffers, I’ve uncovered more in this regard than they did with 80 staffers and $15 million of taxpayer money.”

END UPDATE

Captain Ed, one of our most esteemed reporters in the blogosphere is doing a great job of putting some pieces of this puzzle together:

The 9/11 Commission claimed to have discounted the testimony of Captain Scott Phillpott in July 2004 on Able Danger specifically because of his assertion about when his team identified Mohammed Atta as a potential al-Qaeda terrorist in the United States. The official timeline for the Commission on Atta starts on June 3, 2000, when INS records the first of only three entries for Atta in Newark, New Jersey. Captain Phillpott insists that his team ID’d Atta in the US in January or February 2000, months earlier.

…I argued that the Commission’s weak sourcing for the Atta timeline, essentially based on nothing but INS records and the testimony of two captured terrorists, reopens not only the question of when Atta first established his cell here but the long-debated Czech intelligence that has Atta meeting with the Iraqis in Prague.

…However, the trip to Spain that Atta undertook in July 2001 creates new problems. Atta went to Spain twice, actually; when he met Ramzi Binalshibh in January 2001 in Germany, he traveled through Madrid to get there. The second time on July 7, Atta traveled to Zurich but stayed in Spain, as far as anyone can tell.

But why Spain? The terrorists knew Germany much better than Spain, and presumably could find better cover there.

…So we have the two terrorists going into unfamiliar territory at the height of tourist season, when making travel arrangements are the most difficult. In fact, Binalshibh had to contact Shehhi to recast the arrangements after Atta had already left. Why go through all of this hassle, unless (a) there were other people that Atta needed to meet, and/or (b) Germany was too dangerous for Atta? The Spanish government insists that Atta met with more than just Binalshibh in that trip, a fact that the Commission only includes as a footnote on page 530. They discount this information even though the Spaniards used it to indict several people on terror charges, preferring the testimony of Binalshibh instead.

If the meeting was only between Atta and Binalshibh, why risk operating in the open in unfamiliar territory to make that connection? Atta probably thought that after the German arrests, Germany was no longer safe for him to visit. Indeed, as far as is known, Atta never returned to Germany after the arrests of the Iraqi spies.

Although this is just a theory, the fact that Atta never again set foot in Germany after the arrests of the Iraqi agents is very telling. As The Captain noted, Germany was a huge resource and a had a well set up network for Atta to work in. Why would he all of the sudden begin meetings in Spain, in unfamiliar terrority? The real question is why the 9/11 Commission saw fit to dismiss all of this.

The Captain also has some news on a terrorist who has surfaced recently who claims to have helped Atta and his crew with their travel arrangements. The arrangements seem to support the contention that Atta was in Prague in April of 2001:

The German news magazine Der Spiegel profiles yet another terrorist linked to the 9/11 attack plot and the Hamburg cell whence it sprang. Luai Sakra surfaced in Turkey, and although he has some apparent stability issues, DS reports that the Syrian has worked as an informant for Western intelligence agencies. Either that, or Sakra knows how to spin fantasies that might cost him his life (h/t: CQ reader Rob P-M):

Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested an Islamist with ties to many upper tier al-Qaida members. The man not only tried to get asylum in Germany, but claims to have known about the London bombings beforehand and to have helped the 9/11 pilots. …

…”I was one of the people who knew the 9/11 perpetrators,” Sakra reportedly said in passing during the interrogation, “and I knew the plans and times beforehand.” He claims to have provided the pilots with passports and money.

Sakra lived in the German town of Schramberg from September 2000 to July 2001, during the period when the Hamburg cell actively supported Mohammed Atta and the primary leaders of the attack plot. By July 2001, when he left, most of the heavy lifting had been done by those abroad, and the rest of the attack preparation took place in the United States. Sakra would have moved on to a new assignment at that time.

This guy could be a nut but should be checked out.

There is also news on how Atta’s picture was obtained so early for this chart: (h/t A Blog For All)

A Pentagon secret intelligence team identified 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta through a probe of blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman ? the mastermind of the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center, it was revealed yesterday.

An outside contractor to the intelligence unit, code named Able Danger, has told congressional staffers Atta’s name was discovered by a computer data-mining search of connections to Abdel-Rahman, the Muslim cleric in prison for inspiring the 1993 trade center bombing and a plot to blow up New York landmarks.

Contractor James D. Smith testified that a California researcher was later able to purchase Atta’s photograph from an Islamic Web site, officials confirmed.

And finally Independent Sources takes my local communist paper to task on it’s reporting of the Able Danger story:

This is how the Los Angeles Times reported on Able Danger in their 8/23 article ?No Evidence Atta Was Identified, Official Says?:

The Pentagon has been unable to validate claims that a secret intelligence unit identified Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta as a terrorist more than a year before the attacks, a Defense Department spokesman said.

Larry Di Rita said research into the matter continued, but that there had been no evidence that the intelligence unit, called Able Danger, came up with information as specific as an Army Reserve officer associated with the program had asserted.

If the Los Angeles Times was one?s only information source, one would naturally conclude that there was no story, no evidence, no witnesses, etc. to the Able Danger claims. Not so fast?The New York Times and Fox News were already reporting that a second military intelligence has publicly backed claims that Able Danger identified Mohamed Atta as a security risk.

Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott told FOX News in a statement Monday evening that the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks was identified as someone with ties to known terrorists.

…Readers of the L.A. Times would also know nothing nothing about Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon?s statement:

?Three people associated with Able Danger have gone on the record to certify that it was a program tasked with mapping Al-Qaeda worldwide ? its work included the linkages which identified Mohamed Atta. That finding should not be taken lightly, and neither should the credibility of the three people who have bravely gone on the record.?

While it is possible that the Times had gone to print prior to this statement?s release, it is certainly in time for the LAT 8/24 edition which will be going to print in the next hour. At the time of this writing, 11:45 pm, there was nothing up on the LAT website for this story. (Click here to go to the LAT website and type in ?Able Danger? to the search window.)

In summary, at a minimum the LAT omitted material allegations in its Able Danger story and gave undue weight to the DOD statement that there was ?no evidence? by failing to include all of the qualifiers to the ?no evidence? statement. Other papers did, so why didn?t the LAT? The DOD has been trying to recover from its public relations disaster and has been parsing words (?can?t substantiate? instead of ?we can prove they are wrong?). Is this the dawn of a new era where the DOD releases a statement and the LAT takes it as gospel?

Does not surprise me one bit, what do you expect from one of the worst papers in the Country?

Just found out that LTC Shaffer and his attorney will be on O’Reilly tonight.

Check out Patterico’s Pontifications, Single Malt Pundit, & A Blog For All for more.

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The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XI
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update X
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update IX
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update VIII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update VII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update VI
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update V
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, update IV
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update III
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update II
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger