Atta intel OMITTED

This story keeps changing, little cracks in the ceiling seem to portend a great crashing. First the 9/11 Commission didn’t know anything about Able Daring, then, yeahhhh, they heard about it but discounted it, then, yeahhhh, we heard about it twice, actually, but…but, it fell between the cracks as things were ready to go to print…

Now, the word Omitted is being used, as in: Atta Intelligence Omitted From Report, as in the 9/11 Commission seems to have purposely left out the information, and now, uh-oh!, people are going back to the National Archives – the place where Sandy Berger found and lost-or-destroyed so many interesting notes and documents!

The Sept. 11 commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday.

Al Felzenberg, who had been the commission’s chief spokesman, said Tuesday the panel was unaware of intelligence specifically naming Atta. But he said subsequent information provided Wednesday confirmed that the commission had been aware of the intelligence. …

Staff members now are searching documents in the National Archives to look for notes from the meeting in Afghanistan and any other possible references to Atta and Able Danger, Felzenberg said.

Yeah, good luck with that – but then, do we really want these staffers in the National Archives right now? I’m wondering…Sandy Berger was supposed to receive his slap-on-the-wrist sentence for stealing and “losing or destroying” top-secret documents (clearly marked SECRET and encased in nice plastic covers) in June or July, I believe. Then that got pushed back to September. And here we are, in August, when Washington is quite, quite empty, and no one is around to talk about anything…how interesting, the timing of Weldon’s information.

I’ve been wondering all along where this information suddenly came from…I can’t help wondering (and this is only me wondering, I could be completely, totally all wet, here) but is it possible – at all – that Sandy Berger is the source of this info? Is it possible that part of his deal to stay out of prison (and perhaps not be charged with treason) was to make certain THESE FACTS BECAME AVAILABLE and saw the light of day? Is that even, perhaps, why his pals in the press are being pretty good about actually covering the story? Because it’s part of a deal?

Oh, heck, I don’t know. I have no head for this sort of stuff…but it DOES seem odd to me, the timing.

Ed Morrissey is also writing on this right now: One of Sandy Berger’s last visits to the Archives where he took highly classified material out the door with him was in October 2003, around the time that the Commission first heard about Able Danger. Does this start to sound just a little too convenient and coincidental?

Even without the possible Berger theft as part of the story, this constant shifting of the story underscores the massive credibility deficit that the Commission has now earned.
…
Instead of reporting it, the Commission buried it.

This points to some disturbing questions. It looks like the Commission decided early to pin blame on the intelligence community rather than the bureaucracy which stripped it of its ability to act in the interests of our security. Who benefited from that? Commissioner Jamie S. Gorelick. Who else stood to lose if the real story came out? The answer to that may well be the NSA director who conducted a clumsy raid on the National Archives in the middle of the investigation.

Congress needs to take this up immediately.

I concur. I don’t know if they will…somehow, nothing Congress has done lately tells me they’ve the guts to do look into this. But I agree, they should. As Ed says, the credibilty of the 9/11 Commission is shot. Ed has also written this piece for the Weekly Standard which is pretty troubling, and more than suggests that 9/11 was supposed to be a GLOBAL attack.

Jim Geraghty at TKS has lots of insights.

WELCOME: CQ readers! While you are here, please look around. Today we’re also talking about Cake and the Divine Spark, the idea that Jon Stewart likes milblogs, Attorney General Eliot Spitzers seeming reluctance to talk to Air America, and a new book that takes on the Myth of Hitler’s Pope.