There will be a lot more to say in the coming days about the startling revelations (a) that some of the 9/11 hijackers – including Mohammed Atta – were actually identified as potential terrorists as early as 1999 by a DoD intelligence project called “Able Danger,” but, in those days of the “wall” that prevented intelligence agents from comparing notes with criminal investigators, law enforcement was not told; and (b) that the 9/11 Commission was told about Able Danger and the early identification of Atta but decided it wasn’t worthy of any mention in its 567-page that devotes exactly two pages (78-80) to the wall – describing it as just one of those unfortunate misunderstandings. (And did I mention that one of the 9/11 Commissioners, Jamie Gorelick, was the Deputy Attorney General who had a key role in heightening and formalizing the wall? And that neither she nor her “brethren” thought this was a conflict of interest worthy of her withdrawal as a Commissioner?)
For now, this from Congressman Curt Weldon’s letter to the Commission sums things up well: “The commission’s refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose.”