To pile on J-Pod’s comments about the usability by law enforcement of intelligence gathered by the Defense Department, it is worth focusing on Michael Ledeen’s point about the nature of the information it appears we are talking about when we discuss “Able Danger.” In his séance with Michael this morning, J.J. Angelton observes the following about the appropriateness of passing this information to the FBI:

It wasn’t illegal, first of all. How could it have been? The “information” wasn’t proprietary, and it wasn’t secret. The data came from newspapers and magazines, they just analyzed it, and apparently they analyzed it quite well. There was no legality that prevented them from pointing out the significance of the data to anyone — law enforcement or Army cook. It’s just nonsense.

If all we are talking about here was marshaling what was available from open source information rather than some super-sensitive intelligence source, it is even more inexplicable that the information was not passed along.

Some other observations:

It is reported that this Atta information may have been developed as early as 1999. If that turns out to be true, think about what that means. The Democrats on the Commission (especially Gorelick and BenVeniste), through well coached witnesses like Richard Clarke, told us again and again that in the run up to the Millennium bombing, President Clinton demanded that his entire administration hierarchy be at “battle stations” – poring over all the intelligence, demanding answers from the intelligence community about any and all information so that nothing was missed. That is the well-oiled counterterrorism machine they used the Commission investigation to project. (Transparently, the intimation by the Commission Dems was that the Bush hierarchy was comparatively asleep at the switch in the months before 9/11.)

Well, ok, what did those at battle stations do about the Atta information?

And did the Commission know about the Atta information when it allowed its melodramatic public hearings to be used in this fashion?

The Millennium bombing plot against LA Int’l Airport occurred in late 1999 and confirmed that militant Islam was bent on striking the American homeland. What was done at that time about the Atta information?

In October 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors. This reaffirmed that al Qaeda was operating through cells and bent on killing Americans anywhere. What was done at that time about the Atta information?

Given this turn in 9/11 Commission events, it is again worth asking: Why has the public not been told at this point what was in the classified documents that Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger illegally pilfered from the archives during preparation for his Commission testimony (as well as President Clinton’s) – some of which he destroyed (although there are said to be other copies)? The 9/11 inquiry was said to be so significant to the public’s understanding of intelligence failure that the Commissioners famously forced a Presidential Daily Briefing from the CIA (one of the most sensitive documents generated by government) to be declassified and unsealed so that Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condi Rice, could be asked about it publicly. Why haven’t we been able to see for ourselves what Berger took?

Just asking.