Pentagon to release report on September 11 claims

[Mark Gobell]

Pentagon to release report on September 11 claims

Oooh, can't wait . . .

By David Morgan and Kristin Roberts
Wed Sep 20, 10:22 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's inspector general will release a report in the coming days that is expected to refute claims that an Army intelligence unit had information that could have thwarted the September 11 attacks, officials said on Wednesday.

The report, the result of a Defense Department probe launched last October, was expected to be issued by acting Pentagon inspector general Thomas Gimble as early as Thursday, military and congressional officials said.

Former members of the data-mining unit code-named Able Danger and their Republican champion in Congress, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, have maintained for over a year that Able Danger uncovered intelligence on September 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and others in 2000 that should have been a tip-off of the attacks.

The September 11, 2001 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania and prompted the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

A spokesman for Weldon's office acknowledged that a final draft of the report was "imminent" but said he could not discuss the contents of the document.

Officials from Gimble's office were expected to brief Weldon about their findings on Thursday and then release the report on the Defense Department web site www.defenselink.mil, officials said.

Two officials familiar with the contents of the report said it substantially undermines claims put forward by Weldon and former Able Danger members.

Weldon and former unit members including former Defense Intelligence Agency liaison officer Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer maintain that Able Danger identified Atta and three other hijackers as al Qaeda members in early 2000. But he said Pentagon lawyers prevented the team from warning the FBI.

Officials said the inspector general specifically investigated charges that the Defense Intelligence Agency retaliated against Shaffer for his public remarks about the Able Danger findings.

The inspector general began reviewing the case of Able Danger after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld received a written request on October 20, 2005, from Rep. Duncan Hunter (news, bio, voting record) of California, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services.

Others associated with Able Danger, including the team's former leader, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have made statements similar to Shaffer's.

But an earlier exhaustive Pentagon search of tens of thousands of documents and electronic files related to the operation failed to corroborate the claims.

Officials with House and Senate intelligence oversight committees have also said there is little substantiating evidence.

[Mark Gobell]

Claim 9/11 Terrorists Were Identified Is Rejected

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/22able.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1158897600 &en=123d92d9b6c5d06c&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

By PHILIP SHENON
Published: September 22, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — The Defense Department’s inspector general on Thursday dismissed claims by military officers and others who had insisted that a secret Pentagon program identified Mohamed Atta and other terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks before the attacks occurred.

Threats & Responses

Go to Complete Coverage » The inspector general’s office, which acts as the Defense Department’s internal watchdog, said in a report that its investigators found no evidence to suggest that the intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified Mr. Atta, the Egyptian-born ringleader of the attacks, or any of the other terrorists before Sept. 11.

“We concluded that prior to Sept. 11, 2001, Able Danger team members did not identify Mohamed Atta or any other 9/11 hijackers,” the report said. “While we interviewed four witnesses who claimed to have seen a chart depicting Mohamed Atta and possibly other terrorists or ‘cells’ involved in 9/11, we determined that their recollections were not accurate.”

The claim that a secret Pentagon data-mining program had known of Mr. Atta and other hijackers before Sept. 11 created a stir when the witnesses’ accounts became public last year, because it suggested that the Defense Department had information that might have helped pre-empt the attacks had it been shared outside of the Pentagon.

The inspector general’s report, prepared at the request of several members of Congress, was criticized Thursday by Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and who helped bring information about Able Danger to light.

“I am appalled that the Department of Defense inspector general would expect the American people to actually consider this a full and thorough investigation,” Mr. Weldon said, describing the inspector general as having “cherry-picked testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of the Able Danger effort.”

The report found that the recollections of most of the witnesses appeared to focus on a “single chart depicting Al Qaeda cells responsible for pre-9/11 terrorist attacks” that was produced in 1999 by a defense contractor, the Orion Scientific Corporation.

While witnesses remembered having seen Mr. Atta’s photograph or name on such a chart, the inspector general said its investigation showed that the Orion chart did not list Mr. Atta or any of the other Sept. 11 terrorists, and that “testimony by witnesses who claimed to have seen such a chart varied significantly from each other.”

The report says that a central witness in the investigation, an active-duty Navy captain who directed the Able Danger program, had changed his account over time, initially telling the inspector general’s office last December that he was “100 percent” certain that he had seen “Mohamed Atta’s image on the chart.”

But in an interview this May, the report said, the officer, Scott J. Phillpott, changed his story, telling investigators that he had been confused and was now “convinced that Atta was not on that chart” but that, instead, the terrorist’s photograph was reproduced on a separate document that he was shown by an intelligence analyst on the Able Danger team in June 2000.

The inspector general’s report suggests that the independent federal commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks was right to dismiss Captain Phillpott’s initial claims about Able Danger.

The Sept. 11 commission acknowledged last year that the Navy captain had come to its investigators in July 2004, only days before it issued its final report.

The inspector general’s report also rejected claims by another of the witnesses, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a veteran military intelligence officer, that he had faced reprisals for having make disclosures about Able Danger, including revocation of his security clearance.

[John White]

very interesting

its clear the PTB recognise proof of Prior knowledge as a very serious threat

and they are right: it is

A sorry saga of leaned on witnesses and doublethink catalogued above

[Mark Gobell]

having read the testimonies given to the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees about Able Danger I wanted to discover what action these hearings can take.

Do they just issue reports as a result ?

Is it part of an evidence collection process ?

What is their remit and what outcomes can we expect?

All that has happened so far is that some internal overisght department in the Pentagon / DoD has issued this cover up.

I'm trying to understand the process here, can anyone help.