Contributed by: filbert Friday, August 12 2005 @ 05:19 AM CST
“The 9/11 commission took a very high-profile role in critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to outside information. The commissioners very publicly expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house,” Weldon wrote in his letter Wednesday night.
“Therefore it is no small irony,” Weldon pointed out, “that the commission would in the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when information of potentially critical importance was brought to its attention.”
The 9/11 Commission was already seriously tainted by the inclusion of Clinton Administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie “I Built The Intelligence Wall” Gorelick. Now it appears that the Commission is in full CYA mode[*2] .
WASHINGTON (AP) – 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, spokesman for the commission’s follow-up project called the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, had said earlier this week that 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.
The information did not make it into the final report because it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta’s whereabouts before the attacks, Felzenberg said.
The National Review has, fittingly, a review of What We Know[*3] :
* The 9/11 Commission Report, which everyone and their brother praised as a comprehensive and definitive analysis of the flaws in U.S. counterterrorism operations before 9/11, now has at least one giant glaring hole in it. One cannot help but wonder what else got left out, because some staffer or staffers seemed to think it wasn’t important enough. I relish the wording in this comment: “The 9-11 Commission’s job was to find and connect all the intelligence dots that obviously didn’t get connected prior to 9-11, and then recommend how we can connect the dots better and faster next time. It wasn’t part of their job to erase the dots they didn’t like, before connecting. Doing that, implies that their conclusions were arrived at well before the investigation was complete.”
Most intriguing question on the list: What were the documents that Sandy Berger was caught stuffing down his pants in the National Archive?